8:24 AM Feb 28, 1995

UNITED NATIONS: IMF/BANK-WTO SHOULD COME UNDER UN DIRECTION

Geneva 28 Feb (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization must be brought under the overall policy leadership of the United Nations in macro-economic and social policy issues, the Geneva-based South Centre has recommended in a policy paper on reforming the United Nations.

The United Nations is "under siege and at crossroads", the South Centre says, and argues that any reform must be on the basis that "the UN exists for all humankind and not just a handful of member states representing a small minority of the world's population".

The South Centre Paper is expected to be presented to the Forum on the Future of the United Nations which is meeting in Vienna Monday.

The Forum has been convened by the UN Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali to coincide with the meetings there of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) a body composed of heads of all the UN agencies.

Using the occasion of the ACC meeting that brings heads of all agencies together, Boutros-Ghali has convened the forum and has also invited the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Chairman of the South Centre, Mr. Ingvar Carlsson, Prime Minister of Sweden and Co-Chair of the Global Governance Commission and Mr. Moeen Quereshi former Vice-President of the World Bank who briefly last year was a care-taker Prime Minister of Pakistan and heads the Ford Foundation/Yale University working group on the future of the UN.

In underlining the need for a Global Vision that can be supplied only by the United Nations and for "Global Governance", the South Center paper, without making any reference as such to the recent report of the Global Governance Commission, in effect rejects some of the concepts and recommendations of that report.

In particular it appears to knock down some of the Commission's ideas including a UN Economic Security Council and abolition of the UN Conference on Trade and Development.

Any reform of the United Nations System must result in its empowerment to deal with matters pertaining to the world economy and enable it to exert policy leadership in macro-economic and social policy issues, bringing all specialized agencies -- including the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organization -- under its policy direction, says the South Centre.

Towards this end it calls for activating Art. 58 of the Charter -- which enables the UN General Assembly to make recommendations for the coordination of policies and activities of the Specialized Agencies -- and reinvigorating Articles 57, 74 and 64 to bring all the intergovernmental organizations into specialized agency relationship with the UN and under the coordinating role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Calling for a constructive approach to UN reforms, the paper says that the failing of the UN over the last 50 years arise from the fact that "it was not allowed to do" more of what it was established to do and has been trying to do, but has been thwarted from doing, namely, to achieve "democratic management of the global economy to overcome poverty and inequality and removes causes of economic and social turmoil which endanger the peace have been largely thwarted".

Any reform of the UN must be based on the fundamental principles of the Charter -- "democracy, accountability and respect for diversity", not only within nations, but internationally.

The principle of democracy is as central to the inspiration, functioning and decision-making of the UN system as it is to national systems and "any attempt to make the UN an instrument in the hands of a few with power and money violates the Charter".

The accountability principle involves all countries being accountable to the UN for actions and policies having a bearing of the obligations of membership and has many direct applications.

The UN would not be a fully democratic body so long as any one of its members hold "for life" and "as of right" a seat in any organ comprising less than full membership of the organization.

The diversity and pluralism principle means that "hegemony of any kind in the international sphere, or any behaviour based on the assumption that one people or political, social or economic doctrine is inherently superior to another is alien to the founding principles of the UN Charter, and must resolutely exposed and resisted".

The UN is a global, universal, public-service institution and exists to serve the public interest of all humankind. Through the last five decades, the three supreme achievements of the UN are its virtually universal membership; building a global vision through its global network, research, deliberations and other activities; and together contributing to the development of a sense of international community and global consciousness.

As the 20th century comes to a close an increasing number of problems require more cooperative, even collective responses, commitments and policies, with all governments working together to establish a framework and rules.

"Global governance" is emerging as a concept reflecting recognition of the need for a new and more advanced forms of international cooperation, management of global affairs and dealing with problems common to a number of nations, if not all.

But "Global governance" requires a truly global approach that can come only from the UN.

"Nevertheless, in an international community ridden with inequalities and injustice, institutionalizing 'global governance' without paying careful attention to the question of who wields power, and without adequate safeguards, is tantamount to installing governance of the many weak by the powerful few."

