"We have our responsibility to try to make good recommendations. That is why the Second Committee is taking major decisions and has a direct impact in achieving the MDGs."
— Marco Balarezo
Permanent Representative of Peru
Chairman of the Second Committee
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Natural disasters devastate many parts of the world, whether they were high-intensity hurricanes battering the Pacific islands or gigantic ocean waves killing thousands in its wake. From strengthening coordination of humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, including special economic aid to individual countries or regions, to correcting global trade imbalances and promoting information technology for development, the Second Committee worked hard on these issues during the fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly.
With 2005 marking the start of the ten-year countdown to 2015, the target date for the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aim, among others, at halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, the Committee worked towards aligning its objectives with the framework of the MDGs.
“We are in a transition”, Committee Chairman Marco Balarezo of Peru told the UN Chronicle. “Before the sixtieth General Assembly, the Committee will review the Millennium Declaration and Goals during the 2005 summit”. He said it was very important for the Second Committee to take decisions that would help achieve the MDGs. The Assembly recently approved a multistage work plan for 2005 that will culminate in a high-level review of worldwide progress towards attaining these Goals just ahead of the commemoration of its sixtieth anniversary in September.
In the tradition of consensus within the Committee, 40 resolutions were adopted without a vote, while 2 were put to a vote.
By a draft on the external debt crisis and development, adopted without a vote, the Assembly stressed that debt relief could play a key role in liberating resources for poverty eradication, economic growth and sustainable development.
In the debate, Franklin Esipila of Kenya said that achieving official development assistance (ODA) at 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product was still below target in the developed world. ODA or foreign aid consists of loans, grants, technical assistance and other forms of cooperation extended by developed countries to developing ones. A significant proportion of ODA is aimed at promoting sustainable development in poorer countries, particularly through natural resource conservation, environmental protection and population programmes. Many delegations pointed out that writing off the escalating external debt burden of the world’s poorest countries must become a top priority in helping them to restore economic growth, fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic and meet the MDGs.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Africa’s economic growth levels must double to 7 per cent annually over the next decade in order to halve poverty by the year 2015. But continued debt servicing has made it impossible for Africa’s heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) to increase savings and investments to promote economic growth. Eight years after launching the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative, these nations are still far from reaching sustainable debt levels.
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Debt servicing at any level is incompatible with attaining the MDGs in many African countries, according to “Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?”, a report released by UNCTAD. Between 1970 and 2002, Africa received some $540 billion in loans, but despite paying close to $550 billion in principal and interest, it still has a debt stock of $295 billion at the end of 2002, the report notes. The figures are even more disconcerting for sub-Saharan Africa, which received $294 billion in disbursements, paid out $268 billion in debt service, and yet remains straddled with a debt stock of some $210 billion. The report concludes that this results in a reverse transfer of resources from the world’s poorest continent. This is a “hot” issue, Committee Vice-Chairman Majdi Ramadan of Lebanon told the Chronicle. “Lebanon has a huge national debt and this is a huge burden on our possibility to set and implement many economic and foreign policy choices.”
International financial institutions also drew attention to the intractable debt crisis. Reinhard Munzberg, Special Representative of the International Monetary Fund to the United Nations, said that the HIPC Initiative had recently been extended for two more years, encouraging eligible countries to take the necessary actions to benefit from it. Welcoming this extension, he told the Committee that a forward-looking debt sustainability framework was vital in helping low-income countries to manage their borrowing and avoid amassing unsustainable debt.
Martin Andjaba of Namibia said that the developing countries themselves must take ownership of their development programmes and make external assistance supplementary to national efforts. In the case of Africa, it was being elaborated through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. The strategic framework of NEPAD arises from a mandate given to the five initiating heads of State (Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa) by the African Union to develop an integrated socio-economic development framework for the region. Namibia was committed to investing in its people and had allocated 25 per cent of its budget to education and 15 per cent to health, Ambassador Andjaba said.
By another consensus resolution concerning the triennial comprehensive policy review of operational activities for development of the United Nations system, the Assembly called on donor countries to substantially increase their contribution to the regular budget of the UN system. It also urged all development organizations to intensify inter-agency information-sharing. “This resolution will review the operational activities of the funds and programmes of the United Nations at the country level and at Headquarters”, Chairman Balarezo said. “It is very important to strengthen the coordinating system at the country level and be more coherent about those functions as they directly impact the Millennium Development Goals.”
 | | © WHO photo/P. Virot |
Eliminating agricultural export subsidies and reducing production subsidies was another issue that was heavily debated in the Second Committee. While the recent World Trade Organization (WTO) framework agreement to balance global economic and trade disparities was encouraging, the upcoming Doha Round of trade negotiations could fail if WTO members were inflexible, particularly on the sticky issue of agriculture, delegates told the Committee. More than 10 million persons in Central and Western Africa depend directly on cotton production, a major source of foreign exchange and government revenue for countries such as Burkina Faso, Mali and Benin. According to the World Bank, the region is among the lowest-cost producers of cotton. Yet despite this advantage, it is losing world markets and its cotton farmers are suffering rising poverty as a direct result of farm subsidies by the industrialized nations.
