The United Nations is trying to regain credibility by
31st August 2000
Pity the United Nations, for it is not powerful enough even to be hated.
While other global bodies are widely reviled, the UN has become little
more than a joke
Ignored and undermined, its treaties unratified, its fees unpaid, the
sometime saviour of the world has sunk towards irrelevance. The General
Assembly is permanently sidelined. The Security Council is heeded only
when its decisions don't interfere with the plans of any of its members.
Next week's Millennium Summit, the biggest meeting of heads of state in
the history of the world, is likely to be just another scene in an ever
more ludicrous pantomime.
UN officials have long been aware of their problem. They have spent much
of the past ten years desperately seeking to be taken seriously by the
world's great powers. They are in danger, as a result, of exchanging the
role of clown for the role of villain.
The UN's metamorphosis began at the Earth Summit in 1992. The United
Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, which tried to help weak
nations to protect themselves from predatory companies, had recommended
that businesses should be internationally regulated. The UN refused to
circulate its suggestions. Instead the summit adopted the proposals of a
very different organisation: the Business Council for Sustainable
Development, composed of the chief executives of big corporations.
Unsurprisingly, the council had recommended that companies should
regulate themselves. In 1993, the UNCTC was dissolved.
In June 1997, the president of the General Assembly announced that
corporations would be given a formal role in United Nations
decision-making. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, suggested that he
would like to see more opportunities for companies - rather than
governments or the UN - to set global standards. At the beginning of
1998, the UN Conference on Trade And Development revealed that it was
working with the International Chamber of Commerce to help developing
countries "formulate competition and consumer protection law" and to
facilitate trade. The UN, which until a few years before had sought to
defend poor countries from big business, would now be helping big
business to overcome the resistance of poor countries. The ICC repaid
the favour, by asking the world's richest nations to give the UN more
money.
In January 1999, Mr Annan launched a new agency, called the "Business
Humanitarian Forum". It would be jointly chaired by the UN High
Commissioner on Refugees and the president of a company called Unocal.
Unocal was, at the time, the only major U.S. company still operating in
Burma. It was helping the Burmese government to build a massive gas
pipeline, during the construction of which Burmese soldiers tortured and
killed local people. "The business community," Annan explained to
Unocal, Nestle, Rio Tinto and the other members of the new forum, "is
fast becoming one of the United Nations' most important allies ... That
is why the organization's doors are open to you as never before."
Two months later, a leaked memo revealed that the UN Development
Programme had accepted $50,000 from each of 11 giant corporations. In
return, Nike, Rio Tinto, Shell, BP, Novartis, ABB, Dow Chemical and the
other companies would gain priveleged access to UNDP offices, acquiring,
in the agency's words, "a new and unique vehicle for market development
activities", as well as "world-wide recognition for their cooperation
with the UN". The UNDP would develop a special UN logo which the
companies could put on their products.
After fierce campaigning by human rights groups, this scheme was
suspended. But in July this year, Mr Annan launched a far more ambitious
partnership, a "Global Compact" with 50 of the world's biggest and most
controversial corporations. The companies promised to respect their
workers and the environment. This, Annan told them, would "safeguard
open markets while at the same time creating a human face for the global
economy." The firms which signed his compact would be better placed to
deal with "pressure from single-issue groups". Again, they would be
allowed to use the UN's logo. But there would be no binding commitments,
and no external assessment of how well they were doing.
The UN, in other words, appears to be turning itself into an enforcement
agency for the global economy, helping western companies to penetrate
new markets while avoiding the regulations which would be the only
effective means of holding them to account. By making peace with power,
the United Nations is declaring war upon the powerless.