The Amateur

Computerist

Summer 2010 In the Shadow of Deep Crises Volume 19 No. 1

Table of Contents

Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Farewell Speech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 5

UN Security Council Reform in Focus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 16

Changed Model Needed to Solve Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 24

Response to Israeli Attacks on Gaza.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 26

The World Has Been Watching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 30

Israel Attempts to Justify Attack on Gaza.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 34

Need to End Siege of Gaza.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 39

Principles to Guide UN Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 42

Responsibility to Protect?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 50

G192 Emerges at UN Conference.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 57

We, the Different are Here. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 66

The People are the Sovereign. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 81

Father Brockmann and the

Session of the UN

General Assembly

The articles in this issue of the Amateur Computerist help to

document the role played by the General Assembly in its 63

Session

from Sept 16, 2008 to Sept 14, 2009. They have been selected to

document what was a special year in the recent experience of the United

Nations. The year began when Father Miguel d!Escoto Brockmann of

Nicaragua assumed the Presidency of the General Assembly. The

Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

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articles ask the question: In the shadow of deep crises like the world

financial and economic crisis, and the Middle East political crisis, can

the UN be a force to help clarify and bring needed change?

As the president of this important but poorly understood body of the

United Nations, Father Brockmann was criticized by several conserva-

tive entities and was subjected to death threats in response to his defense

of the Palestinians when they were the object of an Israeli attack on

Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan. 2009.

But also, he was admired by those who had hope that the United

Nations could begin to challenge the forces of privilege and power

which dominate institutions like the UN Security Council.

The year of Father Brockmann’s presidency was marked particu-

larly by the Israeli invasion of Gaza in Dec 2008 and the economic and

financial crisis that gripped the world in much of 2009. As Father

Brockmann left the presidency in Sept 2009, he expressed his disap-

pointment that he had not been able to do more to support the forces of

democracy. (See, “In the Shadow of Deep Crises,” p. 3.) His achieve-

ments however were significant.

In this issue we have attempted to give a sampling of what was

accomplished when a diplomat with a vision of a more democratic world

was at the head of an important international organization. Except for

the first article, the issue is organized chronologically. The earliest

article, “UN Security Council Reform in Focus” (p. 8) concerns a

problem that was passed onto the 63

Session. The remaining articles

were written about the developments that were part of the General

Assembly during its 63

Session.

Father Brockmann’s statement below was delivered in the final

session of his presidency. We have placed it at the beginning of the issue

to give some sense of both the sweep of events of the year and of the

goal that Father Brockmann had set for the year. It is important to

recognize that a significant achievement of the 63

Session of the

General Assembly was the introduction of the concept of the G192, of

a democratization of the international economic structure to challenge

the G7, G8 or even G20 as the vision for a more democratic economic

system. (See, “Change in Economic Model Needed to Solve Crisis,” p.

12, “G192 Emerges at UN Conference on World Financial and Eco-

Page 2

nomic Crisis,” p. 28 and “We, the Different are Here,” p. 32.)

Far less understood is the role Father Brockmann and the General

Assembly played in breaking through the barrier in the Security Council

which was blocking the Council from passing a resolution to support the

Palestinian people during the attack by Israel on Gaza.

Articles in the issue document the urgency Father Brockmann felt

when Israel launched its attack on Gaza on Dec 27, 2008. (See, “the

World Has Been Watching,” p. 15.) Many excuses by the U.S. Ambassa-

dor kept the Security Council from intervening against the carnage.

If the Security Council is blocked from fulfilling its Charter

obligation of maintaining or restoring “peace and security,” that does not

relieve the member nations of their responsibility. Father Brockmann

and member nations of the General Assembly realized that this was a

situation needing the “Uniting for Peace”

procedure for calling a

General Assembly meeting.

Under Father Brockmann’s presidency, members of the General

Assembly called an emergency session. It was set to meet if the Security

Council failed to act on Jan. 8, 2009. On Jan. 8, the Foreign Ministers of

the Security Council member nations finally managed to vote on and

pass Security Council Resolution 1860, calling for an “immediate,

durable and fully respected cease-fire, leading to the full withdrawal of

Israeli forces from Gaza.”

The vote was 14 in favor with the United

States abstaining. If the U.S. had voted against the Resolution, the

General Assembly meeting was set to take on the responsibility to take

the action which the U.S. was blocking. Given these conditions,

Condoleezza Rice abstained but did not veto Resolution 1860.

Other achievements during Father Brockmann’s presidency

included the bringing to the General Assembly of several experts to

debate controversial issues before the member nations. One example

was the Interactive Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect

(R2P). (See, as an example, “A More Just World and the Responsibility

to Protect,” p. 24.)

The most important achievement of the year however was the

General Debate on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its

Impact on Development held in June 2009. (See, “G192 emerges at UN

Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis,” p. 27.) We

Page 3

have included from this debate the speech by Rafael Correa, the

President of Ecuador. (See, “We the Different are Here,” p. 32.)

President Correa’s speech is an example of the alternative economic

perspective presented to the nation members as part of this Debate.

Father Brockmann appeared disappointed that more was not

accomplished during the 63

Session of the General Assembly over

which he presided. But his Presidency has left a legacy that can act as a

foundation for the United Nations to truly be an international organiza-

tion that can help to enable the different world that is emerging.

Notes:

1. If the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members,

fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace

and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the

peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immedi-

ately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective

measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of

armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security. If

not in session at the time, the General Assembly may meet in emergency special

session within twenty-four hours of the request therefore. Such emergency special

session shall be called if requested by the Security Council on the vote of any seven

members, or by a majority of the Members of the United Nations; (See:

http://habitat.igc.org/ufp/a-r377ae.htm).

2. See: http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions09.htm and

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2009/sc9567.doc.htm

Page 4

[Editor’s Note: From September 2008 to September 2009, H.E. Father Miguel d!Escoto

Brockmann, M.M. was the President of the 63

session of the United Nations General

Assembly. On September 14, 2009 he finished his term and made a Farewell Speech.

This is a shortened version of his remarks concerning the issues considered by the 63

Session. His whole Farewell Speech can be seen at:

http://www.un.org/ga/president /63 /statements/statements.shtml]

In the Shadow of Deep Crises

UN General Assembly 63

Session

by Miguel d!Escoto Brockmann

President of the 63

Session

of the UN General Assembly

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Tempus fugit, the

Romans used to say, and

they were right. Time flies:

it is running out for us. And

as time passes us by, so too

do the opportunities for us

to do what we must to en-

sure a fitting future for the

coming generations….

One year ago, from this

very rostrum, I shared with

you the vision of what I

hoped to achieve during my

year in this high office, to which you, with such trust and affection, had

elected me. Now the time has come to take stock.

I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude not only for your

trust, but also for the generous cooperation afforded to me, including by

many who did not disguise their concerns about me being a Catholic

priest committed to the theology of liberation and to the liberation

struggle of my people, led by the Frente Sandinista de Liberación

Nacional in my country, Nicaragua. Fortunately, these doubts and

suspicions did not prevent a frank and fraternal dialogue with those who

Father Miguel d!Escoto Brockmann (far left) with reporters

and staff at the UN

Page 5

would have been expected to oppose me most strongly. Today, as I step

down, I am very happy and extremely grateful for all of the generous

cooperation that I received from all of you without exception….

Economic and Financial Crisis: Need for the G192

The most important months of my presidency occurred in the

shadow of the current deep economic and financial crisis, which does

not yet appear to have bottomed out. However, as an eighteenth century

English philosopher once said, perhaps the carping of our worst critics

sounds less triumphant when we observe that, while we did not

accomplish as much as we would have liked, we nevertheless accom-

plished a great deal.

In accordance with Article 13 of the United Nations Charter, the

General Assembly “shall make recommendations for the purpose of

promoting international cooperation in the economic, social, cultural,

educational and health fields.” However, for approximately the past 30

years, the Organization has been prevented from performing the role

assigned to it by the Charter on the pretext that only the Bretton Woods

institutions had expertise in these fields.

The work of my Presidential Commission of Experts made it clear

that the General Assembly was indeed capable of bringing together

specialists with sufficient expertise to discuss global financial, eco-

nomic, monetary and trade governance. Furthermore, the Commission

produced what is undoubtedly the most serious and complete proposal

for how we should tackle the current global financial and economic

crisis.

The adoption on 9 July of the outcome document of the United

Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its

Impact on Development, held from 24 to 30 June 2009, was a historic

milestone for the United Nations. The G-192 was thereby established as

the most appropriate forum to address those issues that affect the

international community as a whole. [See this issue p. 28 and the

Outcome Document at:

http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/63/303

The G-8 and the G-20 will continue to be significant minorities.

However, this is more due to the fact that they are rich and powerful

Page 6

than to their demonstrated ability to do things well. We cannot and

should not forget that, after all, it is because of the extremely grave

errors committed by them, and the Bretton Woods institutions run by

them, that the world is currently undergoing what could well turn out to

be the worst crisis in history.

Extremely valuable inputs were made to the outcome document’s

conclusions as a result of the proposals put forward by the Commission

of Experts chaired by Professor Stiglitz, the report issued by the

Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and, of course, the

statements delivered by Heads of State and Government at the plenary

meeting of the Conference itself – for example, the excellent statement

by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador [See this issue p. 30] – in

addition to the comments made at round tables and working breakfasts.

However, we must also recognize that without the extraordinary

support and active participation of non-governmental organizations and

the South Center, headed by Martin Khor, we would not have made the

progress that we did.

The draft outcome document, despite being negotiated by 192

countries and contrary to the fears expressed by some notable minorities,

was not only ready two days before the Conference, but also comprehen-

sively addressed a series of complex issues that went beyond the debates

and documents arising from other forums.

It should also be noted that the outcome document of our historic

June Conference finally launched the process of compliance with the

recommendations contained in the report of the World Commission on

the Social Dimension of Globalization, entitled “A fair globalization.”

This report states that “Globalization is making multilateralism both

indispensable and inevitable” and that the multilateral system of the

United Nations “is uniquely equipped to spearhead the process of reform

of economic and social policies.”

The role of the United Nations in dealing with the most urgent

issues of our time was institutionalized with the establishment on 31 July

2009 of the ad hoc open-ended working group of the General Assembly

to follow up on the issues contained in the outcome document. Such

issues include reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, the same

“expert” institutions that have reduced the implementation of Article 13

Page 7

of the United Nations Charter as much as possible for the past three

decades.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P)?

Today the most urgent issue continues to be the provision of

resources to the most vulnerable countries, primarily in the form of

donations, or, rather, the provision of compensation through a global

fund, or of special drawing rights for development, in order to finance

both public goods and the Millennium Development Goals.

It is precisely because of our failure to resolve the fundamental

problems of the economic system, and the extreme poverty and

inequality on which this system is based, that we have had to resort to

palliative measures such as the Millennium Development Goals, or to

press for the urgent implementation of the concept of the Responsibility

to Protect. However necessary the Millennium Development Goals may

be, they do not address the need for urgent and indispensable interna-

tional economic reforms.

In the absence of the political will to tackle the serious injustices

and inequalities facing the world, it is far more convenient to have

recourse to the Responsibility to Protect in dealing with the

consequences of such problems. Nevertheless, we should be satisfied

that we have been able to comply with the provisions of paragraph 139

of the 2005 World Summit Outcome, which calls on the General

Assembly to continue consideration of the Responsibility to Protect and

its consequences.

Our panel on this issue was not only balanced but was also one of

the most distinguished in the history of the United Nations, including

intellectuals of the calibre of Noam Chomsky, Ngugi wa Thiong!o, Jean

Bricmont and former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. The

rich and comprehensive discussions clarified our understanding of this

concept, which continues to be an important aspiration. [See this issue

p. 22] However, great care will be needed to ensure that this concept is

not interpreted or used, as so often in the past, as a right to intervene.

Page 8

Security Council Reform: Narrow Decision-Making Base

We are at a critical juncture on the path that we set out upon in San

Francisco 64 years ago. The institutions established at that time, like all

institutions, have undergone a natural, gradual and inevitable process of

attrition. As a consequence, the present crisis is affecting both interna-

tional economic governance and policy.

There is broad consensus that the United Nations Security Council

is incapable of effectively addressing many crucial issues related to

international peace and security and that it requires comprehensive

reform in order to overcome the increasing limitations arising from its

restrictive methods and narrow decision-making base. We have also

taken important steps in this regard, and we have made progress with the

implementation of decision 62/557 of 15 September 2008. [See this

issue p. 6]

With regard to reform of the Security Council, I believe we can say

that during the sixty-third session of the General Assembly we have

turned a dream into a reality, since we have succeeded in moving the

reform process from a study by the open-ended working group to the

level of intergovernmental negotiations in informal plenary meetings.

Since the start of the negotiations in February, under the leadership

of Ambassador Zahir Tanin of Afghanistan, we have held 32 meetings

to consider specific issues. More than two thirds of Member States

participated actively in these meetings and detailed proposals were also

submitted, which clearly demonstrates the importance that Member

States attach to this issue.

In May even more progress was made on this basis, with the

negotiations receiving further encouragement by a document outlining

the main options and a series of negotiable issues. A robust framework

for subsequent negotiations has thereby been established. I am con-

vinced that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Provided that we

continue the negotiations and show a greater degree of commitment at

the next session of the General Assembly, this process will shortly yield

concrete results.

Page 9

General Assembly Reform: Democratization of the

United Nations

I am grateful to Ambassador Maria Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador

and Ambassador Morten Wetland of Norway for their excellent work as

Co-Chairs of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the revitalization of the

General Assembly. Their efforts were a focused response to my

longstanding call to prioritize the democratization of the United Nations.

Only a strong General Assembly which vigorously exercises its

deliberative, policymaking and decision-making roles will be capable of

enhancing multilateralism as the best option for relationships between

States. It must be borne in mind that the most significant revitalization

has been the capacity demonstrated by the General Assembly to address

existential economic problems that it had been unable to tackle for

almost three decades. Revitalization is a political rather than a technical

issue.

I am also grateful to the Co-Chairs of the System-wide Coherence

process, Ambassador Juan Antonio Yáñez-Barnuevo of Spain and

Ambassador Kaire Mbuende of Namibia, for the progress achieved

under their able guidance. Indeed, harmonized cooperation in line with

the national plans of developing countries should continue to be a

fundamental objective to ensure system-wide coherence of the United

Nations through governance that is focused on the principles of

transparency, inclusiveness and national ownership. These principles

should, in turn, ensure that the forces of change are mobilized to achieve

both gender equality at the global level and enhanced results at the

national level.

Further efforts must therefore be resolutely pursued to secure an

agreement between Member States on the need for a global institutional

incentive to achieve gender equality. This will ensure that the women of

the world have a strong and coherent voice within an effective structure.

Events of International Relevance

For my part, I leave satisfied at having spared no effort conscien-

tiously to fulfill my obligation to carry out the agenda of the sixty-third

session and, at the same time, to ensure that the General Assembly

Page 10

remained attuned to events of international relevance not foreseen in the

agenda, such as the Israeli aggression against Gaza, the global financial

and economic crisis, or the recent coup d’état in Honduras, a stroke of

luck for the pro-coup forces of the twenty-first century by which the

international reactionaries tried to impede the victorious and promising

advance of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. If we had had

more time, we would have taken up as an agenda item in the General

Assembly the serious threat to peace in Latin America posed by plans to

build seven new United States military bases in Colombia, but regretta-

bly the sixty-third session has run out of time. This theme will therefore

have to wait until the next session, if the work of the General Assembly

is to be kept in tune with events in our world.

As has happened with the Governments of many Member States, the

magnitude and gravity of the global financial and economic crisis, the

greatest crisis since the foundation of the United Nations, have occupied

centre stage in our agenda during this past year, and have in fact

prevented us from considering, to the extent we would have preferred,

such other issues as nuclear disarmament, the situation in Palestine,

decolonization and the extremely dangerous and illegal concept of

preventive war, which has nothing to do with that of “pre-emptive war,”

despite the fact that, regrettably, we use the same word in Spanish to

refer to these two essentially and critically different concepts.

We would also have liked to have considered the so-called war on

terror in greater depth in our agenda. Most salient in that regard is the

universally condemned case of the five Cuban heroes, unjustly and

arbitrarily detained for exactly 11 years and two days, and subsequently

condemned to serve heavy prison terms for having brought to light, in

Miami, terrorist schemes against the heroic and ever-supportive

Republic of Cuba. Despite the fact that the information was duly

provided to the authorities of our host country, who have continuously

claimed to have no knowledge of it, the response was to jail them. It is

to be hoped that with the much-touted change and rectification policy of

the new Government of the host country, there will be a correction of

this miscarriage of justice, which has caused so much suffering to the

five families affected and so much damage to the image of the United

States that its new president is committed to improving.

Page 11

Palestine: A Scandal that has Caused Me Much Sorrow

My greatest frustration this year has been the Palestine situation.

The Question of Palestine continues to be the most serious and pro-

longed unresolved political and human rights issue on the agenda of the

United Nations since its inception. The evident lack of commitment for

resolving it is a scandal that has caused me much sorrow.

