At 65, UN still pushing for economic social development
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A look at the UN role in fostering economic and social development on its 65th anniversary finds it is not only widespread but wide ranging.
The UN Charter, 65 years old on Sunday, calls for the organization to "promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development."
The world body has affected the lives and well-being of millions of people as it carries out that mandate throughout the world.
Economic and Social Affairs and Development Operations make up half of the United Nations' four principal sectors of work even though the other two sectors, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Affairs, are more familiar to most people.
While the entire UN family works for economic and social development, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) takes the lead, even though it is not heard of as much as the other principal entities, such as the General Assembly, Security Council, the Secretariat and even the International Court of Justice.
It is generally agreed that development and climate change are the two biggest challenges the United Nations faces.
Debate on economic and social issues underscore the common interest rich and poor countries have in solving problems that go beyond their borders.Those problems include refugee populations, organized crime, drug trafficking and AIDS. They are seen as global issues requiring coordinated, regional action.
Poverty and unemployment on one side of a border can be felt on the other through immigration, social disruption and conflict.
At the same time, because of globalization, financial instability in one country frequently is reflected in its neighbors and through its ties with other nations.
In 2009, the World Economic and Social Survey (WESS) said the separation in practice of climate change and development agendas distorted the global debate on the two biggest policy challenges.
An integrated approach was sought and the WESS proposed that mitigation and adaptation could move effectively only if part of a consistent development strategy plan was built around a massive investment-led transformation along low-emissions, high-growth paths.
In June, WESS said the systemic weakness unmasked during the current "great recession," as described in some quarters, proposed reforms to eliminate the deficiencies and gaps in global governance.
"The proposed reforms were aimed at ensuring consistency among national development efforts and global mechanisms in aid, trade and finance to pave the way towards more balanced and sustainable development," WESS said.
The report said the pattern of uneven development brought about by globalization was sustainable "neither economically nor environmentally, nor was it feasible politically."
"The global financial crisis exposed serious weaknesses not only in the world economy but also in global economic governance," said the WESS.
"Because of the complexity and interconnectedness of today's global challenges, a new balance must be found between international rules-setting and the provisioning of global public goods, on the one hand, and the creation of the space needed by nations to determine their own destiny, on the other," the WESS said.
"This will require a new kind of thinking and the striking of a new balance as well between decision-making processes at the national level and those at the global level," it said.
And this presents a challenge to the United Nations.
Jomo Kwame Sundaram, the UN assistant secretary-general at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, spoke of it earlier this week during an interview with Xinhua.
"When it comes to economic issues, when there are disputes among member states, usually they don't come to the UN," he said. "Usually they would go to Washington, to the IMF (International Monetary Fund), to the World Bank and so on. The UN is rarely brought into this, although the UN should be playing such a role."
Sundaram said it was important for "the big developing countries ... to walk on two legs: participate in the G20 and so on, but recognize that this is an ad hoc group which is not inclusive, which is not a multilateral arrangement and to always insure that those processes are referred back to the UN."
The United Nations has to be careful, he said, "to insure that others do not bypass the UN on the grounds that the UN does not have the capacity. Of course they might bypass it because it is not politically convenient, but that's something you cannot avoid. But you cannot say that it has no capacity."
One of the problems the United Nations has had is the failure of the UN to reform itself to find "a smaller, tighter group to discuss economic and social and developmental matters."
It "needs to be addressed urgently if the UN is going to be effective as a voice for developing countries, as a voice for the international community," Sundaram said.
The financial crisis has spawned rethinking among developing countries.
"There is now perhaps more openness to allowing developing countries to have much more control over their own fates and to make their own policies as is appropriate for their own conditions, " Sundaram said. "So this may come out of this crisis, it's not clear but if developing countries work hard and persuade the developed countries we may be able to make some progress."
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