UN Summit (Day 1)

We begin our coverage of the UN Summit of 2005 (also covered in Spanish by El Universal at: http://estadis.eluniversal.com.mx/graficos/coberturas_est/esp835.html).

The summit will begin formally tomorrow (September 15) but today was an important day because there had to be an agreement on the document that would serve as a base for the talks of the following days and also as the roadmap for UN reform.

The consensus at the end though was that of great dissapointment at the document. An agreement was not reached on all aspects that many countries were aiming for. This "document lite" (http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota=36914&tabla=internacional), was however not without victories. The Toronto Star gives special mention to a few victories that were sponsored by Canada.

So lets make a short summary of those positive aspects of the document:

1. The UN will act quickly to protect people vulnerable to violations of their human rights. This was proposed to avoid genocide in the future like those that happened in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The document states that a government that is not protecting its citizens or acting directly agains their human rights will be promplty warned. If the warning is not paid attention to, the UN will the act militarily to protect these people.


2. The UN's Human Rights Comission will have its resources doubled. This will permit the continuation of the outstanding work being done to protect Human Rights around the world.

And now we move to those topics that didn't get to make it or that were "diluted" in the document.

1. There was no agreement to keep countries that were known (or suspected) for their violation of human rights out of the Human Rights Council.


2. There was no agreement on a definition for the word "terrorism". Therefore, there was no agreement of how the UN should help protect the world from terrorism. The point of main disagreement is that some countries think it is ok for civilians to be killed when they are killed in a fight against an occupying force.
   
3. There were no agreements for nuclear disarmament.


4. There was also no agreement on how to achieve the Millenium Development Goals. The dissapointment in this, is that it wasn't some "renegade" country that opposed this plan of action but the US. The US continues to shy away from the commitment to give 0.7% of their GDP to the reduction of poverty and debt in the third world.

And that's how the UN Summit begins. I hope that in the following three days more obstacles are crossed so that there can be agreements or improvements on those last four issues. It will be difficult since the Summit should also cover the proposals for reform at the UN, the Secretariat and the Security Council. I would hope, though, that the emphasis on the Summit continues to be on the Millenium Development Goals and perhaps on the Human Rights and Security Council. I believe these three things are a key part of what the next 60 years of the UN will be. Those three things give the organization credibility in their goal to look for peace and the respect of life. There is nothing more important or fundamental that I can not think of.