I promised a proactive Presidency, and sincerely believe that I did

everything I possibly could in this regard, requesting and attempting to

persuade those who should have been most closely involved to call for

the convocation of the General Assembly to consider the Palestine

situation. However, whether at the time of the three-week invasion of

Gaza that began on 27 December or now, all I received was advice to

give the process more time, because things were always on the point of

being resolved and we should do nothing that could endanger the

success that was always just beyond our reach. [-ed. Father Brockmann

is here and below likely referring to the Permanent Observer Mission of

Palestine to the United Nations representing the Palestinian Authority]

Faced with this situation, I sincerely did not know what to do. I

wanted to help Palestine, but those who should supposedly have been

most interested denied their support for reasons of “caution” that I was

incapable of understanding. I hope that they were right and that I was

wrong. Otherwise, we face an ugly situation of constant complicity with

the aggression against the rights of the noble and long-suffering

Palestinian people.

A just resolution of the Question of Palestine must be based on the

content of international law, and will only be attained when the unity of

the Palestinian people has been achieved and the international commu-

nity speaks with all its representatives who enjoy credibility and have

been democratically elected. In addition to the withdrawal of the Israelis

from all territories illegally occupied since 1967, international law

demands that all Palestinians displaced during the creation of the State

of Israel, their children and grandchildren, be permitted to return to their

homeland of Palestine.

My chief consultant on humanitarian affairs, Dr. Kevin Cahill, was

sent to Gaza from 17 to 22 February to prepare a report on the humani-

tarian situation in Gaza immediately after the aggression. Dr. Cahill’s

Page 12

report was issued on Wednesday 19 August, on the occasion of World

Humanitarian Day commemorating the sacrifices of United Nations staff

in conflict zones; it had originally been intended for release at a Special

Session on Gaza, but that did not take place for the reasons mentioned.

I find disgraceful the passivity and apparent indifference of some

highly influential members of the Security Council to the fact that the

blockade of Gaza has continued uninterrupted for two years, in flagrant

violation of international law and of the resolution of the Security

Council itself, causing immense damage and suffering to the Palestinian

population of Gaza. This situation threatens to become even more

serious if immediate measures are not taken, now that winter is

approaching. Now is the time to demonstrate, with actions and not

simply words, a true commitment to the concept of the Responsibility

to Protect.

Main Lesson or Perception

It would be inappropriate for me to leave without sharing with you

what I feel is the main lesson or perception I have gained during this

year of work, dedication and total commitment to the cause of peace

through the democratization of the United Nations; the revitalization of

the General Assembly; the complete abolition of nuclear weapons by the

year 2020, the 75

anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the eradication of poverty and hunger, which

this year passed the psychological barrier of a billion people suffering

hunger throughout the world; the taking of measures to ensure the

availability of clean water and food for all; the promotion of effective

policies for dealing with climate change; putting an end to the crime of

human trafficking, as well as to the disgrace of the ill treatment of and

discrimination against women; guaranteeing the right to education for

children and youths, including that of girls and boys in situations of

armed combat or humanitarian disasters caused by natural phenomena;

as well as guaranteeing universal access to health, which is an ethical

and religious imperative.

In all these endeavours, the ongoing counsel of Brother David

Andrews of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, as well as of Maude

Barlow, Mohamed Bedjaoui, Byron Blake, Leonardo Boff, Noam

Page 13

Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Michael Clark, Kevin Cahill, Aldo Díaz

Lacayo, François Houtart, Michael Kennedy, Francisco Lacayo Parajón,

Carlos Emilio López, Paul Oquist, Nuripan Sen, Joseph Stiglitz and

Oscar-René Vargas, was of great use to this Presidency, which we

intended to be a team effort from the beginning. However, clearly, our

greatest gratitude is to God, our Lord, for having allowed us to contrib-

ute in some small way to the cause of world peace.

During this year, there was much talk of the need to reform the

United Nations and to do everything possible to improve its image,

credibility and effectiveness. According to data from the latest poll by

the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes project, carried out in 24

nations and the Palestinian Territories, there has been a noticeable

improvement in the perception of the United Nations. This gives us

happiness, but not satisfaction. Much remains to be done if the United

Nations is to become worthy of the prestige, trust and credibility it needs

to carry out its mission effectively, a mission that is so important in

today’s troubled world.

It is said that the League of Nations failed because those who

sponsored it lacked the power or will needed to make it a reality. I

believe that something similar can be said of the United Nations. I am

one of those who believe that the United Nations has the potential as an

organization to be indispensable to humanity’s efforts to survive the

crises converging to threaten its extinction. The main problem, without

a doubt, is that not all its founders really believed, or believe even today,

in the vision or principles explicit and implicit in its underlying Charter.

I believe that it is not far-fetched to note that the whole world

knows that, among many other truths, some of our most powerful and

influential Member States definitely do not believe in the rule of law in

international relations and are of the view, moreover, that complying

with the legal norms to which we formally commit, when signing the

Charter, is something that applies only to weak countries. With such a

low level of commitment, it should not be surprising that the United

Nations has been unable to achieve the main objectives for which it was

created.

Certain Member States think that they can act according to the law

of the jungle, and defend the right of the strongest to do whatever they

Page 14

feel like with total and absolute impunity, and remain accountable to no

one. They think nothing of railing against multilateralism, proclaiming

the virtues of unilateralism while simultaneously pontificating unasham-

edly from their privileged seats on the Security Council about the need

for all Member States conscientiously to fulfill their obligations under

the Charter, or be sanctioned (selectively of course) for failing to do so.

The sovereign equality of all Member States and the obligation to

prevent wars are, for them, minor details that need not be taken very

seriously.

All of this, and many other equally serious anomalies, is what has

brought many to believe in the urgency of the need to reform the United

Nations. But during this year as President of the General Assembly, I

have come to the conclusion that the time has already passed for

reforming or mending our Organization. What we need to do is to

reinvent it, and we need urgently to do it ad majorem gloriam Dei,

which is to say, for the good of the Earth and of humanity.

In the 64 years since the creation of the United Nations, there have

been many scientific advances and development in the ethical conscious-

ness of mankind that allow us to clarify the main elements of this other

world, possible and indispensable for our survival, and to proceed on

that basis to the drafting of a proposed Declaration on the Common

Good of the Earth and Humanity. Once the consensus of Member States

has been obtained on this Declaration, this shared vision will have to be

converted into a draft for a new Charter of the United Nations, one that

is attuned to the needs and knowledge of the twenty-first century….

Tempus fugit. Time is running out. In Copenhagen [at the 2009

United Nations Climate Change Conference] we will have the opportu-

nity to show that we understand well what that means and that we are

determined to do what is needed to defend life.

Thank you.

Page 15

[Editor’s Note: One of the problems inherited by the 63

Session is the

widely felt need for Security Council reform. Father Brockmann phrased

this as the need for democratization of the UN The following article

appeared on Sept 15, 2008 one day before the beginning of the 63

Session. As mandated by the 62

Session, the 63

session initiated

intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform which is a

small step toward the desired reform.]

UN Security Council Reform in Focus

Public Scrutiny and Debate Needed,

Not Closed Meetings

by Ronda Hauben

The critical need for Security Council reform is being expressed by

a number of nations at the United Nations as the 62

session comes to

an end and the 63

session of the General Assembly gets underway.

Describing this urgency, Hilario Davide, the Philippine ambassador

to the UN, told the Security Council Open Debate on its Working

Methods held in late August: “Calls for changes and reforms in the

Security Council are becoming louder and stronger. In due course, it

may even become irresistible.”

The Problem of Equitable Expansion

The 61

session of the General Assembly ended a year ago with a

resolution on Security Council reform stating that intergovernmental

negotiations would take place in the next session and that a transitional

agreement could provide for the flexibility needed to try out a tentative

solution. The idea of a transitional agreement was presented as a

breakthrough. Similarly, the plan to move to intergovernmental

negotiations was a means to move past the deadlocked working group

phase of discussion.

No such activity took place during the 62

Session of the General

Assembly, which ran from Sept. 18 2007 to Sept. 15, 2008. Instead, the

members of the General Assembly once again have the dilemma of

passing the problem onto the next session of the General Assembly,

Page 16

which begins on Sept. 16.

Most of the delegations to the UN maintain that there is a need for

some change. What the change should be, however, is a deeply

contentious issue. There have been a number of proposals over the years.

The effort to create a forum to reform the Security Council has been

going on for years. The most recent effort dates back to 1993 when the

Open Ended Working Group was created. Since then the problem has

passed from one General Assembly session to the next.

There are a number of proposals for reform that have been

presented to the UN membership but none has gained general accep-

tance.

Among the more well-known proposals for reform is that of

Germany, Japan, India and Brazil (Group of Four [G-4]), proposing four

new seats for themselves and two for African nations. In this proposal,

the new permanent seats would not hold veto power.

Several other member nations appear concerned that if a nation

from their region in this group gains the additional power that possessing

a permanent Security Council seat represents, it will shift the power

balance in the region in an undesirable way. Such a concern is an

impetus for other proposals, such as the Uniting for Consensus Group of

nations led by Pakistan and Italy, which opposed the creation of new

permanent seats for individual nations, but advocated 10 new seats for

two-year renewable terms.

Another proposal on behalf of a group of 54 African nations is

asking for both permanent and nonpermanent seats to be assigned to the

African region, with the decision of which nations fill those seats to be

determined regionally. The African group wants the permanent seats to

be with veto as long as any other nation on the Security Council has a

veto. Its proposal is for an increase in total Council membership to 26

seats, with two of the six new permanent seats to be for nations selected

by the African region, and two of the five new nonpermanent seats to be

for African nations as well.

The Organization of Islamic Conference has expressed its concern

that there be adequate representation for its members.

Page 17

Does the Council Act on Behalf of the Members?

Despite the differing views on how to expand the Security Council

membership, there is an agreement among many of the nations on the

need for changes in the working methods of the Council.

In statements made at the Open Debate of the Security Council on

Working Methods held on Aug. 27, several nations point to Section 1 of

Article 24 of the United Nations Charter, which says that the Council

acts on behalf of the members. They argue that this article obliges the

Council to involve them when determining its course of action.

The language in the charter reads, “In order to ensure prompt and

effective action by the United Nations, its members confer on the

Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of interna-

tional peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under

this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf” (Article 24,

Section 1).

Several of the nations not on the Security Council say they are

rarely consulted or even informed about the issues being determined.

Yet they are told that they must enforce the decisions made by the

Council.

Even some of the members of the Council itself report that they do

not know how the decisions by the five permanent members of the

Council (P-5) are made in the drafting of resolutions. Also, they observe

that non-council groups or nations are part of the process of drafting

resolutions instead of the members of the Council.

Article 32 of the charter states, “Any member of the United Nations

which is not a member of the Security Council, or any state which is not

a Member of the United Nations, if it is a party to a dispute under

consideration by the Security Council, shall be invited to participate,

without vote, in the discussion relating to the dispute.”

Instead, nations complain that even when they are a subject of or

involved with the matters before the Security Council, they are excluded

from the discussion and negotiation of resolutions and are only allowed

to speak after a decision has been agreed to and voted on by those on the

Council.

Since nonpermanent members only serve for two years at a time,

they are at a disadvantage when compared to the P-5, which have been

Page 18

on the Council since it was created over 60 years ago. The P-5 nations

are familiar with the past experience of the Council. They also have

greater resources to draw on in keeping up with the intense schedule of

diverse issues that come before the Council. In addition, the P-5 can use

their veto as a means to pressure for their interests or to threaten that

they will prevent any action.

Nations Urge Specific Reforms

Following are a few excerpts from many statements made by UN

delegates at the Aug. 27 open debate describing what delegates view as

the problems that need attention.

Dumisani Kumalo, the South African ambassador to the UN,

explained: “The Security Council has witnessed the gradual erosion of

its credibility and authority. Its representativity has been challenged

increasingly, as it addresses matters that have expanded beyond the

vision that the founders of the United Nations foresaw in 1945.

“In the past decades, permanent members of the Security Council

have sought to utilize the Council to further their own interest.… We

have always been troubled by the fact that issues such as Kosovo,

Western Sahara, non-proliferation and even Georgia, are regarded as of

interest, at least to some members of the Council, to the exclusion of

other issues. On the question of the Middle East, people around the

world are well aware that the Council has remained paralyzed in trying

to address the plight of the Palestinian people 40 years after the illegal

occupation of their land.”

Ambassador Hilario G. Davide, Jr. of the Philippines told the

Council: “Due process and the rule of law demand that Member States

that are not members of the Security Council but are the subjects of the

Council’s scrutiny should have the right to appear before the Council at

all stages of the proceedings concerning them to state or defend their

positions on the issues that are the subjects of or are related to that

scrutiny. At present such participation is unfairly limited by rules 37 and

38 of the provisional rules of procedure.… This is a denial of due

process, which is a violation of the basic principle of the rule of law.

Due process and the rule of law require that a party must be heard before

it is condemned.”

Page 19

Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, asked: “A

legitimate question therefore arises: whether the outcome of such non-

transparent, exclusive and political procedures can represent the points

of view of the entire membership. How can one expect Member States

to implement decisions that are made without even minimal engagement

on their part, or even without their knowledge?”

Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s ambassador, reminded the

Council: “In failing to apply these methods and thus failing to improve

its working methods, the Council has overlooked the fundamental

premise that its actions are carried out on behalf of and in representation

of all Member States.”

Does the Council Act in Accord with the Charter and

International Law?

The UN Charter states that the member nations are obliged to carry

out the decisions of the Security Council that are in accord with the

charter. This implies there is an obligation of the Council to draft

resolutions that are in line with the obligations of the charter and of

international law. According to Article 25, “The members of the United

Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security

Council in accordance with the present Charter.” Presently, however,

there is no mechanism to prevent the Council from passing resolutions

contrary to the charter and then claiming that member states must

enforce the resolutions.

A case in point is the sanctions list the Security Council has

compiled of the names of individuals and entities that it alleges have

been involved in the financing of the al-Qaida network and the Taliban.

This is detailed in Security Council resolution 1267 (1999) and related

resolutions.

The bank accounts of these individuals and entities are to be frozen

and a ban instituted on their right to travel.

Several of those whose

names have been put on this list have appealed to various courts and

sought other avenues for legal remedies, as they claim none exists within

the UN processes. A recent decision by the European Court of Justice on

Sept. 3, agreed with the arguments of two of those on the list, Yassin

Page 20

Abdullah Kadi, an individual, and Al Barakaat International Foundation,

an entity.

The two separate cases were joined together by the court. The court

found that both are being denied the mandatory due process procedures

that are to be followed when access to one’s property or to the right to

travel are being denied. Therefore, being put on the sanctions list

subjects them to a violation of their human rights. The court decision

refers to the obligations of the UN charter to “encourage respect for

human rights” (Article 1, Section 1).

The European Court of Justice said Kadi and Al Barakaat’s

argument was well founded, that European Union (EU) and European

Community (EC) regulations to enforce the Security Council sanctions

to freeze their funds violated their rights of defense, “especially the right

to be heard, and of the principle of effective judicial protection”

(Decision No. 353). It ordered that the two particular regulations

imposing the restrictive measures on persons and entities associated with

al-Qaida and the Taliban be annulled, but that the effects of the

regulations be maintained for a period not to exceed three months so that

the EU and EC could remedy the infringements found and redraft the

regulations.

In their criticism of the working methods of the Security Council,

several nations explain that they do not want the Council to be acting

arbitrarily or outside of the framework of international law.

Expressing this idea, Marty Natalegawa, Indonesia’s ambassador to

the UN, told the Council: “We seek a Council that safeguards the

interests of all and whose decisions and actions are in full consonance

with the established principles of international law and the Charter of the

United Nations.”

Open Processes Make Reform Possible

The challenges facing the nations of the United Nations in trying to

bring reform to the practices and composition of the Security Council

are formidable. The possible veto of any change by any of the P-5

nations presents a difficult obstacle to overcome. Similarly, fostering

agreement among the diverse nations as to what change is needed and

how to implement it is similarly a difficult task.

Page 21

Considering the difficult nature of the problem, the process in

working for reform becomes important. If discussion of the various

proposals for change is done in an open environment, the details can be

covered by the press and public discussion can be encouraged. The

activities of the group working on Council reform

held during the 62

Session of the General Assembly, however, were often held in closed

meetings and even some of the nations involved complained that they

were kept in the dark about what was happening.

Little progress is likely to be made in this difficult area of United

Nations reform unless the whole process is opened up to welcome public

scrutiny and discussion. Such discussion helps to clarify the public

interest and to find ways to solve problems impeding a solution that is

in line with the public purpose.

For example, in 2003 the United States sought to get a Security

Council resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. The argument was

made that it would weaken the UN if the Security Council failed to

authorize the invasion. One of the ambassadors on the Council at the

time explained how the broadly based international coverage of Council

meetings and the broad public discussion of the issues involved helped

to clarify that it was in the best interests of the UN not to authorize the

invasion. This international public concern helped him to resist the

pressure.

The lesson of the need for open, public processes is a lesson that can

help to guide the efforts toward Security Council reform in the 63

session of the General Assembly. Democratizing the UN has been

proposed as a key issue for this session and for the opening debate. This

is a sign that there are some nations that recognize the problem and will

make efforts to solve it.

Notes:

1. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, 2009 S/PV.5968 Resumption 1, p. 8, and longer

statement distributed by ambassador at meeting. This statement was one of many

comments presented at a meeting of the Security Council to discuss its working

methods on Aug. 27. This Council meeting on the subject, held under the Belgium

presidency in August, was a rare event that several delegates urged be repeated at least

every two years.