In 2004, the resolution, “International trade and development”, unlike the previous year, did not enjoy full consensus, receiving 166 votes to 2 (Palau, United States), with 6 abstentions (Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea). By its terms, the Assembly would stress the importance of an open, transparent functioning of the multilateral trading that would allow effective participation of members on trade negotiations. Lucy Tamlyn of the United States, in her explanation of vote, said that “in case after case, one group of nations or another has sought to use these negotiations to solicit a General Assembly endorsement of a particular position, even while knowing other nations were opposed”, and for that reason her country did not support the resolution.
Impetus on “South-South” trade cooperation, that is, promoting trade among developing countries, was also placed before the Committee. The basic premise of this cooperation is that developing countries exchange their commodities and manufactured goods, which ensures greater development and enhances trade. It also gets a better price for their goods without the involvement of any industrialized nation. Paul Yaw Essel of Ghana told the Chronicle that even though South-South cooperation improved global trade perspectives, it was limiting, as “it draws the constraint that a certain number of countries produce more or less the same kind of commodities”. However, he added, technological advances made by China, India and Brazil could transform these roadblocks and be the engine to pull global trade cooperation ahead. South-South cooperation has even transcended to sub-regional dimension like NEPAD, Mr. Essel noted, which has helped countries come together and create a bigger market and take “advantage of a real economy of scale”. However, conflicts in parts of West Africa have constrained global trade efforts, and therefore “we certainly need peace, stability and good governance so that we can come together and eliminate suspicions and rivalries among us”, he said.
On the conflict front, Paul Collier, Director for the Centre for the Study of African Economies and Professor of Economics at Oxford University, said in his keynote address that on average two civil wars broke out each year, making it a $100-billion annual problem. The economic growth rate of nations in civil conflict plummeted by 2 to 2.5 per cent, creating economic nightmares for countries affected by the conflict. “By contrast, the economic gain of prevention would be equivalent to triple the global budget to fight HIV/AIDS”, he said.
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A resolution on the role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence was also adopted without a vote. It entails the need to address global asymmetries, concentration of technical innovation in industrialized countries, and other issues, such as increasing the flow of foreign direct investment and enhancing the participation of developing countries in world trading and financial systems.
Amartya Sen, Lamont University Professor at Harvard University and 1998 Nobel Laureate in Economics, during his keynote address on “Forging Coherence to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals in the Context of Globalization” said that while economic globalization had brought prosperity to many, the challenge ahead was to ensure that the poor received fair and acceptable gains, including modern technologies, cost-effective drugs to treat epidemics, better market access and a greater say in international decision-making. Demolishing the market economy and turning it inward, which some anti-globalization forces favoured, was not the solution. Rather, strong public policy reform to improve and expand basic education, land rights and usage, and micro-credit and health-care services would more effectively correct imbalances.
At the Committee debate, UN officials highlighted efforts to tackle natural disasters, desertification, climate change and other developmental hazards, emphasizing the need to increase public and private support for sustainable development goals. The Committee adopted two resolutions without a vote: “Natural disasters and vulnerability” and “International strategy for disaster reduction”. Jan Egeland, UN Emerg-ency Relief Coordinator, said that the number of persons struck by natural disasters had more than doubled over the last decade, and economic losses had more than tripled. Introducing a report on natural disasters and the El Niño phenomenon, he urged Governments to contribute to a new early-warning promotional platform for natural disasters set up in Bonn, Germany under the auspices of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. Regional outreach programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean had supported national and regional strategies for disaster reduction, as well as partnerships to raise public awareness.
Also before the Committee was the Secretary-General’s report on implementation of the International Strategy, which notes that 700 natural disasters had occurred in 2003, killing 75,000 persons, affecting 250 million and resulting in $65 billion in economic loss. Poverty, environmental degradation and lack of preparedness played a major role in turning natural hazards into disasters. However, inexpensive and simple measures, with proper resource allocation and strong institutional structures, were available to reduce the impact of disasters.
Focusing on the developmental effects of climate change, Joke Waller-Hunter, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, noted the increasing economic costs of dealing with the adverse impact of global warming. The good news, he said, was that the Russian Federation had formally ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at curbing global greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, it had triggered a ninety-day countdown to bring the international climate treaty into force. The UN protocol, a legally binding treaty in effect from 16 February 2005, will have thirty supporting industrialized countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions to nearly 5 per cent below 1990 levels. They will have until 2012 to achieve this target.
Though consensus is the norm in the Second Committee, the resolution entitled “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources” was adopted by a vote of 156 to 5 (Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United States), with 11 abstentions. The representative of Israel said that the text was “one-sided, misleading and unproductive”, adding that it was “tenuously connected to the work of the Second Committee and was an attempt to shift focus away from its priorities and the overall reform efforts of the Assembly”.
In his concluding remarks, Chairman Balarezo said that he was satisfied with the fifty-ninth session, especially the interactive debates that had taken shape among Committee members and high-level officials from the UN Secretariat who had generated important recommendations. “We have our responsibility to try to make good recommendations. That is why the Second Committee is taking major decisions and has a direct impact in achieving the MDGs.”
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