It is a great pleasure to be with you today at this Conference
to address various issues in diplomacy which affect small States.
My perspective now is the critical need for partnerships and
alliances to help small States cope with the ever-growing agenda
of the international community.
A vital part of such alliances is available from National Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies - designated auxiliaries to
the public authorities of their countries in the humanitarian
field, and represented in the UN by their Federation, the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
It is important to start with some background about the sheer
size and scope of the modern international community.
The size of the international community
The 61st Session of the United Nations General Assembly, which
opened in September 2006, had 154 items on its initial agenda.
By the end of January 2007 it had adopted 255 resolutions.
It conducts its work through a constellation of a plenary supported
by six main committees in which the entire membership participates.
The Plenary and committees often meet simultaneously, but the
real work on crafting resolutions is done in back rooms at the
same time as the floor debates.
Each resolution emerges from a drafting process involving a
wide range of States with consultations extending to a host
of non-governmental organisations usually well-equipped on the
issues of concern to them.
There are now over 60 organisations accredited as observers
to the United Nations General Assembly.
These include the International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies, as well as some with a particular concern
for certain of the issues important to small States, such as
the Pacific Islands Forum, the Association of Caribbean States
and Partners in Population and Development.
In addition, there are currently over 2700 Non-Governmental
Organisations accredited to the UN Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC), and over 400 accredited on a specialist interest basis
to the Commission on Sustainable Development.
The United Nations system has what it terms 38 "principal offices"
in different parts of the world. These include some which are
sections of the United Nations Organisation itself, like the
Office of the High Representative for Least Developed Countries,
Land-Locked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing
States and organisations which are technically separate from
the United Nations proper like the World Trade Organisation.
The number does not include the various functional commissions
and other bodies established by the ECOSOC or the General Assembly
itself, of which there are dozens, perhaps hundreds if we count
those established by Specialised Agencies and other intergovernmental
organisations.
The 38 principal offices are located in no fewer than 19 cities
in 17 different countries. New York and Geneva are the cities
which most people think of when asked about UN headquarters
cities, but many agencies of great importance to small States
function elsewhere. Nairobi, for example, hosts UN Habitat and
the United Nations Environment Programme. Vienna hosts the UN
Office on Drugs and Crime, the UN Industrial Development Organisation
and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The map of UN headquarters also includes the regional economic
and social commissions, but does not include a large number
of other intergovernmental bodies, many of which adopt strategies
and programs of direct importance on the ground to small States
and other members.
These include the African Union, in Addis Ababa, the Council
of Europe in Strasbourg and the Organisation of American States
in Washington. And there are many more.
A few more statistics fill in the picture even more.
Small State presence in UN and other headquarters
One member State of the United Nations does not have the resources
to maintain a Permanent Mission to the UN in New York. Kiribati.
But 29 small States have no office with the UN Office in Geneva,
and 3 more are accredited but from other cities elsewhere in
Europe.
The figures are even more daunting for Vienna and Nairobi where
the majority of small States have no representation at all,
or are accredited from cities far away. In Brussels, three small
island developing States share the same personnel.
This is at a time when the whole world is speaking of globalisation,
the global village, the role of the UN and the wider inter-governmental
community is the kitchen in which recipes are developed every
day for peace and security and the achievement of the United
Nations Millennium Development Goals.
That's the situation in some of the main headquarters locations
for multilateral diplomacy. It does not, however, take account
of the phenomenal number of meetings and negotiations relevant
to small States which take place in other centres. Including,
for example, locations where UN regional commissions are based
(Santiago de Chile, Bangkok and Addis Ababa are the most relevant
to this point).
But, perhaps most important of all, it does not take account
of the question of the capacity of small States to absorb and
assess the multilateral agenda in their own capital cities and
elsewhere. In most cases, and for most issues, the size of the
small State missions in the UN centres reflects the capacity
of their governments to handle material they send home.
It is true that most international organisations now maintain
strong websites containing the documentation scheduled to be
considered at meetings.
This is, however, only half the story. In every case, documents
placed in the web will be reports and assessments which have
been through a long process of discussion and negotiation before
they are finally given a number and posted. The critical time
for small States to present their views and record their priorities
is during the drafting of these documents.
A typical UN Mission of a larger State will include a number
of specialists in the issues key to that State. Their task,
normally, is to maintain a network of contacts in other Missions,
international organisations, NGOs and the secretariat of the
agency concerned.
They will normally be abreast of the issues in which their capital
is interested, and be in a position to volunteer national positions
as the discussions proceed.
