Thinking aloud: can the United Nations catalyze development?

• Author: Rasi, Marjatta

Everyone ... is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation ... of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity ...

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 22

Yes, I think the United Nations can be a catalyst for development, but the speed of change of the world surrounding us has been so fast that the United Nations has not always been able to keep pace with that process. It was founded for an entirely other kind of reality and, therefore, its present structures do not necessarily correspond to the needs of this moment. It is important to remember its many achievements, notably those relating to crises management and peacekeeping; indeed, its failures are all too few when viewed in the totality. Regardless of the perhaps justified argument that the United Nations is lacking influence on macro-economic issues, I would argue that it has been playing a very central role in setting the parameters for the debate. For example, the important issues related to environment, energy, the debt question and multinational companies have increasingly been focused and included in the discussions in other fora as a result of the United Nations initiatives.

As to social development, the outcomes of many worldwide international conferences, establishing the so-called global agenda, are also commonly known, covering areas like environmental protection, advancement of women, human rights, population issues and human settlements; important sets of norms and action programmes for Member States to follow have resulted from those gatherings.

Despite these achievements, the problems that the United Nations today is facing must be recognized. The end of the cold war and the rapid globalization of the world economy have changed the nature of many processes. Previously locally or nationally handled matters are becoming increasingly issues of global character. Indeed, the whole concept of development has changed. Nowadays, we include in it a number of economical, social, political, environmental and technological factors. One could say that the concept of sustainable development has become "the objective of all objectives". This change has led also to the criticism that the familiar and widely supported neo-liberal development model is increasingly being accepted. More serious efforts are now being made to incorporate components, such as equality, environmental demands or cultural values, in our...