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September 17-21, 2001 - Global Policy Forum - Email 'Listserv' News
GPF List-Serv
September 17-21, 2001Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
Situation in New York
Here in New York, we remain very shaken by the terrible attack of September 11. The sirens of ambulances and fire trucks, part of the daily cacophony of the city, stir uneasy recollections. Thunder at night (as on Thursday) brings an edgy wakefulness. On Broadway, we saw a convoy of ten huge flatbed trucks carrying excavating gear southward towards Lower Manhattan to help dig out the mountain of rubble (already, they say, 100,000 tons have been removed, though the work has only begun). The same trucks, on their return trip carry torn steel girders and crushed emergency vehicles.
New York remains jumpy, but the citizens of the city have shown remarkable energy and solidarity in the emergency and they are approaching the present with their usual determination and speed. Businesses have already re-located into hotels, garages and every conceivable empty space. And New York has been quick to start thinking about the political future as well. Though there are many flags waving and a certain amount of chauvinistic sentiment, oppositional currents have already emerged, with articles, radio interviews and vigils at Union Square critical of Washington's war plans. New York, after all, is not Bush country and the majority of New Yorkers do not take easily to his simplistic logic and his cowboy call to arms.
At the United Nations
At the UN, the crisis has knocked everything out of joint. On the 11th, the Secretariat imposed an incredibly high state of security, adding to the usual extensive security preparations for the Children's Summit and the High-Level Debate of the General Assembly. Ever since, the Security Department has completely excluded NGOs from the headquarters complex. A US Coast Guard ship has stood at anchor in the river with lots of electronic gear on board. Huge orange trucks, filled with sand, block all roadways in the vicinity. Police barricades, heavily-armed security agents and other security measures are everywhere.
The UN has now postponed the Children's Summit and the High-Level Debate of the GA, the latter until November. But some Presidents, Prime Ministers Foreign Ministers and other dignitaries have paid visits to UN headquarters as part of trips to Washington and New York to express their solidarity with the United States. In general, though, a high level of uncertainty prevails. No one seems to know which meetings will eventually take place and how they will be organized. Greatest of all is the uncertainty about the role of the UN in the crisis, as a moderating influence for lawful and multilateral approaches to the crisis. As George Bush lays out his war scenario in Washington, optimism is not great.
NGOs are very worried about their access to the UN in the coming months. More than four weeks before the crisis, UN Security started to severely restrict the issuance of passes to NGOs in a way that broke earlier promises made by the Secretary General. The heads of the ECOSOC and DPI NGO offices in the Secretariat were evidently caught by surprise. Was this move driven by official paranoia after Genoa, warnings of an impending attack on New York, or just the usual temptation to clamp down on the pesky NGOs. No one knows. But obviously, a negative trend was under way well before the events of the 11th.
In light of the seriousness of the overall security situation in the city and the special challenges faced by the UN security forces, the present exceptional situation appears to be justified. Fortunately, the UN made an exception to allow NGO representatives to attend the negotiations of the PrepCom of the International Criminal Court.
Soon, though, we will have to insist that NGOs be allowed to return to the headquarters buildings. Any long-term exclusion would be the equivalent of a State of Emergency - a dubious restriction of democratic privileges that could well be politically motivated.
New Section of the Web Site on the WTC Crisis
Thanks are due to the GPF team for rapidly creating a new section of the web site to cover the WTC Crisis. During the week, though we were very short-handed, the new section went up speedily. Thanks go especially to Celine Nahory for overall coordination of this work and to Patrick Meier for the design and production of the home page and template graphics. The site had nearly 200,000 hits in the most recent seven-day period.
During the week we also welcomed several new interns: Sara Spant, Florence Poli, Bojana Stoparic and Misaki Watanabe, each from a different country. Misaki, a student at Barnard College/Columbia University, is a returning veteran who worked with GPF in the summer of 2000. She will help with our Security Council work.
Here are the week's links:
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