the ethically-based critique alone could not suffice. The post-cold war period opened a new chapter in the efforts to conceptualize the idea of development in a globalizing world. The UN organized a series of global conferences on various aspects of development which defined the problems and a set of international cooperation goals as well as programs of action in such areas as environment, social development, the role of women, human settlements, population, and human rights. The importance of these conferences, which took place in the major part of 1990s, cannot be overemphasized. The end of the Cold War and the earlier demise of the New International Economic Order idea created a vacuum which could easily lead to the collapse of international development cooperation. UN conferences gave a new impetus and substance to international development, thus enabling a fresh start in the new millennium.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed a set of Millennium Development Goals in the year 2000, which were based on the extensive, serious and solid work completed during the development conferences of the preceding decade. In addition, they were, in the words of Nitin Desai, a former UN Under-Secretary-General on economic and social affairs, “crisp enough to cope with the attention deficit disorder on development issues in the media and in the higher reaches of government.” The MDGs were devoted to the reduction of extreme ←24 | 25→poverty, the improvement of basic health and education conditions, the improvement of maternal health and the reduction of child mortality, as well as ensuring environmental sustainability. The goals also called for a new development partnership without defining it fully.
The Millennium Development Goals led to the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, achieved in 2002, and generated a variety of useful activities by governments, development agencies, the private sector, NGOs, academic institutions and, to a lesser extent, the media. It is important to understand the emergence of the Millennium Development Goals in their historical perspective and in their potential for the future. They were not an arbitrary proposal, but a distillation of several decades of development work and a realistic framework for both future national policy-making and international development cooperation.
The results achieved since the adoption of the MDGs confirm this assessment. This was also the assessment of the High-Level Panel for the Post-2015 Development Agenda, co-chaired by the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia, and the British Prime Minister at the time. The panel wrote that the last thirteen years since the proclamation of the MDGs “have seen the fastest reduction of extreme poverty in human history: there are half a billion fewer people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.” Substantial improvement was reported in such areas as the reduction of child mortality levels and deaths due to malaria. Optimistic assessments were also made by several leading experts. This all contributed to the success of the negotiations for the subsequent fifteen-year period – 2015 to 2030. The UN laid out a system on seventeen Sustainable Development Goals and a set of other tasks forming what became known as “Agenda 2030.”
Agenda 2030 is the most comprehensive and ambitious vision for global development ever defined. It is to the credit of the United Nations that it was able, in 2015, to agree by consensus on this vision. In essence, Agenda 2030 advances three concepts: first, poverty eradication, second, sustainability and third, fairness.
The achievements in poverty reduction and the optimism of our time suggest that poverty eradication should be the key priority. The UN system will need to provide a credible analysis of poverty profiles in different parts of the world as well as mature policy guidance. The latter should include policy recommendations related to those with the greatest needs, whether they are ethnic minorities or other identity groups. A national policy intended to address poverty issues cannot be enough if it relies only on general statistical information. Disaggregated data usually help identify the groups most concerned and allow for a good diagnosis of the problem, and consequently, better policy-making.
The sustainability of development initiatives has been hitherto considered mainly in its environmental dimension. There are good reasons for that. Social ←25 | 26→sustainability has been less prominent, even if understood well. One of the criteria for the good governance is the existence of policies designed to promote growth and to ensure that economic growth translates into social improvement to the largest extent possible. The expectation of an automatic “trickle down” effect is most often an illusion. In recent years that illusion has started to wane, while current debates on growing income inequality within states places the question of social sustainability more centrally into the development debate. Moreover, the question of balancing the environmental, economic and social sustainability of development remains as critical as ever.
The third concept, fairness, should be understood in its general meaning. Development requires rules and rules need to be fair. Ideally, development brings with it an increasing sophistication of the rule of law and a steadily improving level of achievement of universal human rights standards. However, these requirements are as sensitive as they are necessary. Perfect is an enemy of good. It is important to set priorities related to the realization of human rights in a manner that takes into account the economic and social context in which these human rights are to be realized. In addition, fairness within states has a counterpart in the need for greater fairness among states as well.
Unlike economic and social cooperation, human rights are scarcely mentioned in the UN Charter. The proposal made in San Francisco to include an international bill of rights did not succeed. However, the void was filled soon after, by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, one of the most important and most ambitious pronouncements ever made by the UN.
Let me remind you of the following provision in the Declaration, its Article 28:
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
This provision contains two key elements: first, the entitlement to a social and international order and, second, the aspiration of the full realization of rights, as opposed to mere recognition or formal enactment. Thus, the platform was set for significant development – first a standard setting, which dominated the first two decades of action, and later a gradual strengthening of the implementation of human rights – a more difficult and conflictual aspect of human rights work which dominates the agenda to date.
Let me conclude.
Observing the UN as a whole, as well as its evolution in more than seventy years of existence, shows that the organization is not only indispensable but also practically relevant to a wide variety of the international community’s ←26 | 27→needs. There are both possibilities and needs for improvement, with some of them obvious.
In terms of peace operations, the mere numbers of peacekeeping personnel and the fact that they remain under national disciplinary and criminal jurisdiction has made the task of preventing and suppressing the incidence of inappropriate behavior, including sexual abuse, difficult. It is encouraging that the Security Council has expressed its commitment to the principle of zero tolerance for this unacceptable behavior by peacekeepers. Now, the Council should develop methods to ensure that this principle is implemented.
With regards to the UN development system, much innovation is needed to take full advantage of the data revolution, to improve monitoring and develop capacities for sophisticated analysis and policy advice. This will require ever greater attention to UN activities in the field, as well as a more ambitious approach at the level of principal organs.
The human rights segment has to continue to improve its monitoring and implementation capacity, as well as think about the transformative potential of human rights. In fact, the language of Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be the guiding principle of human rights bodies and of the UN system as a whole.
The UN needs to strengthen its outreach to the general public to gain worldwide public opinion support. Communication with the general public is necessary to