They will also maintain, through secure communications channels,
networks at home to exchange ideas and receive instructions
on the best ways of handling issues.
Little of this is available to the small States. The costs involved
in maintaining a strong presence at and in support of multilateral
negotiation are high. The result is that some small States have
tried to place capable people in their UN Missions and given
them a broad trust to take the decisions themselves on both
priorities and issues to be resolved.
This can mean that only a few questions are sent home for consideration,
but it also means that few of the decisions ultimately taken
are able to be addressed at home at the implementation stage.
The natural but unfortunate consequence of this is that a very
significant percentage of States play little or no part in the
consultations which precede the drafting of important reports
or resolutions, and in many cases there is little optimism that
the majority of the resolutions adopted will be implemented
in a uniform way, if at all.
This sounds gloomy enough, but there is more.
The complexity of multilateral business is such nowadays that
even the largest of States find it difficult to keep up with
the pace of that business. In part this is because the UN has
earned a reputation for being a hot air palace disconnected
from the realities of life.
In the past, this was often a reasonable criticism. Debates
about economic and social conditions and priorities were frequently
focused on international issues like the New International Economic
Order, or placed into a political context far from the concerns
of communities.
The criticism also meant that developed countries paid only
selective attention to UN debates on most economic and social
issues, and much of this was generated as much by political
or ideological positions as by economic or social realities.
The search for solutions
Nevertheless, even while this remained true of the conference
settings, the secretariats of the different agencies had started
years earlier to adapt their own working methods to those realities.
This led some larger countries to see value in helping smaller
neighbours and others better equip themselves to handle the
pressures of multilateral work and obtain value for themselves.
One product of this thinking is the Association of Small Island
States, AOSIS.
AOSIS was set up in 1991 as a coalition of small island and
low-lying coastal States sharing common development challenges
and environment concerns. As its website says, it is primarily
an ad hoc lobbying and negotiating voice.
AOSIS now has 43 members, 38 of which are members of the United
Nations. It gains some of its strength from the decision of
some of the States to locate their New York Missions together,
and from that base to work out ways of covering conference and
other needs in a collective spirit.
Paradoxically, AOSIS has made it possible for the very smallest
of States to express their positions with more force than many
of their larger colleagues. In addition, their cohesion makes
it possible for their size as a potential voting bloc important
to all other States whenever elections are held for different
governing bodies or other councils.
The drive for a more relevant UN picked up speed dramatically
with the end of the Cold War, and the consequent end of arrangements
based on political alignments which had reduced so many debates
to a very low common denominator.
It was in this changing atmosphere in 1994 that the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies obtained
its status as an Observer at the UN General Assembly and began
to develop its own position as the only organisation with this
status which drew its strength from a community base.
That base is, of course, provided by its worldwide network of
185 Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, each of which is made
up of members drawn from every sector of the national community,
and from branches in virtually every town and village.
Beyond this, the situation in the UN itself is now very different
from that which inspired the creation of AOSIS. There are many
reasons, but one of special relevance to small States is the
tireless work of the United Nations under Secretary-General
Kofi Annan which saw the adoption in September 2000 of the Millennium
Declaration and subsequently the drive for the achievement of
the Millennium Development Goals.
Since then, largely because the Millennium Declaration makes
specific reference to communities and their needs, States have
developed new approaches to the processes of negotiation in
the multilateral offices, and agencies have developed a much
keener understanding of their own need to build programs which
reach out to communities.
Ideas and support from the national and local level
This in turn has placed much more emphasis on the need for the
international community to look for ways of building capacity
at the local level as well as for national governments.
The IFRC has found this welcome development well-tuned to its
own priorities. The community base of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies has, since its establishment as the League of Red
Cross Societies been seen as a driver of community capacity-building
for the alleviation of suffering everywhere in the world [1].
As an example of what this means today in practice, governments
and National Societies sitting together in 1999 at the 27th
International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent agreed
on an International Plan of Action, Final Goal 2.1 of which
includes an undertaking by States to establish national disaster
preparedness plans with representation for National Societies
on appropriate national policy and coordination bodies.
What this means in practice is that when, for example, a United
Nations body adopts a resolution on disaster management, governments
should bring it to the attention of the country's national disaster
management mechanism.
At the same time, the IFRC's processes should bring the resolution
to the attention of National Societies, enabling those Societies
to consider whether they wish to make use of it when they attend
meetings of the mechanism.
A recent example of a resolution bearing on this is Resolution
2006/5, adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in July
2006 [2].
