Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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May 14 - 18, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
GPF List-Serv
May 14 - 18, 2001Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
The Dark Side of Chocolates?
In the past two years, campaigns have revealed much about diamonds -- how behind their glamour lies a sordid African reality of violence and death. Now chocolate candies stand exposed as well. A chocolate campaign has recently announced that cacao plantations in West Africa practice child slavery on a large scale. According to recent reports on CNN and the BBC World Service, as many as 200,000 children between 9 and 12 years old work in conditions of bondage in these plantations. According to a report posted on the BBC News web site on May 4, the Ivory Coast Prime Minister has accused the major chocolate companies of driving down the price of cacao and creating conditions that lead to such slave conditions. Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cacao producer. Ivory Coast ministers flew to London to speak with Brian Wilson, Foreign Office Minister for Africa. Wilson was said to be asking chocolate executives to re-examine their practices, but the industry publicly insists that it buys from dealers and can do nothing about conditions on the plantations. A small number of firms including Cadbury (UK), Kraft (USA) and Nestle (Switzerland) dominate the world chocolate market. Kraft is a division of Philip Morris, the cigarette manufacturing giant. Nestlé has a bad reputation from marketing an infant breast milk substitute that must be mixed with (often impure) water, bringing death to large numbers of infants in poor countries.
Debate Heats Up over the Human Rights Commission Election
Editorial writers, politicians and NGO leaders have all weighed in with their opinions about the recent loss by the United States of its seat in the UN Human Rights Commission. While many around the world have made sensible commentary about the matter, we have noticed a profound reality gap in statements by many opinion leaders in the US. They seem to think that elections are unacceptable when their country loses -- a very dubious approach, especially when voiced in the name of human rights.
The Chairman of the United Nations Association-USA, William Luers, has unfortunately joined this chorus. In a press release dated May 3, he utters patriotic noises about “America’s history of leadership” and its “commitment to the promotion of human rights.” He then astonishingly proposes that “One of the other countries should step down from the Commission so that the United States can continue there.” (!!) Such a proposal can only damage the credibility of the human rights movement by exposing the cynicism that lies so close to the surface in human rights discourse. And it can only deepen the nausea felt by the people of other countries towards the United States and its sanctimonious claims to hegemony. If only Mr. Luers had also issued a press release expressing opposition to the human rights offender who has been nominated as the next US ambassador to the United Nations. But alas, as far as we know, he has said nothing on the subject.
Security Council Jottings
After a lot of talk about the US project to devise “smart sanctions” for Iraq, the Bush administration has decided to take a low profile in the matter and pass responsibility of selling the proposal to its partner the United Kingdom. So the UK is quietly circulating a a plan that has Washington’s blessing. From what we have heard, the draft is scarcely innovative. It prohibits the sale of a specific list of arms and “weapons-related items” to Iraq. But what does the term “weapons-related items” include? All monies from oil sales would remain under UN control and all investments in Iraq would still be prohibited.
Members of the Security Council are not enthusiastic about this very cautious and disappointing proposal. Only bold changes can address what one ambassador calls the “dreadful humanitarian situation” in Iraq. Norway backs the UK measure, but Russia and China are not ready to agree and France likewise balks. As Council members meet and as the US brings to bear its usual heavy pressure, the elected members will insist on certain improvements. Once the Council reaches June 6, it will almost certainly renew the old, discredited Oil-for-Food program for another six months while the talk goes on.
In Liberia, in retaliation against the Security Council’s sanctions, President Charles Taylor has imposed a travel ban on UN diplomats and NGO employees and imposed a new curfew. The Liberian foreign ministry argued it was taking this step “for security reasons.” Meanwhile, the Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas has appealed to the Security Council to establish a legal framework to indict Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his “involvement in gun- running and diamond smuggling with Sierra Leonean rebels”.
In Sierra Leone, the army and the RUF have signed a ceasefire and agreed to start a demobilization program under the auspices of the UN. "We solemnly undertake to ensure the cessation of all hostilities and, to that effect, hereby instruct all our combatants to desist from any hostile activity," said the joint communiqué. The agreement also stipulated that UNAMSIL would "immediately ensure the observance of the undertaking as well as the unimpeded movement of persons, goods and services throughout the country." But the RUF has already complained to UNAMSIL that government-backed Civil Defense Force violated cease-fire in the RUF-controlled Kono district.
And now here are this week’s links:
