The UN partnership with multinationals does not square with poverty alleviation, writes Faiza Rady Following festivities marking the UN's 60th anniversary and a contentious three-day talk shop addressing a range of issues including the "war on terror", human rights, conflict resolution and poverty, some 175 world leaders signed a protocol at the World Summit in New York on Friday, obliging intervention in cases of genocide and re-affirming goals set to alleviate global poverty. Hailed by many Northern leaders as a landmark, and dismissed by Southern politicians as a seriously compromised version of the original draft, the 35-page document raises much controversy. Critics contend that it falls short of realising the UN Millennium Summit Goals. These included halving the extreme poverty levels that afflict over one billion people living on less than one dollar a day; reducing the yearly child death toll of 10.7 million by two-thirds; and achieving universal primary education by 2015. United States Ambassador to the UN John Bolton -- a veteran and vociferous critic of the world body, who once described the world body as "non-existent" -- lauded the protocol "as an important step in a long process of UN reform". Bolton has good reason to gloat. After several weeks of arduous pre- conference behind-the-scene labour, he managed to divert the summit's anti-poverty focus and hijack its agenda -- tailoring it to the Bush administration's all-out "war on terror". Thus the UN Millennium Declaration, which included a solemn international pledge "to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty by 2015," was quietly swept under the carpet and sidelined amidst the Bush administration's grander policy designs. It is telling in this context that the summit's protocol on development reneged on significantly changing unequal terms of trade between developed and developing countries which, according to the 2005 UN Human Development Report (HDR), continue "to deny poor countries and poor people a fair share of global prosperity". This imbalance has created conditions where more than 2.6 billion people in the South have no access to potable water, while the annual $7 billion needed to solve the problem over the next decade are spent on luxuries such as corrective surgery in wealthy countries like the US. Armed with a grand total of 750 amendment requests of the summit's draft document, Bolton proceeded to plough his way through the text. He started out by demanding that references to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) be scrapped, relenting only after he faced vehement opposition from the floor. Another of Bolton's amendments concerned the vexing issue of free and compulsory primary education as part of the MDG package. A relentless foe of free education, Bolton insisted that primary education be defined in market terms, arguing the world's poor be given the democratic freedom to pay for their children's schools. Facing Bolton on the other side of the divide, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the summit as an "unforgivable sham". To the sound of a unanimous applause, Chavez described the protocol as "conceived in darkness and brought forth from the shadows" -- adding that Venezuela and Cuba were excluded from the group of 30 nations who had fine-tuned the final text. "Obviously people are pleased with what he said, but they cannot express themselves as frankly as he does," said one Arab ambassador who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend the US. South African President Thabo Mbeki blasted "rich and powerful nations" -- a transparent reference to the US and the EU -- for blocking attempts to democratise the UN Security Council (SC) by excluding more developing countries. Mbeki has a point. Denied permanent seats on the all- powerful Security Council under the freshly- baked World Summit protocol, poor countries will continue to have no voice in any significant UN decision-making process. However, over and above exclusion from the SC, Southern countries are equally sidelined from other powerful UN agencies, which now include the world's major financial institutions spearheading the course of international trade. These include the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In the early 1980s, the US and the United Kingdom directed the WB and the IMF to make loans conditionality contingent on privatising the public sector, rolling back state subsidies and dismantling protective trade and tariff barriers. Since then, international trade conditions have been heavily tipped to favour the industries of rich countries at the expense of the poor. In 1994, the WTO was created to legislate and supervise neo-liberal trade agreements and function as a formidable policing force against potential deviance. Needless to say, the economies of Southern countries have been devastated over the past two and a half decades as a result, sporting a toll of soaring inequalities both within and between nations. Leading the coalition of rich OECD countries (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development), the US and the UK have seen to it that poor countries remain marginalised in the WTO, the WB and the IMF. Responsibility of the day-to-day management of IMF programmes is vested in 24 executive directors, five of whom represent the big stakeholders: the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. Africa has two directors, representing 44 countries. Membership in the WB and the IMF totals 184 countries, while the G8 group of industrial countries account for 40 per cent of the total vote. The remaining votes are distributed according to proportional financial contributions, largely excluding the poor. But not entirely. Each of the 184 member country has a "basic vote", in deference to the principles of democratic power-sharing. Still, the weight of the basic vote remains nominal in the balance -- accounting for less than two per cent of the total vote. Unequal power-sharing and unequal voting rights ultimately explain the totalitarian character of the international money lenders -- all neophyte UN agencies. Besides merging with the WB/IMF, the UN has enlisted a powerful group of multinational sponsors under the so-called Global Compact. A brainchild of UN secretary- general, Kofi Annan, the Global Compact consists of a partnership between the world body and multinationals. The UN's role is to monitor corporate practices and bring them in line with international environmental and labour standards. In turn, the corporations are to follow UN directives and make efforts to increase the transfer of capital and technology to the South. Critics have described this novel kind of partnership as dubious, at best. For example, ranking high on the list of UN partners is Dow Chemical. Renowned as the infamous creator of Agent Orange, the multinational sold the toxic defoliant to the Pentagon who then used it to despoil Vietnam's forests and agriculture -- causing damage that will continue to cripple the country well into the next century. Can corporations like Dow Chemical be reformed through the UN's Global Compact, and will they work to alleviate global poverty? This is unlikely, critics contend. Multinationals are in the business of maximising profits at the expense of people's needs, as pointed out by the Centre on Transnational Corporations -- itself a UN agency which has recently been quietly terminated.
