Further memorandum submitted by the Department
for International Development
THE OUTCOME OF THE 2005 UN WORLD SUMMIT
SUMMARY
1. The 2005 UN World Summit—or Millennium
Review Summit—was held at UN Headquarters in New York on
14-16 September. Its purpose was to review progress since the
Millennium Summit of 2000, and other UN Summits such as the Monterrey
Conference and Johannesburg Summit of 2002, and in particular
towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
by 2015, including commitments of donor assistance to finance
these. The Summit was informed by a report by the UN Secretary-General
entitled In Larger Freedom which drew on the reports of
the High Level Panel and the Millennium Project. It included a
session devoted to Financing for Development (FfD), to review
progress on financial pledges of aid. This Memorandum concentrates
on areas of most direct interest to DFID.
2. The UK was represented at the Summit
by the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for International
Development (who also represented the UK and EU at the FfD session)
and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
As the current holder of the EU Presidency, the UK also represented
the EU throughout, presenting agreed EU papers on our objectives
for the Summit and the session on Financing for Development.
3. Following negotiations involving all
of the UN's member states—191 countries in all—an
Outcome Document was agreed. For the first time, there was an
unambiguous commitment from all member states to achieving the
MDGs, with support for developing countries' efforts to implement
comprehensive national development strategies. In terms of development
issues, the Document consolidated all the achievements of the
G8 Summit at Gleneagles, endorsing the need to accelerate progress
towards the MDGs, acknowledging the special needs of Africa, and
endorsing the G8 approaches on HIV/AIDS and climate change, including
on stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations. The commitments
of the G8 and EU to increase and improve development assistance
were welcomed, and there was recognition of the expectation that
development assistance will increase by around US$50 billion a
year by 2010. The value of developing innovative sources of finance
such as the International Finance Facility (IFF) was also acknowledged.
The UK's Development-related objectives for the Summit were, therefore,
largely met.
4. On humanitarian reform, peace and security,
human rights and strengthening the United Nations, the Summit
conclusions represented important steps forward.
5. We welcome the agreement on establishing
the Peacebuilding Commission by the end of this year. This is
a major innovation that will address some of the critical weaknesses
in the international response to conflict and help support long-term
institution building. The Summit also agreed a strong condemnation
of terrorism in all its forms. A separate Summit-level meeting
of the Security Council agreed a UK-drafted resolution calling
on all states to prohibit by law incitement to terrorist acts.
6. On humanitarian reform, there is now
a consensus that the response of the international community to
emergencies needs to be improved through more timely and predictable
funding and developing stand-by capacities. Proposals for a strengthened
Central Emergency Revolving Fund (CERF) were agreed and six countries,
including the UK, agreed to contribute to it. Endorsement of the
concept of Responsibility to Protect, in line with the suggestion
first made by the Prime Minister in his speech at Chicago in 1999,
is another major step forward. For the first time, the international
community has agreed that it has a responsibility to support States
in protecting their populations. Where states are unwilling or
unable to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity, the international community has the
responsibility to intervene, including as a last resort, militarily.
7. On human rights, the Summit resolved
to create a new Human Rights Council to replace the discredited
Commission on Human Rights and to strengthen the Office of the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, including by doubling its
budget over five years. These are important first steps towards
building a better international human rights system.
8. The Summit made some advances on strengthening
the management of the UN itself, in particular regarding ethics,
oversight, a review of mandates over five years old and a one-time
staff buy-out programme. The UN Secretary General was given a
mandate to address longer-term reform of the UN development architecture
in line with proposals contained in In Larger Freedom for
"more tightly managed entities in the field of development",
humanitarian assistance and environment. The Summit agreed to
launch further work to strengthen environmental governance, in
the UN system, including better integration of environmental activities
at operational level.
9. For DFID, our immediate priorities will
be to support the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission
by the end of the year and to develop satisfactory arrangements
for the Peacebuilding Fund; to be closely involved in the process
by which the Secretary-General develops his ideas for longer-term
reform of the UN development architecture; and to continue to
work with the UN on reform of the humanitarian assistance system.
