Report on the Work of the UN

The annual Report on the Work of the Organization (A/70/1) is one of the rare UN documents that gets media attention.

That is because it is submitted to the opening session of the General Assembly every year and its Introduction reflects the Secretary-General’s primary political concerns. 

The Report itself is a distillation of many departmental submissions and traditionally it has been a committee-designed horse, its ill fitted parts of varying worth and integrity.

The Introduction to the 2015 Report is remarkable for several reasons. 

At the top of my list is that it makes no mention of a major change in UN policy announced sotto voce in the penultimate section of the Report itself: “The United Nations advocates a rebalancing of the international policy on drugs, to increase the focus on public health, human rights, prevention, treatment and care, and economic, social and cultural measures.” 

That is the closest the UN has ever come to calling for an end to the prohibitionist approach to psychoactive drugs which has for over a century failed in its main purpose while rewarding organized crime with sky-high profits. It is certain to raise expectations that the 2016 General Assembly special session on drugs will rewrite international drug policy.

The Introduction is notable also for completely ignoring drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, the triune that funds terrorism and most contemporary conflicts. 

Some of its statements are also outrageously false. Looking back over the UN’s seven decades it says “we have much to be proud of” because the “world has avoided global conflict on the scale seen twice in the first half of the twentieth century” and numerous “smaller wars were averted or brought to an earlier end.”

The truth is that well over 100 million people have died in the conflicts of the last 70 years, far more than in the two declared “World Wars.” Many societies have been torn apart by war and many hundreds of millions of lives ruined. Those grim realities have been generally invisible because international mass media pay little attention to the poor countries that have borne the terrible toll.

The claim that the UN has prevented and ended wars is ludicrous when even a cursory review can reveal the consistent impotence of the Security Council in the face of prolonged and widespread carnage. The cause of that failure is no mystery: the Council’s permanent members have been the primary beneficiaries of war; they provide almost all the world’s weaponry and reap enormous economic and political advantages from instigating proxy conflicts.

Another dishonest claim in the Introduction is that the past year has seen “significant progress” towards the interconnected goals of ending poverty, bringing climate change under control, and agreeing on “shared approaches to funding and implementing a new development agenda.” In fact, the UN’s endless talk on those issues has resulted in nothing but arid, hollow texts.

The authors of the Introduction are also inexplicably confused when it comes to telling about the “enormous strides” the UN has made in “building the long-term foundations of peace.” 

On the one hand they ascribe undeserved credit to the Organization for raising “millions out of extreme poverty” and empowering women, both national processes, with a marginal UN role.

On the other hand, they make only one passing reference to the UN’s undisputed and major success in advancing human rights and international law. 

The 70th anniversary is surely an occasion to celebrate that despite the many tyrannical regimes in its membership the Organization has created and codified more international law than in all previous history. It has been the primary designer, architect and advocate of a body of law that now extends from the abyssal depths of the sea to outer space and covers every individual on earth with the mantle of universal human rights and protections.

Strangely too, the report makes no mention at all of another major UN achievement, the creation of an integrated statistical framework that makes global problems visible. Without it the world would be incapable of policy and strategy in every vital area.

On contemporary problems, the Introduction is frank: “age-old problems persist,” and new ones are proliferating. “Inequalities are growing in all societies,” the “poorest of the poor” are being left farther behind, and there are shockingly violent crimes of violence against women and girls, especially as “a tool of war.” Climate change has “only begun to show the potential severity of its impacts.” Overall, problems have become more complex in an “increasingly fast-paced and interconnected world where opportunities “abound” but “risks are greater and more contagious.”

The description of the world situation in 2015 is vivid:

“During the past year, more people were displaced than at any time since the Second World War. Desperate migrants risked everything to flee from hunger, persecution and violence, only to meet with death, discrimination and greater desperation along the way. Conflict and crisis engulfed millions of people in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gaza, Libya, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Ukraine and Yemen. Millions faced the brutal tactics of violent extremists such as Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab and Da‘esh/Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while many foreign fighters found the message of such groups alluring enough to join their cause. Environmental degradation, pollution and resource depletion continued almost unabated around the globe. There was little progress on the long-stalled disarmament agenda. Countless people died of curable diseases, went to bed hungry, buried children who might have been saved with basic health care, and in many other ways suffered avoidable, unacceptable levels of deprivation, fear and hopelessness.”

The section on Disarmament notes both the quick UN action to neutralize Syria’s chemical weapons and the 19-year lassitude of the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD), the world’s only multilateral negotiating forum on arms issues.

Finally, the Report takes no note of the tireless and powerful role of civil society in international affairs. Without the largely volunteer-driven agendas of civil society organizations the UN's State-centred processes would lose an essential humanizing element; it would be impossible for the Organization to hold out the hope that the idealism in the Preamble to its Charter will eventually come to life in global governance. 

