'Spirit of cooperation and compromise overcomes 'tyranny of budgetary constraints.'.

• Author: Rutsch, Herst
• Position: General Assembly 53 - Highlights of the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly

Horst Rutsch Looks at the Current Assembly Session

The Assembly reviewed the implementation of the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s and urged the international community to substantially increase the flow of financial resources to the continent. The European Union stated that it would work to improve market access for the least developed countries by 2000 and to set up by 2005 a mechanism by which those African nations would benefit from duty-free access to the European Economic Community markets.

The fifty-third General Assembly, after three months of deliberations on a wide range of items that included nuclear disarmament, the global financial crisis, international terrorism, human rights defenders and the peace process in the Middle East, successfully concluded its regular session on 17 December 1998 by designating the fifty-fifth session (2000) as the United Nations "Millenium Assembly".

Assembly President Didier Opertti of Uruguay praised the "spirit of cooperation and compromise" among all delegations prevailing during the debate. He cited the resolution on dialogue among civilizations as an eloquent illustration of how the Assembly furthered understanding and solidarity among all peoples of the world. But he cautioned that the "tyranny of budgetary constraints" had seriously affected the Assembly's work and threatened to undermine the spirit of tolerance pervading the international community if Member States did not soon pay their assessments in full.

The Assembly plenary opened on 17 September with a high-level dialogue and review of the social and economic impact of globalization, particularly in the wake of the Asian financial crisis. The two-day debate incorporated a series of ministerial round tables on international and national responses to globalization. The high-level participants, among them many Heads of State and Government and foreign ministers, warned that, although the process had opened up tremendous opportunities for creating wealth, globalization threatened to further widen the economic gap between richer and poorer countries. While accepting the "irreversible" nature of the process, many speakers called for urgent steps to manage it by developing a global mechanism to reduce its harmful effects. This entailed enabling the most marginalized countries, particularly African States, to gain access to international markets. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in closing the discussion...