By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 11 2000 (IPS)

The usually routine matter of electing five members to the Security Council turned into a cliff-hanger with a tiny nation beating the official African candidate for that continent’s seat and with a running battle among three of Europe’s major donors to the United Nations.

Mauritius defeated Sudan, the official candidate of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in the fourth round of voting on Tuesday.

Despite being the OAU’s chosen candidate, Sudan was defeated by a combination of its own record of violence against civilians in the south and against relief workers, including those from the United Nations, and by an aggressive campaign by the United States to deny a Security Council seat to a nation it brands a terrorist state. Sudan is also under Security Council sanctions relating to an assassination attempt against Egypt’s president.

Ireland was the big winner among the Europeans. There were three candidates for two seats allotted to the Western European and Other States grouping: Ireland, Italy and Norway. In the first round of voting, Ireland got 130 votes, easily surpassing the two-thirds vote (116) needed to be elected, while Norway fell just short with 114 votes. Italy got 94 votes.

In the subsequent three rounds, Norway always missed the two- thirds by a few votes while Italy’s tally continued to drop. Finally in the fourth round, Norway hit the two-thirds mark exactly: 115.

Every year, five of the 10 non-permanent seats on the Council are up for election. The seats are allocated according to geographic regions. In most years, the regional groups nominate as many candidates as there are vacancies, thus the winner is a foregone conclusion. This is what happened with the Asian seat – Singapore was the only candidate – and the Latin American and Caribbean seat – Colombia was the consensus candidate.

In order to be elected, a state must get two-thirds of the votes of states present and voting. The ballot is secret.

After the second round of voting, the atmosphere was getting so tense that the President of the General Assembly, Harri Holkeri, had to hammer the gavel and tell the delegates, “we are in the middle of an election and all campaigning must stop”.

Mauritius, a small chain of islands east of Madagascar, is a country where English, French, Creole, Hindi and Urdu are spoken and where its population of 1.2 million are Hindu, Christian and Muslim.

Mauritius announced its candidacy in January, but the OAU endorsed Sudan for the Council seat in July. Mauritius’ Foreign Minister Anil Kumarsingh Gayan told the General Assembly last month, “as far back as January 2000 Mauritius announced to all countries of the East African region that we would seek election for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. At that time Mauritius was the only declared candidate. The government of Mauritius considers itself fully qualified to serve in the Supreme Organ of the UN”.

Mauritius argued that Sudan became the OAU candidate without proper consultations at the OAU’s summit in July. Uganda also lobbied against Sudan saying there was no consensus on a candidate at the OAU Summit, thus there could not be an official candidate.

In a letter to the General Assembly President, Uganda said it objected to the candidacy of Sudan “because of the incredible criminal terrorism that Sudan has been, either directly or by proxy, perpetrating on Uganda”. Sudan allows the Ugandan rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, to operate from its territory.

Both the US government and a coalition of US-based religious and human rights groups strenuously lobbied against a seat for Sudan. Freedom House, the American Anti-Slavery Group, and the US Committee for Refugees met with delegations encouraging them to vote against Sudan.

At a briefing last week, these NGOs accused the government of Sudan of genocide, slavery, forced conversion, and withholding food from civilians. They charged that in the 17 years of civil war 2 million Sudanese have died and four million are displaced within the country.

Roger Winter of the US Committee on Refugees said Sudan “is the only government in the world that routinely bombs its own civilians”. He said government war planes follow relief aircraft and bomb them once they land.

Nina Shea, the director of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, called the government “the world’s most violent persecutor of religious freedom”.

The three candidates from the Western European and Others group are all members of the European Union. All three have campaigned on their roles in making the UN more effective, on their contributions to peacekeeping and on their voluntary financial contributions to social and development agencies.

At the Millennium Summit in September, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern pledged 0.7 of GNP for development aid by the end of 2007, which he said would amount to over 900 million dollars per year.

On its website, Italy touted its leading role in trying to make the Security Council more representative and its support for peacekeeping. It is the fifth largest contributor to the UN’s regular budget and contributes nearly 110 million dollars to UN development agencies.

Norway spends 0.9 percent of its GNP on development aid – one of the highest percentages of all UN members. Its website says Norway “contribute[s] upwards of 150 dollars per capita to the UN, or 10-20 times more than the average for citizens of other wealthy nations”. It lists all the agencies that receive Norwegian contributions, where it is inevitably one of the top donors.

All three have been major donors of money and troops to peacekeeping operations.

There is no official limit on how often a country may serve on the Council, but Italy had a seat in 1995-96 while Ireland has not been on since 1981-82 and Norway since 1979-80. Italy just completed a term as president of the Economic and Social Council. Italy also entered the contest late.

The new members replace Argentina, Canada, Malaysia, Namibia, and the Netherlands in January.

Excerpt: