9. The un in the new millennium

A UN for the new millennium

Secretary-General identifies key opportunities and goals

On the eve of a new millennium, Secretary-General Kofi Annan has identified key opportunities, obligations and challenges facing the global community and proposed concrete actions to "to lift people's spirits and improve their lives." Mr. Annan's report, We the Peoples: the Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, will be debated by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit, 6-8 September in New York.

"The relevance of the United Nations and its capacity to inspire have in no way diminished since its founding," Mr. Annan states. "If anything, they have increased as people have become interconnected in new ways and the need for global collective responsibility has become more widely felt. But we need to ask ourselves what kind of United Nations leaders are prepared to support -- in deeds as well as words."

Three tasks loom above all others, he states: to ensure that peoples everywhere live free from want and from fear, and that future generations inherit a healthy planet and global environment. Underlying these goals are the challenges posed by the deep poverty of over half the world's population, the raging HIV/AIDS epidemic, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the destruction of the ecosystem and the environmental resources humanity needs to survive.

The forces of globalization are seen as overarching, often contributing to problems but with the potential to be harnessed for economic development and social well-being. "The central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people instead of leaving billions behind in squalor," the Secretary-General states.

Special provision for Africa

Mr. Annan's report pays particular attention to sub-Saharan Africa. "Nowhere is a global commitment to poverty reduction needed more than in Africa south of the Sahara," says the Secretary-General, "because no region of the world endures greater human suffering." After outlining the region's fundamental problems -- low GDP growth rates and per capita income, debilitating external debt burdens, low agricultural productivity, armed conflicts, poor governance and alarming HIV infection rates -- he urges the Millennium Summit to "make special provision for the needs of Africa and give our full support to Africans in their struggle to overcome the continent's problems."

As a first step toward his "millennium goals," the Secretary-General announced several initiatives the UN is taking in partnership with private enterprise. Under the Health InterNetwork, some 10,000 "on-line sites" will be set up and operated in hospitals and clinics in developing countries to provide Internet access to up-to-date medical information tailored to the needs of specific countries and regions. Through the UN Information Technology Service (UNITeS), a consortium of "high-tech volunteer corps" from industrialized countries will train groups in developing countries in the uses and opportunities of information technology. The Secretary-General, with the heads of the UN Development Programme and the International Labour Organization, is also convening a "high-level policy network" to propose ways to reduce the extremely high levels of youth unemployment.

Meeting concrete goals

In addition, the Secretary-General urges leaders to meet goals that already have been set at major UN conferences in the 1990s: halving extreme poverty by 2015; improving living conditions for 100 million slum dwellers by 2020; halving the proportion of people lacking access to safe drinking water by 2015; ensuring primary education for all by 2015 and closing the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005; and reducing by 2005 the rate of HIV infection of people between the ages of 15 and 24 in the most affected countries. Also emphasized are the need for open access to the developed world's markets for goods produced by the least developed countries, expansion of the heavily indebted poor countries initiative so that more countries can benefit from debt relief, and "more generous" levels of official development assistance.

To sustain the environment, the Secretary-General notes that in addition to preventing the degradation of fertile soils, fresh water, the ozone layer and biodiversity, halting climate change is a vital necessity. Emissions of "greenhouse" gases which cause global warning must be reduced. This can be done with the use of cleaner, more efficient technologies and non-fossil fuels. He calls on governments to adopt and implement the 1997 UN Kyoto Protocol that binds industrialized countries to reduce emissions by 2002. By using the UN's system of "green accounting," governments can easily monitor activities that are good for people and the environment and those that pollute or degrade the planet.

To improve peace and security, the Secretary-General calls for strengthening peace operations, targeted sanctions against rogue groups and a halt to illicit arms trafficking. The new International Criminal Court, he stresses, is essential for ending "the culture of impunity" that has existed for those committing gross human rights violations.

Within the UN, the Secretary-General points to the need to reform the Security Council so that it is viewed by the world's peoples as democratic and representative. "I believe that ... all these things are achievable, if we have the will to achieve them," the Secretary-General concludes. "In inspiring and coordinating those efforts, a renewed United Nations will have a vital and exalting role to play."