United Nations: Preparing for five major conferences

by Thalif Deen

United Nations, June 3 -- The United Nations is preparing to start the new millennium with five major international conferences that will focus primarily on socio- economic issues, including trade, debt, development financing, poverty and human security.

Three are scheduled for next year: the 10th UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Bangkok in February, the South Summit in Havana in April and the Millennium Summit in New York in September.

The latter is the most significant of the three, also called the Millennium Assembly, and will lay out a new social and economic agenda for the 21st century.

Additionally, two key conferences are scheduled for the year 2001 - the first on "Financing for Development" and the other on the economic deterioration of the world's 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), described as the poorest of the poor.

Since the Children's Summit in 1990, the United Nations has hosted at least six major UN conferences: on the environment in Brazil in June 1992, on Human Rights in Austria in June 1993, on Small Island Developing States in Barbados in April 1994 and on Population and Development in Egypt in September 1994.

Additionally, the United Nations also hosted two major conferences in 1995: on Social Development in Copenhagen in March and on the Advancement of Women in Beijing in September. The last two major UN conferences were in 1996: Human Settlements (Habitat) in Istanbul and the World Food Summit in Rome.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that over the past two years, he has been deeply concerned about the economic crisis "that has swept like a plague across the globe and left very few developing countries unscathed."

"Tossed out of jobs and schools, their hopes and futures in disarray, men and women around the world have quite naturally looked to their governments and to the United Nations for answers and for help," he told UN delegates recently.

"It is our duty to respond," he says, pointing out that development will be high on the agenda of all five conferences. "A series of major events to be held over the next two years gives us an opportunity to see that these demands are met."

Annan says that if there is one event at which all of key economic issues - namely debt relief, poverty alleviation and development financing - may converge, it is the Millennium Summit.

"The next century will bring many global problems which need to be addressed in the forum of a global organisation. The United Nations can and must identify those problems, as well as the means of addressing them," he says.

Many commentators see the United Nations being gradually marginalised as a force for peace and security and as an actor for development. "This is not my view. Nor do I believe it corresponds to either the interests or the desires of the world's peoples," Annan stresses.

Annan believes the next series of conferences will help revive these issues on the UN agenda. "If we prepare well, the cause of development - and of multilateralism itself - can be invigorated and restored to centre stage," he says. "If we do not, we may simply add yet more declarations and plans of action to the growing pile of those awaiting implementation."

In addition to the five conferences, the 185-member UN General Assembly also has scheduled four Special Sessions to review the implementation of a slew of declarations adopted at four previous conferences.

The first of these Special Sessions, a follow-up to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, will take place at the end of this month while the follow-up to the 1994 Conference on Small Island Developing States will be held in September. Both meetings will be held in New York.

The other two Special Sessions will take place in 2000 - a five- year review of the Social Summit to be held in Geneva and a review of the World Conference on Women will be held in New York.

Meanwhile, 132 developing countries comprising "the Group of 77" (G-77) are organising the South Summit, to be hosted by the Cuban government.

Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan says he has a number of questions that the South Summit should address, starting with a "cold and realistic analysis" of endeavours to promote South-

South cooperation which developing nations pledged at a conference 18 years ago in Caracas, Venezuela.

"Has the golden principle of collective self-reliance (among developing nations) helped us improve the living standards of millions of men, women and children in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean?" Kamal asks. He says that, in the past two years, the financial crisis has brought a number of looming questions to the fore with greater intensity.

They include: How best the developing countries can deal with the negative consequences of globalisation and interdependence? How can the less developed countries benefit from the process of globalisation? What measures should they take to address their increased vulnerability to external shock? How can the developing countries safeguard their economic sovereignty? How can we realise the ever elusive goal of economic and social development?

"The South Summit should endeavour to find answers to these questions and design a strategy for the next century," Kamal says. "The primary objective of the Summit should be to effect a tectonic shift which can change the situation of the majority of developing countries."

In addressing G-77 members, Kamal concludes that "we cannot help the millions in the South by hollow declarations and unimplementable plans of action. We have to move beyond words. Otherwise, we are doomed to become irrelevant." (IPS)

The above article by the Inter Press Service appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS).