{"id":145601,"date":"2019-10-21T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=145601"},"modified":"2019-10-18T10:33:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-18T09:33:13","slug":"uns-75th-anniversary-shadowed-by-right-wing-nationalism-widespread-authoritarianism-and-budgetary-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/10\/uns-75th-anniversary-shadowed-by-right-wing-nationalism-widespread-authoritarianism-and-budgetary-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"UN\u2019s 75th Anniversary Shadowed by Right-Wing Nationalism, Widespread Authoritarianism and Budgetary Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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17 Oct 2019 <\/em>\u2013 When the six much-ballyhooed high-level UN meetings concluded late September, there were mixed feelings about the final outcomes.<\/p>\n

And civil society organizations (CSOs), who were mostly disappointed with the results, are now gearing themselves for two upcoming key climate summit meetings: COP25 in Santiago, Chile in December and COP26 in Glasgow, UK in late 2020, along with the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Women\u2019s Conference scheduled to take place in September 2020 in New York. But perhaps the most politically-significant event in 2020 will be the 75th anniversary of the United Nations which will take place amidst continued threats against multilateral institutions, rising right-wing nationalism, growing authoritarianism and widespread disinformation.<\/p>\n

The anniversary will also take place in the shadow of one of the worst financial crises facing the world body \u2013 as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that \u201cthe situation remains dire. And without immediate action, I can no longer guarantee the smooth functioning of the Organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge you to help put the United Nations on a solid financial footing,\u201d he pleaded last month before the 134 members of the Group of 77 developing countries, plus China.<\/p>\n

Sesheeni Joud Selvaratnam, Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2030 lead at ActionAid, told IPS the United Nations is marking its 75th anniversary next year against a backdrop of rising global hunger, the climate crisis and an unravelling of progress towards social justice and equality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not too late to get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track, but the 2020 global summits must see political will and leadership that translates into real action on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cStates turning up and making commitments at the High-Level Political Forum and UN General Assembly isn\u2019t enough. Governments must be held accountable to their citizens on implementing and delivering on their promises by 2030, and ensuring the most vulnerable are not left behind,\u201d said Selvaratnam.<\/p>\n

Jens Martens, executive director of Global Policy Forum (New York\/Bonn), told IPS the summits have put the UN back at the centre of the global debates on future justice.<\/p>\n

At least, many Heads of State and Government have recognized the climate emergency and the importance of sustainable development by participating in the summits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have launched countless new initiatives to implement the SDGs. This is of course better than the destructive policies of Trump, Brazil\u2019s Bolsonaro & Co,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

But, being present at the summits, making nice speeches, dating Greta Thunberg, and expressing understanding for the concerns of young people is not enough, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as governments do not change fundamentally the framework conditions of sustainable development, this will remain symbolic policy and sometimes pure actionism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The summits were once again summits of announced actions. But the world does not need more hypocritical promises and announcements, he pointed out.<\/p>\n

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UNGA – Patrick Gruban\/Flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIt needs political decisions that make fiscal policies fairer, bring global economic and monetary policy into line with SDGs and human rights, and rapidly accelerate the exit from the fossil fuel economy\u201d, said Martens, who has coordinated the international Civil Society Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.<\/p>\n

In an oped piece for IPS last week, Kul Gautam, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General said: Everybody says UN needs reforms. But the kind of reforms that are proposed by Member States are often timid and inadequate, and in the case of those proposed by some, e.g. the Trump administration, they are actually harmful and contrary to the multilateral ethos of the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Such proposals are unlikely to command broad-based support, he warned.<\/p>\n

It is time for the Secretary-General himself to take the initiative and commission a high-level panel to propose a more predictable and sustainable funding of the UN, said Gautam.<\/p>\n

The 75th anniversary of the UN in 2020 is a perfect occasion for the S-G to present a bold proposal for a more sustainable funding mechanism for the UN in keeping with the ambitious Sustainable Development Agenda for 2030 that the UN has championed so boldly, he declared.<\/p>\n

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid, told IPS 2019 has seen an unprecedented uprising of ordinary citizens around the world, inspired by young people, taking to the streets to demand action on the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have exposed the failure of the richest polluting countries at the UN climate action summit to respond with the ambition needed to address the scale of the climate emergency.<\/p>\n

\u201cAhead of the climate summit in Santiago this December, we\u2019re demanding meaningful financial support to address the injustice of climate change. Important proposals to support countries dealing with climate-induced \u2018loss and damage\u2019 are on the table\u201d, she added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s critical that the world does not turn its back on the vulnerable countries left to pick up the pieces after climate disasters, Anderson declared.<\/p>\n

