Greetings Gambia-l, I thought this article might be of interest to some of you. regards, Momodou Camara __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ Title: POLITICS-UNITED NATIONS: NGOs Call for Radical Changes in World Body By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Aug 18 (IPS) - A coalition of over 350 legislators and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has called for radical political and structural changes within the United Nations. These proposed changes - ranging from the creation of a People's Assembly to the establishment of a high-level Environmental Council - could pave the way for ''a more effective and democratic'' world body, says EarthAction Network, comprising NGOs and citizen's groups from over 150 countries. ''The United Nations, imperfect though it is, has done much good,'' says the coalition. ''But the world at the dawn of the 21st century is very different from that of 1945 (when the UN was established).'' ''Our existing international system cannot protect us from the threat of nuclear war or global environmental destruction. And it has failed to meet the basic needs of more than a billion of the world's citizens,'' the coalition warns. In an appeal to over 125 world leaders, who are expected to participate in what has been billed as the largest summit meeting ever at the United Nations Sept. 6-8, the coalition calls for the creation of a democratic chamber within the UN system. The proposed People's Assembly could, together with the existing General Assembly made up of national governments, play a major role in decision-making on the global environment, sustainable development, peace and human rights, according to EarthAction Network. Moreover, such an Assembly, it says, could also provide democratic oversight of the expenditure of UN funds, including new global revenues. The need for a new Environmental Council has been prompted by the fact that ''consensus'' decisions on the protection of the global environment involve waiting until almost 200 national governments are agreed before global action is taken. ''Imagine trying to make decisions in your country if all members of the national legislature had to agree before anything got done,'' the coalition complains. On the issue of peacekeeping, the coalition has proposed the creation of a UN Rapid Deployment Brigade ready to go to areas of conflict to prevent killing and to protect innocent people. ''To be effective, such a force needs to be trained, armed and authorised to arrest anyone engaged in aggression or murder,'' the coalition says. The signatories to the appeal range from the Lawyer's Committee on Nuclear Policy and the War and Peace Foundation in the United States to the Council for Human Ecology in Kenya and the Society for Developmental Action in India. William H. Luers, President and Chairman of the UN Association of the USA (UNA-USA) - one of the most active US-based NGOs promoting the cause of the United Nations - says the flaws in the UN system are ''fixable,'' but the world body must honestly assess its own strengths and weaknesses. Writing in the current issue of ''Foreign Affairs'' - published by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations - Luers points out that ''the most obvious shortcoming of the United Nations is its lack of standby capacity - which (the US) Congress opposes - for peacekeeping, policing, and administration in troubled regions.'' This has been underscored in the past year by UN experiences in Kosovo, East Timor and Sierra Leone, where peacekeeping has run into trouble. Luers argues that limits on the UN's efficiency partly stem from its multinational character. The 188 member states, he says, reduce General Assembly activities to interminable speech-making while their demands for a quota of UN jobs hamper the Secretary- General and other UN agency heads in selecting staff according to merit. But still, there are signs of genuine reform, Luers concedes. But he points out that the body's capacity to respond to new challenges has been severely limited by a shortage of resources. At US congressional insistence, the UN Secretariat's budget has been frozen at about 1.3 billion dollars annually for the past four years. ''After accounting for inflation and delayed or defaulted payments by the US and other nations, this means that the UN has far fewer funds to meet greatly expanded obligations,'' Luers says. In its appeal to world leaders, EarthAction Network says the near- bankruptcy of the United Nations, the shrinking funds for helping the world's poorest citizens, and the lack of resources for priorities such as renewable energy and forest protection, show clearly that resources on the scale necessary to meet global needs are unlikely to come from national budgets alone. Some governments have urged that, to generate resources for global priorities, fees should be levied for uses of the ''global commons'' - namely the atmosphere, the oceans and outer space. According to EarthAction Network, fees on global pollution, for example, a global ''carbon tax'' on the carbon dioxide emissions which contribute to global warming, would both raise funds and help discourage damaging activities. An additional revenue source would be a levy on international transactions generating about 150 billion dollars a year. These fees, says EarthAction Network, would be levied by national governments but the proceeds would be devoted to global priorities through the UN system. The coalition has also proposed a more active role for the UN in the process of demilitarisation. ''If nations are to have the confidence to demilitarise, they must be sure that their neighbours and adversaries are doing likewise. For any disarmament agreement, the United Nations should verify and ensure compliance.'' ''We have begun a new millennium, yet all our hopes for the future could be lost if we fail to solve our global problems of war, poverty, environmental degradation and the abuse of human rights,'' it says. (END/IPS/IP/td/da/00) Origin: SJAAMEX/POLITICS-UNITED NATIONS/ ---- [c] 2000, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface ----------------------------------------------------------------------------