Global Policy Forum

By Jerome Hule

New York - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said it would be wrong for donor nations to divert resources meant for development in one region to finance emergency relief in another. In an interview in the current issue of "Choices", a publication of the UNDP, he underscored the fact that while emergency operations were necessary to save people in urgent need, the essential task of development involving the alleviation of poverty cannot be ignored. "In my discussions, including during the General Assembly, all the leaders and donor countries I spoke to assured me that they are not going to do that because they understand the essential task that we are engaged in is to alleviate poverty and foster development," he said

Some European countries had, in the wake of the Kosovo war, decided to cut their development assistance budget to finance humanitarian assistance to the displaced people of Kosovo. The UNDP has expressed concern that a situation like that would amount to diverting development assistance to a region like Africa. Annan also said that under current reforms at the UN, efforts would be made to develop its advocacy capacity to reach and engage governments and people to give liberally to help in the fight against poverty, for education, health and for other basic needs. "I believe we should also be able to advocate and push donor countries to do much more on development of the assistance issue," he added.

While current efforts is focussed on the debts of poor countries, Annan said, there is also need for donor countries to increase Official Development Assistance to assist developing countries to built basic institutions and thus lay the foundation for future development. In his discussion on the issues that would form the core of UN agenda in the next millennium, he added that the promotion of human security would be one of the major issues the UN will be dealing with. Human security, he explained, touched on the respect for individual rights and personal dignity and the ability of the individual to satisfy his basic necessities like health, education and long life. "Human security also touches on the question of peace, which is more than the absence of war, and on our ability to end conflicts because, in today's world, it is civilians who suffer from such conflicts," he said.

The challenge for the UN in this regard is to focus on the security of the individual within the state and not on the security of the state per se. "Nothing in the UN charter precludes a recognition that there are rights beyond borders," he said. "In short, the problem is not the deficiencies of the charter but our difficulties in applying its principles to a new era; an era when strictly traditional notions of sovereignty can no longer do justice to the aspirations of people everywhere to attain their fundamental freedoms."