Geneva has been at the centre of the world's diplomacy stage
throughout the modern era. But diplomacy at the outset of this
millennium is a very different creature from that which is in
all our history books and the imagination of novelists and filmmakers.
Contrast these two paragraphs. The first is the beginning of
the Declaration of Principles Issued on 12 December 2003 at
the Geneva phase of the World Summit on the Information Society.
The second is Article 23 of the Covenant of the League of Nations,
done in 1919 and the basis of the modern United Nations. I mention
it because it shows how totally top-down multilateral diplomacy
was, only 92 years ago.
"We, the representatives of the peoples of the world, assembled
in Geneva from 10-12 December 2003 for the first phase of the
World Summit on the Information Society, declare our common
desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and
development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can
create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge,
enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their
full potential in promoting their sustainable development and
improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and
principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting
fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Contrast that with
"ARTICLE 23.
Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of international
conventions existing or hereafter to be agreed upon, the Members
of the League:
(a) will endeavour to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions
of labour for men, women, and children, both in their own countries
and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial
relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain
the necessary international organisations;
(b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants
of territories under their control;
(c) will entrust the League with the general supervision over
the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women
and children, and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs;
(d) will entrust the League with the general supervision of
the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which
the control of this traffic is necessary in the common interest;
(e) will make provision to secure and maintain freedom of communications
and of transit and equitable treatment for the commerce of all
Members of the League. In this connection, the special necessities
of the regions devastated during the war of 1914-1918 shall
be borne in mind;
(f) will endeavour to take steps in matters of international
concern for the prevention and control of disease.
The first phase of the WSIS built on the principles of the Millennium
Declaration adopted in New York in 2000. That Declaration will
be seen by all students of the way diplomacy has changed, for
it is the first instrument signed by the world's Heads of State
and Government which explicitly acknowledges the part communities
must be able to play in negotiations and decisions relevant
to their own needs.
This introduction skips many other events in multilateral history,
but there is one other which deserves reference, also from the
Covenant of the League of Nations. Article 25 is one of the
most important from the standpoint of the history of multistakeholder
diplomacy, for through it the member States of the League accepted
an obligation 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".
Later, in Article 26 of the First Geneva Convention in 1949,
States formally referred to National Red Cross Societies "duly
recognised and authorised by their Governments". This provision
gives rise to other rights and responsibilities in the Convention,
but it has also extended to envelope the auxiliary role of National
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [1].
In their own ways, the Covenant of the League and the Geneva
Conventions foreshadowed the arrival on the international stage
of communities, with their place at the table whenever the mitigation
of suffering was on the agenda.
The other side of that was the obligation contained in Article
18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations under which "every
treaty or international engagement" between States would be
registered and published. This, in the words of Sir Geoffrey
Butler in his 1919 Handbook to the League of Nations
was "aimed at securing so-called open diplomacy".
Open diplomacy then is a forerunner to what we mean by multistakeholder
diplomacy now. It is about finding ways to enable communities
and individuals to bring their needs to the top negotiating
tables on issues of concern to them.
Community involvement takes many forms, but one of the most
direct statements of the ability of communities to bring their
needs to the top tables of the world is in UN General Assembly
resolution 49/2, adopted on 19 October 1994, by which the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was granted
observer status at the United Nations General Assembly.
States recalled, in the preamble to the resolution, "the special
functions of the member societies of the International Federation
of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies which are recognized
by their respective Governments as auxiliaries to the public
authorities in the humanitarian field".
Through this, States in effect observed that because of this
auxiliary role at the national level, their Federation should
have the capacity to work on their behalf at the international
level and throughout the UN system.
This has involved the need for the International Federation
to reorient its own priorities and ways of working considerably.
In its older days as the League of Red Cross Societies, the
IFRC was a membership organisation. Its main concerns were assisting
its member National Societies with cooperation within the Red
Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and advising them on ways and
means of working with their governments and other partners.
Since 1994, and particularly since the adoption of the Millennium
Declaration in 2000, the International Federation has become
more and more a player of significance on the international
stage. It is now commonly seen as the single organisation which
has both a community base and the ability to speak and be heard
at the top levels.
The International Federation is also accepted by the United
Nations system as a body with many of the attributes of the
members of that system. Along with the International Committee
of the Red Cross, the IFRC participates as a standing invitee
in the UN's Inter-Agency Standing Committee.
This enables it to bring its experience and that of its community
memberships into the inner circles of inter-agency thinking
and planning on any issue at all which is relevant to humanitarian
coordination and assistance.
Geneva is the place where the bulk of these issues are to be
found and where key negotiations take place. But the issues
are in their raw form where they matter most, at the community
level.
Geneva can debate what must be done, and what resources must
be provided, to deal with threats to our planet from pandemics
like HIV and AIDS or Avian and Human Influenza. But the reality
of those catastrophes is in the households, communities and
nations afflicted.
Similarly, Geneva and New York can host pledging conferences
and inter-agency meetings on all sorts of disasters, on human
rights questions and many other matters of direct concern to
all nations and communities. But there are more and more questions
about the value of those debates, resolutions and pledges to
the communities themselves.
Geneva's place as the centre of the world's human rights debates
has made it the magnet for very many non-governmental organisations.
They have seen many changes in the way the international community
has received them. In early days they were tolerated, at best,
in a limited range of settings. They were confined to the ability
to observe meetings under the umbrella of the UN Economic and
Social Council, and a long struggle ensued to get them the ability
to speak, circulate documents and take part in a credible sense.
