United Nations Takes Further Steps Toward Global Governance Framework
ECONOMICS, CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP, ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH, SUSTAINABILITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, SOCIETY & CULTURE
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Two recent developments further evidence the global governance ambitions of the United Nations. First, in advance of the 2010 Summit of the Millennium Development Goals ("MDGs"), which will take place from September 20-22, 2010 at the UN Headquarters in New York, national governments have submitted a draft MDG Summit Outcome document. The document includes an action agenda for achieving the MDGs by 2015. Second, on August 9, 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability "to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable growth and low-carbon prosperity." The scope of these two initiatives appears to be matched by the appetite of the UN secretariat and transnational progressives for power and wealth re-distribution on a global scale.
The beginning of the 21st century is being marked by global governance ambitions arising from the Babel Impulse-the inherent desire of an elite cadre of world leaders and bureaucrats to articulate and build a tower of secular ethical norms designed to relieve the world of wealth disparities and human suffering that they attribute to the refusal of developed nations and transnational businesses to share the knowledge and means to generate wealth. This modern-day Tower of Babel is being built by a matrix of human rights governance networks that generate research and soft law norms that, in theory, will settle to form the hard law foundation of perpetual peace and security.
At the 2010 Summit of the Millennium Development Goals, a High-Level Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly (the "Summit"), representatives from national governments will consider a draft MDG Summit Outcome document (the "Draft") that is a blueprint for the social transformations that the UN and the leaders of developing nations believe are essential to realizing the eight MDGs by 2015.
The following selected quotes from the Draft, which evidence the breadth of the UN's agenda for realizing the MDGs, raise basic questions that follow each quoted paragraph:
21. We acknowledge that the multiple and interrelated challenges of poverty, food security, energy, global economic and financial crisis, and climate change at the same time present the global community with a unique opportunity to tackle them together through innovative approaches, new methods and in forward-looking ways that will ensure inclusive, sustained and sustainable growth and further the promotion of sustainable development.
Is it really within the UN's mandate to take the leadership role in organizing and governing the "global community" to remedy poverty, food insecurity, energy shortages, economic and financial inequalities, and the effects of climate change?
23. We recognize that attention must be focused on the special needs of the most vulnerable and the large and increasing economic and social inequalities, including those resulting from geography, sex, age, disability, ethnicity and other vulnerabilities.
Is it conceivable that the UN and the "global community" could ever objectively and effectively identify, quantify, and address the "special needs of the most vulnerable" and the "increasing economic and social inequalities" without interfering with national sovereignty and individual liberty?
32. We call for urgent efforts to enhance the policy coherence, governance and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems order to foster a supportive and enabling international environment for development and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
By what authority and means will the UN or any other international agency "enhance" the policy coherence, governance and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems to foster development in a manner that achieves the Millennium Development Goals?
36. We affirm that ensuring universal access to social services and providing a universal social protection floor with wide coverage are essential to consolidate and achieve further development gains.
What global authority will decide the social services that are essential to human security and the appropriate coverage of any "universal social protection floor?"
38. We stress the importance of strengthening international and regional institutions for cooperation in order to provide effective support to national development strategies and to sustain reforms for a more conducive international environment for development.
Is it within the UN's mandate to organize and manage the work of "international and regional institutions for cooperation" that will pressure nations to submit their national development strategies to determine whether they conform to an "international environment for development?"
Meanwhile, in a related development, on August 9, 2010, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a new High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability (the "HLPGS") that, according to a UN press release, "brings together some of the world's leading policymakers and thinkers to formulate a new blueprint for sustainable growth and low-carbon prosperity for all on a planet under increasing strain, not least from climate change."
According to the terms of reference for the HLPGS, the HLPGS will address three sets of key issues:
1. New Development Paradigm
• How to get to a low-carbon/green economy?
• How to build resilient economies- especially for the most vulnerable?
• How to eradicate poverty?
• How to achieve sustainable modes of consumption and production?
• How to provide for development in a carbon-constrained world?2. Mechanisms for putting into practice a new development paradigm, including any necessary adjustments to the institutional architecture and financing at the global and national levels?
3. Transparent collection, compilation, assessment and disclosure of relevant data and information by public and private entities, with a view to enabling 3.1 and 3.2 above.
The second of these three sets of key issues evidence UN global governance intentions that would obliterate national sovereignty, free enterprise, and individual liberty. Obviously, the "necessary adjustments to the institutional architecture" are code for UN global governance. The contemplated "financing at the global and national levels" would consist of a new regime of international taxation. The "transparent collection, compilation, assessment and disclosure of relevant data and information" is code for a UN mandate that all public and private entities, including national governments, businesses, and individuals, provide UN authorities with any and all information UN officials deem relevant to determining who is helping or hindering the realization of the "new development paradigm."
These two recent developments confirm the UN's global governance ambitions. The MDG Summit's adoption of the Draft and the final report produced by the HLPGS will provide further evidence and details in that regard.
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