Page 22

2. See a summary of some proposals at: http://www.Reformtheun.org.

3. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, S/PV.5968 Provisional, p. 15.

http://www.reformtheun.org/index.php/eupdate/3920

4. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, S/PV.5968 Resumption 1, p. 8.

5. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, S/PV.5968 Resumption 1, p. 12.

6. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, S/PV.5968 Resumption 1, p. 13.

7. For details, see Ronda Hauben, “At the Crossroads: Security Council Sanctions

Imposed without Due Process,” Telepolis, June 29. 2009.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/28/28217/1.html

8. See Decision Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber), Sept. 3.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/Notice.do?val=478012:cs&lang=ro&list=463008:cp,478012

:cs,463008:cs,&pos=2&page=1&nbl=3&pgs=10&hwords=&checktexte=checkbox

&visu=

9. Security Council meeting, Aug. 27, S/PV.5968 Provisional, p. 5.

10. The actual name of the working group is the Open Ended Working Group on the

Question of Equitable Representation and Increase in the Membership and Other

Matters related to the Security Council. The proposal for the Sept. 9 draft for the final

document is A/Ac.247/2008/L.1/Rev.1.

11. For a summary of some of the actions of the working group, see “Security Council

Reform Debate Heats Up as Member States Negotiate Final Drafts,” by Jonas von

Freiesleben, Sept. 11.

http://www.centerforunreform.org/node/364

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on September 15, 2008 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=383668&rel_no=1

Page 23

Change in Economic Model Needed to

Solve Crisis

President of Bolivia Offers

Alternative to the Neoliberal Agenda

by Ronda Hauben

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, in a talk to the United

Nations General Assembly [in September 2008], offered an alternative

viewpoint of how member nations should deal with the economic crisis.

He presented a critique of what he called “the continuation of the

neo-liberal agenda of the developed nations,” explaining how this

approach would only deepen the crisis rather than help to solve it. “In

order to put an end to the financial crisis,” he said, “we have to put an

end to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO).”

“It is important to move forward to deep economic change,”

Morales explained. This means changing the economic model. He called

for replacing the neo-liberal model.

His alternative agenda included providing aid to the victims of the

crisis. By the victims he meant those who have lost their homes, and

those who are losing their jobs. The money should not go to those who

have caused the crisis, he told the member nations of the General

Assembly.

Morales also criticized the G20 summit held on Nov. 15, 2008 in

Washington, D.C. as not representative of the majority of countries in

the world who are affected by the economic crisis. Maybe it was just 20

countries, because those countries feel they bear responsibility for the

crisis, he suggested. But that still didn’t justify limiting the decision

making process for the world response to the crisis to 20 of the

developed nations, he reasoned.

As a model for an alternative economics, he offered the practice of

Bolivia where a new constitution has been passed, and services have

been instituted to benefit all the people, including those in the rural areas

who were ignored by the governing institutions in the past.

Morales noted that it was very important “to be constantly with the

Page 24

people, to heed what the people want, to listen to what the people are

asking for.”

Describing how the newly passed constitution would provide rights

for the indigenous people, he said that, for the first time, “the state is for

all.”

Morales explained that he had come to thank the General Assembly

for the support given him and his country when groups tried to

destabilize the country. While the nationalization of the oil in Bolivia

has resulted in a substantial increase in the funds the country receives

from its oil reserves, this also led to certain groups trying various means

to cut Bolivia’s exports.

At the press conference held on Nov. 18, just after Morales’ speech

to the General Assembly, Father Miguel d!Escoto Brockmann, who is

from Nicaragua, introduced Morales. He said President Morales is a

head of state who is practicing the values for the 21

century. Member

nations had described such values as desirable during meetings

supporting interfaith dialogue which had been held at the UN the

previous week.

In response to a question at the press conference, Morales explained

that illiteracy is being eradicated in Bolivia, and that a pension has been

instituted for those over 60 years of age.

He offered these as examples of how the resources of the country

are being used to improve the lives of the people.

Also he explained that under the new political constitution, no

foreign nation is allowed to set up a military base in Bolivia. He

described how his country is opposed to the use of the coca leaf to

produce cocaine, but that consumption of the coca leaf is a traditional

part of the culture in Bolivia and the government supports this cultural

practice.

Morales told members of the media, that though in the past the rural

people had no access to telecommunications, after the nationalization of

telecommunications important changes have taken place. Now even

people tending sheep in the fields have cell phones and can get calls

from their relatives abroad.

Electricity in the rural areas, he explained, is becoming more

affordable to people.

Page 25

While Morales offered an alternative economic model for develop-

ing nations to that of neoliberalism as the needed response to the

economic crisis, much of the western press focused on his ban on the

role played by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in

Bolivia. In response, Morales described how even when he was a

member of the Parliament, he was not allowed to pass a certain check

point that was at the time maintained by the officials of the DEA. He

also recalled when the DEA had had helicopters monitoring social

movement activity.

Morales, who had been a labor leader in Bolivia, maintains that

government has a duty to serve people and defend the sovereignty of the

country.

Note: A video of Evo Morales’ press conference is available at the UN Web site.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2008/pc081117pm.rm

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on November 25, 2008 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=384247&rel_no=1

Response to Israeli Attacks on Gaza

Press Statement Issued by Security Council

After Five Hours of Consultations

by Ronda Hauben

Reporting from the United Nations, Saturday night Dec. 27, 2008

through Sunday morning, Dec. 28. – I arrived at the United Nations

around 9:35 p.m. (EST) after learning that there were to be Security

Council consultations about what is happening in Gaza. The Security

Council consultations were scheduled for 10 p.m. (EST).

The Libyan delegation, on behalf of the Arab League, had asked for

a meeting of the Security Council to respond to the Israeli attacks on

Gaza.

Soon after the members arrived, some members of the delegations

Page 26

told the press that the Security Council members were working on a

statement which would urge Israel to halt its military operations in Gaza.

Also, the statement was to call for cessation of rocket attacks on Israel

from Gaza.

Another element for the statement was said to be to call for the

opening of the border crossings into Gaza and unrestricted humanitarian

access to the area.

A few others who spoke with the press informally were quick to

point out that the draft effort to fashion a statement was not something

agreed to in any way yet by the members of the Security Council. The

discussion among the members of the Security Council was said to be

about whether they would hold a meeting this evening and if so what the

meeting would do.

A representative of one of the delegations said that his delegation

wanted either a statement that all members of the Security Council

agreed on presented to the press this evening, or else an open meeting

where all members would speak freely.

Five hours after the meeting began, members of the Security

Council emerged from their consultations. They had indeed agreed on

a statement to be read to the press.

The statement contained several points. These included:

1) There was serious concern about “the escalation of the situation in

Gaza.”

2) The call for “an immediate halt to all violence.”

3) The call for “all parties to stop immediately all military activities.”

4) The call for the opening of the border crossings “to ensure the

continuous provision of humanitarian supplies.”

The statement “stressed the need for the restoration of calm” toward

finding a political solution for the settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli

conflict.

Several of the parties came to speak briefly to the press after the

Security Council issued its statement.

The American ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, wanted it

known that he attributed the root cause of the problem to Hamas’ rocket

attacks on Israel. He limited the questions he would answer after being

Page 27

confronted with questions from reporters asking if what Israel was doing

in killing over 200 Palestinians was not a disproportionate response.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin indicated that there were

different views among Security Council members about what the root

cause of the problem was, but that the bottom line was that the situation

in Gaza had slipped, and that it was important to stop the bloodshed. He

expressed his appreciation that the matter had been brought to the

Security Council as a result of a decision of foreign ministers, and that

a statement had been issued by the Council.

When asked what the Security Council would do to follow up on the

statement, he said that the statement had been crafted with some

understanding by the Israeli government that it was issued, and he

expected that the parties assumed that there were certain responsibilities

given that the Security Council had issued a statement.

The Palestinian observer at the UN explained that if Israel didn’t

comply, the Arab nations would come back knocking at the door of the

Security Council.

Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said that the Security Council

didn’t have to be in such a rush to issue a statement.

The French ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, said that the

statement made clear that the border crossings to Gaza had to be open

including having access allowed to NGOs, diplomats, and journalists.

While the members of the Security Council were discussing what

the Security Council would do, others at the United Nations presented

their view of the situation.

The Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, via his spokesperson had

issued a statement on Saturday, Dec. 27. It contained a general statement

about Israel’s obligation to uphold humanitarian law, and human rights

law, in general condemning “excessive use of force,” but condemning

by name Hamas for ongoing rocket attacks on Israel. The statement is

posted at the UN.

The President of the General Assembly, Miguel d!Escoto

Brockmann, announced he would cut short his brief Christmas holiday

to return to the UN from Nicaragua.

His spokesperson, Enrique Yeves, told journalists, “The General

Assembly President is extremely worried about the whole situation. He

Page 28

believes it is time for the international community to act to prevent this

kind of aggression from Israel against the civilian population of

Palestine.”

“If we fail,” Yeves explained, “we will all be guilty by omission.”

The president of the General Assembly is following very closely the

situation in New York, said Yeves, and he gave journalists a copy of

Brockmann’s statement.

The statement expressed in a clear and forthright manner that he

condemned the actions by Israel. The statement by the president of the

General Assembly is:

The behavior by Israel in bombarding Gaza is simply the

commission of wanton aggression by a very powerful state

against a territory that [it] illegally occupies.

Time has come to take firm action if the United Nations

does not want to be rightly accused of complicity by omission.

The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe

and massive violations of international humanitarian law as

defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the

obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of

the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who

live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the

actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the air strikes were aimed at civilian

areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world,

certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the air strikes have

not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s

elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of

civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students

attempting to find transportation home from the university.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the

UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to

protect any civilian population facing massive violations of

international humanitarian law regardless of what country may

Page 29

be responsible for those violations.

I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every

relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move expedi-

tiously not only to condemn Israel’s serious violations, but to

develop new approaches to providing real protection for the

Palestinian people.

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on December 28, 2008 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3845

12&rel_no=1

The World Has Been Watching

The UN and the Failure to Act to

Stop Attack on Gaza

by Ronda Hauben

On the evening of Jan. 3, the President of the General Assembly,

Father Miguel d!Escoto Brockmann, arrived at the UN as the Security

Council was preparing to hold a closed door meeting about the Gaza

crisis.

Earlier in the day, Israel had escalated the previous eight days of

bombing of Gaza by beginning a ground invasion into the territory.

The situation in Gaza is that 1.5 million civilians are trapped in a

virtual prison. For 18 months prior to the invasion, Israel has blockaded

the crossing points into Gaza that it controls and Egypt has closed the

one crossing point it has control over.

Responding to the question from a journalist about what his reaction

was to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Israeli ground attack, Brockmann

said, “I think it’s a monstrosity. There’s no other way to name it.”

He went on to explain that “once again the world is watching in

dismay the disfunctionality of the Security Council.” The shame of this,

he said, is that “people are dying.”

Such activity by the Security Council, Brockmann said, is “what is

responsible for the loss of prestige and the bad image” that the

Page 30

disfunctionality results in. “The Security Council,” he explained, “is in

very urgent need of profound reform.”

Subsequent events on Jan. 3 at the Security Council demonstrated

the accuracy of Brockmann’s description of the current state of the

Security Council.

This was the first meeting of the Security Council in 2009. Five

newly elected nations replaced five outgoing members. The new

members were Turkey, Mexico, Uganda, Japan and Austria. They

replaced Indonesia, Panama, South Africa, Belgium and Italy.

A problem, however, seemed to be that the newly elected members

did not have the same understanding of the dynamics and how to deal

with them that the outgoing elected members had learned from their two

years on the council.

While several of the outgoing members had voiced

their commit-

ment to having open meetings of the Security Council – especially when

there was a dispute that couldn’t be resolved – the new members and

others on the Council allowed the meeting on Jan. 3 to be a closed

meeting. The discussion and actions of the Security Council were only

available from second hand reports.

During a similar meeting of the 2008 Security Council on Dec.

27-28, one of the outgoing ambassadors, South Africa’s Domisani

Kumalo told journalists that he was insisting on an open meeting if the

Security Council did not, at least, come to an agreed upon statement for

the press.

At the first Security Council meeting in 2009, however, it is

reported that no ambassador insisted on an open meeting. Hence there

was neither an agreed upon press statement from Council members, nor

was there an open meeting.

Describing the events of the Jan. 3 meeting, the Egyptian Ambassa-

dor, Maged A. Abdelaziz, told the press that, “we find regrettably that

the Security Council is downgrading its response.”

He was referring to

the fact that the U.S. Ambassador Alejandro D. Wolff would not even

agree to make the previous weekend’s press statement into a Presidential

statement. Nor would the U.S. agree to a press statement like that of the

previous Saturday, calling for an immediate halt to all violence.

Significantly, Israel’s escalation of violence against Palestinians in

Page 31

Gaza, represented by the Israeli land invasion, was greeted with official

silence at the first meeting of 2009 of the Security Council. The Security

Council was silent on the fact that the large number of civilian deaths

and injuries and the massive destruction of civilian targets in Gaza

demonstrated that Israel was committing widespread collective

punishment of civilians in Gaza.

During Brockmann’s comments to the press, he had referred to

“other possible steps” that were being considered.

Some member nations of the UN are pointing to General Assembly

Resolution 377 “Uniting for Peace”

as a procedure to be invoked to

respond to the problem when a permanent member of the Security

Council blocks action on an urgent issue, as the U.S. did on Jan. 3.

The Uniting for Peace resolution notes that the blocking of urgent

action by a permanent member of the Security Council does not relieve

the members of the UN of their responsibility under the charter. Under

Article 24 of the UN charter, members of the UN confer “on the

Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of interna-

tional peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under

this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.”

When the Security Council fails to carry out such duties however,

the General Assembly can assume the responsibility. If the General

Assembly is in session, a meeting is to be called. If the General

Assembly is not in session, as is currently the case, there is a procedure

to call for an Emergency Session, which is to meet within 24 hours of

the request.

There have been press reports that member nations of the UN, like

members of the 57 nations of the Organization of Islamic Conference

(OIC), or like members of the 117 non-aligned nations are working to

start the process to call for an emergency meeting of the General

Assembly about the Gaza crisis if the Security Council continues to be

unable to act on the need for a cease fire and the opening of the border

crossings into Gaza.

There have been ongoing and growing demonstrations around the

world of people upset about the lack of action by their governments to

find a way to stop Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The persistent failure

of the UN Security Council over the past 18 months to stop the siege of

Page 32

Gaza has helped to set the conditions for the current attack on the

Palestinians by Israel.

Angry demonstrations around the world are evidence that this

inaction is an affront, not only to the besieged Palestinians but to people

around the world who condemn Israel’s invasion of Gaza. In his

comments to the press on Jan. 3, Brockmann said that “what is really

responsible [for the current violent situation in Gaza –ed.] I think is the

unfulfilled resolutions of the Security Council” with regard to the

Palestinian crisis.

“The world has been watching,” he noted.

Notes:

1. Media Stakeout: Informal comments to the Media by H.E. Mr. Miguel d!Escoto

Brockmann, President of the 63rd session of the General Assembly on the situation in

the Middle East, including the Palestinian question. [Webcast: Archived Video - 7

minutes]

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/stakeout/2009/so090103pm2.rm

See also Ronda Hauben “Security Council and Others at UN Respond to Israeli Attacks

on Gaza , Press statement issued by Security Council after 5 hours of consultations,”

OhmyNews International, Dec. 28, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3845

12&rel_no=1

2. Ronda Hauben, “Security Council Fails to Act on Gaza Crisis: The Silence is

Deafening Says Indonesia’s Ambassador to the UN,” OhmyNews International, Feb.

7, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=16&no=38

1689&rel_no=1

3. Egypt Media Stakeout: Permanent Representative of Egypt, H.E. Mr. Maged A.

Abdelaziz [See especially Minutes 18:47-20:52]

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/stakeout/2009/so090103pm3.rm

4. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, states, “No protected person

may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective

penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are

prohibited.”

5. General Assembly Resolution A/RES/377(V) A 3 November 1950 377 (V). Uniting

for Peace.

http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/99818751a6a4c9c6852560690077ef61/55c2b8

4da9e0052b05256554005726c6

6. Indonesia and Malaysia are two such nations. See for example, Abdul Khalik and

Page 33

Lilian Budianto, “RI pushes for UN emergency meeting” The Jakarta Post, Jakarta.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/04/02/ri-calls-israel-halt-attack-gaza-strip

.html

“President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Monday that Indonesia would continue

its political and diplomatic efforts to push the Security Council to issue a resolution to

stop Israeli attacks and force both sides to return to peaceful dialog to solve the

conflict.”

“But if we can’t get a resolution through the Security Council then we will use the

alternative of an emergency meeting at the General Assembly to force a cease fire to

stop the hostilities that have claimed many lives,” he told reporters at the Presidential

office.

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on January 6, 2009 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3845

69&rel_no=1

Israel Attempts to Justify

Its Attack on Gaza

The Obligations of Israel As an Occupying Power

Under the UN Charter

by Ronda Hauben

In a letter submitted to Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the

United Nations, and to the President of the Security Council for the

month of January (S/2009/6, Jan. 6, 2009), Israel informs them that it

has expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Israel claims this

is its right under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. Israel

states that this is a “defensive military operation” and that it has begun

this military operation only “after exhausting all other means.”

The letter states “Israel is not at war with the Palestinian people.”

