Nitin Desai: Some bells have rung

In the old days, the beginning and end of a teaching period in a college were often marked by the ringing of a bell. There was a sprawling college in South India where there were several such bells, all supposed to be rung at the same moment by an army of janitors.

Malcolm Muggeridge, who taught at this college, was late one day for a lecture. He rushed into the Common Room, woke up an old professor, and asked breathlessly, "Has the bell rung". The old professor replied gently, "Some bells have rung, some have not," and went back to sleep.

So it is with the UN reform agenda set by the Secretary General and several committees of the worthy and the eminent. The great summit has come and gone. Some reform bells have rung out loudly, some faintly and some not at all.

The main changes that were expected to be rung are well-known""a Security Council with a broader membership, a more credible UN human rights process, a strengthened mandate to prevent genocide and similar crimes, an agreement to define terrorism and work together against it, action on non-proliferation and disarmament, a new peace-building Commission for better oversight over post-conflict peace building operations, a global commitment to support the anti-poverty programme encompassed in the Millennium Development Goals, a renewed emphasis on environmental sustainability, etc.

In India the focus was almost exclusively on Security Council expansion, which has not happened despite the sustained campaign launched by the G-4""India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan. The belief is that the failure to agree on a common approach with the African Union put an end to that hope.

We in India must remember that other than the G-4, most UN members have no real interest in Security Council expansion and quite a few also-rans for permanent membership are against it.

Hence the failure to convince the African Union may well have rescued the G-4 from an even more decisive failure if, as is possible, their resolution had failed to get the requisite two-thirds majority. Now the G-4 nose is bloodied but they have not been knocked out. They can get up and fight when the bell rings again.

The text that has now been agreed does include a reference to a new Human Rights Council but without spelling out any detail about how it would be constituted and what its mandate would be. It recognises a global obligation to intervene when there is a threat of genocide or ethnic cleansing but with a string of qualifications that virtually guts the commitment.

This weak outcome reflects the fear of many developing countries that the power of monitoring and intervention would be used largely against them by bodies like the Security Council, in which they have limited influence.

On terrorism there is a commitment to negotiate a global convention, which India in particular has strongly advocated. The main bottleneck has been the lack of an agreement on a definition of terrorism. This discussion actually misses the point. A terrorist act is inherently illegal. The real issue is when pre-emptive action is justified in order to prevent it. There is in fact a certain parallelism in the pre-emptive rights against individuals, contained, for instance, in the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), and the possibility of pre-emptive action at a global level.

What are the standards of imminence of threat, of intention and ability on the part of the supposed terrorist individual or state? Who has the authority to judge the available evidence and mandate pre-emptive action?

When it comes to disarmament and non-proliferation, the agreed text is nearly silent. This is a bell that has not been rung. Perhaps the most substantial achievement on the peace and security agenda is the agreement to establish a new Peace-building Commission with a truly innovative structure of membership. It is possible that this new Commission may lead to a de facto reform of how peace and security policy is handled at the UN.

The development and environment agenda certainly receives a lot of space in the agreed draft. Some 50 or so paragraphs repeat many of the commitments that have already been made. An important new development is the agreement to hold a biennial development co-operation forum at the UN, within the framework of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

This forum will help to hold countries accountable for reaching the targets of assistance and debt relief that they have announced at the G-8 Gleneagles Summit and elsewhere. Many NGOs are disappointed because they were expecting more. But we must not underestimate the value of the profound change we have seen in European aid and debt policies.

Quite apart from the clear commitment on a timetable for the 0.7 per cent aid goal, we have at least two major initiatives launched by European states""the International Finance Facility, which will allow a front-loading of aid delivery, and the proposal to mobilise resources through a levy on international air travel.

Europe's renewed commitment to development co-operation reflects several political impulses. First, it is an influence-multiplier for Europe, which otherwise is getting marginalised in global politics. The Scandinavians had understood this much earlier and now many others in Europe have seen the light.

Second, even the right-wing in the EU has sometimes argued for aid on the argument that it will keep potential immigrants in their home countries.

Finally, Europe is truly committed to a strong human rights agenda, largely on the basis of its own experience of the long European peace. They know that the human rights agenda cannot be pushed without a serious commitment to support globally agreed economic and social goals.

The outcome of the reform process is disappointing because we are trying to use the very structures that need to be changed to get an agreement on reform. The real challenge of UN reform is that we cannot leave it to governments.

We need a global citizens' movement for a new structure and modality of global governance. Perhaps this is the loudest bell that has been rung on First Avenue this fall.

The author was formerly Under-Secretary General at UN headquarters. The views expressed here are personal.