The authors of the Report could have made all those points easily by quoting from a statement made last March in the CD by the 100-year old Women’s International League for Peace and Freedomx. Some excerpts:

“For the last few years, my organization, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, has been permitted to deliver a statement to the Conference on Disarmament to mark International Women’s Day. For years before that, our statement was read out to the CD by the sitting president. This is the only time of year that any voice from civil society is allowed inside the CD chamber. And this may be the last time our voice is heard here.

“Dear colleagues, … let me explain to you what it is like being the only civil society organization that still pays attention to the CD. Last week, for the high-level segment, I had to make a detour on my way to the gallery, because security wouldn’t let me through – I would have been too close to the chamber in which about 20 minutes later a high level dignitary would be speaking.

“Even after any regular plenary session, I have to wait outside the Council Chamber for someone from the Secretariat to hand me the statements that you delivered, because I am not allowed into the room. This practice, by the way, was never an official decision. In 2004, it was decided that civil society was allowed on the floor, before and after the meeting. That changed without an official decision ever being put on the record.

“These are but a few of the indignities that civil society experiences at the CD. We do not experience them at other disarmament forums—not at First Committee, not at meetings of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, not at meetings of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

“So, you can imagine our delight when Ambassador Lomónaco tabled the draft decision to increase our access to and engagement with the CD. And I assume you can imagine our disappointment, to put it mildly, when you started discussing that draft decision. Aside from the sexist, degrading remark about “topless ladies throwing bottles of mayonnaise,” the level of disrespect to civil society and disconnection from the outside world demonstrated by the debate over this proposal was astounding.

“Many of you have expressed your appreciation for our work over and over again. And we do enjoy working with you towards our collective goals. But at the moment that it mattered, some of you put process over progress. Member states that pride themselves to be open, democratic societies said they needed more time, had some more questions, wanted some changes, and in the end could not agree ...

“We in WILPF have thus decided that it’s finally time to cease our engagement with this body. While the debate over the proposal to amend the CD’s engagement with civil society was important in terms of timing, it is not the key reason that we have come to this decision. 

"This is a body that has firmly established that it operates in a vacuum. That it is disconnected from the outside world. That it has lost perspective of the bigger picture of human suffering and global injustice. … We can no longer invest effort into such a body.”

Economic Development after 16 May

The parties with a realistic chance of assuming power after 16 May are agreed on the need for "economic reforms" to help India industrialize rapidly.

Both BJP and the Congress have declared their intention to ramp up industrial manufacturing, which they think is the only way to create the millions of new jobs the county needs.

They ignore what has happened in China, where such "development" has created the world’s most unequal society and the worst levels of air, water and soil pollution anywhere on the planet.

I was thinking of this on a recent trip to Bangalore to attend a wedding

The ceremonies were at a temple I had never heard of, and other guests who did know of it were foggy about how to get there: our cab driver had to ask for directions repeatedly as we traveled along narrow country roads and came eventually to a small flyblown town where the temple was located.

The temple itself was a pleasant surprise, a graceful complex of grassy squares, carved rock structures and statuary, a portal to another universe, serene and ancient.

A plaque said it was a thousand years old.

After the wedding we had lunch at an establishment near the temple. The food was excellent but served with a raw lack of style. Before and after eating we washed hands at a cracked sink with a wobbly faucet. The toilets were primitive.

It occurred to me on the hour ride back to Bangalore that the temple could easily be developed into a major tourist attraction. That would create thousands of new jobs at all skill levels and transform the economy of the surrounding countryside. From that thought, it was but a step to the proposition that in a land richly endowed with natural beauty and littered with the monuments of a millennial history, such a process could be the basis for rapid, sustained and sustainable development.

A national crash programme to create world-class tourist facilities would bump up GDP faster than any campaign to make India an international manufacturing hub.

It would not require imported capital and technology or create a super-rich class: tourism is the world's largest industry but it consists mainly of small and medium enterprises. The benefits of tourism-based growth would thus be widely distributed.

Instead of fouling the natural environment and causing the proliferation of every type of cancer and lung disease, it could improve the ecosystem and the urban habitat.

Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the least developed parts of India, have the richest potential for tourism development and could vault ahead.

What will it take to implement such a programme?

The first essential is to sell the concept to the people of India as equal in importance to the freedom struggle. We cannot transform the country without everyone pitching in enthusiastically.  

The next three essentials are imaginative planning, innovative problem solving and excellent quality control, all eminently feasible. Especially so if we get a government after 16 May that is capable of concerted strong action.

How can we actually begin?

By setting up a task force to outline an overall strategic plan of action, identifying what needs doing where. Other expert groups could then carry forward progressively more detailed planning, all the way down to the recommendation of standardized templates for the new facilities to be constructed, and check-lists for cleaning up our towns and cities.The aim should be to have at the end of that process a number of specific project proposals in the form of business plans for examination by investors. Everyone involved in the process should be given strict deadlines and failure to provide quality work when expected should lead to dismissal.

To ensure success, it will be critically important to:

1. Maintain overall government oversight but contract out most of the actual work, including quality control, to private businesses, domestic and foreign.

