Second Committee: Economic and Financial; Big questions with no easy answers.

How to create more equality in a global economy where one quarter of the world's 6 billion people consume more than half of global resources, how to assist people and countries out of crippling debt so they too can benefit from the globalization of wealth: and how to keep rising sea levels from swallowing small island States--these are some of the enormous and complex matters the Second Committee tackles "These are big questions, and there are no easy answers", Committee Chairman Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury of Bangladesh told the UN Chronicle. "To know what to ask is to know half the answer in some ways."

A total 37 resolutions were recommended to the General Assembly for adoption: 35 of them were adopted without a vote in the tradition of consensus within the Committee.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)--whose aims include halving by the year 2015 the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water: eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005; and developing an open, rule-based, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system--framed Committee discussions. Burkina Faso, Yemen, Venezuela and other industrializing nations asked donor countries to fulfil the promise made at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey Mexico in 2002, where leaders from donor countries agreed to increase official development assistance (ODA) to 7 percent of their countries' gross domestic product

In the Committee debate, Nguyen Thanh Chau of Viet Nam pointed out that although ODA had risen by 4.8 per cent, to $57 billion in 2002, that was still far short of the $100 billion the World Bank estimated was needed to finance the MDGs in the developing world.

Ambassador Chowdhury said that although the donor community must keep its promise on ODA, developing countries had the obligation to use aid effectively. He said: "In the 1970s, Bangladesh was able to evolve homegrown ideas, such as micro-credit and non-formal education. This, coupled with fairly good governance, pluralistic institutions and a strong middle class, gave society the where-withal to absorb external assistance." He added that over a period of time, his country had achieved a steady growth rate of 5 to 6 per cent, along with social goals such as gender mainstreaming. "It is an extremely successful paradigm of how a traditional society is being modernized by empowering women. The numbers of educated Bangladeshis have gone up extremely high all girl-children have free education". the Ambassador said.

Donor nations tend to place conditionalities for good governance and professional accounting of donor aid. In fact, in the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)--a homegrown plan by Africans for the region which the General Assembly endorsed in 2002--a peer review mechanism consisting of a panel of eminent African personalities would monitor in a neighbourly way a country's observance of its aid commitments. The mechanism had to be included at the insistence of the donor community.

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Perspectives however, depend on what end of the telescope one was looking into. Majdi Ramadan of Lebanon told the Chronicle that although recipient countries should have good governance regarding macroeconomics and social issues in order to receive ODA, international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, should also practise good governance. They could do this by giving developing countries more voice "Lebanon has been dealing recently with the World Bank and IMF, and the truth is that two years ago the World Bank was requesting the devaluation of the Lebanese currency. But the position of the Government was very clear, because devaluation undermines the confidence of the investors". Mr. Ramadan said. He noted that his country had secured $4.6 billion in so-called "soft loans" with very low interest from France, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia--countries that, he believed, were confident that Lebanon was on the right track concerning economic policies.

In the debate on ODA. Pablo Berti of Cuba said that for every dollar of ODA received, developing countries paid $6 in servicing the debt. Nigeria, Indonesia. Ecuador and Uganda, among others, said that they were unable to work towards the MDGs because their limited funds had to be spent servicing their external debt; they supported swapping debt for sustainable development. Countries could then invest in education, HIV/AIDS eradication and environmental protection in exchange for cancellation of some of their debt While aid, debt and development could be seen under the eighth and most important of all MDGs--develop a global partnership for development--an event such as rising sea level could mark the end of a country altogether. The fact was not lost on the Committee when it adopted without a vote the resolution titled Further implementation of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States.

The existence of Tuvalu, the second smallest country in the world, is precariously dependent on the South Pacific Ocean surrounding it. It is 26 square kilometres with nine coral atolls, with its highest point four metres above sea level. Along with Maldives, Tuvalu appealed to Committee delegates to help stop global warming because rising sea levels would wipe out their countries. At the Ninth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention (Kyoto Protocol), held in Milan in December 2003, reports revealed that the combined emissions of Europe. Japan, the United States and other highly industrialized countries could grow by 8 per cent from 2000 to 2010 for about 17 per cent over 1990 levels), despite domestic measures currently in place to limit them. These emissions have a direct impact on global temperatures, rising sea levels and the survival of countries such as Tuvalu.

Ambassador Chowdhury explained the logic of the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. "In the past, the polluter has not paid", he said. "And the polluter has achieved progress through polluting. Suddenly wisdom and morality have reached a point where you say, 'OK, you polluters can not do that." However, he added, it costs money to conform to emissions standards and "many developing countries are not in a position to conform". Short on resources, industrializing countries have great difficulty following emissions guidelines, especially considering that "even some of the rich powers have not backed Kyoto".

