U.N. Reform: the road to global governance

By Henry Lamb
web posted April 4, 2005

Kofi Annan's long-awaited reform report, "<a href="
http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/contents.htm">In larger
freedom: towards development, security and human rights for
all</a>," is a laundry list of changes designed to strengthen the
United Nations' grasp on global governance. Virtually every
recommendation in Annan's report is a regurgitation of
recommendations first advanced a decade ago by the U.N.-
Funded Commission on Global Governance.

When the Commission on Global Governance's final report, <a
href="http://sovereignty.net/p/gov/ogn-front.html">Our Global
Neighborhood</a>, was released in 1995, it went almost
unnoticed outside the U.N. activist community. The dramatic
changes the report recommends, however, have been bubbling
up through the U.N. ever since.

The U.N.'s non-binding <a href="
http://sovereignty.freedom.org/p/gov/madec.html">Millennium
Declaration</a> captured the goals of the Commission on
Global Governance, and expressed them in language acceptable
to more than 150 heads of state at the Millennium Summit in
2000.

Now comes the official request by Kofi Annan to incorporate
many of those recommendations into structural changes that will
be legally binding on member nations.

The Commission on Global Governance recommended that the
U.N. Security Council be expanded to 23, and that the veto
power, and permanent member status be removed from the five
current permanent members.

Annan is not going quite that far - at this time. He is
recommending expanding the Security Council to 24 members,
in one of two possible scenarios, but he knows he has no chance
of getting the veto power removed from the existing permanent
members - at this time.

Regardless of the method chosen, expansion of the Security
Council can do nothing but place more obstacles on the road to
negotiating resolutions. It is difficult enough now, and sometimes
impossible, to get agreement on U.N. action. The addition of
nine more self-interested nations on this Council will stall, if not
kill, any meaningful action in the future.

The Commission on Global Governance recommended that the
U.N. Trusteeship Council be transformed and given "trusteeship"
over the "global commons," with representation of "civil society"
through partnership with non-government organizations.

Annan is recommending that the Trusteeship Council be
eliminated, and replaced by a new Council on Human Rights,
replacing the corrupt Commission on Human Rights. Details are
sketchy about the responsibility and authority of this proposed
new council, but Annan is calling for a permanent arrangement
for NGO participation, and greater "coherence" among all
agencies to achieve environmental and sustainable development
goals.

The Commission on Human Rights should be eliminated. A new
Council, wearing the "Human Rights" label, offers no promise of
change in attitude or function. The promise of expanding NGO
representation, however, is cause for alarm. In autocratic
nations, where citizens have no voice at all, NGO participation
may be helpful. But in America, NGO participation in U.N.
policy development provides a mechanism to by-pass duly
elected officials at the state and local levels. This practice is
already widespread in the use of "visioning councils,"
"stakeholder councils," and "regional councils" of various sorts.

Annan's report calls for all nations to reaffirm their commitment
to provide .07 percent of their gross national income to "Official
Development Assistance." This amounts to a global welfare
program, administered by the U.N. Having seen the efficiency
with which the U.N. administered the oil-for-food program in
Iraq, there should be little appetite for any nation to help provide
the U.N. with hundreds of billions of dollars annually, to be used
by U.N. agencies which have neither oversight by, nor
accountability to, any responsible party.

The world's poverty can never be eliminated by increasing
welfare dollars. Were the people in the developing world
allowed to own private property, which could be used as
collateral for loans to invest in business opportunities, the people
could begin to build their own prosperity. Where poverty is most
severe, government owns the land and the resources.

Were the people in the developing world allowed to develop
abundant and affordable energy from domestic coal and
petroleum, both prosperity and health would improve
dramatically. The sustainable development agenda advanced by
the U.N., and its NGO partners, are the real obstacles to the
elimination of world poverty and poor health.

The recommendations in Kofi Annan's report will do nothing to
enlarge freedom in the world; they will only enlarge the power of
the U.N. to continue its quest for global governance. The United
States should reject Annan's requirement that the report be
adopted in full. Instead, the United States should develop its own
set of recommendations for the U.N., stripping it of its "global
governance" aspirations, and returning it to nothing more than a
forum for discussions among its sovereign members.

Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental
Conservation Organization (ECO), and chairman of Sovereignty
International.

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