It states that Israel is doing its “utmost to avoid and minimize civilian

casualties and to take the necessary precautionary measures in accor-

dance with Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.”

Also Israel claims that it “makes – and will continue to make every

effort to allow humanitarian relief into the Gaza Strip.”

Page 34

Describing the nature of Israel’s attack on the political infrastructure

of Gaza, Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director of the Middle East

and North American Division of Human Rights Watch, in a press

conference at the United Nations, presented a different view of what

Israel is doing. She explained that under international law only com-

batants who are actively engaged in fighting are legitimate subjects of

attack. (Press Conference, Jan. 7, 2009, Note 1)

In its bombardment, Israel has targeted the political and civilian

infrastructure such as police stations. It is Israel’s burden of proof to

show that the police were indeed Hamas militants. Instead, Whitson

noted, Israel targeted police stations “on a blanket basis.”

Similarly, she pointed out, Israel targeted a Hamas Official at the

Ministry of Health, and the Hamas media broadcasting station.

Whitson maintained that under international law, the closure of the

crossing points into Gaza, the blockade that Israel and Egypt have

participated in imposing on the people of Gaza, is the imposition of

collective punishment on a civilian population. The people suffering

from the effects of the blockade are civilians, rather than the effects

being restricted to the combatants Israel claimed it was fighting.

Moreover, Israel, as the occupying power over Gaza, has the primary

responsibility to provide food and medicine for the people of Gaza, but

instead has prevented the people from having access to the goods and

services necessary for life.

The rationale presented by Israel in its letter to the United Nations

is quite different from the facts. The claim that its military bombardment

of Gaza is defensive in nature is contrary to its announcement that it has

attacked the political infrastructure of Gaza, a political infrastructure that

was the result of the Palestinian people voting in January 2006 for

Hamas as its political representatives.

In an interview by UN radio with Richard Falk, the UN Human

Rights Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian territories, about the

crisis in Gaza (Interview on Gaza, Jan. 2, 2009, Note 2), Falk maintains

that the “maintenance of a blockade on a society is treated as an act of

war.” Imposing such a blockade and then militarily attacking the people

of Gaza, as Israel has done since Dec. 27, is “a massive and severe

violation of the prohibition on collective punishment which is contained

Page 35

in Article 33 of the Geneva convention.” Falk also explains that Israel’s

failure to provide adequate food and medicine for a population that is

under its occupation, is a continuing violation of Article 55 of the same

international treaty.

Falk describes how Hamas adhered to the cease-fire agreed to in

June 2008 by not launching rocket attacks on Israel, but that Israel broke

the cease-fire agreement by failing to restore humanitarian supplies as

they had agreed to do. (UN radio, Interview with Richard Falk, Jan. 9,

2009, Note 3) Israel is not defending its own territory from an invasion,

but attacking another political community, one that it has a responsibil-

ity to maintain under humanitarian law. According to Falk, Israel, by

controlling land, sea and air access to Gaza, is the occupying power in

Gaza.

It was not only that Israel failed to allow food, fuel, and medical

supplies into Gaza as it was obliged to do under its agreement with

Hamas, but on Nov. 4, 2008, when much of the world was distracted

with the U.S. election, Israel launched an attack on Gaza, resulting in at

least six deaths. This act of Israel broke the cease-fire. Hence Israel’s

attack on Gaza is not defensive as its actions were the cause of the

escalation of hostilities. Then when Hamas offered to agree to a

continuation of the cease-fire for 10 years if the blockade was lifted,

Israel ignored the offer. Falk says Israel’s action in ignoring the offer by

Hamas to negotiate how to continue the cease-fire “is a violation of

international law which requires a government to use every diplomatic

option before they have recourse to war.”

An article by Jimmy Carter similarly details how Hamas did not

break the cease-fire, just as it was Hamas that offered to negotiate with

Israel to extend the cease-fire. (Jimmy Carter, “Gaza: an unnecessary

war,” 1/8/09, Mercury News, Note 4) Carter notes that the people of

Gaza “were being starved” by Israel’s actions enforcing the blockade.

Carter describes his efforts in mid-December to extend the

soon-to-expire six-month cease-fire deadline. The issue for Hamas was

the opening of the crossing points into Gaza to restore access to needed

supplies for the people of Gaza. Carter reports that Israeli officials

“informally proposed that 15 percent of normal supplies might be

possible.” Carter relates how this was “unacceptable to Hamas and

Page 36

hostilities erupted.”

While Israel has pre

sented its rationale for its at-

tack on Gaza to the United

Nations, claiming that it is

acting in a just manner, the

Security Council has passed a

binding resolution calling for

a cease-fire and withdrawal

from Gaza. Israel is ignoring

the resolution, though as a

member state of the United

Nations, it has an obligation

to abide by the decisions of

the Security Council.

Under Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations, the Security

Council has the authority to call upon the parties to settle their dispute

by peaceful means. More civilians are being killed and wounded every

day that Israel continues its military attack and blockade of Gaza, yet

Israel continues to ignore its obligations to cease its attacks.

The crisis in Gaza is a test of the United Nations and the interna-

tional community. Can a means be found to require Israel to live up to

its obligations as an occupying power to the Palestinian people in their

struggle for self determination? This is a critical challenge facing the

United Nations and the international community.

Many protests and demonstrations are taking place around the world

in support of the Palestinian people and against the attack by Israel on

Gaza. These demonstrations are an indication that there is public opinion

and grassroots pressure for the United Nations and member nations to

let Israel know the need to fulfill its obligations under the UN charter

and international law. The struggle of the Palestinian people for

self-determination and against occupation, as covered under Article 73

and 74 of the Charter of the UN, is a struggle that deserves the support

of the member nations and of people around the world.

Karen AbuZayd and John Holmes speak to reporters after

presenting reports on need for Security Council action on

Gaza.

Page 37

Notes:

1. UN Press Conference: Yazdan Al Amawi, team leader, Care’s West Bank and Gaza

program, Allyn Dhynes, communications manager, World Vision International, Sarah

Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director, Human Rights Watch, to brief

on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. January 7, 2009. [Webcast: Archived Video -

English: 50 minutes]

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2009/pc090107am1.rm

2. UN radio’s Samir Aldarabi spoke to Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur

on the Occupied Palestinian territories about the situation in Gaza. January 2, 2009

http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/detail/67184.html

3. UN Radio’s Samir Imtair Aldarabi spoke to Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights

Council’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories about the human

rights violations in Gaza. January 9, 2009

http://downloads.unmultimedia.org/radio/en/real/2009/090109-falk2.rm?save

4. Jimmy Carter, “Gaza: An Unnecessary War,” The Mercury News, January 8, 2009.

http://www.mercurynews.com/livechats/ci_11408309?source=email

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on January 12, 2009 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=384602&rel_no=1]

Page 38

UN Officials Present Need to End

Israeli Siege of Gaza

to Security Council

Response Continues Failure to Act

by Ronda Hauben

“Every Gazan projects a sense of having stared death in the face.

Every Gazan has a tale of profound grief to tell,” recounted Karen

AbuZayd, the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and

Works Agency (UNRWA) in her presentation to the Security Council on

Tuesday before they went into closed session.

She reported that there had been a systematic destruction in Gaza to

schools, universities, residential buildings, factories, shops and farms.

(Karen AbuZayd’s Statement to the Security Council, Jan. 27, 2009)

AbuZayd told the Security Council that “There is rage against the

attackers for often failing to distinguish between military targets and

civilians and there is also resentment against the international commu-

nity for having allowed first the siege and then the war to go on for so

long.”

Also speaking to the Security Council before they went into closed

session was John Holmes, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitar-

ian Affairs and Emergency Relief. Holmes explains how he visited Gaza

from Jan. 21 to 25.

Describing the widespread destruction to Gaza’s economic and civil

infrastructure, he reported, for example, that the entire industrial and

residential area in East Jabalia had been systematically bulldozed, along

with other serious damage to medical facilities, water, sanitation and

other critical infrastructure, including damage to UN facilities. “I saw

the UNRWA compound warehouse still smouldering, and the OCHA

office in the UNSCO compound, where my own staff used to work,

damaged beyond use,” Holmes reported.

Both AbuZayd and Holmes emphasized the impossibility of any

improvement in the situation in Gaza without the lifting by Israel of the

Page 39

blockade. “All Gaza’s borders must be opened and kept open continu-

ously (including at Karni, Sofa, Nahal Oz, Kerem Shalom, Erez and

Rafah) to allow two way freedom of movement for people, goods and

cash,” AbuZayd told the Security Council.

“Recovery requires the free inflow of humanitarian and commercial

supplies,” she stressed. “Reconstruction demands open borders that

enable the importation of construction materials and the export of

products and goods from Gaza.”

“Let me emphasize again,” Holmes reiterated, “the unacceptability

of the status quo ante, with a limited trickle of items into Gaza continu-

ing the effective collective punishment of the civilian population – and

the resultant counterproductive reliance on tunnels for daily essentials,

and further build up of frustration of anger.”

He explained the critical need to open Gaza to at least 500 truck-

loads of goods daily, including commercial traffic, up from the 120

truckloads that Israel allows on “good days,” in contrast to the frequent

situation when fewer than 120 truckloads are given permission to enter

Gaza, and the times when no trucks are allowed to enter as the crossing

points are closed by Israel.

Holmes also described how many humanitarian workers, including

those from international NGOs, “continue to be refused regular entry”

to Gaza.

“We already see relief goods piling up in Egypt for lack of ready

access,” Holmes reported. Reminding the members of the Security

Council that they themselves passed Resolution 1860 (2009) which

provides for “unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of

humanitarian assistance,” Holmes pointed to the importance of this

critical principle.

Moreover, Holmes explained that “Israel has a particular responsi-

bility as the occupying power in this context, because of its control of

Gaza’s borders with Israel, to respect the relevant provisions of

international humanitarian law.” (See for example, Articles 73 and 74

of the United Nations Charter)

As soon as the reports by Holmes and AbuZayd had been presented,

the Security Council went into a closed session.

When the closed session with Holmes and AbuZayd was over, these

Page 40

two UN officials came to speak with the press.

No member of the Security Council, however, was available to

speak with the press. Journalists wondered why not even the Security

Council President was available to comment on these important reports

on the situation in Gaza and the need for the Security Council to act on

getting Israel to lift the siege.

Had the reports about devastated Gaza as a “giant open-air prison”

fallen on deaf ears at the Security Council?

The lack of any public response from any member of the Security

Council to these two heart wrenching reports is but another sign of the

failure of the Security Council to demonstrate its ability to carry out its

mandate.

The failure of the Security Council to act with regard to the siege

against Gaza began over a year ago.

The growing calls for Security Council reform can only be further

fueled by this lack of action by the Security Council, which the

Indonesian ambassador described as, “The silence is deafening.”

Notes:

1. See: Security Council: The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian

question. [Print version of talk, Security Council S/PV.6077], also Webcast : version

of Archived Video - English: 26 minutes.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/sc/2009/sc090127pm2

2. For background see, for example: Ronda Hauben, “Marathon UN Meeting on Gaza

Goes Nowhere: The ability of the Security Council to function breaking down,”

OhmyNews International, March 4, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3819

57&rel_no=1

Ronda Hauben, “Israel Attempts to Justify Its Attack on Gaza. The obligations of Israel

as an occupying power under the UN Charter,” OhmyNews International, Jan. 12,

2009.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3846

02&rel_no=1

3. Ronda Hauben, “Security Council Fails to Act on Gaza Crisis ‘The silence is

deafening,’ says Indonesia’s UN Ambassador,” OhmyNews International, Feb. 7, 2008.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3816

89&rel_no=1

Page 41

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on January 30, 2009 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3847

18&rel_no=1

What Principles Guide the UN in

Creating a Palestinian-Israeli

Peace Framework?

Davos Talks by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Amr

Moussa on Steps Needed to Build Peace Process

by Ronda Hauben

Part I - Analysis of Situation

The Palestinians in Gaza continue to suffer under the siege created

by Israel and Egypt closing the border crossings into Gaza. Who is

responsible? What can be done to get the siege lifted?

Such questions are on the minds of many people around the world.

The siege of Gaza has gone on for many months and continues, even

after the devastation, deaths and injuries of the Palestinians caused by

the recent 22-day Israeli military assault on Gaza.

Though these are serious questions, they rarely get public attention

and discussion. One recent exception surprisingly was a panel held at the

World Economic Forum in Davos last month. The panel session was

titled “Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace.” David Ignatius of the

Washington Post was the moderator. On the panel were the UN

Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary-General of the Arab

League Amr Moussa, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip

Erdogan and the President of Israel, Shimon Peres.

In his instructions to the panel, Ignatius asked members to discuss,

“What needs to be done to prevent the Middle East peace process from

slipping back.”

After Ban Ki-moon gave a short set of comments, Erdogan was

called on to speak. He proposed that “we need to do a proper analysis of

Page 42

the current situation in order to determine what steps need to be taken.”

He pointed to the period six months earlier when there was a cease

fire agreed to by Israel and Hamas. The Turkish Prime Minister

reminded the audience that for six months there had been “No problem

for rocket attacks” on Israel. The Israeli obligation for the cease fire then

was “to lift the embargo,” that Israel had imposed on Gaza.

But Israel didn’t fulfill its part of the truce agreement.

Erdogan went on to discuss what he saw as one of the key problems

to be solved if the circumstances of the Palestinians had any chance of

being improved.

That problem was how to heal the breach between the Palestinian

factions, particularly between Hamas and Fatah.

Erdogan pointed to the fact that Hamas had won the parliamentary

election of January 2006. Actually Hamas won 76 of 132 seats, while

Fatah only got 43.

Erdogan explained, “We are talking about democracy. So if we

would like to see democracy take root, then we must respect first of all

the people who have received the votes of the people of the country they

are running in.”

“So we may not like them, but we have to respect the process,” he

emphasized.

Instead, Israel arrested several of Hamas government ministers and

members of Parliament and put them in prison. Erdogan described how

in the middle of December 2008, he had asked Prime Minister Olmert,

as a gesture of good will, to release these prisoners, along with the

Palestinian women and children they had in Israeli prisons. Olmert told

Erdogan that he would talk to his colleagues in Israel and respond the

next day. No response was forthcoming. Four days later Israel started the

war on Gaza.

Erdogan expressed his conviction that the UN should be taking the

lead in working to solve the Palestinian crisis and that he was hopeful

that the new U.S. administration would put its weight behind a solution.

“There’s got to be a new opening and Hamas must be considered in

the process,” Erdogan proposed. He offered Turkey’s help in the

process.

Page 43

Part II – Occupation Breeds Resistance

Next the moderator asked Amr Moussa to speak to the question of

how to achieve unity among the Palestinians, and what he felt the new

U.S. administration could do to help the situation.

Moussa said there must be a recognition that Israel’s assault on

Gaza “was not just a reaction for some rockets being launched against

Southern Israel.” This situation in Gaza and in the rest of the Palestinian

territory is a problem of a foreign military occupation, he explained.

“The siege, the blockade of Gaza,” Moussa maintained, “is a very

severe situation.” He argued that “you cannot ask people in Gaza living

in starvation and hunger because of the blockade... to be calm and ask

them why do you throw stones against your occupiers?” This, Moussa

said, “is against the nature of people. You strangle them, you starve

them and then you ask them to be quiet?”

He went on to refer to Israel’s claim that the smuggling into Gaza

must be stopped. Moussa said, “You strangle them, not a single window

of opportunity, and then you talk to them about illicit trade?”

Instead, “If you want to prevent this, you have to open the crossing

points,” Moussa explained. “You have to give them food, you have to

give them water, to give them medicine.”

He added that the “Palestinians had believed the call for them to

practice democracy, to have an election.”

But then he described how when, “Hamas won, and half an hour,

twenty-five minutes after the announcement of the results of the

election, Hamas was served notice that aid would be suspended and then

came the blockade.”

“It is not a question of Israel reacting to some rockets,” Moussa

emphasized, “it is much deeper than that, it is an action of occupation,

it is an action of blockade, then a reaction of resistance, then the reaction

of destruction carried out by Israel.”

Moussa also referred to Israel’s failure to respond to the Arab

initiative.

In 2002, the Arab nations decided at a Summit that they were ready,

at their highest levels, to agree to peace with Israel. They proposed to

recognize Israel and carry out any agreements signed with Israel in

exchange for the creation of a Palestinian State with borders similar to

Page 44

those before 1967. But in the seven years that transpired after the offer

of the initiative, Israel failed to respond in any authorized way to the

authorized message from the Arab summit.

Referring to Ban Ki-moon’s brief presentation to the panel, Moussa

said there are three or four things that need to be done now. He listed

these as a cease fire, opening of the crossings, stopping illicit traffic and

the reconciliation between the Palestinians.

Moussa also said he had another point to make. But the moderator

cut him off, before he could explain.

Unfortunately, instead of providing for a similar short period for the

Israeli president to make his comments, the moderator allowed Peres to

speak for twice the time he had given to each of the two previous

speakers. When Erdogan asked for time to respond to Peres, however,

Ignatius told him there was no time. This led Erdogan to leave the panel

in protest.

The issues raised by these two talks were a significant statement of

what is needed to deal with the crisis facing the Palestinians in Gaza.

Part III - Principles for UN Actions in Palestinian Crisis

Had there been time for discussion in the panel held at Davos, it

would have been helpful to put this discussion in the context of a United

Nations General Assembly document presented in January 2008.

