We have often been asked what our position is on the United
Nations and the Community of Democracies. The issue of the
United Nations comes up often and this paper spells out our
position on this issue. While the Wall Street Journal
has suggested the Community of Democracies might one day replace
an imperfect United Nations and some in the public policy
arena have called for “an alliance of democracies”
to supplant the UN, neither the CD movement nor the Council
for a Community of Democracies has ever endorsed such a position.
Rather we see the Community of Democracies
as exerting an influence within the United Nations itself
to live up to its original charter. Indeed, as the Secretary
General himself said in his address to the inaugural Community
of Democracies Ministerial meeting in 2000: “The theme
of this conference, ‘Towards a Community of Democracies,’
represents my own profound aspiration for the United Nations
as a whole. When the United Nations can truly call itself
a community of democracies, the Charter’s noble ideals
of protecting human rights and promoting ‘social progress
in larger freedoms’ will have been brought much closer.”
For the same reason, CCD supports the Secretary General’s
own reform agenda.
While the Community of Democracies was established
outside the UN, one of its earliest goals was to work with
and within the world body. Following the founding Warsaw Conference
of the CD in June 2000, the organizing Convening Group met
at that September’s UNGA solely to propose establishment
of a caucus of democracies that would operate within the UN.
That effort and the Warsaw pronouncements
of the Secretary General perfectly express our own view. Since
that time CCD has lent its support and its leadership to a
movement of NGOs that have vigorously advanced the idea of
a UN Democracy Caucus. In October 2001 we organized a luncheon,
initiated by our Board Member and current President, Dick
Rowson, jointly with UNA/USA. Invited to this dialogue on
the role such a caucus could play, were the Permanent Representatives
of a score of countries and several NGOs. Subsequently, we
participated in meetings with a coalition of NGOs including
Freedom House, Democracy Coalition Project, American Bar Association,
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others designed
to win the support of governments for the idea of the caucus.
In 2003, Secretary Powell and the foreign
ministers of the CD Convening Group declared their support
for the idea. At a full CD Ministerial meeting at the 2004
UNGA session in New York, under the able leadership of Chile
and its Permanent Representative, Amb.Muñoz, the CD
formally organized the UN Democracy Caucus. CCD, in December
2004, again took the initiative by organizing a second luncheon
for Permanent Representatives, media representatives and nongovernmental
organizations at the UN, in partnership with UNA/USA and several
other NGOs, to discuss the progress of the Caucus. We arranged
for Amb. Muñoz to brief those attending and also invited
Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. Andres Simonyi to address
the audience on Hungary’s plan to launch an International
Centre for Democratic Transition in Budapest. We did so in
order that the Hungarian initiative could be related to the
work of the UN especially to that of the UNDP.
The Department of State joined with other
foreign ministries of CD countries last year to wage a campaign
in Geneva that would seek to improve the performance of the
Human Rights Commission. In a briefing to the NGOs, the leadership
of the Offices of International Organization Affairs and Global
Affairs at the Department reported that they had been encouraged
by the progress made in Geneva.
CCD believes these initial efforts have had
a positive influence on change at the UN. We share the concern
of many that the credibility of the United Nations among Americans
and citizens of other democracies was being eroded by headlines
declaring: “Libya to head UN Human Rights Commission”.
The world has witnessed a long train of abuses of that Commission
by Cuba, Vietnam, Libya and more recently Zimbabwe fueling
a sense that the UN Commission has become the antithesis of
what it was meant to be, by a pattern of actions that undermined
principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For this reason, CCD applauds and fully supports
Secretary General Annan’s planned wide-ranging reform
of the Human Rights Commission and his proposal that it be
transformed into a 23 member Human Rights Council that would
exclude those who systematically violate the Universal Declaration.
We also note that foreign ministers at the Santiago Ministerial
of the Community of Democracies recently announced that a
meeting of the CD Ministers would be scheduled at the forthcoming
UNGA and at subsequent UNGA openings to focus on the need
for action on these reforms and enlist the UN Democracy Caucus
in this effort.
CCD’s work in this area has at no time
reflected the view that the Community of Democracies should
in any way replace the United Nations. Our President, Dick
Rowson, and our founding President, John Richardson, both
long associated with the UNA/USA, and the Chairman of our
Board, Robert Hunter have all strongly supported the need
for a strong UN and view the Community of Democracies as a
supporter of the world body. We view it as a movement with
no ambitions to become an institution like the United Nations
dealing with issues of international peace and security and
the myriad other functions that the UN manages on a daily
basis. Rather, we have consistently acted out of the conviction
that an imperfect United Nations could be strengthened and
reformed through the efforts of democracies acting in concert
on issues related to common values consistent with the Charter.
This position was made explicit by our Board of Directors
at its retreat in May of 2004.
May 18, 2005