The text contains paragraphs through which governments agree
that all States should establish national contingency plans
to cope with disasters. It also encourages capacity-building
for national and local authorities, including NGOs, and invites
UN humanitarian entities to work closely with the Red Cross
and Red Crescent.
In larger States, this allows Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
a place at the national table.
In small States, however, the National Societies can sit at
that table with the strength of the IFRC and all other National
Societies in their briefing packs.
The corollary is that the small State governments are able to
draw from this strength of their National Societies to improve
their own understanding of what they can do to mitigate disasters
and reduce risk.
Similar benefits reach small States in the field of health.
Just as ECOSOC adopted its resolution in 2006, the General Assembly
of the IFRC adopted a resolution in 2005 through which it offered
to governments the support of their National Societies in the
urgent work they need to do together to combat avian and human
influenza. Again, this is of the greatest benefit to small States.
While it is true that no State, and no other organisation, has
the capacity to address the challenges of disasters or pandemic
diseases alone, this statement finds real resonance in small
States. The same linkages make it much easier for small States
to handle the pressures of multilateral diplomacy.
Building local capacity
The IFRC, with its presence at all major international centres,
stresses the building of local capacity and the strengthening
of partnerships and alliances to enable the best planning, programming,
implementation and monitoring of work to alleviate human suffering.
The IFRC is now working to support a Global Agenda which prioritises
four goals relating to disasters, health, community capacity-building
and respect for diversity through the reduction of discrimination
and social exclusion.
The Global Agenda includes a new operating model for the IFRC
which emphasises the value of partnerships and operational alliances.
This will include much more interaction with international organisations,
and much better linkages between National Societies and their
governments on policy issues as well as operational management.
The IFRC expects that this will result in much more interaction
around the preparation of national delegations for multilateral
action. As the IFRC participates in bodies such as the Inter-Agency
Standing Committee within the UN system, it means that small
States will be able to take advantage of IFRC activity around
the preparation of vital conference documents to learn at the
national end of understandings of the relevance of issues for
them and their communities.
This level of interaction between governments and National Societies
is essential for their joint work to address vulnerability and
community needs. But it also points to what is equally essential
for the governments of small States if they are to address the
complexity of the modern international agenda.
This is because there is no remedy on the horizon for the fact
that small States are small, and that their ability to build
diplomatic resources to handle the size of the international
agenda decreases daily as globalisation takes hold. The way
forward is through partnerships and alliances with trusted members
of their own civil society, and with their Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies.
Trust is difficult to guarantee, of course. Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies have a special quality, in that they are
all created by legislation in conformity with the First Geneva
Convention of 1949, and they are designated as the auxiliaries
to the public authorities of their country in the humanitarian
field.
This characteristic was important to the decision of the UN
General Assembly to grant the IFRC its Observer status in 1994
- the auxiliary role of National Societies is specifically mentioned
in the resolution [3],
Conclusion
It is only possible for small States to cope with the complexity
of the international community if they do so through partnerships
and coalitions on the issues of most importance to them.
They can most conveniently prioritise the agenda through coalitions
with other small States, such as AOSIS.
They can develop the national strength they need to provide
positions and advocacy internationally through partnerships
with the local actors best equipped to provide professional
advice on the real needs of communities and the solutions which
would best meet those needs.
The IFRC stands alongside National Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies with this priority, and through them provides valuable
support to governments and the international community's systems.
The international community as a whole has an obligation to
help resolve these issues. The existing Office of the High Representative
for Least Developed, Land-locked and Small Island Developing
States is a good start in this sense, but it too must reach
out to other partners if it is to realise its ambitious agenda.
As a postscript, let me say that this address has not dealt
with project stages which follow successful work in diplomacy.
There are a host of issues to be addressed in those stages as
well, not the least of which are the transaction costs which
small States face when they come to apply for funding and then
report on work done.
These costs, in bureaucratic as well as financial terms, are
often crippling in themselves, and I am very pleased that the
Diplomacy Foundation is addressing this issue as well.
______________________
ENDNOTES
1/ Article 25 of the Covenant of the League of Nations reads:
“The Members of the League agree to encourage and promote
the establishment and co-operation of duly authorised voluntary
national Red Cross organisations having as purposes the improvement
of health, the prevention of disease and the mitigation of suffering
throughout the world.”
2/ http://www.un.org/docs/ecosoc/documents/2006/resolutions/Resolution%202006-5.pdf
3/ UN General Assembly Resolution 49/2, adopted 19 October 1994
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