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September 11-15, 2000The latest UN financial information, just released, contains very bad news. As of the end of August, UN arrears stood at a record level for the month – a total of $3.241 billion in payments due from member states. The arrears of the United States had risen to a record of $1.875 billion – 58% of the total outstanding. This dire situation has arisen in spite of the many concessions offered to the United States by Secretary General Annan and by UN member states -- all anxious to end the UN’s disastrous financial troubles. No wonder that member states oppose any further concessions to the superpower, even though the US government is pushing hard to reduce its assessment rate. See our finance tables: www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables/index.htm
As the Security Council approves new peacekeeping missions or increases existing missions, arrears are likely to rise further, putting the UN’s budget into extraordinary jeopardy. The US government, turning up the heat to win its dues reduction, may continue to hold back its payments, driving the organization to the brink, in order to extract its latest demands.
The UN’s woes often start not in Washington, but in corporate executive suites.
In early August, the World Health Organization released an extraordinary study about tobacco company campaigns to undermine and discredit WHO because of its programs against smoking and nicotine addictions as major health hazards. Based on millions of pages of confidential tobacco company documents released in recent lawsuits, the report details the corporate attacks on WHO in chilling detail. See www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/tncs/2000/tobacco.htm
The report shows that top executives of the world’s leading tobacco companies conspired together against WHO, an organization they saw as “one of their foremost enemies” and that they “instigated global strategies to discredit and impede WHO’s ability to carry out its mission.” The Philip Morris Company, the industry leader, held an strategy session in 1989 in Boca Raton Florida where executives planned a world-wide offensive against tobacco critics, identifying WHO as their most dangerous opponent.
The report shows how the companies hid behind a “variety of ostensibly independent quasi-academic, public policy and business organizations” whose tobacco backing was not disclosed. The companies established clandestine relations with present and former WHO staff member, hammered the organization with negative public relations, fomented disputes between WHO and other UN agencies about tobacco-related policy and tried to organize developing country representatives by painting WHO policies as driven solely by rich country concerns. They devoted huge resources to these campaigns and used their vast corporate networks in the food business and other non-tobacco companies to pursue their anti-UN goals.
The WHO report, commented in many press articles, is available in full on the WHO web site. We encourage readers to look at it and to consider its implications for UN “partnerships” with multinational corporations, touted with such flourish on June 26 as a “Global Compact” of the UN with fifty multinationals was announced.
While the UN is throwing its doors open to corporate executives, it has been pulling them shut for NGOs. We were shocked to learn in recent days that the UN office issuing grounds passes suddenly refused to give passes to NGO interns and volunteers. No consultations preceded this step and no credible explanations were offered. Though the order has now been reversed, the UN still threatens to restrict such passes beginning January 1. The Secretary General’s office has not been able to explain why once again the UN has acted in a high-handed manner towards those the SG likes to call “indispensable partners” and “the conscience of humanity.”
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