Interventions (27 page)

I have always said that the UN needs to be a United Nations not just of governments but of peoples, as it is from people, not governments, that all power is ultimately derived. The expansion of robust international civil society during the preceding years represented an opportunity to pursue this aspiration. I was unembarrassed to admit that, in many areas, NGOs were ahead of the UN in what they could deliver. They were the “bomb-throwers,” the icebreakers, of social and economic development work, usually with far more on-the-ground experience in their countries of operation.

It was due to the great potential stored in this energy, drive, and dedication, particularly as a sector that was now strengthening its connections internationally, that I very publicly sought to reach out and engage with international civil society and institutionalize this common cause. In the first months of my tenure as secretary-general, I directed all UN entities to establish and formalize close working relationships with civil society, and to create forums for genuine consultation and cooperation.

Our growing string of alliances with this freshly emerged grouping of actors would prove vital to the transformations in the development agenda that were to come. And not just because of these actors' activities in developing countries. Underpinning our common cause was a rational and deeply moral purpose, but the will of most member states was absent. Political leaders within countries are, in many ways, beholden to compromises of multiple constituencies and the many audiences for whom they must perform to sustain their authority. This was why it was often hard or impossible to convince leaders of an otherwise rational course of international action that was in their country's interest. But in international civil society, which represented a network of organizations supported by communities of morally concerned supporters, including many voters within donor countries, there lay the potential to affect those countries' domestic policies.

In expanding our global partnerships for development to international civil society, there was the possibility to tap into and encourage a circle of influence that might move the debate forward worldwide. Indeed, this would prove vital, even to the point where Hollywood actors and rock stars became involved, throwing in their popularity to help make the development agenda a mainstream feature of political debates in the rich world.

In addition to global civil society, the other crucial group of players on the world stage was to be found in business. The state of the world's economy meant that any ideological aversion to allying with capitalism had to be forgotten. Private investment in developing countries had increased from $5 billion in the early 1970s to more than $240 billion by 1997, underpinning major economic and social change in those countries. However, 80 percent of private investment in the developing world went to just 12 countries, with only 5 percent going to Africa and nearly 50 developing countries failing to attract any financial capital at all. Economic globalization was proving extremely powerful, but also powerfully marginalizing. My belief was that, with the right set of partnerships, underpinned by the cultivation of a shared commitment, we could start turning the vast resources and dynamism of business more decisively toward the common good of global development and poverty eradication.

There were natural foundations for an enduring relationship between business and the UN's development efforts. The campaign to eradicate poverty, to raise living standards, and, therefore, to increase personal wealth, presented enormous opportunities for businesses worldwide. International development and poverty eradication themselves created and expanded consumer markets, which can be tapped to extend the boundaries of enterprise. On that basis, business had an inherent interest in being part of the common cause of equitably distributed international development.

I also felt that international business lived in a world of responsibility, as well as opportunity. There were rights, rules, and laws safeguarding businesses and their operations. But there needed to be a forum of accountability that reminded them of their role in safeguarding the rights of others, particularly their impact on the right to freedom from want, hunger, sickness, and an early death. In a globalizing world, where public relations were also global, I felt this was a message they could not easily ignore. From my very first weeks in the job, I began giving speeches to business audiences around the world to sell the message that the UN was open, as never before, for engagement with private enterprise.

On January 31, 1999, I spoke to the corporate and political leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos. I went there to launch a “Global Compact” between the private sector and the United Nations that aimed to build a broader foundation for globalization based on shared values and principles. From past meetings with leaders there, I had developed a relationship of mutual respect that I believed could be the basis for something more ambitious. I warned of the fragility of globalization and its vulnerability to a backlash from all the “-isms” of our post–Cold War world: protectionism, populism, nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, fanaticism, and terrorism. To safeguard the benefits of a global trade system and the spread of technology, however, corporations had to do more than just engage with global policymakers.

There was—and is—a great deal that they could do on their own, proactively. I didn't want them to think they could use the excuse of dysfunctional governments and trading regimes to delay action. “Don't wait for every country to introduce laws protecting freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining,” I urged them. “You can at least make sure your own employees, and those of your subcontractors, enjoy those rights. You can at least make sure that you yourselves are not employing underage children or forced labor, either directly or indirectly. And you can make sure that, in your own hiring and firing policies, you do not discriminate on grounds of race, creed, gender or ethnic origin.” This would have to be a two-way street: we at the United Nations would abandon our past prejudices against private enterprise, but in return I believed that global business would have to rethink its role as well as its obligations if we were to put global markets on a fair and sustainable footing.

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W
e also had to build partnerships and expand cooperation within the UN. But the UN's development agenda itself was also divided, scattered across a dizzying thirty-two funds, agencies, programs, departments, and offices. As things stood, there was little hope of any cohesion or single strategic purpose among these organizations. To start rectifying this, I established the UN Development Group in 1997, which sought to bring together all of these strands to deliver a more coherent, effective, and efficient system of support to developing countries. All agencies now had to form a single UN “house” in each country of operation, all under the primacy of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representative. These measures did not solve all our problems. The vast array of challenges in developing countries—from health, sanitation, agriculture, education, and environmental sustainability to infrastructure development—meant that a significant range of actors from the UN and elsewhere were always needed, bringing with them recurring organizational obstacles. But these new measures meant that development was finally ceasing to be a scattered set of endeavors without any shared direction, and was becoming a team effort with a common goal.

