The World Today

August & September 2001: August/September 2001

In May, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan released his report on ten years of national and international efforts to ensure the rights of children throughout the world to live full and productive lives. The ‘We, the Children’ report is to be presented to the UN General Assembly’s Special Session on Children in September as a follow up to the 1990 World Summit for Children. It is a telling document, a ten year history of promises made to children, commitments kept and commitments broken. The final record is uneven and unsettling, highlighting blighted lives and wasted potential as government after government failed to invest sufficiently in basic social services or provide adequate international development assistance to invest in children’s lives.

Articles

In September, two hundred young people will come from all corners of the globe to New York to take part in the UN Special Session on Children. The Session will focus on issues that affect young people such as health, education, nutrition, protection from all forms of abuse and participation. There shall be a lot of talking – the young people’s role is to give it meaning and to keep it real. Young people will have the opportunity to speak to world leaders and government delegates who hold the power and put their points directly across.

Living Silence. Burma under Military Rule by Christina Fink. Published by Zed Books, 2001. Burma. Political Economy under Military Rule edited by Robert H Taylor. Published by Hurst & Company, 2001.The Making of Modern Burma by Thant Myint-U. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2001.

A few hundred thousand voters are about to choose parliamentary representatives in Fiji. An event that might be routine takes on special significance because it should restore democracy after the island’s latest coup attempt. What’s more, it will indicate whether the different ethnic groups can continue to coexist and whether there are lessons for other troubled parts of Melanesia.

Asylum-seekers are often seen as being on a shopping spree for the ideal country of refuge. As they get mixed up with growing numbers of economic migrants, it has become increasingly difficult and expensive to ensure refugees get the protection they deserve. New European procedures will try to separate the moral imperative of asylum from economic need.

The Taliban have hit the headlines with often bizarre or brutal actions, which they insist are based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They’ve blown up ancient Buddhist monuments, sheltered Osama bin Laden from America where he’s accused of terrorism, and obliged men to wear beards. Women face particularly stringent restrictions. Banned from most jobs and schooling, they are largely confined to their homes. The foreign press has concentrated mainly on the instant shock value of such stories. But what is the structural impact of this vast, unprecedented social experiment?

When Henri Dunant interrupted his travels to go to the aid of dying soldiers on the battlefield of Solferino in 1859 he was untroubled by many of the dilemmas facing modern day humanitarians. Dunant took no view on the rights and wrongs of the war, nor did he stop to think whether the people whose broken bodies he attempted to mend might recover only to don their uniforms and fight again. The modern concept of human rights hadn’t even been born. But a century and a half on, the humanitarian tradition inspired by Dunant and his followers in the Red Cross movement is under attack. It is derided by many as at best self-serving philanthropy and at worst, political blindness and criminal naivety.

Also in this issue

When people in the world’s conflict zones need protecting, it is the United Nations which is most frequently charged with ‘doing something’. Often short of soldiers, it should be given another option, to call on professional military companies to provide human security – for a fee.

Angola From Afro-Stalinism to Petro- Diamond Capitalism by Tony Hodges Published by James Currey/Indiana University Press, 2001.

The Russian army is in a shambles. Most units are not ready to fight, the few resources are often completely misappropriated. Young conscripts face a system inherited from the gulags which reduces many to a pitiful state. After spending months filming conscript units, Paul Jenkins concludes that the west might step in and help Moscow create a professional military it can do business with.

The end of the Soviet Union produced a series of bitter struggles in Eurasia. The names of the territories involved surfaced briefly as trouble spots. But almost a decade on, the disputes are far from over – despite recent flurries of diplomatic activity, they are conflicts frozen in time.

How should we react to demonstrations against globalisation? Do the protesters have a point – is the process likely to produce significant numbers of victims? And could there really be a backlash against the whole phenomenon?

The enlargement of the European Union, which will almost double its membership of fifteen countries, is its most important project. The other tasks which the Union has in hand at the beginning of this century – the single currency, and the development of Europe’s role in foreign policy, security and defence – are of crucial importance, touching as they do on key areas of economic and political activity. But enlargement is an existential project. Bringing in the countries of central and eastern Europe, with more than 100 million people, will literally change the shape and dimension of the Union.