2. Minimize corruption by establishing a policy of total transparency, with all budgetary information and analyses freely available on an official Web site. It should have links to the web sites of all private contractors, who should be required to maintain similar open access to information. An email system to distribute whistle-blower complaints to the Press and multiple levels of government should make a serious dent in corruption.

3. Mobilize and sustain public support for the programme by providing a multimedia flow of information on what is happening around the country and inviting their views on how things could be improved. An e-news service should pay free-lancers for articles on problems and progress. State and central cabinet committees should report quarterly and annually on the overall process.

4. Arrange for public-private partnerships to identify and develop human resources necessary for smooth implementation of the plan. Those with technical skill sets such as electricians and plumbers should get nationally standardized training to enable them to work at short notice in any part of the country. There should also be a common standard for the esthetic quality of their work.

In addition to the action directly related to the development of tourism, the government should move simultaneously to:

1. Create a national Youth Internship Corps to enable college students to volunteer for work in their chosen fields and gain on-the-job training.
2. Establish a cadre of community-level social workers to care for people living on the streets, especially, children, women and the elderly without family support. They should have the necessary institutional back-up from medical and educational institutions to function effectively.
3. Give real estate developers tax breaks and land grants to build public shelters for the homeless and rental housing available only to those in the lowest income strata. National awards should be instituted to acknowledge good work. 
4. Encourage and support animal lovers throughout the country to cooperate in looking after strays. The support could be through financial grants when necessary and by building/improving facilities for animal care in every community. Students in veterinary colleges should be required to work with such community activists before they can graduate.
5. Work with entrepreneurs to make every post office a cyber café offering support for first-time computer users and students.
6. Promote modern watershed management throughout the country. An excellent model for this already exists in the Watershed Organisation Trust, a Pune-based NGO that works in several Indian states. WOTR uses mobile phones and tablet computers to collect and organize multimedia input into a database that is used to plan and implement appropriate land and water management. The success of its efforts was evident during the recent drought in Maharashtra when the areas where WOTR worked had no shortage of water.
7. Concentrate all energy development funding on off-grid solar energy. A model for action on this exists in Simpa Networks, a Bangalore-based company that finances renewable-energy kits for homes and recovers the cost by charging for the electricity used. The energy is free after the cost of the kit is repaid.

How can we fund all this?

The simplest way would be for the government to abolish all personal and corporate income taxes and announce an amnesty for all black money invested in interest-paying 10, 20 and 30-year Development Bonds. The bonds could be issued in series tied to the time-bound implementation of particular projects. (New taxes on immovable corporate property could make the abolition of income taxes revenue neutral.)

Foreign Policy Aspects

None of our efforts will work as planned unless the government addresses key aspects of our international and regional situation. It must: 

1. Focus public attention on the post-independence role of Britain in creating our most serious national security problems, ranging from communal violence to terrorism and armed insurrection. There is a great deal of evidence of this dating back to partition, but successive Indian governments have felt it necessary to pretend that Britain is not involved. That reflects the strength of British corporate and media proxies in India, and it has led to a situation in which Indians have no clear idea why their society is in a growing state of crisis. Clarifying what has been happening will build the public support necessary for the steps below.  
2. End the $60 billion trade in opium and heroin out of Afghanistan run by terrorist groups obedient to Britain’s SIS and Pakistan’s ISI. The only way to kill the trade is to change the prohibitionist drug conventions that reward drug traffickers with enormous profits. A high-level International Commission on Drug Policy declared in 2011 that the current prohibitionist approach had failed; more recently, Latin American countries at the presidential level have been pushing for change because current policies are having a devastating impact on their countries. With the UN General Assembly scheduled to undertake a comprehensive review of existing policies and practices in 2016, New Delhi should go into high gear in support of a new International Convention on Psychotropic Drugs. It should decriminalize all substance abuse and move policy towards therapeutic approaches. That would immediately knock out all profit from "illicit drugs" and pull the rug out from under the SIS-ISI-Taliban- Al Qaeda combine. 
3. Stabilize the Rupee. The value of the Indian currency has been subject to egregious manipulation through off-shore markets, mainly Singapore and Dubai. These manipulations have helped British corporations make windfall profits, especially in the energy sector. New Delhi must make clear that those who profit from such manipulation will pay an equal price in new taxes.
4. Enlist the support of all British corporations operating in India and Indian corporations with close ties to the British power elite (ESSAR, Reliance Industries, Cairn India and the Tata Group), to communicate a blunt message to London: unless it stops all subversive activity, there can be no normal economic relations. To spell out exactly what that means, the Law Ministry should frame a new law specifically invoking national security (and thus overriding all applicable international instruments), empowering the Indian government to confiscate and hold in escrow the profits of all British corporations doing business in India. 
5. Help all members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to undertake their own versions of our tourism-based development.

End Note 

What happens if 16 May results in a hung parliament?

I would suggest a unity government with the proposals above as a common operating platform.