Declaration fudges many critical issues facing UN

In a number of areas the UN Summit has fallen short of expectations, but the Government's commitment on overseas aid is welcome…

In a number of areas the UN Summit has fallen short of expectations, but the Government's commitment on overseas aid is welcome, writes Justin Kilcullen

Following months of negotiations, this week world leaders finally reached agreement on a world summit declaration.

There is considerable relief at the UN headquarters that, despite the difficult and often acrimonious negotiations, the summit will have an outcome which runs to 40 pages. The UN has not collapsed, as anticipated by some. Nor has it come out of this negotiation process with a radical agenda for reform.

The final declaration, which will be formally adopted by world leaders tomorrow, falls far short of expectations.

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At the outset, this summit was billed as a landmark occasion - a global summit which would review the millennium declaration signed in 2000 and set out an agenda for development, peace and security.

Key elements of this agenda were to be a wholesale reform of the key UN institutions. Kofi Annan set out the main reforms in his report In Larger Freedom, which called for reform of the Security Council, the Human Rights Commission, UN General Assembly and Ecosoc, among others.

He also called for the creation of a peacebuilding commission, which would bridge the divide between peace, human rights and development. Through this commission, the UN would have a much more co-ordinated and long-term approach to dealing with conflict situations. His vision was that all these changes had to be achieved as a package - piecemeal reforms, in his view, were not an option. The architecture of the UN had to be reformed to bring it up to date with the current global context.

Kofi Annan's ambitious programme set the bar high, articulating a vision of a more inclusive, equitable and efficient UN. In reality, the outcome fudges many of the critical issues. The planned reforms to the Security Council were shelved during the summer as a result of the inability of governments to agree criteria for selecting new permanent or semi-permanent members. As one official commented: "It seems that the current criteria is a reward for possessing weapons of mass destruction."

The other main reforms - the creation of a human rights council to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission and the peacebuilding commission - have remained in the final document. Importantly, however, the document postpones decisions on the details of those two new bodies.

The outcome document also falls far short of the "global partnership for development" on trade, aid and debt which are needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. In terms of aid, there are no new commitments - but a restatement of commitments made in other forums earlier this year.

On debt, there is an acknowledgment of the need for a resolution of the debt crisis, but no agreement on how this can be addressed.

On trade reform, the governments could not agree on anything substantial - arguing that trade is not an issue on which the UN Summit has competence to speak. Instead, decisions on trade will be deferred to the WTO summit in Hong Kong later this year.

Given these omissions, it would be tempting to call the summit a failure. The document, however, is only one part of the summit outcome. Alongside the agreed "bottom line", individual member states have lined up in a kind of beauty contest to set out their own initiatives and commitments to international co-operation.

In this regard, the Government's decision to reaffirm its commitment to meeting the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNI to ODA by 2012 is a welcome outcome. The commitment to dedicate some of these increased resources to HIV/Aids and humanitarian emergencies should also be welcomed.

Although not as ambitious as hoped, this concrete commitment does set Ireland three years ahead of the EU in its aid spending.

The focus now must turn to the implementation of all these promises - both globally and nationally. The days of world leaders turning up at summits and making promises which were then shelved are gone.

Civil society movements, although officially excluded from the summit, have demonstrated their willingness to hold leaders to account on their promises. Young people, in particular, as the Taoiseach acknowledged, take these promises seriously. From Ireland's perspective, we now await the annual plan which will turn this solemn promise into action.

Justin Kilcullen is director of Trócaire