DETAIL
10. The 2005 UN World Summit reviewed progress
on all aspects of the 2000 Millennium Declaration (peace and security,
development, human rights, UN reform, Africa, environment) and
commitments made at other Summits (eg on finance through the Monterrey
Consensus on Financing for Development of 2002 and on sustainable
development at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held
in Johannesburg in 2002). The Summit included a session devoted
to Financing for Development, as a follow-up to the Monterrey
Conference on Financing for Development. The focus was on upholding
commitments made at Monterrey on aid volume, and securing agreement
on aid effectiveness and innovative finance.
11. The UN Secretary-General's report In
Larger Freedom, published in March 2005, drew on two sources:
(i) the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, created
by the Secretary-General in 2003, to consider new global threats,
and how the UN needs to change to meet them; and (ii) the United
Nations Millennium Project under Professor Jeffrey Sachs to review
progress on achieving the MDGs and propose an implementation plan
that would allow all developing countries to meet them by 2015.
12. The High Level Panel reported in December
2004. It emphasised the link between security and development—neither
being sustainable without the other. It identified six clusters
of global threats—economic and social arising from poverty,
financial instability, infectious diseases and environmental degradation,
including climate change; inter-state conflict and rivalry; internal
conflict, encompassing civil war, state collapse, genocide and
mass human rights abuses; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
terrorism; and organised international crime.
13. Two of the Panel's conclusions were
of particular interest to DFID: the call for stronger action by
the UN in humanitarian crises, and the establishment of a Peacebuilding
Commission to fill the current gap in the international architecture
for helping countries in the transition between conflict and post-conflict
institution building.
14. The Millennium Project reported in January
2005. Its main message was that progress towards achieving the
MDGs was off track for many countries. The report made a compelling
case for increased aid volumes, and for urgency and ambition in
both developing countries and donors. It also emphasised the need
for better aid—more alignment and harmonisation, increased
predictability and reducing donor transaction costs through using
developing country systems. "More and better aid" is
a key 2005 objective for DFID.
15. In his report In Larger Freedom,
the Secretary-General made a number of proposals for endorsement
by Heads of member states at the Summit. The report put freedom
as the central goal of the UN, based on development ("Freedom
from want"), security ("Freedom from fear") and
human rights ("Freedom to live in dignity"), underpinned
by UN institutional reform ("The imperative for collective
action: strengthening the UN"). The Secretary-General's report
set the framework for the Outcome Document agreed by member states
and published at the end of the Summit.
16. In the light of these reports and conclusions,
the UK Government established nine priorities for the negotiations
on the Summit Outcome Document, as follows:
(i) agreement on more and better aid to
deliver much faster progress towards the MDGs, with specific commitments
from donors and developing countries;
(ii) agreement to develop a new international
framework for tackling climate change, endorsement of G8 outcomes
on scientific basis and new technologies; and more work on environmental
governance;
(iii) agreement to establish a new Peacebuilding
Commission for countries emerging from conflict;
(iv) agreement to work to a definition of,
and comprehensive convention on, terrorism;
(v) agreement on ways of improving UN's
response to humanitarian crises;
(vi) agreement on Responsibility to Protect;
(vii) achieve reform of the human rights
machinery to make it more effective and efficient;
(viii) agreement on a reformed, streamlined,
more effective and accountable Secretariat; and
(ix) early agreement on Security Council
enlargement without damaging prospects for the Summit.
The Government later added non-proliferation
following lack of agreement at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review
Conference (NPT RevCon).
THE OUTCOME
DOCUMENT
17. The UK represented the EU at the Summit
as holder of the EU Presidency. Prior to the final negotiations
on the Outcome Document, a strong EU position was agreed, and
the final EU statement to the Summit enshrined many of the principles
which are central to the UK's own objectives.
18. That the Outcome Document as agreed
by all UN member states represents a consolidation of major achievements
agreed elsewhere during 2005, and is a vehicle for deep-rooted
reform of the UN system in a number of significant areas in the
years ahead. Importantly, it is a global endorsement of the outcomes
of the G8 Summit at Gleneagles.
DEVELOPMENT
19. Our key objective on development was
to secure agreement on more and better aid, including through
multilateral debt relief and innovative sources of finance, to
deliver much faster progress towards the MDGs, recognising particularly
the special needs of Africa, with specific commitments from donors
and developing countries.
20. The development section reflects this.
It underlines the need for urgency on all sides, and for more
ambition in developing countries' national development strategies.