This document is a report by the Human Rights Rapporteur John

Dugard, discussing what he believes to be the law governing the United

Nations participation in the Palestinian situation.

Dugard refers to the problem represented by the Quartet and the

UN’s participation in it, with the Secretary-General representing the UN.

Dugard explains how on July 20, 2004 the General Assembly

adopted resolution ES-10/15. This resolution called on Israel to comply

with the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice issued

by the court titled the “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a

Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The International Court of Justice is the judicial organ of the United

Nations. It is, according to Dugard “now part of the law of the United

Nations.” In addition the General Assembly by a large majority gave its

approval to the decision. As such the Advisory Opinion is one of the

Page 45

authoritative statements of the applicable international law relating to

the framework for peace in the Middle East.

While this law isn’t binding on three of the Quartet members, the

U.S., Russia, or the EU (though the Russians and the EU members did

vote in favor of the UN resolution approving the advisory opinion), the

UN as a member of the Quartet is bound by the Advisory Opinion. As

a representative of the UN, the Secretary-General, Dugard argues, is by

law obliged to uphold the principles of the Advisory Opinion in his

participation in the Quartet.

The Secretary-General or his representative is by law obliged to be

guided by the Opinion and to endeavor in good faith to do his or her best

to ensure compliance with the opinion.

In his statement about what is happening in the Palestinian situation,

Dugard points to the fact that Palestine is an occupied territory and that

Israel has obligations regarding its treatment of the Palestinians.

Dugard argues that the root cause of the violence in the

Israeli-Palestinian context is the occupation, not any act of Hamas or

others.

He notes that the right of the Palestinian people for

self-determination is in general recognized. But such a recognition

“should not take the form of support – political, economic or military –

for one [Palestinian] faction at the expense of the other.”

A critical factor in the Palestinian situation is the need for reconcili-

ation between the two major Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas,

Dugard maintains. The Quartet explains Dugard, instead “pursues a

divisive policy of preferring one faction over the other, of speaking to

one faction but not to the other; of dealing with one faction while

isolating the other.”

In negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, what

was being done was a negotiation among unequal partners. The problem

with this is that it doesn’t make it possible to have the negotiations

reflect a normative framework.

As the UN draft resolution A/HRC/7/17 of Dugard’s report states:

“In the opinion of the Special Rapporteur negotiations should take place

within a normative framework, with the guiding norms to be found in

international law, particularly international humanitarian law and human

Page 46

rights law, and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of

Justice and Security Council resolutions.”

“Negotiations on issues such as boundaries, settlements, East

Jerusalem, the return of refugees and the isolation of Gaza should be

informed by such norms and not by political horse-trading,” Dugard’s

report advises.

The experience of the negotiations that led to a democratic South

Africa in the mid 1990's is offered as an example in Dugard’s report, as

it places the efforts toward a solution to the problem within a framework

of accepted democratic principles, and international law (with special

reference to human rights law).

Part IV - Need for Normative Framework

What the presentations by Erdogan and Moussa at the World

Economic Forum and the UN report document by Dugard have in

common is that they look for the underlying principles that are needed

to guide efforts to settle the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

These principles are based on the obligations under international

law, established and accepted by most of the international community

via its support for the Advisory Opinion. The Palestinians are in a

situation where they suffer from Israeli occupation.

These principles include:

1) Recognizing the Palestinian right to resist occupation.

2) Treating the Palestinian factions of Fatah and Hamas with equality so

as to encourage unity.

3) Letting Israel know that it has the obligation to negotiate with the

Palestinians in a way that is conducive to recognizing and implementing

the principles of international law, not in a way that treats the Palestin-

ians as less than equals.

4) That the UN uphold the principles of international law.

A particular example of the need to apply these principles is raised

by Dugard’s report when it discusses the role the UN Secretary-General

has played in the Quartet. The U.S., the EU, Russia and the UN

(represented by the Secretary-General) are part of the Quartet which is

supposedly providing a framework for peace negotiations between Israel

and Palestine.

Page 47

The problem Dugard observes is that the Quartet does not recognize

the principles of the Advisory Decision. While this is a course of action

that can be taken by the U.S., the EU or Russia, it is not appropriate for

the Secretary-General acting on behalf of the UN to discard these

principles. Dugard’s report proposes that the Secretary-General is “in

law obliged to be guided by the Opinion and to endeavour in good faith

to do his or her best to ensure compliance” with it. In this context he

proposes that it is necessary for the Secretary-General to either withdraw

from the Quartet or to explain “why he is unable to do so and how he

justifies remaining in the Quartet in the light of its refusal to be guided

by the law of the United Nations.”

Unless international law becomes the framework under which the

international community, including the UN’s Secretary-General,

operates to work toward a solution to the Gaza crisis, there seems no

way to end the devastation that the Israeli government believes it has the

right to inflict on the Palestinians.

The recent panel at Davos on the crisis in Gaza demonstrated that

there are nations like Turkey and international representatives like the

Secretary-General of the Arab League willing to explain to the world the

principles needed to guide the efforts for a peaceful solution. It is

imperative that there be serious discussion around the world about these

principles and also efforts to hold the UN and other international and

national entities accountable for the implementation of these principles.

Notes:

1. A webcast of the session is online at: Gaza: The Case for Middle East Peace:

http://wn.com/Turkish_PM_to_Israeli_President_Thou_shalt_NOT_kill#

For a partial transcript:

http://palestinethinktank.com/2009/01/31/transcripts-of-erdogan-moussa-peres-and-

erdogan-again-at-davos/

2. Scott Wilson, “Hamas Sweeps Palestinian Elections, Complicating Peace Efforts in

Mideast,” The Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2006; Page A01.

3. General Assembly Draft Resolution A/HRC/7/17 21 January 2008, Human Rights

Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories. Report of the Special

Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since

1967, John Dugard.

4. Advisory opinion requested by General Assembly on Dec. 8, 2003 from International

Page 48

Court of Justice regarding legal consequences of construction of the wall built by Israel

in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Issued July 9, 2004.

www.icj-cij.org

Among the advisory opinion’s principle findings were:

1) Palestinian people have the right to self determination.

2) Israel is under a legal obligation to comply with 4

Geneva Convention in Occupied

Palestinian Territories.

3) Israel is bound by international human rights conventions in the Occupied

Palestinian Territories.

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on February 22, 2009 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3848

49&rel_no=1

Page 49

[Editor’s Note: On July 23, 2009, Father Brockmann convened the United Nations

General Assembly Interactive Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect. The

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005.

That

agreement holds each State responsible for shielding its own population from genocide,

war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity, requiring the

international community to step in if a state does not meet its obligation. The Dialogue

included Noam Chomsky, a U.S. public intellectual, Gareth Evans, former Foreign

Minister of Australia, Ngugi wa Thiong!o, a prominent African writer and defender of

human rights, and Jean Bricmont, a Belgian physicist and co-author of the book

Fashionable Nonsense. This dialogue was vibrant and a significant event at the UN in

that it clarified issues rather than leaving them vague. The following is the statement

on that panel by Professor Jean Bricmont. The entire dialogue can be seen at:

http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/ responsibilitytoprotect.shtml]

A More Just World and the

Responsibility to Protect

How Are the Weak Ever to be Protected

From the Strong?

by Jean Bricmont

I would like, in this talk, to challenge the intellectual assumptions

underlying the notion and the rhetoric of Responsibility to Protect (R2P).

In a nutshell, my thesis will be that the main obstacle to the implementa-

tion of a genuine R2P are precisely the policies and the attitudes of the

countries that are most enthusiastic about this doctrine, namely the

Western countries, and in particular the U.S.

During the past decade, the world has looked on helplessly as

innocent civilians were murdered by American bombs in Iraq, Afghani-

stan and Pakistan. It has been a helpless bystander of the murderous

Israeli onslaught on Lebanon and Gaza. Previously, we have seen

millions of people perish under American firepower in Vietnam,

Cambodia and Laos; and many others have died in American proxy wars

in Central America or Southern Africa. In the name of those victims,

shall we say: never again! From now on, the world, the international

community, will protect you!

Our humanitarian response is yes, we want to protect all victims.

But how, and with which forces? How are the weak ever to be protected

Page 50

from the strong? The answer to this question must be sought not just in

humanitarian or in legal terms, but first of all in political terms. The

protection of the weak always depends on limitations of the power of the

strong. The rule of law is such a limitation, so long as it is based on the

principle of equality of all before the law. Achieving that requires

clear-headed pursuit of idealistic principles accompanied by realistic

assessment of the existing relationship of forces.

Before discussing politically the R2P, let me stress that what is at

issue are not its diplomatic or preventive aspects, but the military part of

the so-called “timely and decisive response,” and the challenge that it

represents for national sovereignty.

R2P is an ambiguous doctrine. On the one hand, it is being sold to

the United Nations as something essentially different from the “right of

humanitarian intervention,” a notion that was developed in the West at

the end of the 1970's, after the collapse of the colonial empires and the

defeat of the United States in Indochina. This ideology has been relying

on the human tragedies of the newly decolonized countries to lend a

moral justification to the failed policies of intervention and control by

the Western powers over the rest of the World.

Awareness of this fact exists in most of the world. The “right” of

humanitarian intervention has been universally rejected by the South,

for example at the South Summit in Havana in April 2000 or at the

meeting of the Non Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur in February

2003,

shortly before the U.S. attack on Iraq. The R2P is an attempt to

fit this rejected right into the framework of the UN charter, so as to make

it appear acceptable, by stressing that military actions are to be the last

resort, and must be approved by the Security Council. But, then, there

is nothing legally new under the sun, and I refer you to the concept note

of the Office of the President of the General Assembly for a precise

discussion of the legal aspects of the problem.

On the other hand, R2P is being sold to public opinion in the West

as a new norm in international relations, one that authorizes military

interventions on humanitarian grounds. For example, when President

Obama, at the recent G8 meeting, stressed the importance of national

sovereignty, the inluential French newspaper Le Monde called it a step

backwards, since R2P has already been accepted. There is a big

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difference between R2P as a legal doctrine and its ideological reception

in the Western media.

However, in a post-World War II history that includes the Indochina

wars, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, of Panama, even of tiny

Grenada, as well as the bombing of Yugoslavia, Libya and various other

countries, it is scarcely credible to maintain that it is international law

and respect for national sovereignty that prevent the United States from

stopping genocide. If the U.S. had had the means and the desire to

intervene in Rwanda, it would have done so and no international law

would have prevented that. And if a “new norm” is introduced, within

the context of the current relationship of political and military forces, it

will not save anyone anywhere, unless the United States sees fit to

intervene, from its own perspective.

Moreover, it is beyond belief that the supporters of R2P speak of an

obligation to reconstruct (after a military intervention). How much

money exactly did the United States pay as reparations for the devasta-

tion it inflicted on Indochina or in Iraq, or that was inflicted on Lebanon

and Gaza by a power it notoriously arms and subsidizes? Or to Nicara-

gua, to which reparations for the Contra activities are still unpaid by the

U.S., despite their condemnation by the World Court of Justice? Why

expect R2P to force the powerful to pay for what they destroy if they do

not do so under current legal arrangements?

If it is true that the 21

century needs a new United Nations, it does

not need one that legitimizes such interventions by novel arguments, but

one that gives at least moral support to those who try to construct a

world less dominated by the United States and its allies. The very

starting point of the United Nations was to save humankind from “the

scourge of war,” with reference to the two World Wars. This was to be

done precisely by strict respect for national sovereignty, in order to

prevent Great Powers from intervening militarily against weaker ones,

regardless of the pretext. The wars waged by the United States and

NATO show that, despite some significant accomplishments, the United

Nations has not yet fully achieved this primary goal. The United Nations

needs to pursue its efforts to achieve its founding purpose before setting

a new, supposedly humanitarian priority, which may in reality be used

by the Great Powers to justify their own future wars by undermining the

Page 52

principle of national sovereignty.

When NATO exercised its own self-proclaimed right to intervene

in Kosovo, where diplomatic efforts were far from having been

exhausted, it was praised by the Western media. When Russia exercised

what it regarded as its R2P in South Ossetia, it was uniformly con-

demned in the same Western media. When Vietnam intervened in

Cambodia, or India in what is now Bangladesh, their actions were also

harshly condemned in the West.

This indicates that Western governments, media and NGOs, calling

themselves the “international community,” will judge the responsibility

for a human tragedy quite differently, depending on whether it occurs in

a country where the West, for whatever reason, is hostile to the

government, or in a friendly state. The United States in particular will

try to pressure the United Nations into endorsing its own interpretation.

The United States may not always choose to intervene, but it may

nevertheless use non-intervention to denounce the United Nations as

ineffective and to suggest that it should be replaced by NATO as

international arbiter.

National sovereignty is sometimes stigmatized by promoters of

humanitarian intervention, or of R2P, as a “licence to kill.” We need to

remind ourselves of why national sovereignty should be defended

against such stigmatization.

First of all, national sovereignty is a partial protection of weak states

against strong ones. Nobody expects Bangladesh to interfere in the

internal affairs of the United States to force it to reduce its CO

emission

because of the catastrophic human consequences that the latter may have

on Bangladesh. The interference is always unilateral.

U.S. interference in the internal affairs of other states is

multi-faceted but constant and always violates the spirit and often the

letter of the UN charter. Despite claims to act on behalf of principles

such as freedom and democracy, U.S. intervention has repeatedly had

disastrous consequences: not only the millions of deaths caused by direct

and indirect wars, but also the lost opportunities, the “killing of hope”

for hundreds of millions of people who might have benefitted from

progressive social policies initiated by people like Arbenz in Guatemala,

Goulart in Brazil, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh

Page 53

in Iran, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or President Chavez in Venezuela,

who have been systematically subverted, overthrown or killed with full

Western support.

But that is not all. Every aggressive action led by the United States

creates a reaction. Deployment of an anti-missile shield produces more

missiles, not less. Bombing civilians – whether deliberately or by

so-called “collateral damage” – produces more armed resistance, not

less. Trying to overthrow or subvert governments produces more

internal repression, not less. Encouraging secessionist minorities by

giving them the often false impression that the sole Superpower will

come to their rescue in case they are repressed, leads to more violence,

hatred and death, not less. Surrounding a country with military bases

produces more defense spending by that country, not less. The posses-

sion of nuclear weapons by Israel encourages other states of the Middle

East to acquire such weapons. The humanitarian disasters in Eastern

Congo, as well as in Somalia, are mainly due to foreign interventions,

not to a lack of them. To take a most extreme case, which is a favorite

example of horrors cited by advocates of the R2P, it is most unlikely that

the Khmer Rouge would ever have taken power in Cambodia without

the massive “secret” U.S. bombing followed by U.S.-engineered regime

change that left that unfortunate country totally disrupted and

destabilized.

The ideology of humanitarian intervention is part of a long history

of Western attitudes toward the rest of the World. When Western

colonialists landed on the shores of the Americas, Africa or Eastern

Asia, they were shocked by what we would now call violations of

human rights, and which they called “barbaric mores” – human

sacrifices, cannibalism, women forced to bind their feet. Time and again,

such indignation, sincere or calculating, has been used to justify or to

cover up the crimes of the Western powers: the slave trade, the

extermination of indigenous peoples and the systematic stealing of land

and resources. This attitude of righteous indignation continues to this

day and is at the root of the claim that the West has a “right to intervene”

and a “right to protect,” while turning a blind eye to oppressive regimes

considered “our friends,” to endless militarization and wars, and to

massive exploitation of labor and resources.

Page 54

The West should learn from its past history. What would that mean

concretely? Well, first of all, guaranteeing the strict respect for interna-

tional law on the part of Western powers, implementing the UN

resolutions concerning Israel, dismantling the worldwide U.S. empire of

bases as well as NATO, ceasing all threats concerning the unilateral use

of force, lifting unilateral sanctions, in particular the embargo against

Cuba, stopping all interference in the internal affairs of other States, in

particular all operations of “democracy promotion,” “color” revolutions,

and the exploitation of the politics of minorities. This necessary respect

for national sovereignty means that the ultimate sovereign of each nation

state is the people of that state, whose right to replace unjust govern-

ments cannot be taken over by supposedly benevolent outsiders.

Next, we could use our overblown military budgets (NATO

countries account for 70% of world military expenses) to implement a

form of global Keynesianism: instead of demanding “balanced budgets”

in the developing world, we should use the resources wasted on our

military to finance massive investments in education, health care and

development. If this sounds utopian, it is not more so than the belief that

a stable world will emerge from the way our current “war on terror” is

being carried out.

Defenders of R2P may argue that what I say is besides the point or

needlessly “politicizes the issue,” since, according to them, it is the

international community and not the West that will intervene, with,

moreover, the approval of the Security Council. But in reality, there is

no such thing as a genuine international community. NATO’s interven-

tion in Kosovo was not approved by Russia and Russian intervention in

South Ossetia was condemned by the West. There would have been no

Security Council approval for either intervention. Recently, the African

Union rejected the indictment by the International Criminal Court of the

President of Sudan. Any system of international justice or police,

whether it is R2P or the ICC, needs a relationship of equality and a

climate of trust. Today, there is no equality and no trust, between West

and East, between North and South, largely as a result of past U.S.

policies. If we want some version of R2P to work in the future, we need

first to build a relationship of equality and trust and what I said before

goes to the heart of the matter. The world can become more secure only

Page 55

if it first becomes more just.