Among the highly industrialized group of nations, Canada had supported the Kyoto Protocol. Louis Saint-Arnaud told the Committee that his country had doubled its annual funding to the United Nations Environment Programme and ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. Stefano Toscano of Switzerland, the newest Member State of the United Nations, told the Chronicle that his country supported the Protocol because of its "overall goal of sustainable development" and "concern for the global consequences of climate change". He said that although its implementation might present some financial challenges in the short term, "to only look at the short term might be short-sighted". Among the rapidly industrializing nations, China's support is critical to its success. In an interview with the Chronicle, Wang Ling said that her country also wanted to see the rapid ratification and implementation of the Protocol. She outlined China's effort to reduce emissions by switching from coal fuel to natural gas and clean-coal energy for use in industry, business and families. "Some cities already have natural gas pipelines and we are trying to get natural gas to every family", she said. The representative of the Democratic Republic of the Congo told the Committee that he found some degree of comfort in many developed countries' support for the Protocol.

Nigeria is the largest producer of oil in Africa. Bolus Paul Zom Lolo told the Chronicle that although his country was an oil-producer, it was eager to use cleaner energy sources. "In Nigeria, we are blessed with a lot of sunshine, so solar energy is a good option. However, we lack capacity. We will pursue nascent projects within the framework of NEPAD, where energy is a top priority."

Though consensus is a tradition in the Second Committee, there were votes on two resolutions. The text on Unilateral economic measures as a means of political and economic coercion against developing countries was adopted by 125 to 1. with 37 abstentions. It urged the international community to adopt "urgent" measures to eliminate unilateral measures not authorized by the United Nations or inconsistent with the principles of the UN Charter. In explanation of its negative vote, the United States representative said. "Unilateral and multilateral economic sanctions can be an effective means to achieve legitimate foreign policy objectives. The United States is not alone in holding this view or in following this practice. The UN Charter itself provides for use of sanctions to change the behaviour of those who would challenge, or seek to undermine, international norms."

The other resolution, on natural resources in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian Golan territories, was adopted by a vote of 154 to 4 (Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, United States), with 10 abstentions. The representative of Israel called it a "biased and counter-productive text" that had no place in the Second Committee, adding that it prejudged issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which both sides agreed would be addressed through direct bilateral negotiations.

The Second Committee's session this year was also marked by concerns over the international trade balance and the capacity of institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) to tip it in the right direction. Ambassador Chowdhury told the Chronicle: "Whether the WTO has that capacity, that political clout at home and abroad, to address these broad economic questions far beyond trade is something that has increasingly become unclear." The Committee adopted without a vote the resolution titled Role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence. He said that there had also been talk of a possible "economic security council" or a "development revenue mechanism", where countries that "have no problems exposing themselves to external inquiry can showcase themselves, and in some ways performance can be rewarded through this methodology".

Even as the Second Committee had been rich in breeding novel ideas of global partnership, the Chairman noted that the ideas had to take shape and that there had to be mechanisms to implement them. "One of the things that many of us are seeking to do is to bring development to the fore of United Nations activities."

RELATED ARTICLE: UN-HABITAT 

Perhaps no organization within the United Nations family is better suited to tackle the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to "achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020" than the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). Its Executive Director, Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, told the Second Committee that by 2030 the world's slum population could expand from 1 billion out of 6 billion inhabitants to 2 billion out of 8 billion. (See UN Chronicle issues 4, 2000 and 1, 2001.) Even so, the MDG target was modest and she suggested a more ambitious one that would achieve the Millennium Summit's principle of cities without slums.

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Partnership is a key ingredient to UN-HABITAT activities. These range from encouraging cooperation between cities and villages, such as Amesbury, Massachusetts, and Esabalu, Kenya, to working with local governments to improve slum policy, or helping African mayors examine participatory budgeting processes that have led to major development improvements in the poverty-stricken zones of 250 Latin American cities.

The UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum, held every two years, brings together national governments, local authorities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and urban experts to examine the challenge of reducing poverty in urban areas around the world. Over 2,000 participants are expected at the Forum in September 2004.

Axumite Gebre-Egziabher of the Nairobi-based UN-HABITAT told the UN Chronicle that basic infrastructure, including water, sanitation, shelter and access roads for ambulances, is the most urgent need in most slums. She said the Programme's success is due partly to its communitybased approach, which involves multiple stakeholders, including slum residents, local and national governments and NGOs. "Enabling people to be part of governance and getting them involved in finding solutions to issues that matter have important benefits. People feel ownership and take responsibility for their area. We often don't need to put policemen in the slums", she said.

Ambassador Johan Lovald of Norway, whose country had contributed $1.3 million to the UN-HABITAT Water and Sanitation Trust Fund, told the Committee that the Programme, "under the able leadership of Anna Tibaijuka, is progressing positively". He praised the Forum, where urban issues could be examined "thoroughly and freely". He also expressed his delegation's pleasure at the Programme's efforts to mainstream gender equality in all its activities, saying it was necessary to provide it with "stable and predictable" funding.

--Jonas Hagen