//REPEATING//DEVELOPMENT-GERMANY: Former Capital Gets A New Image

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Feb 9 2000 (IPS) - With Berlin the new headquarters for the German government and parliament, Bonn – the former west German capital – is struggling to fill the gap left behind.

In recognition of its role as capital of post-war Germany for nearly 40 years until unification of two German states about 10 years ago, Bonn has been upgraded into a ‘federal city’, the only German city to have that status.

Plans are underway to develop the city into a Centre for International Cooperation (CIC). The federal government has allocated nearly 1.5 billion US Dollars towards the project. This covers a period of 10 years, ending in 2004.

Additional funds are being channelled by the government of the state of North-Rhine Westphalia in which Bonn is located.

However, the widespread feeling in the German development community is that on the whole, the federal government is not providing the political backing required for Bonn to emerge into a real Centre for International Cooperation.

“The government could indeed do more,” says Eckhard Deutscher, an initiator of the pressure group ‘North-South Informal Circle Bonn’.

Uwe Holtz, honorary professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University Bonn, agrees. Holtz presided the economic cooperation committee of the federal German parliament for two decades, until middle of 1990s.

However, the German ministry of economic cooperation and development (BMZ) has joined hands with the federal state of North- Rhine Westphalia and the city of Bonn, to impart much needed impulses for the CIC.

In fact a special website (www.cic-bonn.org) has been launched in German and English to promote the Centre within Germany, elsewhere in Europe and in the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“We are looking forward to a world-wide interaction and dialogue,” says Klaus Brueckner of the federal state of North- Rhine Westphalia.

“Bonn has a truly cosmopolitan character,” says the city’s Lord Mayor, Baerbel Dieckmann.

The cosmopolitan character is expected to be enhanced with organisations around the world signing themselves up as ‘actors’ and ‘partners’ in virtual CIC Bonn. The website also acts as a portal to useful information on issues related to development, environment and human rights. The sources are both German and international.

While the CIC-Bonn website is striving to create a virtual global centre, the physical CIC is expected to be built on six pillars.

The idea is to make CIC some kind of ‘a lighthouse’ for those dealing with global issues, says Holtz, regarded as the driving force behind CIC.

The first of the six pillars constitutes BMZ, Environment Ministry – both of which remain in Bonn with their headquarters – German Volunteers Service (DED), German Foundation for International Development (DSE) and the German Institute for Development Policy (DIE). The latter three are moving from Berlin to Bonn.

The second pillar consists of non-governmental organisations, university institutes such as the newly established Centre for Development Research (ZEF) and Centre for European Integration (ZEI) as well as the independent Bonn International Conversion Centre (BICC) that serves as a disarmament think-tank.

The third pillar includes United Nations organisations with a seat in Bonn. The eminent ones among these are: the United Nations Volunteers (UNV), the secretariats of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Bonn is also expected to beome a venue of international conferences around the year. This, says Holtz, would be the fourth CIC pillar.

European and international cultural cooperation and the choice of Bonn as the headquarters of German and foreign media organisations is expected to constitute the fifth and sixth CIC pillars.

As moderator of the ‘North-South Informal Circle Bonn’ – comprising government and non-government representatives as well as their counterparts from United Nations organisations seated in Bonn – Holtz has been championing the cause of CIC.

“We want to ensure that commitments undertaken, when the Berlin- Bonn Law was passed by the parliament in April 1994, do not become obsolete,” adds Holtz.

He considers the presence of some 150 NGOs in Bonn and neighbouring Aachen and Cologne as a good prerequisite for Bonn developing into a genuine Centre for International Cooperation.