It is important to understand that the critique made here of R2P is

not based on an “absolutist” defense of national sovereignly, but on a

reflection on the policies of the most powerful states that forces weaker

states to use sovereignty as a shield.

The promoters of R2P present it as the beginning of a new era; but

in fact it is the end of an old one. From an interventionist viewpoint, the

R2P backtracks with respect to the old right of humanitarian interven-

tion, at least in words, and that old “right” was itself a step back from

traditional colonialism. The major social transformation of the 20

century has been decolonization. It continues today in the elaboration of

a genuinely democratic world, one where the sun will have set on the

U.S. empire, just as it did on the old European ones. There are some

indications that President Obama understands this reality and it is only

to be hoped that his actions will match his words.

I want to end with a message for the representatives, and for the

populations, of the “Global South.” The viewpoints expressed here are

shared by millions of people in the “West.” This is unfortunately not

reflected in our media. Millions of people, including American citizens,

reject war as a means to settle international disputes and strongly oppose

the blind support of their country for Israeli Apartheid. They adhere to

the goals of the nonaligned movement of international cooperation

within the strict respect for national sovereignty and equality of all

peoples. They risk being denounced in the media of their own countries

as being antiWestern, anti-American or anti-Semitic. Yet, they are the

ones who, by opening their minds to the aspirations of the rest of

mankind, carry on what is genuinely of value in the Western humanist

tradition.

Notes:

1. See paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document online

at:

http://www.who.int/hiv/universalaccess2010/worldsummit.pdf 2. The South (also

known as the Global South) is part of a distinction between the most developed nations

(the North) and the poorer less developed nations (the South). See for example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_South.

3. In their opposition to the creation of a broad right of intervention on humanitarian

Page 56

and human rights grounds, African and other developing countries cited possible

opportunities for infringements on sovereignty and possible pretexts for interference

by former colonial powers or neighbouring states. (See for example:

http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/subjindx/143peack.htm).

4. See the Office of the President of the General Assembly, “Concept note on

responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and

crimes against humanity” at:

http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/ pro-

tect/conceptnote.pdf

5. The “Concept Note” sited above in (4) reports that, “At the negotiations on the

World Summit Outcome Document, the then U.S. Permanent Representative John

Bolton stated accurately that the commitment made in the Document was ‘not of a legal

character’.” The “Concept Note” is appended to this issue as the last article.

G192 Emerges at UN Conference

on the World Financial and

Economic Crisis

Reforming the World Bank and IMF is

Only Stop Gap Measure

by Ronda Hauben

Describing the need for a new financial grouping to challenge the

G8 and G20, John Hiliary, in an article in The Guardian (U.K.) writes,

“It is not just that they [G8 and G20] are exclusive, invitation only

forums where deals are drawn up behind closed doors. It is the fact that

both the G8 and G20 have championed the same free-market fundamen-

talism that served the interests of their corporate backers but brought the

world economy to the brink of collapse. It is the tune that needs

changing, not just the band.”

Such a new economic grouping, which some have called the G192,

recently held its first meeting at the United Nations in New York. The

meeting, which took place from June 25 to June 30 was officially titled

“Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact

on Development.”

Referred to as the G192 because it includes all 192 member nations

Page 57

of the United Nations, the meeting provided a sharp contrast to the more

exclusive meetings of the G8 and G20 convened by the major economic

powers. The UN meeting provided a glimpse into how a more demo-

cratic process can lead to a better understanding of the global financial

and economic crisis now plaguing the nations of the world.

A number of the talks presented at the UN meeting did indeed

represent a substantial change from the guiding ideology that has

dominated grouping like the G8 and G20. In offering such a change in

perspective, the UN conference provided an opportunity to consider both

the problem represented by the current global economic and financial

architecture, and the means that are being attempted to make a change.

Dr Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of St.

Vincent and the Grenadines, who served as co-facilitator for the

outcome document approved during the conference, credited Venezuela

for proposing the idea for such a conference in November 2008.

Gonsalves said:

“I also applaud the vision of the Bolivarian Republic

of Venezuela which first conceptualized a formal United Nations

conference on this crisis in a draft resolution tabled last November.”

Calling the current moment, “a crisis of capitalist globalization, of

international capitalism in crisis,” Gonsalves depicted the crisis as

“reflective of the triumph of neo-liberal ideology, which sought to roll

back any interventionist role of the democratic state.” According to the

set of ideological tenets he saw as setting off the crisis, “the organs of

the State, so the neo-liberal thesis went, were to be minimalist; the

international capitalist system driven by ‘the market’ was best left to be

self-regulatory, according to the neo-liberal ideologues.”

The result of such ideological tenets which led to little or no

regulation over investment and other financial institutions and instru-

ments, Gonsalves explained, is “the worst crisis in international

capitalism since 1929-31 has come upon us.”

The crisis led to the recognition of the important role of “the

democratic State,” and in his region, Gonsalves said that the democratic

national government has been “a force for good.”

Along with “the urgent need for further reforms of the global

financial system and architecture,” Gonsalves called for “improved

regulation at all levels and for an appropriate state role in regulatory

Page 58

matters.”

Several other speakers at the conference, including the Foreign

Minister of the Dominican Republic, stressed the need to recognize “the

regional sphere” as the most ideal for the implementation of the short

and long-term measures that will end the crisis, as opposed to the global

and national sphere.

In his presentation to the General Assembly, Steve William Abana,

the Minister for Planning and Coordination of the Solomon Islands,

called for an enhanced role for the UN in creating an international

mechanism to periodically assess the global economic situation and

provide broad guidelines for the economic and financial sectors.

He and others who spoke during the five days of the conference

called for serious reflection on the legitimacy and effectiveness of the

current economic and political system so as to determine its flaws and

the means needed for its reform.

One of the most significant complaints concerned the problematic

use of the dollar as both a national currency in the U.S. and as a source

of international reserves. “A common international currency has

remained elusive,” observed Dr Dipu Moni, the Foreign Minister of

Bangladesh.

This is a problem that many, including Chinese economist

Yu Yongding, a member of the General Assembly Experts Commission,

emphasized as a significant problem needing both short and long term

attention.

The Experts Commission was established by the President of

the General Assembly to help prepare for the conference.

Though this conference was to be open to all the member nations of

the UN to participate, the U.S. did not provide visas in time for the

designated representatives of Iran or Venezuela to attend.

In place of the designated government official of Venezuela,

Ambassador Jorge Valero the Venezuelan Ambassador to the UN spoke

on Friday, June 26.

Valero described the resistance to the conference on the part of

some of the developed nations. He said, “We were aware that an

initiative of this nature would be met with resistance by forces clinging

to the past. An attempt was made to prevent the United Nations from

discussing the economic and financial crisis that we are suffering today,

when it is precisely this forum – the G192 – [that is] the most legitimate

Page 59

and representative of the world.”

Valero said, “We must move toward the construction of a new

international architecture that is not concentrated, legitimizing new

relationships that underpin the emergence of a multipolar world. We

must take off the straight jacket of uni-polarity.” Crucial to such a

program is the need “for a more effective involvement of the State to

ensure an appropriate balance between market and public interest.”

It was, however, the presentation of President of Ecuador, Rafael

Correa, to the General Assembly and later in a press conference, that

most eloquently demonstrated the urgent need for the conference and the

concept of a G192.

Correa's talk put the conference into context and

helped to illustrate how the solution to the current crisis cannot be left

to the few powerful nations that make up the G-8 or G-20.

Correa referred in his talk to a poem by the poet Juan Ramon

Jimeniz. The poem emphasized how the powerful dominate and treat the

rest of the people as “the different.”

“The different, the exploited and vilified, the majority of us,”

Correa said, “demand transparency and truth at the time of revealing

who was at the origin of today's crisis, who plundered the peoples, who

benefitted from these adjustment policies, from illegitimate debts, coup

d!etats, subterfuges and institutionalized illegalities.”

Correa described how the lowering of interest rates by the U.S. after

September 11, 2001, was a decision that in a deregulated environment

encouraged the growth of sub-prime loans with very high risk, resulting

in a situation of increased volatility in financial markets.

Correa elaborated, “Now precisely we the different are here, and we

have come to the G192 to demand democracy and to highlight the other

possible world, the other urgent world that we need, the world of peace

and justice, only made possible through the respect for the sovereignty

of the people and through equilibrium and respect among human beings,

countries, nations, continents.”

Correa placed the responsibility for the crisis on the shoulders of

what he referred to was the Washington Consensus. His characterized

the Washington Consensus as “a paradoxical and cynical agreement

signed behind the backs of peoples and governments and limited to the

conclaves of the dominating and colonialist powers.” Correa explained

Page 60

that “the different” will talk “about issues that it seems, are absent in

other exclusive and excluding fora, such as the G8 or G20.”

These issues include how, “the crisis originated in the U.S. financial

markets” and how it has spread so that “the whole world has been

contaminated.”

Correa explained that the current crisis is but a symptom of a system

that privileges financial speculation over the real economy. “For years

the United States maintained huge trade and fiscal deficits, with the

connivance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” he said. “Any

other country would have been forced to devalue their currency and

‘correct’ its imbalances.” The United States, however, Correa pointed

out, was allowed to continue its irresponsible fiscal and monetary

activities while other nations would not have been allowed the same

leeway.

Such preferential treatment of the U.S. financial sector by the IMF,

was a decision to “choose complicity” with the U.S. and subsequently

“led to the unhinging of capitalism.” According to Correa, “the effort to

recapitalize the IMF without even removing one chair from its Board of

Directors” is a sign of the duplicity that undermines the operation of the

IMF.

By the time the crisis became evident in 2008, Correa explained, 9

trillion dollars was dispersed to banks and other institutions “without

any oversight or control mechanisms and without knowing where these

funds have gone or how they have been used.” This raises the question

of what effect such action will have on the global financial system and

crisis in the future. He proposed that the current crisis is a much more

serious crisis than those which recur periodically “provoked by capital-

ism” or even when compared with the Great Depression.

Correa argued that the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions –

the World Bank and the IMF, were only a stopgap, temporary measure.

He maintained that these institutions have only “served to make

ideological marketing for neo-liberalism and the Washington Consen-

sus.”

“If the speculative markets of the capitalist core were directly

responsible for the world crisis,” Correa reasoned, “it would be absurd

and irresponsible to let the solutions be proposed, programmed and

Page 61

executed by the same system that caused it.” Yet this is what is being

presented as the means to carry out a reform of the Bretton Woods

institutions by the G8 or G20.

Instead, the crisis, Correa and others argued, presents the opportu-

nity to work toward a new regional and global architecture for the world

financial system. As an example of the regional proposals, he pointed to

Latin America. Correa described the work to create a Development Bank

for the South capitalized by the countries of the region.

He argued that the gravity of the crisis requires that it be addressed

within the UN by all the governments of the world. This conference held

by the United Nations, “must be the turning point toward the strengthen-

ing of the role of the United Nations in world governance to advance

toward a true democratization of international relations....”

Correa called for “models of society that put human well being

above the interests of capital.” At the press conference he held after his

speech to the UN General Assembly, Correa elaborated on what such a

model would be.

He said that the model he was proposing was a form

of 21

century socialism which learns from the errors of past socialist

efforts and builds on these lessons.

Though the UN conference continued for two additional days, the

Outcome Document was put to a vote on Friday, June 26.

The

document was adopted by the conference participants by consensus.

After it was approved, applause filled the hall of the UN General

Assembly.

After the vote, a few nations spoke of their reservations and several

spoke of their hopes for stronger action. Many commented that

something significant had been achieved. The principle of full participa-

tion of the 192 nations of the UN, the G192, had been established as a

basis for discussion of the problems of the global financial and economic

crisis.

On Monday, June 29, and Tuesday, June 30, those nations which

had not yet spoken, presented their talks to the General Assembly. One

of those was Sin Son-ho, the UN Ambassador from North Korea. He

said: “It is fortunate that the draft outcome document, which is the

product of the intensive inter-governmental negotiations so far, contains,

more or less, such issues like the possible substitution or the diversifica-

Page 62

tion of international reserve currency, and the strengthening of supervi-

sion and regulation over and reform of international financial institu-

tions.”

Ambassador Sin said that the only way out of the crisis “is to replace the

outdated international financial and economic system with a new

international economic order that ensures the equal sovereignty of all

countries.” “It is the imperative requirement,” he concluded, “of our

times to restructure the old international financial system and economic

order of the last century, which relies heavily on the U.S. dollar.”

In an article published shortly before the conference, Julio Escalona,

an adjunct Ambassador to the UN for the Venezuelan mission, predicted

that convening the conference would be a victory in itself. “For the first

time,” he wrote, “an initiative promoted by the South against the will of

the North could materialize. Then it's a matter of forcing the centers of

power to discuss topics, such as the IMF and World Bank’s monopoly

on credit, the reform of the international financial structures and regional

currencies, the end of the dollar’s hegemony, among other things, and

making sure the discussion continues open inside the UN, as well as the

G-20 could signal the beginning of a new epoch.”

Just as Escalona predicted, the presentations by the Ecuador’s

President Correa, and others, were examples of a sharp critique of the

problems at the core of the current crisis. These critiques demonstrated

the inadequacy of proposed reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions,

institutions created over 60 years ago. Instead the UN conference helped

to highlight the need to redesign the current financial architecture, taking

into account the experience of the past half century. The new architec-

ture that is being proposed is one that is more solidly based on a regional

cooperation and consensus, and one that will be more supportive of

national sovereignty than the Bretton Woods institutions.

How this new architecture will be formed is yet to be determined.

But the need for it has been argued and the requirements it must satisfy

have been articulated. Significantly, through this conference at the UN,

the principle of involving all 192 nations of the UN in identifying the

problems and fashioning means to solve them has been successfully put

into practice for the first time.

Describing the importance of the UN meeting, Father D’Escoto

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Brockmann, the President of the United Nations General Assembly saw

the meeting itself and the outcome document, to as a victory. At a press

conference at the UN on July 10, he said that the significance of the

conference was, that no longer is it possible to leave in the hands of a

few, the matters that affect the whole world.

Reminding journalists that every effort was made prior to the

conference, first not to have the conference, then to narrow the focus,

Father Brockmann explained how despite these problems, the G192 is

now recognized as a venue to deal with the economic and financial

problems of the global crisis. “In the end it’s happening,” he noted.

Documents Referred to in Article:

1. John Hilary, “End the G8 Charade – We Need a G192,” Guardian Online, Comment

is Free, Monday, 6 July, 2009.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/06/g8-g20-g192

2. United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its

Impact on Development.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/stt_day24.shtml

3.See Gonsalves Statement: H.E. The Honourable Ralph E. Gonsalves, Prime Minister

and Minister of Finance of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/svg_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090625am.rm?start=00:49:3

3&end=01:07:34

4. See Troncoso Statement: H.E. Mr. Carlos Morales Troncoso, Minister of Foreign

Affairs of the Dominican Republic.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/dominican_rep_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090624pm.rm?start=01:13:1

2&end=01:24:37

5. Hear Abana Statement: H.E. Mr. Steve Abana, Minister for National Planning and

Aid Coordination of Solomon Islands.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090624pm.rm?start=01:13:1

2&end=01:24:37

6. See Moni Statement: H.E. Dr. Dipu Moni, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the

Peoples Republic of Bangladesh (on behalf of the Least Developed Countries).

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/bangladesh_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090624pm.rm?start=00:48:3

2&end=01:01:06

7. Press Conference: Joseph Stiglitz, Chairman of the Commission of Experts of the

President of the General Assembly on reforms of the international monetary and

financial system, to brief in connection with the current General Assembly Conference

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on the Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2009/pc090625pm2.rm

8. See Presstv Articles: “U.S. prevents Venezuela minister from attending UN confab,”

Presstv. “The U.S. government has refused to grant entry visas to Venezuelan Minister

of Finance Ali Rodriguez,” Presstv. “Iran criticizes U.S. over visa denial, U.S. denying

visas Iran’s first vice president and members of his delegation,” Presstv.

9. See Valero Statement: H.E. Ambassador Jorge Valero

Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America and Multilateral Affairs and

Permanent Representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United

Nations.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/venezuela_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090626pm.rm?start=01:16:0

0&end=01:39:32

10. See Correa Statement: H.E. Mr. Rafael Correa Delgado

President of the Republic of Ecuador.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/ecuador_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090625am.rm?start=00:03:3

7&end=00:47:58

11. Press Conference with HE. Mr. Rafael Correa Delgado, President of Ecuador, and

H.E. Fander Falconi, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ecuador, to brief in connection

with the current General Assembly Conference on the Economic Crisis and its Impact

on Development.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2009/pc090625am1.rm

12. Draft Outcome Document, A/CONF.214/3*.

http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/CONF.214/3&Lang=E

13. See Sin Son Ho Statement: H. E. Ambassador Sin Son Ho, Permanent Representa-

tive of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the United Nations.

http://www.un.org/ga/econcrisissummit/statements/korea_dpr_en.pdf

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/ga/63/2009/ga090629pm.rm?start=01:20:5

6&end=01:26:35

14. Julio Escalona, “It’s the time of history. Whether we know it or not, whether we

believe it or not,” Vheadline.com.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=80757

15. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann on the outcome of the

UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on

Development as well as on the current crisis in Honduras, Press Conference, June 10,

2009. [Webcast: Archived Video – 45 minutes]

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2009/pc090710pm.rm

This article appeared in OhmyNews International on July 14, 2009 at:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3854

52&rel_no=1

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[Editor’s Note: The first 21

century world financial and economic crisis was

precipitated by the purposeful lack of regulation of the U.S. financial sector. This crisis

brought attention to the inadequacy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the

World Bank and the G8 and G20. As a world crisis, world measures are needed to

resolve it. Under Father Brockmann’s presidency, the General Assembly addressed the

question of the crisis on June 24-26 2009 at the General Debate on the World Financial

and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development. In some ways this Debate was

the beginning of the emergence of a G192 economic institution. The first speaker on

June 25 was Rafael Correa, President of the Republic of Ecuador, an economist by

training. He spoke in Spanish. All texts from the June 25 session can be seen at:

http://-

www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=A/CONF.214/3. The following is a shortened

version of the English translation of President Correa’s presentation.]