This includes endorsement of a key recommendation of the Millennium
Project for "quick impact" initiatives, in particular
on malaria and the elimination of user fees in education and,
where possible, also health services. Reflecting the Gleneagles
Africa Communiqué, the Outcome Document reaffirms the central
principle that developing countries must take primary responsibility
for their own development, and that good governance, anti-corruption
and the rule of law underpin that development.
21. The G8 commitment to increasing aid
volumes is now endorsed by the wider donor community. During the
Financing for Development session of the Summit, non-G8 countries—recognising
the lead the G8 had set—added their own pledges of further
aid. The Outcome Document now sets out clear expectations of the
donor community for which it will be accountable.
22. Through its welcome for the G8 multilateral
debt relief proposals, the Summit represented a broadening of
international support for this initiative. The efforts of the
UK and others to develop innovative methods of financing also
gained support through the explicit endorsement of the value of
such initiatives, and a number of countries have come together
to launch the International Finance Facility for Immunisation
(IFFIm).
23. HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and
other health issues were addressed, and in line with G8 commitments,
there was support for reaching as close as possible to universal
access to treatment for AIDS by 2010. There are now global commitments
to providing substantial funding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria and to achieving universal access to
reproductive health by 2015.
24. We welcome the recognition given to
the special needs of Africa. The Outcome Document emphasises the
centrality of NEPAD and reflects many of the priorities outlined
in G8 commitments, including the importance of promoting sound
economic management and sustainable growth, deepening democracy,
human rights and good governance, helping to build Africa's capacity
to trade and working to mobilise extra investment for infrastructure.
25. The importance of collective donor effort
to improve the quality of aid is also recognised, through the
endorsement of donor commitments made in the Paris Declaration
on Aid Effectiveness. This sets clear monitoring arrangements
and deadlines for meeting these commitments.
26. The Outcome Document, while pointing
to the importance of climate change and trade, recognises that
these must be dealt with in the appropriate international fora.
On climate change, the Montreal Conference of the Parties to the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will take place in November.
The Outcome Document does contain two important advances—the
commitment to establishing a worldwide early warning system for
all natural hazards, building on existing national and regional
capacities, and agreement by member states to explore the possibility
of a more coherent institutional framework for the governance
of environmental work in the UN system. On trade, there is much
more work to be done ahead of the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
Ministerial in Hong Kong in December. The Government will be playing
a full part in trying to secure progress on climate change and
trade.
PEACE AND
SECURITY
27. The Summit agreed to establish a Peacebuilding
Commission (and associated Peacebuilding Fund and Peacebuilding
Support Office). This responds to a well-recognised institutional
gap in the UN architecture for "marshalling resources and
advising on strategies for peace building and post-conflict recovery
to help prevent countries lapsing back into conflict". The
Commission is intended to address some of the obstacles currently
faced, such as the failure to begin peace building tasks early
enough during the immediate post-conflict phase; failure to maintain
international attention long enough in the post-conflict period;
problems in mobilising early financing for peace building and
then sustaining it; and a lack of shared analysis and coordination
between different actors, both within the UN system and with those
outside, such as bilateral donors and the International Financial
Institutions.
28. The Summit agreed that the Commission
should be operational by the end of this year and the Outcome
Document identifies details, such as its mandate and categories
of membership (although not numbers). Some important elements
remain to be agreed, in particular its working arrangements, how
it will formally be established (by the Security Council or the
General Assembly or jointly), and the respective roles of the
two bodies in the oversight of the Commission's work.
29. Establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission
is a priority for the UK and we will be working with the UN Secretariat
and the President of the General Assembly's office on this.
HUMANITARIAN REFORM
30. Improving the UN's response to humanitarian
assistance is a DFID objective. In a speech at the Overseas Development
Institute in London in December 2004, the Secretary of State for
International Development proposed six reforms—faster, and
more equitable funding through a reformed Central Emergencies
Revolving Fund (CERF); strengthening the capacity and influence
of UN Humanitarian Coordinators to ensure that the most urgent
humanitarian needs are met promptly and effectively; the production
of more inclusive, prioritised and strategic Common Humanitarian
Action Plans with donors pooling their funding behind the Humanitarian
Coordinator in support of these; the establishment of benchmarks
to inform the planning and evaluation of humanitarian response,
against which we can measure progress and improve accountability;
greater attention by donors to forgotten crises/donor orphans;
and increased donor funding for Disaster Risk Reduction and reform
of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
31. These proposals were welcomed by the
UN Secretary-General, and DFID has since been promoting debate
with humanitarian agencies and donors on how best to take these
forward. The Outcome Document reaffirms the need to strengthen
the effectiveness of UN humanitarian responses. At the Summit
itself, member states pledged over US$150 million to a reformed
CERF, including at least US$70 million from DFID. The UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) will make
detailed proposals on the arrangements for reforming the CERF
in October, and the UN General Assembly will take decisions on
this in November.
