Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - What are the ringing sucesses of the United Nations.

smooth · 11-14-2004, 11:33 PM

Well Mr. Mephisto, I guess I sidetracked for a second there, but I don't really have much to add after your postings.

Other than to inform you that you had me off the fence until you threw the IMF, WTO, and World Bank into the mix!

Seriously though, I thought those were Brenton Woods organizations instituted after WW2. What is their relation to the UN in terms of their basis for your including them as a function of that international umbrella institution?

Hey look, I found something of an answer:

Quote:

Relations between the Global Economic Institutions and the United Nations

The Monterrey Consensus had a section on "Addressing systemic issues", which was aimed at enhancing the contribution of monetary, financial and trade policy to development. The section identified a variety of problems with the policy-making process. There is a lack of coherence between the global institutions. This can be answered by strengthening the central policy-making role of the United Nations General Assembly and the co-ordinating role of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). For the global economic institutions to make a greater contribution to development they must give more attention to development issues and enhance the participation of developing countries in their decision-making. However, it was recognised that action at the global level cannot be sufficient. There has to be greater co-ordination in each capital city between the various ministries and there must be assistance to developing countries to build their capacity to participate effectively in multilateral forums.

Some NGOs want to address systemic problems through legal enhancement of ECOSOC, but this is not a fruitful approach. It is often assumed that the Fund and the Bank are outside the UN system, when this is not true. They are both "specialised agencies" as defined in the UN Charter, Article 57. In 1947, each approved an agreement to co-operate with the Economic and Social Council and other UN bodies, as provided for in Article 63. There is widespread frustration within the development community because the BWIs have appeared to impose their own agenda on other UN programmes and agencies rather than being subject to review by ECOSOC. Within the current legal regime, calls for ECOSOC to assert direct control over any of the agencies are pointless. Under Article 63, ECOSOC "may co-ordinate the activities of the specialized agencies through consultation with and recommendations to such agencies", but it has no supervisory authority. In practice, although they are legally autonomous, most of the agencies share bureaucratic procedures, co-ordinate programmes and follow the political agenda of the UN. The Fund and the Bank are less integrated in the UN system, because they are financially independent. No politically-feasible reform of the UN system could establish legal authority or financial control by ECOSOC over WHO or UNESCO, let alone the BWIs. This would require amendment of the UN Charter and the constitution of each of the agencies.

Progress may be made by promoting political, rather than legal, integration and since the early 1990s this has been occurring. First, the Bank moved from seeing development as promotion of growth in a country's GDP, to achieving reduction in the number of people living in poverty. In addition to the long-established funding of the work of other UN agencies, the Bank is now engaged in intensive institutional collaboration with the UN through UNAIDS, the Global Environment Facility, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) and the Global Health Fund. The Fund has realised maintenance of the international financial system involves much more than imposing "sound" economic policy on developing countries. Its acceptance of "social safety nets" was necessary to prevent "IMF riots". Following the financial crises of the late 1990s, the Fund moved into increasing transparency in markets, reducing corruption and promoting stronger administrative and legal systems for financial regulation. None of this directly involved other UN bodies, but it did widen the Fund's remit from a narrow focus on economic policy to consideration of social policy and good governance. Collaboration of the Fund with the Bank at the country level has had to increase, because the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), which provide the framework for its lending to the poorer developing countries, have to be prepared in conjunction with the Bank. One indicator of their engagement in politics is that, starting in 1998, there has been a special meeting of ECOSOC to receive reports from the Spring Meetings. Usually, this has occurred the day after the Spring Meetings close and the Managing Director of the Fund, the President of the Bank, and the ministers chairing the two committees have attended. The heads of the institutions also have a dialogue with ECOSOC at its regular summer session.

The texts of the 1947 agreements between the BWIs and the UN suggest a symmetrical relationship. They provide for exchange of information and representation in each other's meetings. These provisions are not fully implemented, but they should be activated vigorously. The UN Secretary-General and the President of ECOSOC should attend both the Spring and the Fall Meetings every year. Not only the Spring Meetings, but also the Fall Meetings, should report to ECOSOC. At the moment, this is not easy to do because ECOSOC does not normally meet in September and the UN is dominated by heads of government and foreign ministers participating in the General Debate of the General Assembly. However, this situation should be seen as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. If the UN is serious about enhancing its role, the General Assembly could halt work for two days and a high-level special meeting of ECOSOC could discuss the work of the Fund and the Bank.

The 2002 meeting with ECOSOC was held the day after the Spring Meetings and was attended by Trevor Manuel, Chair of the Development Committee; Eduardo Aninat, Deputy Managing Director of the IMF; Shengman Zhang, Managing Director of the World Bank; and Nacer Benjeloun-Touimi, a Senior Adviser at the WTO. After the opening speeches, it broke up into informal discussions. While it did serve to maintain the momentum from Monterrey and strengthen UN-BWI relations, nothing new was added to the global debate on development. One panel requested that in future years the issues for discussion should be more specific. It was also noted, indirectly, that there was a mismatch between the engagement of civil society at Monterrey and their absence from policy-making in the economic institutions. The level of participation and the outcome did not begin to match the call from Monterrey for this meeting to "address issues of coherence, coordination and cooperation".

The real anomaly in the global system is the position of the WTO. It is not a UN specialised agency and it does not operate as a normal diplomatic institution. It does not have a coherent policy-making process. The secretariat is politically weak and understaffed. The organisation lacks sufficient resources to run its own technical assistance programme adequately. There are no provisions for participation by NGOs. It is more surprising that the WTO's Trade Negotiating Committee was unable in April 2002 to agree rules for participation by staff from the Fund, the Bank and UNCTAD, as observers in the Doha Round. The WTO is so secretive and opaque that even its members call for "internal transparency", so that delegates of small countries can know what is happening in their name. Although it is a one-country-one-vote institution, its decision-making to date has been dominated by negotiations between the United States and the European Union. Developing countries have only had any impact at the Ministerial Conferences. At its simplest, the countries without any mission in Geneva cannot hope to exercise any influence on the WTO committees and those with small missions have to select their priorities carefully. All this is slowly changing and the Doha Development Agenda will not be completed unless further substantial change occurs, to make the WTO a more efficient and more legitimate organisation. One major requirement is that it must establish arrangements for other intergovernmental organisations to have observer status, so that it can co-operate with them. It is ridiculous that US opposition to relations with the Arab League prevents the WTO working with the Fund and the Bank. At least the WTO was represented at the ECOSOC meeting and is now committed to attending every year. This is but the first step towards the Monterrey goal of systemic integration. The end result must be the WTO becoming a full UN specialised agency.

-- http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/p.willet...S/APR-2002.HTM