Some governments came to recognise that NGOs could enable their
own presentations to UN meetings to be more meaningful. They
also started to recognise in the 1970s that their own representation
needed to be brought to their own constituencies at home if
they were to obtain the resources and support they needed for
the expanding international agenda.
This was particularly true of the human rights debate. With
the entry into force of the International Covenants on Human
Rights in 1976 it suddenly became apparent to all governments
that people mattered, and their rights and needs would be considered
by governments other than their own.
Some governments moved after that to find ways to reach out
to their communities and help them see how the international
community worked. To reduce the mystery. And to influence the
way governments themselves reacted to one another in negotiation.
It is now fairly common to see government delegations to international
conferences include NGO representatives concerned with the issues
on the table.
This is natural enough in human rights debates, but it has achieved
a special importance in some other fields.
Of special relevance today is the part NGOs and civil society
have played in heightening consciousness of the need to protect
our planet, our environment.
Environment NGOs have played a noticeable role in the negotiation
of all the major treaties on the environment. Treaties which
have included strict management regimes, like the 1987 Montreal
Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, have benefited
greatly from the involvement in working groups and other sessions
from people with direct community knowledge of the potential
impact of proposals under discussion.
Nowadays, the involvement of communities and their knowledge
has moved to another level. The processes of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have just seen the issue of "Climate
Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis", otherwise known as
the contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment
Report of the IPCC [2].
The contribution itself will be considered by the IPCC and presented
to the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on
Climate Change. This is not the place to explore the findings
in the Physical Science contribution, but to observe that it
is the product of work by over 2500 scientists and others within
a program designed by the IPCC Secretariat which is headquartered
at the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva and supported
by the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi.
The work of IPCC is made possible by the widest involvement
of the NGO and civil society community. Every step it takes
is monitored by the multistakeholder world, including executive
government, politicians, experts, academics, NGOs, the private
sector and women and men in their own homes.
The impact of its reports is extraordinary, by any standards.
It is also able, through the production of complex yet understandable
documentation, to reach out and involve whole communities.
This is why it has also resonated in the Red Cross Red Crescent
world. In 1999, at the 27th International Conference of the
Red Cross and Red Crescent, National Societies and Governments
that the International Federation should "undertake a study
to assess the future impact of climatic changes upon the frequency
and severity of disasters and the implications for humanitarian
response and preparedness" [3].
The result was that in 2002 the Netherlands Red Cross Society,
with the active support of the International Federation and
many other National Societies set up the Red Cross Red Crescent
Centre on Climate Change and Disaster Preparedness in The Hague
[4].
It has done exhaustive work on the relationship of climate change
to natural disasters, and has established programs to help National
Societies in developing countries better understand the negative
impacts of climate change for their countries and programs.
The work of the Netherlands Red Cross has been facilitated by
its access through the International Federation to the inner
circles of discussion in other Climate Change circles.
This has contributed to a decision that the humanitarian consequences
of extreme weather conditions (including the impact of Climate
Change) will be one of the main themes of the 30th International
Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, to be held in
Geneva in November 2007.
This conference will also emphasise the essentiality of partnerships
in modern diplomacy, using the overall theme "Together
for Humanity".
"Partnerships" means many things, but for the future it means
new ways of partnering governments and their people. It means
that there needs to be a reconnection between governments and
their high policies and the real needs of their people.
The network of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies provides
an important link to this kind of partnership. It is important
in all countries, but it is perhaps most important of all in
countries which find difficulty coping with the sheer size of
the multilateral agenda of the modern world.
Small states are particularly vulnerable to this huge agenda.
How can they, especially with their limited resources in the
multilateral centres and at home, handle an agenda like the
one in front of the current session of the UN General Assembly
- 154 items inscribed when the session opened in September 2006,
and 255 resolutions adopted by the end of January 2007?
This is why multistakeholder diplomacy, and the connection between
people and the multilateral work of their governments, is so
important.
It is also why so many of us in Geneva are pleased to see the
Geneva authorities keeping alive the spirit of their city by
improving public transport links to the UN headquarters here.
The relevance of the UN to everyday lives is something to be
treasured and protected! That is the spirit of Geneva.
Conclusion
This is a brief description of how what might be termed the
spirit of Geneva has moved since the days of the foundation
of the modern diplomatic era in 1919 to the point where individuals
and their expertise is now a principal moving force in international
diplomacy.
This has its own outcomes for the civil society and private
sector communities, for they now have an assured place at the
table in discussions relevant to their interests.
What is still to be settled, however, is how they should use
their place at the table, and how governments should deal with
the fact that they are no longer the sole representatives of
the people of their countries.
This is globalisation in a hurry, and like many hurried movements
it will face difficulty settling. In the meantime, the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies will continue,
within its own Global Agenda aimed at reducing human suffering,
to discharge its responsibility to its 100 million volunteers
and members and bring their voice to the top negotiating tables.
________________________________
ENDNOTES
[1] For further information, see the report on the Auxiliary
role to the 28th International Conference of the Red Cross and
Red Crescent, prepared by the IFRC in consultation with the
ICRC. At http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5XRFBM
[2] For all details, consult http://www.ipcc.ch/
[3] Final Goal 2.3 of the 1999 International Plan of Action,
at http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/57JQ8K
[4] http://www.climatecentre.org/
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