32. The UN has established a working group
to make recommendations by December on how to strengthen the UN
Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator system. A few donors, including
the UK, are intending to pool funding behind the Humanitarian
Coordinators in Sudan and DR Congo in 2006. DFID has set up an
expert working group, to develop proposals on benchmarks for the
humanitarian system. The UN has launched reform of its International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction, and DFID is developing its own
paper on disaster risk reduction in response to a National Audit
Office recommendation.
HUMAN RIGHTS
33. The agreement of UN member states on
"Responsibility to Protect" is an important achievement.
This formally recognises the principle that, while each country
has a responsibility to protect its own population, the international
community should act in the face of genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing and crimes against humanity. This includes both the
prevention of such crimes and their incitement.
34. The agreement in principle to replace
the existing Commission on Human Rights with a more robust Human
Rights Council represents a significant step forward in restoring
credibility to the international human rights machinery. While
it is regrettable that more detail could not be agreed at the
Summit itself, the UK is working with EU partners to maintain
the momentum for reform and reach agreement as soon as possible
on establishing the Council. We are currently aiming to get agreement
on the priority issues by the end of this year. We welcome the
agreement to strengthen the Office of the UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights, including through a doubling of its regular
budget over the next five years.
STRENGTHENING THE
UNITED NATIONS
35. It is now generally accepted that there
are some key issues concerning the management and management practices
of the UN that need to be addressed. Progress made on this at
the Summit can be seen only as a first step, and the Government
attaches high priority to working to ensure that these advances
are built upon.
36. The Outcome Document recognises the
need for a more effective Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
It calls for a biennial high level Development Cooperation Forum
to review international development cooperation and to strengthen
coherence among development partners and between different areas
of the work of the UN.
37. The Document emphasises the importance
of improving the accountability mechanisms in the Secretariat,
and of ensuring the highest standards of efficiency, competence
and integrity of staff. The Secretary-General will establish an
independent ethics office and make proposals for ensuring the
independence of oversight mechanisms (such as the Office of Internal
Oversight Services - OIOS) for reviewing the operations of the
UN, including the creation of an independent oversight advisory
committee. The Secretary-General will also make proposals for
strengthening his capacity to carry out his managerial responsibilities
more effectively and for management reforms to the UN.
38. The Outcome Document also supports more
effective coordination of governing bodies, and improvements in
UN performance at country level through a strengthened role for
the UN Resident or Humanitarian Coordinator with the appropriate
resources, authority and level of accountability.
39. DFID will support the United Nations
Development Group Office (UNDGO) to implement management reforms
across the system. We will promote the use of the Common Country
Assessment and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework
(UNDAF) as the primary programming and monitoring tools used by
the UN at country level. The UN Resident Coordinator is to be
responsible and accountable for the delivery of the UNDAF. We
will also encourage reporting on commitments through follow-up
to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
40. The UK will participate actively in
ECOSOC, encouraging it to focus much more rigorously on its core
activities. This includes building stronger relations with the
Bretton Woods Institutions and making sure the United Nations
is informed about new development challenges, the priorities for
addressing these and how the UN can make a unique contribution.
ECOSOC also needs to show leadership on reform.
41. For the longer term, the Summit gave
support to the Secretary-General's proposal contained in In
Larger Freedom to implement fundamental reforms of the UN
structure. This could involve the grouping of agencies, funds
and programmes into three areas dealing respectively with development,
environment and humanitarian action. DFID, along with like-minded
development partners, will strongly support such changes.
CONCLUSION
42. The G8 commitments entered into at the
Gleneagles Summit were essentially supported at the UN Summit.
Over the coming months, the Government will keep up the pressure
to ensure delivery of these commitments. But we also want to go
further, and there will be opportunities to do so.If we succeed,
it will make a difference in helping to tackle poverty in developing
countries.
October 2005
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