New UN President faces tough battle

Miguel d'Escoto, a former priest in his country, Nicaragua, was suspended from the priesthood 23 years ago by the Vatican for refusing to stop supporting Nicaragua's revolutionary government, the Sandinistas. He was then appointed foreign minister by President Daniel Ortega until he lost the election in 1990. With the return to power of Ortega in 2007, liberation theology priest was made an adviser and now the 75-year-old has been appointed President of the 63rd session of the General Assembly.

With his motto 'things have to change', he has his work cut out for him. In his opening address to the General Assembly he cited the 'lamentable state of the world' due to global food shortages, climate change, human rights abuses and weapons purchase that drain resources from efforts to fight poverty. He believes in the United Nations but quickly adds that the world organisations needs to be "democratised".

In fact, in the same speech he proposed to divide the General Assembly's 15-day high level segment into three sessions to deal directly with the changes he would like to see.

The first session is about the relationship of the UN with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. He thinks that the dominance of these institutions by the US and Europe needs to change and that the United Nations through its General Assembly must have a bigger say in how these two institutions conduct their business.

The second session will offer an opportunity to discuss ways how the General Assembly needs to be empowered and revitalised, "through the transfer to this body of the power wrongly accumulated in the Security Council, Bretton Woods' institutions and even the bureaucracy of the United Nations" and through making its decisions binding.

The third session will discuss, in frank terms, the reform of the Security Council.

One thing is already clear, namely that the new UN President will not bring with him to New York the old fiery orator style that was his trademark during the Sandinistas revolution in Nicaragua and his insistence to impose his political views and beliefs that got him suspended from the Church. He has already shown himself to be more pragmatic and realistic and to be against 'futile recriminations' among UN member states.

As I found out myself first-hand when Guido de Marco was President of the General Assembly during the 45th session, it is not easy to change matters at the UN. Any changes, even modest ones needed to be handled with the utmost diplomacy and tact.

The changes the new president has set out to accomplish are far from modest and his style and method alone, although important, are not sufficient for him to reach his goals. What will also be needed is the political will of the member states, particularly the major powers. In fact he was already warned of this by an ambassador from his region who stated: 'If he's combative, he'll learn the hard way how big powers command the UN, and he'll find his initiatives blocked. He can't force things. His role is to build consensus.'

It is interesting to note that some of the main ideas put forward by d'Escoto were also put forward during de Marco's UN presidency, including the revitalisation of the General Assembly, the relationship with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the reform of the Security Council and the Secretariat among others. These ideas were later presented in more detail in the book, A Second Generation United Nations.

I am sure discussion will not be lacking during the 63rd session, though I am, unfortunately, not optimistic about the result, and think there will be no major changes to the United Nations and how it works.

This, because of the fact that the UN has for the past 10 years, at least, been moving towards a division into two voting blocks, the more developed against the lesser developed that is bound to continue to paralyse further its work.

This is not in the interest of any one, including the US and the EU. Since the lesser developed group has more than a two-thirds majority at the General Assembly and other UN committees and councils, it can therefore block any initiative taken by the US, the EU and other developed countries. Alternatively it can push any initiative it wants over the objections of the US, the EU and other developed countries.

This scenario may bring the UN to a complete standstill since the developed countries, particularly the ones with a veto at the Security Council, can stop any action in the Council while the lesser developed group can stop any action in the rest of the UN machinery, including the General Assembly.

This was why the US could not, for the first time, get elected to the Human Rights Commission a few years ago - until it became a Council on Human Rights. This may also be the reason why, as pointed out by a recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the EU has been losing influence at the UN in the last 10 years and therefore making it more difficult to gain support for its initiatives in human rights and in other areas falling within the competence of the General Assembly and the Security Council.