DEVELOPMENT BULLETIN-UNITED NATIONS: Third World Needs To Assert Itself, Says Activist

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 9 1998 (IPS) - A leading environmental and women’s activist says that developing nations need to assert themselves politically at the United Nations, where the United States and other western nations still call the shots.

Susan Davis, Executive Director of the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), says the 132 developing countries of the Group of 77 (G-77) should use their collective strength to set the political and economic agenda of the world body.

She points out that developing nations had the clout – and the votes – to bolster the Secretary-General in his attempts to radically restructure the financially-ailing Organisation. “They could make Kofi Annan really powerful,” she told IPS. Unfortunat ely, “they are locked in box. They cannot move from their script.”

The G-77, which currently represents more than two-thirds of the U.N.’s total membership of 185, should adopt “new tactics, devise new language and craft new alliances” to pursue its agenda in the world body, Davis says.

At a seminar at the U.N. headquarters on Wednesday, Davis maintained the “bottom-up reform” of the United Nations should be led by the G-77, not dictated by the North.

“You have the votes in this institution. You can lead the way forward,” she told a gathering of Third World ambassadors and senior U.N. officials attending the seminar on development financing, sponsored by the G-77 in cooperation with the Rome- based Society for International Development (SID).

Although it owes more than 1.3 billion dollars in arrears to the world body, the U.S. is still a dominant factor at the United Nations where it plays a significant role in overall decision- making. Over the years, Washington has continued to dictate the

U.N. agenda; it has rejected a proposal for global taxes, called for a moratorium on U.N. conferences, cold-shouldered a U.N. request to borrow funds from commercial banks, rejected a proposal for a U.N. standing army and prevented the world body from pen alising countries that renege on their assessed payments.

Jesse Helms, the conservative, right-wing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued an ultimatum last year: “Either the U.N. reforms quickly and dramatically or the United States will end its participation…

“Reining in the U.N. bureaucracy is about much more than saving money. It is about preventing unelected bureaucrats from acquiring ever-greater powers at the expense of national leaders. It is about restoring the legitimacy of the nation state. ”

Helms, whose Republican Party is linking U.N. funding to domestic legislation on abortion, has called for the elimination of U.N. committees and conferences that are considered vital for developing nations, including the Committee on Decolonisation and t he Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.

Davis says there is a lot of “anguish” among Americans that the “politics of abortion” at home is creating “huge problems around the world” resulting from the non-payment of dues to the world body.

One of the failings of the Third World, however, is the lack of solidarity. “We are in a competitive mode. It is a race to the bottom,” Davis says adding that Third World governments express one view in the context of a U.N. setting, and “sing a total ly different song” at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva “where the business lobby has been camping out.”

Developing nations should speak with single voice. “Middle income nations in the World Bank are selling out the poorer nations” although they both belong to the G-77, she says.

Davis wants the G-77 to drop its old language as demands for “new and additional resources” is falling on deaf ears. The world’s “new and additional resources” are women and “you have to change the language and the dynamics of the debate,” she adds .

Davis would like to see the G-77 join hands with women in order to develop a new political constituency. The declaration adopted at the 1995 Women’s Conference in Beijing – focusing on Peace, Equity and Development – has all the elements of a Third World agenda, she says. The North-South paradigm is both antiquated and outdated. If there is no solidarity, “nation states will be played off against each other and regions will be played off against each other.”

She complains that too much time is being wasted on speech- making at the United Nations. The pageantry and the rituals have to go, she added. Since it is the media that rules the day, Davis says the US public has to be educated. She says there are far t oo many news stories of failed and corrupt governments.

Davis singles out the success of the microcredit movement in Bangladesh as an example of “what works.” She says that people are less response to aid because “they don’t want to give their hard earned money on something that is a fake, a fraud or a fai lure.”