The silos dividing UN work were also why we pushed for a transformation in approaches to planning, managing, and implementing our activities in territories torn by civil war, particularly in our peacekeeping operations. It was vital that we integrate development, security, military, and political activity in our interventions in war-torn countries. The motivation was not just the need for an integrated effort in peacebuilding: it was recognition of the intimate connection between economic development and the resolution and prevention of civil wars. Poverty is not the direct cause of civil war, but poverty and failed development nevertheless create the conditions for conflict. It leads to the inequalities between ethnic groups that drive so many civil wars. It further enfeebles state functions that enable governments to respond or preempt violent challenges to their authority. And it produces large numbers of unemployed young men with little future, making them ready recruits for a violent cause.

This is a further reason why rich and poor countries are linked in their interests in international development: civil wars have a security impact far beyond their source. They suck in their neighbors, send thousands of refugees spilling into other countries, create havens for armed groups and terrorists, and they cause the spread of criminal networks and cross-border lawlessness, including piracy. In short, conflicts within states are inherent generators of global insecurity, the causes of which need to be addressed by wealthy and poor states alike.

Another big piece of the international development puzzle lay in the Washington-based financial institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Formed at the same time as the UN, these were officially institutions within the UN system, but their prestige and power meant that they operated entirely separately from the UN. With major resources at their disposal and an overlapping interest in global economic issues, they had a crucial role to play in funding, guiding, and effecting efforts at international development and poverty eradication. If there was ever to be any kind of cohesive, global effort to face extreme poverty, then these two institutions would need to be involved.

But in 1997 their relationship with the UN was distant and dominated by bureaucratic turf wars. I knew we could do better. On a visit to Washington, early in the first year of my tenure, I organized a breakfast with James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, and Michel Camdessus, the managing director of the IMF. From that early meeting, we developed a relationship that over the next decade catalyzed an unprecedented level of cooperation among our three institutions.

I did not start reaching out to this wider array of protagonists in anticipation of the breakthrough that was to come in the run-up to the millennium. I was being opportunistic, hunting for any resources I could find in hopes of changing the trajectory and dynamic of international development. But once we began to build this network, pulling all the strands together, as only an institution like the UN could, a new force began to build. This alone was not decisive. Despite the changes we had ushered in, transforming the place of poverty in international affairs required something far more dramatic than just our reforms in the Secretariat. We would have to bring in the member states. But given the history of commitment to international development, it was going to take nothing less than a genuine diplomatic innovation. This would be enabled by, of all things, an accident of the calendar.

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I
t had been expected for some time that the UN would have its own special event to mark the millennium. It was agreed that this would involve a special summit of heads of state and government before the annual meeting of the GA in September 2000. However, other than this, the only guidance from the member states (who, by UN rules, had to choose and mandate the event) was a 1998 GA resolution: “The year 2000 constitutes a unique and symbolically compelling moment to articulate and affirm an animated vision for the United Nations in the new era.”

This uncertainty gave us useful leeway in how to fashion the event and the accompanying debate. The traditional role of the secretary-general for such occasions is to arrange the administrative and organizational procedures. But I sensed an opportunity to deploy our moral power as well.

Vaguely designated as being for the renewal of the organization in the new century, the event would have to cover all the major issues facing the UN. But I came to the view early on that poverty should form the core. The year 2000 saw the world with the resources, for the first time, to end extreme poverty. But poverty was still a gaping omission on the collective priority list of governments. The summit represented a rare opportunity to rectify this.

As a first step, on March 27, 2000, I issued a report,
We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century
,
to be considered by all member states before the Millennium Summit. Reports of such sweep would usually be drafted in the first instance by relatively junior staff members from different departments, after which, for a period of several months, the text would be circulated and amended by other departments, agencies, and representatives of the member states. This process of to-and-fro deliberation and compromise meant that the outcome was almost always the lowest common denominator. Poverty was never going to move forward on that basis. So, instead, I tasked two senior aides from my office on the thirty-eighth floor, John Ruggie and Andrew Mack, to take the lead in producing the report without the departments taking any formal role and without consultation with member states.

Between them and a tight circle from my office, we then produced the document. The member states would decide on any agreement that they signed, but we ensured that the starting point and the basis for any debate was entirely our text.

We knew the report had both to have teeth and to be popularly accessible. Unlike most UN documents, this had to be a text that anyone could understand and engage with, as only popular accessibility could engender the accountability mechanism that would be needed later on. The major development summits and conferences of the 1990s—Copenhagen, Rio, Beijing, and others—had seen the adoption of resolutions that were complex, opaquely worded, and made no real demands on anyone. Hence, while they represented important landmarks in the growing international consensus on development, they saw little substantive follow-up. In
We the Peoples,
however, we set quantifiable and time-bound targets for poverty eradication, and set those targets around clear, simple, and morally undeniable goals.