In introducing a greater degree of "global governance", the international community must ensure that new arrangements will not allow the UN to continue to be used as an instrument of convenience for those with power and for further extending their control over those who have only weak defences to try to withstand the pressures in a highly unequal contest.

The South Centre points out that already the limitations imposed on sovereignty are exceedingly unequally distributed and nothing demonstrates so clearly this asymmetry as the responsibilities on nations to effect economic adjustment.

"Economic structural adjustment policies," it points out further, "are dictated to some ninety developing countries while industrial countries are under no obligation to alter their economic behaviour, even when this would be in the interests of the world economy. Expecting unequal partners to assume equal responsibilities and duties, as for example in the emerging global policy regimes relating to the environment and to trade, amounts to another such asymmetry."

Thus the UN's over-riding role in formulating institutional arrangements for "global governance", the paper adds, is "to assure their democratic and truly international character."

The prime task of those seeking to achieve this must be "to seek to establish a common platform and set of policies that also subject to the disciplines of a genuinely world community those with the greatest material impact on world affairs, and on the political, economic, social and physical environment".

Lasting solutions to many of the world's problems require a recognition of the inter-relatedness between different aspects of human affairs and across borders.

Social problems are intimately connected with economic and political matters, as has been recognized in the preparations for the Social Summit. Agenda 21 (at the UNCED 'Earth Summit') recognized an intimate connection between environmental problems and both economic development and lack of it. Many of the situations of social breakdown and violence, requiring UN peacekeeping activities, are rooted in economic and social problems.

The UN was founded, and mandated by the Charter, to act as "the centre-piece" of a new system of specialized agencies to tackle international economic and social problems in an integrated fashion.

The San Francisco conference (founding the UN) "debated, negotiated and adopted" a definition of "economic" so that wherever it appeared in the Charter, "it encompasses all the commanding heights of the world economy -- international trade, finance, communication and transport, economic reconstruction, international access to raw materials and capital goods".

The General Assembly, under Art 58, was mandated to coordinate the policies of the specialized agencies and the ECOSOC, under Art 63, to coordinate their activities. The Charter also stipulated in Art 59 that it is the UN which is to initiate actions for creation of any needed new specialized agencies.

"It was never intended, and it is in derogation of standing Charter law, that any of these agencies would be treated as on a par with, or in "complimentarity" to, the United Nations proper -- things which are often said about the Bretton Woods institutions".

A key specialized agency supposed to be created and brought under UN policy guidance, the International Trade Organization was aborted. The recent creation of the WTO outside the UN is also "in direct conflict with the treaty obligations of member-states and with the necessity of integrating trade in the larger web of global economic policies."

"Yet, despite strong evidence of instability and even disorder in international financial matters, important disequilibria in the international economy, substantial inequities in the world trading system and unrest and tension arising from increasing mass poverty, the UN is forced to stand aloof due to the refusal of a minority of members to allow its legal mandates to be implemented," the paper says.

Nor are these global functions carried out in any other structure, the paper points out.

While repeatedly refusing to negotiate macro-economic policy on money, finance, debt or trade at the UN on the ostensible grounds that such policy matters belong to the IMF, World Bank and the GATT, "those in effective control of these bodies have never allowed them to be used for such purposes."

The time will come, however, when under the pressures and mounting complexity of the situation, this minority of countries will feel the need to change course in their own interests and seek to participate in democratic and collaborative efforts to introduce some stability into the world economy, while improving the socio-economic situation of the vast majority of humankind, the South Centre predicts and goes on to add: "Others should press for this to happen sooner rather than later".

"Among other things, it will require bringing the World Bank, IMF and the WTO into the ambit of the UN family and its policy framework. Bringing world economic affairs into the UN arena will automatically bring about the necessary upgrading of the UN's political status. Besides facilitating steps towards democratic efforts to conduct matters on a more orderly basis, this will also make it possible to treat economic, social, environmental and political matters and other global challenges in a more integrated manner."