THE REPORT OF THE  UN'S HIGH LEVEL PANEL ON THREATS, CHALLENGES AND CHANGE  WILL BE RELEASED IN DECEMBER

In early December, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to release a set of recommendations designed to upgrade the way the United Nations responds to the global security challenges of the 21st century. The report of Annan's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change (HLP) will lay out specific proposals detailing how the United Nations can better address threats ranging from terrorism to weapons of mass destruction. The far-reaching report will include recommendations on responding to inter-state wars, civil wars, genocide, combating organized crime, and reducing disease, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation.

Questions the report should address:

• Does the international community have a responsibility to protect citizens when national governments do not in cases of genocide or mass-murder?

• Does a nation's right to self defense, as written in the UN Charter, need to be reviewed to address preventive war when a threat is not imminent?

• Is there a need to have better protection of the nuclear fuel cycle to prevent weapons proliferation while allowing civilian nuclear energy? Can a global system be developed to detected bio and chemical weapons attacks?

• Is there a definition of terrorism that the General Assembly can adopt? Can the global struggle against terrorism be conducted with a great emphasis on human rights? Is there a means by which individuals put on the UN's terrorist list can appeal?

• How can the UN system and member states better organize themselves to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to provide the poorest people of the world the opportunities they need to take control of their own lives by: improving health care and preventing the spread of deadly diseases like AIDS and malaria; improving access to education; promoting open economies; and halving the number of people living on less than a dollar per day?

In a speech to the UN's General Assembly in September 2003, Secretary General Kofi Annan acknowledged that the United Nations did not meet the needs of its members, including the United States. According to Annan, the UN, and the whole multilateral security system stand at a crossroads.  He stated, "We have come to a fork in the road. This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the United Nations was founded. . I believe the time is ripe for a hard look at fundamental policy issues, and at the structural changes that may be needed in order to strengthen them."  Click here to read more.

At the same time, he established the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change made up of eminent leaders from around the globe, including former U.S. national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway to:

• Identify how to increase cooperative internationalism and collective security in response to the resurgence of unilateralism and increasing willingness to bypass the Security Council.

• Address the concern that 'security' for most people in developing world is more about threats from poverty, disease and environmental breakdown than physical violence, that the international system - despite the UN's Charter focusing on development as much as peace - is not giving sufficient weight to these concerns or dealing effectively with them.

• Develop a viable reform agenda for the UN 60th anniversary summits in 2005, where the focus of attention will be not just on immediate issues, but how the post-WWII international system, after six decades, should be reconfigured or redirected to deal with the challenges of the next 50 years or more.

Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister and a member of the Panel in September talked about the need for the report to include realist proposals. Evans said that the Secretary General has made it clear "he wants the emphasis to be on the operationally deliverable rather than the intellectually or emotionally attractive."

It is expected that portions of the HLP report and another report on the MDG's due out in January will form the core of Secretary-General Annan's agenda for the 60th Anniversary General Assembly and summits in 2005. The HLP report is expected to stress that the threats of inter-state and intra-state war, criminal and terrorist networks, poverty, and weak or underdeveloped states all undermine international peace and security. While UN member states have different priorities regarding these threats, they all share a common need to resolve them. The challenge will be to strengthen governments' commitment to address threats that are the priorities of others.

For more information about UN Reform efforts, click here.