Mexico, New Perspectives

Keep your promises and make them true, Photo: Jonas Rey

Mexico is a country that has been in the news a lot recently, especially because if its tragic war on drugs. But it is also the host country for this year’s World Youth Conference; an event that tries to shape global youth policy past 2015 and the deadline of the Millennium Development Goals.

Considering that almost 50 percent of the world population is composed of young people and children, this conference is crucial for shaping the future lifeline of society, particularly as young people are most affected by poverty. Unfortunately, this conference and this topic is not being taken seriously by a large majority of countries, especially in Europe. And so far, the conference has not been covered by western media.

This lack of interest for youth policy is clearly problematic. As the World Bank reports, better youth policies increases the GDP of a country significantly over the long term. It also helps to create a more stable and safe society.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, why have governments, and especially western governments, not started to address the problems of the generation that is and will be most affected by the crisis? As the ILO reports, the current generation of young people threatens to become a lost one, due to high unemployment rates and a lack of appropriate policy responses from governments.

Security Council or Secretary-General?

Lula da Silva at the UN, courtesy of United Nations Photo/flickr

Brazil, particularly President Lula da Silva, is pursuing an active UN and foreign policy. According to The Times, Lula recently joked that he was “infected by the virus of peace.” Such ‘viruses’, however, do not infect people without giving them greater ambition. In the case of Brazil, the country seems to alternate between seeking a permanent seat in the UN Security Council on the one hand and pushing for Lula to become the next UN secretary-general in 2011 or 2015 on the other.

To get a better sense of Brazil’s rising ambitions, let’s review the latest victories in Brazilian diplomacy and other political activities:

UNpopular – Public Resistance to UN Peace Missions

MINUSTAH peacekeepers fire tear gas to disperse demonstrators in Port-au-Prince, courtesy of UN Photo/Logan Abassi

Most UN peace missions established during or after conflict need the permission of the host country in order to deploy international troops. Once deployed, UN operations come to play a formative role in helping to re-build the state apparatus. They operate by, among others, establishing the rule of law, providing security, jump-starting economic development programs, and helping the host government build its capacity to form functioning state institutions.

However, government consent does not necessarily translate into popular support for such a strong foreign presence, which can be seen by local populations as too intrusive and pugnacious. A recent wave of popular backlash against UN missions has brought into question the universality of the UN’s internationalist norms and practices.

In Sri Lanka, following the government’s defeat of the Tamil Tigers’ 25-year armed campaign for an independent Tamil state, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon appointed a three-member panel to advise him on allegations of human rights violations that allegedly occurred during the protracted conflict. Resistant, a Sri Lanka government cabinet minister, Wimal Weerawansa, calling on Ban Ki-Moon to dissolve the panel, is leading hundreds of Sri Lankans in protest outside the UN office in Colombo, blocking access to the UN offices as well as harassing and intimidating officials.

Multilateralism?

Muammar Al-Qadhafi tours the Security Council Chamber, courtesy of UN Photo/Evan Schneider

In a recent article on Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Herbst pointed out that the United Nations is not living up to its basic values: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. He also criticized the lack of democracy in the organization and particularly among its member states. He also mentioned that the UN provides international legitimacy to dictators that have no legitimacy at home.

But Jeffrey Herbst also forgets to point out the following: The UN cannot function on its own. It needs its member states to act. Even though the UN publicized and tried to address the atrocities in Darfur, its member states failed to act.

The real question is: Why do member states not act? And the answer is simple: Democracy.

Democracy does not only mean having a democratic political system, it also means accepting that the international system is democratic, for better or worse, following the “one country one vote” principle.

Some western countries wish they still had the same power as they had when the UN was created after of the Second World War, at a time when their former colonies followed their lead on almost every issue. Now this time is over and the ‘neo-colonialist’ approach no longer works.

As an example of democracy in action at the international level, African countries are now able to elect a country like Libya to the Human Rights Council, because the continent has a comfortable amount of votes in almost every body of the UN.

Now that the organization applies the “democratic” rules so praised by the founders of the United Nations, it is normal that every member state gets the same power and can have more or less the same impact on the UN, regardless of whether it is governed by a dictator like Mugabe or by a social democrat like Tarja Halonen.

Indeed the presence of Libya in the Human Rights Council is representative of the willingness of a part of the world to have its word on Human Rights and some western leaders need to accept that not everyone is pursuing the same objectives or the same values as Europe and North America. They will certainly not simply acquiesce to those values or related demands without a fight.

The time when the UN was a mere tool of US foreign policy, as its former UN Ambassador John Bolton saw it, is now well and truly over.

Welcome to the new era of multilateralism.

UN Security Council Reform: A Gordian Knot?

UN Security Council session on 24 September 2009 chaired by US President Barack Obama. (UN Photo)
UN Security Council Reform: A Gordian Knot? (UN Photo)

Will the UN ever manage to reform its Security Council?

CSS senior researcher Daniel Trachsler evaluates the organization’s 20-year-long efforts in a new policy brief.

He gives an overview of reform proposals and analyzes factors blocking the reform project. Disagreements, regional rivalries and institutional obstacles have led to a Gordian Knot, an intractable problem solved by a bold move, which will require a high degree of willingness for compromise to entangle, he argues.

Failing this, Trachsler warns against a substantial loss of legitimacy for the UN’s most powerful body. He stresses that it is particularly in the interest of small and medium states to avoid this.

You can download the paper here. For more resources on Security Council reform, please visit our Digital Library.