The September summits covered several issues on the UN agenda, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Climate Action, Universal Health Care, Financing for Development (FfD), Nuclear Disarmament and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).<\/p>\n

Still, what is particularly annoying, Martens told IPS, is that the UN provided an exposed stage at the summits for billionaire Bill Gates and numerous representatives of transnational corporations.<\/p>\n

The last few decades have shown that the market-based solutions these corporate actors have propagated have not solved the global crises, but rather aggravated them, he noted.<\/p>\n

Martens said the more than 300 representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) which met parallel to the SDG Summit at the People\u2019s Assembly have rightly stated in their declaration: \u201cWe are saddened by the persisting lack of political will and leadership to even begin to address these issues. This is not good enough. This is failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesse Griffiths, Head of Programme, Development Strategy and Finance Overseas Development Institute, told IPS \u201cI did a blog for our website on the Dialogue \u2013 available here<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main concern would be that while it was important that the level of attention to the issue was raised \u2013 this was a high-level event with heads of state involved \u2013 the event itself had been structured so that no concrete outcomes could be made.<\/p>\n

This has been a problem of the FfD process itself \u2013 the FfD Forums that are held every year could in theory agree what needs to be done to put us on track to finance the SDGs, \u201cbut in practice they merely take stock of where we are, and have so far produced no real concrete outcomes\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fear this state of paralysis will continue until we have another high-level summit to follow up from Addis Ababa in 2015,\u201d said Griffiths.<\/p>\n

According to Guterres, the summit did produce several positive initiatives. \u201cLet me be specific about just a few\u201d, he told at the conclusion of the meeting.<\/p>\n

He said 77 countries \u2013 many in the industrialized world \u2013 had committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And they were joined by 10 regions and more than 100 cities \u2013 including several of the world\u2019s largest.<\/p>\n

He also pointed out that 70 countries announced they will boost their National Determined Contributions by 2020, while well over 100 leaders in the private sector committed to accelerating their move into the green economy.<\/p>\n

More than 2,000 cities committed to putting climate risk at the centre of decision-making, creating 1,000 bankable, climate-smart urban projects.<\/p>\n

UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric provided the final figures: a total of 195 speakers participated, including the Holy See, the State of Palestine and the European Union. Uzbekistan was the only country that did not speak.<\/p>\n

Among the speakers \u2014 82 Heads of State and 43 [Heads of Government].<\/p>\n

There were 16 women speakers, which was 8.2 per cent only of all the speakers, and that is slightly lower than last year, when there were 19 women speakers or about 9.8 per cent.<\/p>\n

To put matters into perspective, on the first day of the General Debate, he said, there were two female Heads of State and one Head of Government, compared to 29 male Heads of State and five male Heads of Government.<\/p>\n

The longest speech at the General Debate was 50 minutes [from Pakistan] and the shortest speech from the President of Rwanda, Mr. [Paul] Kagame.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also had the Climate Action Summit and six other major meetings at the UN during the time of the General Debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, from 23 through 30 September, 1,674 bilateral meetings were held at the UN. And, as of 30 September, 566 other meetings, including those of regional groups [and] UN system entities, were held during the high level debate.<\/p>\n

And, for our part, said Dujarric, \u201cwe issued 137 readouts from the Secretary General\u2019s bilateral meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Thalif Deen, Director, Senior Editor, UN Bureau, <\/em>Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, has been covering the United Nations since the late 1970s. As the former UN Bureau Chief for <\/em>Inter Press Service, he was cited twice for excellence in U.N. reporting at the annual awards presentation of the U.N. Correspondents’ Association (UNCA). In November 2012, he was on the <\/em>IPS team which won the prestigious gold medal for reporting on the global environment– and in 2013 he shared the gold, this time with the UN Bureau Chief of <\/em>Reuters news agency, for his reporting on the humanitarian and development work of the United Nations. A former information officer at the U.N. Secretariat, he served twice as a member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions. His track record includes a stint as deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News and senior editorial writer on the Hong Kong Standard. A former military editor Middle East\/Africa at Jane\u2019s Information Group, a columnist for the Sri Lanka Sunday Times and a longtime U.N. correspondent for Asiaweek, Hong Kong and Jane’s Defence Weekly, London, he is a Fulbright scholar with a Master\u2019s Degree in journalism from Columbia University, New York. He<\/em> can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Oct 2019 \u2013 Perhaps the most politically-significant event in 2020 will be the 75th anniversary of the United Nations amidst continued threats against multilateral institutions, rising right-wing nationalism, growing authoritarianism and widespread disinformation–in the shadow of one of UN\u2019s worst financial crises. SG Guterres warned: \u201cThe situation remains dire; without immediate action, I can no longer guarantee the smooth functioning of the Organization.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":145602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-145601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}