We, the Different are Here

The G192 Economic Summit

by Rafael Correa,

President of Ecuador

In the Atlantic Charter,

which served as a basis for the foundation

of the United Nations, Roosevelt and Churchill affirmed that “after the

final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a

peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety

within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the

men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and

want.”

However, several decades after the United Nations came into

existence, the lack of conviction, will and political generosity have

become manifest, as have the lack of a humanistic project imbued with

equity and solidarity, and the prevailing greed and utilitarianism of the

capitalist system.

Those of us who have embraced our status as world citizens cannot

understand schemes that always end up trampling on the poorest and that

contradict their own claims. How are we to understand a so-called

globalization that seeks to create not citizens of the world, but consum-

ers of the world; that seeks to create not a world society, but a world

market; that continually seeks greater mobility for capital and markets,

but criminalizes the mobility of human beings? All of this, we feel, is the

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work of a sort of clan of the powerful that boasts of respect and equality,

but bends international organizations to its own ends and never treats

others with fairness.

We talk not of tolerance, because it arises from domination, but of

concepts that, in all religions and cultures, have been the source of every

struggle and every aspiration: justice and equality. However, equality

has been manhandled, used rhetorically or reviled by power, as the poet

Juan Ramón Jiménez said in his verses: “They wanted to kill him, the

equals, because he was different.”

Now, it is we who are different here, and we have come to the

G-192 to demand democracy and to highlight the other possible world,

the other world that we urgently need, the world of peace and justice,

made possible through respect for the sovereignty of peoples and

through balance among human beings, countries, nations, peoples and

continents.

We, the different, are here, and we have come from all corners of

the world. Here we have our African brothers, who have overcome the

shameful oppression of apartheid, but who continue to be cursed with

inequality, disdain and indifference. While their drums, magic and

incorruptible struggle managed to break the spells and fears, today the

whole world must heal the wounds of the African people. As Nelson

Mandela once said, “Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread,

water and salt for all.”

Here we have the peoples of the East, age-old and wise, but hidden

from us because the distribution of the universe concealed them from

our sight, surely because we would have discovered much sooner a life

consecrated to peace. In other words, as Confucius said: “Nothing can

be done with the corrupt; it is like trying to build on a swamp.”

Here we have Muslims of various origins, but united and rooted in

religion and humanism, even as some in the Western hemisphere, with

their tyrannical powers, have prevented us from being brothers with our

fellow men. Here age-old civilizations are represented, cultures built

with talent and on the basis of necessity and diversity. A living example

is the Palestinian people, living on shifting sands, with its memories and

its martyrs.

The different come also from Latin America, an ignored and

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humiliated continent, but one that, today more than ever, is insurgent,

rebellious and aware of its historical responsibility. From Latin America,

almost 45 years ago, on 11 December 1964, Commander Ernesto “Che”

Guevara came to this very forum to tell the world: “Yes, now history

will have to take the poor of America into account, the exploited and

spurned who have decided to begin writing their history for themselves

for all time.”

The different, we who are the vast majority, demand transparency

and truth now that it is time to reveal who was at the origin of today’s

crisis, who plundered the peoples and who benefitted from their

adjustment policies, illegitimate debts, coups d’état, subterfuges and

institutionalized illegalities, such as the Washington Consensus, a

paradoxical and cynical agreement signed behind the backs of peoples

and Governments and limited to the conclaves of the dominating and

colonialist Powers.

Let us now talk about issues that, it seems, are absent in other

exclusive and exclusionary forums such as the Group of Eight (G-8) or

the Group of 20 (G-20), alien to those who consider themselves to be

equal, because our manifesto is based on mutual respect, solidarity,

justice, environmental sustainability and the pre-eminence of human

beings over capital.

It was the constant violation of these principles that caused the crisis

which still spreads menacingly, with powerful destructive effects on the

countries of the South

. After the attacks of 11 September 2001, the

United States decided to lower interest rates to a minimum to revive

consumption and production. In a deregulated environment, that

decision exacerbated the growth of sub-prime credit – extremely risky

second-category sub-prime loans. The sub-prime rates were high-risk

rates, especially for mortgage lending.

In 2004, it was decided to raise the rates to offset inflationary

outbreaks. That decision did not stop the bankers, who resorted to

securitizing their assets to have greater liquidity. But when delinquency

grew and it was revealed that the largest banks had committed a large

part of their assets to sub-prime loans, panic spread. Mistrust reduced the

supply of money, volatility shot up and stock markets crashed.

We all know this: the crisis originated in the United States financial

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markets. But it is no longer only a financial crisis, and the whole world

has been contaminated. The South, which bore no responsibility

whatsoever for the crisis, has now become its main victim. For years, the

United States maintained huge trade and fiscal deficits, with the

connivance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Any other

country would have been forced to devalue and “correct” its imbalances.

But in this case the double standards that prevail in the IMF governance

forced it to choose complicity, which led to the unhinging of the

capitalist system. And now, the G-20 wants to recapitalize it just like

that, without even changing one seat on the Fund’s Board of Governors.

This is totally absurd.

The world financial debacle is just a symptom of the crisis of a

system that favoured the speculative-financial economy over the real

economy – where goods and services are actually created to meet the

needs of human beings. I hope we never forget that. My colleagues here

know that, even though I am an economist, I am a good person.

Economics is a science with real variables: basically, productive

capacity, upon which depends the availability, allocation and efficiency

of the use of productive resources. But in recent years everything

became unhinged, and it was claimed that money simply generated more

money by itself.

During the first quarter of 2009, the United States economy fell at

the rate of 6.1% per annum, and investment dropped by 38%. In 2009,

Japan expects a recession of 3.1% and the euro zone expects a fall of

4% in gross domestic product (GDP). As these markets demand fewer

goods produced in Latin America and the Caribbean, this year [2009]

our region may lose between 2.3 million and 3.2 million jobs, according

to estimates by the International Labour Organization.

Since October 2007, immense amounts of money have been

allocated to “rescue” the private financial sector. It is estimated that in

2008 alone such disbursements totaled some $9 trillion, without any

oversight or control mechanisms, and without knowing for certain where

those funds have gone or how they have been used.

Something must not be working right, or at least not working to its

full extent, in this gigantic rescue. This year, the GDP of Latin America

and the Caribbean will decrease by between 1.5% and 2%. The World

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Trade Organization (WTO) estimates that in 2009 international

commercial exchanges will go down by 9%, which suggests the largest

downturn since the Second World War. And, as always, the powerful are

placing the greatest burden on the most vulnerable: the drastic measures

taken against our migrants, combined with the contraction of productive

activities in the countries of the North, will cause a 5% reduction in

remittances without any counterbalances.

We are faced with a crisis unlike the others repeatedly provoked by

capitalism. Some have wanted to compare it with the Great Depression

of the 1930s, but it is much more than that: climate change, along with

the global energy crisis and the grave risk of a worldwide food crisis,

places us in the presence of a true problem of civilization. Our action

must be commensurate with the challenges imposed by history. The

gravity of this crisis requires that it be addressed within the United

Nations, an organization that groups all the Governments of the world

and that must, for the sake of its own credibility and validity, face up to

a comprehensive transformation of the world economic order.

To reform Bretton Woods

would be an insufficient and unjustified

stopgap. For some time its institutions have served only to engage in

ideological marketing for the benefit of neo-liberalism and the Washing-

ton Consensus. If the speculative markets of the capitalist core were

directly responsible for this world crisis, it would be absurd and

irresponsible to let the solutions be proposed, planned and carried out by

the very system that caused it.

However, every crisis is also an opportunity, and this one is no

exception, although for my part I prefer opportunities without crises.

“Every crisis is an opportunity” is a cliché, is it not? The orthodox

notions of macroeconomic stability and the role of the State in the era of

neo-liberalism have proven obsolete in less than one and a half years of

crisis. We have the historical responsibility to seek the re-emergence of

our peoples and to walk on our own feet, starting by redefining the

global financial system, freeing us from the blackmail to which we have

been subjected by rich countries.

The response to Ecuador’s proposals for a new regional and global

financial architecture by the members of the Commission of Experts

appointed by the President of the General Assembly and chaired by

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Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics, is an endorsement of the

relevance of the proposal that I wish to share this morning.

We propose, simultaneously and in parallel, and in line with the

political and economic realities of each region, to enhance the integra-

tion of spaces of supranational monetary-financial sovereignty which are

capable of reducing the evil effects that our economies suffer because of

their links of dependency with the international financial system.

This proposal began to be forged in regional Latin-American

forums such as the Quito Declaration of May 2007, the European

Union-Latin America Summit held in Lima in May 2008 and the San

Salvador Ibero-American Summit of October 2008. We are already

working in our region to create a development bank for the South,

capitalized by the countries of the region. In fact, its role has already

been defined; we need only make it operative. There are seven signatory

countries in Latin America for the Bank of the South. Its objective will

be to finance development projects, particularly multinational ones, and

to improve systemic competitiveness and connectivity among our

countries, on the basis of our own priorities and giving space to local

and regional currencies.

Linked to this, we must establish a common reserve fund for Latin

America. This would prevent the deposit of more than $200 billion in

reserves from our countries in banks of the North. Imagine: the poor are

financing the rich. On one hand we are getting down on our knees, or

subjugating ourselves, so that the international bureaucracy of the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will give us a few

dollars, and on the other hand we are sending more than $200 billion to

the North. It is absurd and irrational. It is paradoxical that, in the midst

of the crisis, we still allow our money to finance rich countries in

exchange for a few dollars in interest. That is one of the traps inherited

from the long and unfortunate neo-liberal night. In the first half of the

1990s, on the basis of studies that would make a first-year economics

student blush for shame, the World Bank imposed, throughout Latin

America, the autonomy of central banks. These are bureaucracies that

are independent of their countries, but sufficiently dependent on

international bureaucracies. We see how many central bank chairmen

and Finance Ministers end up as Washington bureaucrats at the IMF, the

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World Bank, the Inter American Development Bank, et cetera. I stress

that these bureaucracies are independent of their countries, but quite

dependent on the international bureaucracies which, in turn, manage our

reserves and which, for the sake of supposed “prudence,” invest them in

the first world. Our savings are financing the rich. This irrational system

must change, starting by ensuring that Governments gain control over

their central banks.

If we pool our reserves in a common fund, we will need less money

to tackle regional contingencies and crises, and excess funds would

serve to capitalize the Bank of the South. This fund could be supple-

mented with a regional payment system, which would be the precursor

of a regional central bank that would give us more autonomy vis-à-vis

the financial circles of the North. Let us recall that the new regional

financial architecture that we are proposing – which is already being

implemented in Latin America – is first and foremost a development

bank, in the form of the Bank of the South, which has already been

created in name. Secondly, it is a common reserve fund: instead of

sending our reserves to the first world, and in order to avoid the

absurdity of financing the first world, we can use our own reserves. With

this reserve pooling, we can with less money have greater security with

respect to the balance of payments crisis and financial crises in the

region.

Thirdly, this new regional financial architecture will make us less

dependent on – or totally independent from, as I would wish – the

speculative international financial markets. We propose here to build a

common monetary system, which could begin as an electronic currency

to facilitate regional exchanges. This system of regional electronic

payments can be set up immediately. It is only a matter of coordination

and political decision. In fact, we are doing it in the framework of the

Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA),

democratic forum which my country formally joined just 24 hours ago.

The proposal is making significant progress in that forum, as the

Regional Single Payment Compensation System (SUCRE) is about to

begin operation. This is an electronic currency to facilitate our ex-

changes and thus to minimize the use of extra regional currencies such

as the United States dollar. But in the medium term the idea is to have

Page 72

a physical regional currency. We firmly believe that larger monetary

blocs constitute the only way to survive this inhuman, cruel globaliza-

tion – which as the world’s citizens, not the world’s consumers, we do

not seek, just as we do not seek to create a planet-wide society or

planet-wide market. We believe that, sooner or later, Latin America will

have to move to monetary union and possess a physical regional

currency.

I must add also that during the negotiations for this Conference, the

Group of 77 and China expressed their appreciation for and welcomed

these two regional initiatives, which they considered concrete examples

of financial cooperation at the regional level. They will assist countries

of the region in addressing possible balance of payment problems in an

alternative way, and promoting trade among them, moving away from

the iron rule imposed by the dollar.

The current international financial system obliges us, against all

sense of justice, to provide cheap financing to the North and, at the same

time, to seek expensive funding in the North. This cannot continue in the

twenty-first century. What sense can there be in using an extra-regional

currency for our trade, if in that way we only maintain our dependence

and, on top of that, we pay seigniorage? Seigniorage is the fee paid to

the country that issues the currency used for exchanges. If a box of

biscuits costs a dollar in a given country, when the United States issues

$10 it is as though it is gaining 10 boxes of biscuits from that country’s

production – merely by issuing the currency. What sense is there in

paying special fees to whoever issues the currency used for world trade,

when this right to seigniorage could belong to our own countries?

However, as the crisis advances unstoppably, helped by the

passivity – or complicity – of the International Monetary Fund and the

World Bank, we need more urgent measures. We cannot commit the

historical error of falling into a war of depreciation in which our

production will lose value and from which, at the end of the day, only

the countries of the North will benefit, as they will purchase our goods

at cheaper prices. We need to negotiate a regional monetary agreement

immediately, in order to coordinate our monetary policies and prevent

the crisis in our region from broadening, to the benefit of third countries.

This proposal is made in the framework of a broader concept that

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challenges the dominant paradigm. Competition among poor countries

is absurd, and we must move toward cooperation and integration. When

poor countries compete with one another, third countries – the rich

countries – benefit. We must not fall into that trap. The response of the

poor countries must be coordination, complementarity and integration.

….

Patching up the Bretton Woods system, which we do not control,

makes no sense for the countries of the South. This is our opportunity to

consolidate our presence and to develop greater powers of deliberation

and decision in international forums so that we can finally become the

owners of our own destinies. But it will be impossible to attain this

objective unless we have our own international financial architecture.

The structure we are promoting for Latin America can be replicated in

other regions of the world, under other conditions and with different

priorities. We all have the conditions to do so, and we no longer have to

depend on what the countries of the North do or fail to do. This implies,

obviously, invigorating and strengthening regional integration forums

such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) or the

Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean.

However, at the global level, we must promote the creation of a

coordinating entity of planet-wide proportions, based on a monetary

council established with clear criteria for representation and accountabil-

ity; through the issuance of special drawing rights, it would endorse new

foreign exchange commitments and regional institutional arrangements.

This issuance of special drawing rights, which has been postponed for

decades by the big Powers of the North, will contribute to breaking the

monopoly in the provision of liquidity that guarantees the uni-polarity

of the United States dollar and the asymmetric decisions of the Interna-

tional Monetary Fund.

Furthermore, if by means of the necessary institutional changes we

succeed in channeling these special drawing rights through multilateral

regional bodies or entities in charge of urgent tasks, such as the Food

and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the United

Nations Development Programme, we will prevent the IMF from

reproducing the asymmetrical relations that have allowed it to impose

conditions on our countries, something that will be inevitable if we

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allow the recapitalization proposed by the G-20 to go forward without

a total change in the governance of that entity. That would be quite

different from the decency the IMF should display – the mea culpa it

should offer – as one of those that caused the crisis.

Yesterday, when I was talking with President Daniel Ortega of

Nicaragua, he told me that the conditionalities that the Fund wanted to

impose for a $90 million loan were truly intolerable for Nicaragua. How

can we continue to accept this: that the international bureaucracy,

through its machinery of pressure, and with its new twentieth- and

twenty-first-century bombers – the dollars that the international

bureaucracies give us – try to tell sovereign countries what to do and

what not to do? That is unacceptable.

It is necessary to change the governance of the International

Monetary Fund. In principle, it would be better to eliminate it, because

it has already done too much damage. It has betrayed all the principles

for which it was created. Paradoxically, the International Monetary Fund

and the World Bank were created to stabilize world demand, but they

have been the main factors in the destabilization of demand, through

their adjustment programmes and so forth – is that not true? – and

through their pro-cyclical policies. In principle, they should be elimi-

nated, but there is a desire to retain them because of special interests.

But there should at least be substantial changes in their governance.

In this scenario, while an alternative governance system is decided

upon, all new funds handed to the International Monetary Fund should

be placed into a new emergency facility, agile and without the

conditionalities of traditional adjustment. The administration of this

facility must be entrusted to a different governing body, such as the one

already created for the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility.

We must intensify our pressure to demand that the capitalization of

these agencies of the United Nations system through special drawing

rights is used to tackle food, climate change and development problems

of the countries of the South with more resources.

