UN: PREPARATIONS FOR DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE RUNNING OUT OF TIME by KHALIL HAMDANI: 23/03/08 (MaximsNews Network)

UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 23 March 2008 - In an unprecedented move, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon flew to Geneva this month to rally international support for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which will meet at Ministerial level in Accra, Ghana, in April 2008.

“Now is the time for new ideas and fresh approaches,” Mr. Ban Ki-Moon said in a special address to the UNCTAD delegates who have been at loggerheads for months over the draft negotiation text.

“I cannot over-emphasize the urgency of this moment.” Referring to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Secretary- General continued: “Midway to the MDG target date, we have reached at a tipping point.”

“Urgent and concerted action now can help make up for wasted time and effort. But, should we delay or dither, we risk squandering even existing gains to the negative effects of climate change, or to emerging challenges like slowing global growth.”

“That is why your deliberations in the run up to the Accra Conference are crucial. You can help set the stage for a successful UNCTAD-XII Conference in Accra this April.” He added: "And you can help push us over the tipping point in 2008.”

But the preparatory process remains bogged down. “Unfortunately, it appears that progress on the negotiating text has so far been slow,” says UNCTAD Head Supachai Panitchpakdi. “Ever since the negotiations started about three months ago, only 45 paragraphs or so have been cleared, while approximately 230 remain to be agreed. I am not sure we will be in a position to achieve our common goal of strengthening UNCTAD unless we make urgent progress.”

Hopes were initially high. In June 2007 at the G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, the Heads of State and Government (of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States) invited UNCTAD to engage them in dialogue with developing countries at the UNCTAD conference in Ghana. This is the first time in a decade that UNCTAD has been so recognized. But so far, with less than 4 weeks to go, no G-8 senior official has confirmed participation.

“Ghana will be ready for the Conference by the end of March,” says Ghana’s Ambassador to UNCTAD, Kwabena Baah-Duodu. “I hope the Geneva process will be ready as well.” 

He added: “Ghana is a low income developing country, which is straining every sinew in its body to provide appropriate facilities for the Conference to be successful because we believe that trade and development are important for Africa, and indeed its own advancement. I hope we will not disappoint the poor of the world, majority of which are in Africa, and on whose behalf, we are hosting this Conference.”

But some are already disappointed. “Africa is losing faith in conference diplomacy as a source of solutions to its persistent problems,” says Calestous Juma, Professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. 

“While multilateral diplomacy is essential in a variety of key fields such as international security, it may be a blunt instrument for advancing Africa’s development goals. This is partly because the UN is poorly adapted to addressing Africa’s critical concerns such as infrastructure, higher technical training and business incubation.”

"Time has come for Africa to rethink its investment in multilateral diplomacy and redirect its efforts to new activities such as technology cooperation through bilateral partnerships.”

The Accra conference will be the twelfth general conference of UNCTAD. But this is the first time that the UNCTAD secretariat is putting on a conference with vacancies at the senior management level. There has been no Deputy Secretary-General since more than a year, whose task it would have been to provide leadership to the stalled intergovernmental process. Managerial vacancies are one of several governance weaknesses cited by a forthcoming report on UNCTAD by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS).

UNCTAD was established in 1964 to promote development dialogue. The theme of the upcoming Accra conference is: Addressing the opportunities and challenges of globalization for development. The current context of slowing world economic growth should provide urgency to the meeting. While the Secretariat has produced comprehensive flagship reports, the negotiation text contains no new proposals for international policy or development cooperation. The focus of the negotiation is on UNCTAD’s areas of work and methods of work.

UNCTAD’s role remains contentious. On the one hand, UNCTAD has traditionally claimed a comprehensive mandate on all issues relating to the integrated treatment of money, finance, investment, technology, trade and development. On the other hand, a Panel of Eminent Persons has recommended that UNCTAD focus on its core competences. These include commodities, investment, technology, trade and development. But not all agree that these core competencies also include climate change, energy and migration, topics that some delegates want to add to the UNCTAD work programme.

In fact, energy was the major focus of the fourth general conference of UNCTAD in Nairobi in 1976, at which the United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger participated. And carbon credits were first proposed by UNCTAD in 1992 at the eighth general conference in Cartagena. Of course, as these issues have been mainstreamed in the work of other or new institutions, some would argue that UNCTAD should continue to focus on the big picture and think ahead of the curve.

The Accra conference is expected to establish in UNCTAD a commission on globalization, and also an expert group on international investment agreements.

The week-long Accra conference will take place from 20 to 25 April 2008 and its 40 plus activities and events are expected to attract several thousand participants, including several hundred UN staff.

The negotiations are a small part. If the past is any guide, agreement is usually reached at the eleventh hour followed by a round of congratulatory speeches of praise of each other’s spirit of compromise. However, failure to agree on a consensus text in advance of the conference will likely keep key leaders away.

Labels: United Nations, U.N. Development, Developing Countries, UNCTAD, Accra, Ghana

 

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