These special drawing rights must be issued immediately. The 60

per cent corresponding to developed countries may be used to meet, at

least partially, the 0.7% of GDP that in the 1970s they offered to

dedicate to the development of counter-cyclical policies and to the fight

Page 75

against poverty. By the way, this would also help us escape from the

liquidity restrictions imposed by financial uni-polarity.

The imperative of redefining the world financial order, which has

been unhinged by speculation and privilege, is also warranted from a

human rights perspective. At the global level, human beings have fewer

rights than capital does, thanks to bilateral investment agreements and

to international arbitration systems regulated, by the World Bank and the

World Trade Organization, at the International Centre for Settlement of

Investment Disputes (ICSID). These, the worst things that can happen

to us, are incredible and constantly challenge our capacity for amaze-

ment. What is happening in Latin America is genocide. It is amazing

that when human rights are undermined, one must first exhaust all of a

country’s national legal machinery before being able to turn to the Inter

American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American

States. But here is what happens when you are facing up to capital: if

any transnational feels itself harmed by a Latin American country, it can

immediately take us to ICSID without filing any legal motion within our

countries. It can take us to extra-regional arbitration: a transnational can

do this to a sovereign State. And only this extra-regional arbitration

body – the World Bank’s ICSID – can judge whether or not the law of

this sovereign State has been complied with vis-à-vis that transnational.

It can even hand down a judgement when the law is very harsh, when

the legal punishment is disproportionate to the error that has been

committed. Imagine the asymmetry in the current system between

defense of the “rights” of capital and defense, for example, of human

rights. Do we have a forum where we take countries with the death

penalty? United States law employs the death penalty, the most drastic

penalty for a crime: no human being deserves to die for any crime. There

is no such forum, but for capital there is a forum which can oppose the

laws of sovereign States. That must come to an end; it is madness.

The right to life, to health, to the education of our peoples, to a good

life – to ‘sumac kawsay,’ as the ancestral peoples of my homeland say

– is above the interest of the international speculators of Wall Street. If

this minimum principle is considered as insubordination, so be it.

Ecuador has succeeded in cancelling its illegitimate commercial debt.

With an investment of almost $900 million, we will have avoided paying

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principal plus interest of almost $9 billion by the year 2030.

The history of underdevelopment, dependency and domination of

Ecuador and of Latin America is also the history of the foreign debt.

Bonds, renegotiations, conditioned policies and debt agreements have

been the modern mechanisms of domination through forced and

hereditary indebtedness, which in Latin America was called ‘concertaje’.

These mechanisms have also been, in our time, the instruments by which

the financial centers of industrialized capitalism have dominated our

peoples. I repeat: they do not use gunboats or bombers; they only use the

International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the unregulated stock

markets. Those are the modern-day ‘encomenderos’, the true insatiable

traffickers of wealth at the expense of the education, health and food of

our children – 26% of whom suffer from chronic malnutrition in a

country such as Ecuador – and at the expense of peace, well-being and

the very lives of millions of our fellow countrymen and women born as

slaves of a foreign debt.

In my country, the Government of the citizen revolution set out

from the very outset to find a final solution to the yoke of foreign debt.

And, in line with its promise and its proposals, and with profound

conviction, it succeeded in doing so. Now Ecuador can be declared free

from illegitimate external commercial debt. That declaration pays

homage to the bicentenary of our independence and honours the memory

of our heroes: Bolivar, Alfaro, Sucre and Manuela. As we have said, for

the first time in history, a Government has established a debt auditing

commission. There have been experiments with such commissions, but

these have been carried out by civil society and have been very few in

number. This is the first time that a Government has designed a debt

audit commission.

….

After the crisis of 1929, most Latin American countries emerged

with stronger and more active public institutions that helped them to

maintain stable growth rates until the 1970s. We must not repeat the

mistake made after 1982, when we were forced – from the centre – to

respond to the debt crisis by paralysing our public institutions, with the

supposed aim of reaching optimal fiscal policies, policies that would be

satisfactory in honoring a foreign debt manipulated by those at that very

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center.

In Latin America, and in the developing world in general, we have

full creative, technical and political capacity to promote our own

responses, without any need for supporting or fostering them on the

basis of proposals that are alien to our regions, as has happened before

with the so-called Washington Consensus

. I do not know why they call

it a consensus when they never consulted Latin America on anything.

This has been to the shame of the region in recent decades, with the

implementation of public policies arising from that so called consensus,

in which we in Latin America never participated. We shall not be

colonized, even in intellectual terms. We are quite capable of developing

our own thinking and our own responses on the basis of our reality, our

values, our principles and our interests – not interests alien to our

regions.

Our peoples deserve no less than what the constituents of rich

countries are demanding. These demands have already been expressed

in drastic changes in their public policies: financial regulation with more

controls on investment funds and greater international coordination;

regulation of international commodities markets and subcontracting; a

new industrial policy more committed to the promotion of environmen-

tally friendlier industries; and universal social policies, that is, coverage

for all citizens and the development of public insurance programs.

This Conference must be the turning point toward strengthening the

role of the United Nations in world governance, in order to advance

toward a true democratization of international relations, beginning with

substantial changes in financial institutions.

The draft outcome of this historic conference does not meet all the

expectations of our countries. We faced great resistance to bringing this

issue before the parliament of mankind: the universal and democratic

forum of the General Assembly. However, it has the merit of having

marked the beginning of a process of political agreement to effect

comprehensive reform of the current international financial system,

thanks to the commitment that all countries are assuming here and now.

Now we must define the institutional path toward collaboration and

dialogue and toward monitoring what is decided here.

It is in the framework and under the aegis of this Group of 192 –

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different but truly equal – that we must discuss comprehensive, equitable

and democratic solutions to this crisis, which originated, as always, in

greed and disdain. It is we, the different, who must guide the convulsed

world of today. Time is of the essence. We have to advance toward

models of society that put human well-being above the interests of

capital, respecting the limits imposed by nature. This can be possible not

through market mechanisms, but only through the required political will,

collective action, cooperation, coordination, a new ethics of planetary

coexistence and an in-depth process of decolonization, including the

decolonization of thought.

It can be possible, as well, only through unwavering defence of

sovereignty. Our collective response to imperial thrashing is, once again,

solidarity and our inexhaustible strength; it is based on the unity of the

peoples, the unity of the poor and the unity of the different.

‘Hasta la victoria siempre!’ (Always, until victory!)

Notes:

1. Eight points of agreement between the U.S. and the U.K. issued on August 14, 1941,

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/atlantic.asp

2. The South (also known as the Global South) is part of a distinction between the most

developed nations (the North) and the poorer less developed nations (the South). See

for example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_South.

3. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system. The World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund, grew out of an agreement signed in Bretton Woods New

Hampshire, United States in 1944 by delegates from the 44 Allied nations

4. About ALBA, see for example:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article142921.html#article142921

5. “Ecuador announced in late 2008 that it would stop servicing two of its foreign

bonds; six moths later, it bought most of them back for cash at about 35 cents on the

dollar, effecting substantial debt relief.” (Quoted from:

http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2010/03/debt-and-the-people-part-ii-the-hot-di

squietude.html)

6. The so called Washington Consensus was a set of economic reform goals proposed

in 1989 for Latin American countries. The reforms were orthodox neo liberal reforms.

Fiscal Discipline, Reordering Public Expenditure Priorities, Tax reform, Liberalizing

Interest Rates, A Competitive Exchange Rate, Trade Liberalization, Liberalization of

Inward Foreign Direct Investment. Privatization. Deregulation, Property Rights. The

countries which tried to implement them all had poor or disastrous results particularly

in terms of growth, employment, and poverty reduction. The Consensus has basically

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been abandoned by its original advocates and Latin American countries.

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[Editor’s Note: As part of the United Nations General Assembly Interactive Thematic

Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) on July 23, 2009, the Office of the

President of the General Assembly prepared a concept note about R2P. That concept

note emphasizes that the people have inalienable rights and are the sovereign. If R2P

is exercised by an external agency, sovereignty passes from the people of the target

country to that agency transferring the people from sovereign to wards. The following

is that concept note. It can be accessed at:

http://www.un.org/ga/president/63/interactive/protect/conceptnote.pdf]

The People are the Sovereign

Concept Note on Responsibility to Protect

by Office of the President

of the General Assembly

The five main documents in which responsibility to protect has been

articulated are the High Level Panel’s “Report on Threats, Challenges

and Change”; the Secretary-General’s Report “In Larger Freedom”; the

Outcome Document of the World Summit 2005; UN Security Council

Resolution 1674; Secretary-General’s Report on “Implementing the

Responsibility to Protect.” None of these documents can be considered

as a source of binding international law in terms of Article 38 of the

Statue of the International Court of Justice which lists the classic sources

of international law.

At the negotiations on the World Summit Outcome Document, the

then U.S. Permanent Representative John Bolton stated accurately that

the commitment made in the Document was “not of a legal character.”

The Document is carefully nuanced to convey the intentions of the

member states. Paragraph 138 when it deals with the individual state’s

responsibility to its own people is clear in its commitment. When it

comes to the international community helping states, the phrase used is

a general appeal – “should as appropriate.” Paragraph 139 continues this

nuanced approach. The language is clear and unconditional when it

speaks of “the international community through the UN” having the

“responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other

peaceful means in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Char-

ter.” The Document is very cautious when it comes to responsibility to

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take action through the UN Security Council under Chapter VII.

Paragraph 139 uses at least four qualifiers. Firstly, the Heads of State

merely reaffirm that they “are prepared” to take action, implying a

voluntary, rather than mandatory engagement. Secondly, they are

prepared to do this only “on a case by case basis,” which precludes a

systematic responsibility. Thirdly, even this has to be “in cooperation

with regional organizations as appropriate.” Fourthly, this should be “in

accordance with the Charter” (which covers only immediate threats to

international peace and security). Finally, the Heads of State emphasize

“the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the

responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic

cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in

mind the principles of the Charter and international law (emphases ours).

It is therefore, amply clear, that there is no legally binding commitment

and the General Assembly is charged, in terms of its responsibility under

the Charter to develop and elaborate a legal basis.”

It is the great anti-colonial struggles and the anti-apartheid struggles

that restored the human rights of populations across the developing

world and therefore were the greatest application of responsibility to

protect in world history. Their success probably led to more humane

governance in Europe and thereby, at least indirectly, increased the

protection of European populations also. Colonialism and intervention-

ism used responsibility to protect arguments. National Sovereignty in

developing countries is a necessary condition for stable access to

political, social and economic rights and it took enormous sacrifices to

recover this sovereignty and ensure these rights for their populations. As

the U.S. Declaration of Independence says, the people have the right to

get rid of their government when it oppresses them and has thereby

failed in its responsibility to them. The people have inalienable rights

and are sovereign. The concept of sovereignty as responsibility either

means this and therefore means nothing new or it means something

without any foundation in international law, namely that a foreign

agency can exercise this responsibility. It should not become a “jemmy

in the door of national sovereignty.” The concept of responsibility to

protect is a sovereign’s obligation and, if it is exercised by an external

agency, sovereignty passes from the people of the target country to it.

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The people to be protected are transformed from bearers of rights to

wards of this agency.

The international community cannot remain silent in the face of

genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

But the UN response should be predictable, sustainable and effective

without undermining the UN’s credibility based on consecrated

cornerstone values enshrined in the UN Charter. Therefore, it is the

preventive aspects of responsibility to protect that are both important

and practicable but these need both precise understanding and political

will. Genuine economic cooperation in an enabling international

environment would do much to prevent situations calling for responsibil-

ity to protect. This requires an urgent reform of international economic

governance, specifically of the Bretton Woods Institutions with their

procyclical advice, including shifting to cash crops and eliminating

subsidies. Political will is needed for coordinated international action

focused on development in order to implement the Monterrey Consen-

sus, the Millennium Development Goals and the consensus Outcome of

the High Level UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic

Crisis and its impact on development. In the Human Rights Council and

the Peace-building Commission we possess important instruments for

capacity building and prevention.

On the other hand the elements of a so called timely and decisive

response are far more problematic. Articles 2.4 and 2.7 of the Charter

prohibit the use of force. Article 24 confers on the UN Security Council

responsibility to maintain peace and Article 39 to determine any threat,

breach of peace or aggression and measures to restore peace. Article 41

spells out breaking diplomatic relations, sanctions, and embargoes. If

these fail Article 42 empowers force. None of these would cover

responsibility to protect unless the situation is a threat to international

peace and security. The Security Council’s powers are not directed even

against violations of international legal obligations but against an

immediate threat to international peace and security. Collective security

is a specialized instrument for dealing with threats to international peace

and security and not an enforcement mechanism for international human

rights law and international humanitarian law. The discretion given to

the Security Council to decide a threat to international peace and

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security implies a variable commitment totally different from the

consistent alleviation of suffering embodied in the responsibility to

protect. The Security Council has not been willing to relinquish to the

International Criminal Court its power to determine crimes of aggres-

sion.

In case a responsibility to protect type of situation becomes a threat

to international peace and security, the question of the veto will arise.

The veto ensures that any breach committed by a permanent member or

by a member state under its protection would escape action. Member

states, therefore, need to decide whether “a mutual understanding”

among permanent members “to refrain from employing or threatening

to employ the veto” in responsibility to protect situations is adequate or

whether an amendment of the Charter is necessary. A “mutual under-

standing” implies no enduring obligation and therefore has no legal

force. The problem is that if a veto has been cast, the General Assembly

cannot overturn it; even without it, the General Assembly cannot take up

a matter that is on the agenda of the Security Council. The International

Law Commissions draft Articles and the Third Report on responsibility

of International Organizations states that internal rules provide no

excuse for failing to discharge its obligations. If internal rules and the

Charter [Article 27 (3) on the veto] prevent exercising any future

responsibility to protect then should the veto go in such cases or should

the responsibility be abdicated? The existence of the veto and the

erosion of globalization strengthen the Westphalia paradigm as against

the individual rights centered paradigm of responsibility to protect.

Neither do the Councils procedures have any provision for due process

of law nor are its decisions subject to judicial review. Moreover member

states need to consider whether, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan used

to say, the political basis for Security Council decision making is far too

narrow. The provisions of the Genocide Convention provide for a State

to approach the appropriate organs of the United Nations to take action

to prevent and suppress genocide, as well as actions in preparation

thereof. It is the veto and the lack of UN Security Council reform rather

than the absence of a responsibility to protect legal norm that are the real

obstacles to effective action (in an article on the Rwanda genocide

Under Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari reached a similar conclu-

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sion).

Similarly, is it enough to simply ask member states to become

parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? Is it not

also essential to have a definition of aggression under the Rome Statute

in order to deter adventurism before the responsibility to protect can be

developed? Moreover, the International Criminal Court remains

accountable to the Security Council in the sense that the Council has the

power to delay consideration of a case by a year and then another year,

indefinitely.

In case peremptory norms are breached, the International Law

Commission’s draft Articles on State Responsibility specify two sets of

consequences: 1) a positive obligation of States “to cooperate to bring

the serious breach to an end through lawful means” [Article 41 (i)] and

2) not to recognize as lawful a situation created by the breach and not to

render aid in maintaining that situation [Article 41 (ii)]. The use of

military force is expressly excluded from the realm of possible counter

measures. Article 50 (i) (a) categorically says that counter-measures

shall not affect “the obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force

as embodied in the Charter of the United Nations.” It is for member

states to consider if responsibility to protect in its non coercive dimen-

sions adds anything to the International Law Commission’s Articles or

to the provisions of international human rights law and international

humanitarian law.

The International Court of Justice has ruled that “where human

rights are protected by International Conventions, that protection takes

the form of such arrangements for monitoring or ensuring the respect for

human rights as are provided for in the Conventions themselves. The use

of force could not be the appropriate method to monitor or ensure such

respect.” Can any troops wage a war for human rights without causing

more harm than the violations they set out to correct? In terms of the

suffering of the population would this also not be true of sanctions that

cause the deaths of the most vulnerable – women and children – from

malnutrition and lack of medicines? Will not an association with the use

of force also compromise and weaken International humanitarian law?

In terms of the actual resource situation when there are not enough

troops available even for vital peacekeeping, would there be any

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capacity for rapid deployment or preventive deployment?

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI spoke of responsibility to protect

in the General Assembly in April 2008 but he emphasized that the

“juridical means” employed should be those “provided in the UN

Charter and in other international instruments.” These do not include the

use of military force. The Pope also said that “the principles under

girding the international order” must be respected. These principles

include sovereignty and exclude the use of force. Jesus’ emphasis on

redistribution of wealth to the poor and on nonviolence reinforces the

right perspective on responsibility to protect.

On any early warning mechanism, apart from UN Secretariat

accountability and General Assembly oversight, member states would

need to consider whether the Secretariat should take any action at all

before the UN General Assembly has developed the concept and

elaborated its legal basis.

Finally any decision taken by the General Assembly would need to

ensure that it does not inadvertently or even remotely, in the words of

Jurgen Habermas, “break the civilizing bounds which the Charter of the

United Nations placed with good reason upon the process of goal

realization.”

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their authors and not

necessarily the opinions of the Amateur Computerist newsletter. We

welcome submissions from a spectrum of viewpoints.

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EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions. Articles can be

submitted via e-mail:

[email protected] Permission is given to reprint articles from

this issue in a non profit publication provided credit is given, with name of

author and source of article cited.

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http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ All issues of the Amateur

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