Foreign Policy In Focus

On Monday, April 18, Citizens for Global Solutions ran a full page advertisement in the New York Times that calls for three essential actions for the U.N. to take in Libya. We are reaching out to Americans because we now live in a new age where the international community has accepted its responsibility to protect. But you can’t protect babies from 30,000 feet nor should this be the job of the U.S. and its allies alone. The United Nations must have the support and tools that it needs to get these jobs done:

1. Deployment of U.N. Peacekeepers On the Ground to Protect Libyan Civilians;
2. Provision of Food, Water, Medicine and Shelter for Displaced People in Libya;
3. U.N. Sponsored Elections to Bring Democracy and a Legitimate Government.

Take action now – sign the petition.

These goals are in line with the Opinion Editorial written by President Obama, UK Prime Minister Cameron, and French President Sarkozy. In a joint editorial published in the Times, they declared:

The United Nations and its members should help the Libyan people as they rebuild where Qaddafi has destroyed — to repair homes and hospitals, to restore basic utilities, and to assist Libyans as they develop the institutions to underpin a prosperous and open society.

U.N. Peacekeeping

Today 64% of Americans supports a standing peacekeeping force led by the United Nations. Such a force would have the strength and legitimacy to halt the fighting in Libya without having to rely on NATO ground forces. While a standing U.N. peacekeeping force does not yet exist, this is the moment for the international community to establish it. This force could integrate within its ranks all those Libyans who desire peace, the protections of civilians and a legitimate government within their nation. 

Sixteen U.N. peacekeeping operations are currently deployed worldwide, involving nearly 100,000 troops and police from about 120 countries. Peacekeeping has proven to be one of the most effective tools available to the U.N. to assist countries navigating the difficult path from conflict to peace. U.N. peacekeepers provide security and the political and peace building support to help countries make the difficult, early transition from conflict to peace.

Historically, peacekeeping missions have done vital work in helping countries torn by conflict create conditions for lasting peace. For example, the U.N. mission to East Timor in the early 2000s helped the country recover from a bloody Civil War and transition successfully to a relatively stable democracy. In Côte D’Ivoire, the U.N. peacekeeping mission has done similar work, helping to remove the brutal dictator, Laurent Gbagbo, put an end to the 2nd Ivorian Civil War in the past decade, and facilitate the peaceful transition to democracy.

In Haiti, U.N. peacekeepers helped in the recovery following the 2010 earthquake by restoring a secure and stable environment and by facilitating a legitimate election, the results of which are soon to be officially released. Now U.N. peacekeepers are looking to continue aiding people as Haiti looks to rebuild its economy and transition to democracy.  

In Sudan, U.N. peacekeepers have worked to enforce the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed by the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army. U.N. peacekeepers there have provided much needed humanitarian aid to the Sudanese people and helped oversee the election on the referendum to make Southern Sudan an independent state.

Humanitarian Assistance

The United Nations refugee agency has warned that a lack of funding could undermine its ongoing efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to tens of thousands of people displaced by the unrest in Libya, saying it has so far received slightly over half of the funding it requested for the operation.

On April 1, U.N. High Commissioner António Guterres said it was "essential that humanitarian access is provided to all people in need throughout Libya." Speaking specifically on the coastal city of the coastal city Misrata, Guterres said, "This is a situation where life-saving humanitarian access should be guaranteed.” According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since mid-February more than 320,000 Libyans have fled to neighboring countries to escape the violence in Libya.  

The UNHCR, along with the World Food Programme, UNICEF and other U.N. entities, have been able to supply some aid to the Libyan people, but the work is difficult. In late March a World Food Programme convoy delivered 5,000 blankets and 5,000 sleeping mats to the people of Benghazi, the Libyan opposition’s stronghold. However, the UNHCR reported “shortages of medical supplies and basic commodities” in the city.  

In the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi in eastern Libya local authorities have identified at least 35,000 displaced people, mostly from Ajdabiyya and Brega. U.N. sources believe the actual number is likely to be around 100,000, since the population of Ajdabiyya is 120,000 and most people are thought to have left. While a few thousand have crossed into Egypt, the majority are displaced in Benghazi and Tobruk.
  
The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a fact sheet on April 15 reporting that at least 250 people including 20 children have been killed since hostilities began in Misrata. The report also stated that “Humanitarian needs are increasing amidst the ongoing heavy fighting inside the city of Misurata [Misrata]”; “There are reports of shortages of medical supplies, food and water”; and “the water supply to Misrata City has been cut off.”  International medical organizations including the World Health Organization and Doctors without Borders have provided some medical assistance to the people of Misrata, as have other U.N. entities such as the World Food Programme and UNICEF. However, additional aid is desperately needed.  A more concerted effort by the U.N. in coordination with individual nations and NGOs is essential to adequately address the humanitarian needs in Libya.

Elections

In their editorial, Obama, Cameron, and Sarkozy stated, “it will be the people of Libya, not the U.N., who choose their new constitution, elect their new leaders, and write the next chapter in their history." They are exactly right, but without the United Nations the people of Libya will never get the chance. The end result in Libya, as demanded by the Libyan people, must be a democracy with free and fair elections, government accountability, and rule of law. We ask the U.N. to take it upon itself to call for such elections and oversee the election process when fighting lessens and Muammar Gaddafi has been dethroned. 

On April 14, the U.N. called on Somalia’s transitional government to hold democratic elections before the end of its term in August.  A U.N. sponsored conference of Somali officials, the European Union, and the African Union has agreed that elections must take place within the next four months.  Somalia has not had a legitimate, stable government in over 20 years. Thanks to the efforts of the U.N., E.U., and A.U., upcoming elections could help with Somalia’s transition to peaceful, stable democracy. And this is just one of many examples of successful U.N. sponsored elections.  

Once democratic elections are held in Libya, the nation can finally move forward and look to a future where leaders are accountable to the people and human rights atrocities, like those committed by the Gaddafi regime, no longer have a place in Libyan society.

Citizens for Global Solutions believes that these three actions are necessary to ensure that we are living up to our ideals as Americans, as citizens of the world, and as human beings. The world has already shown the commitment to the responsibility to protect -- the responsibility the global community has to step in when the government of a nation cannot or will not protect its people. If the three actions outlined above are taken, we believe that Libyan lives will be saved and the future of the country hopeful.

Take action now – sign the petition.

Don Kraus is the chief executive officer of Citizens for Global Solutions.

Cross-posted from the IPS blog.

The UN climate talks held in Cancun late last year paved the way for a new Green Climate Fund to channel money for developing countries to build resiliency, protect forests, and bring low-carbon technologies and practices into mainstream use.

That marked a critical victory for developing countries, but the biggest fights have yet to come. In the coming year, a committee of 40 government representatives (25 from developing and 15 from developed countries) will be working furiously with the UN and other institutions, as well as finance, gender, community participation, and other experts, on making this fund a reality. They must do everything from creating a management structure to forging a global definition of "clean energy."

This ambitious task is meant to result in a Green Climate Fund that can handle the tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars a year developing countries will need in the coming decades to combat climate change and at the same time continue their fight against poverty.

It's fundamentally disturbing, however, that the World Bank — the planet’s leading cheerleader for a growth-without-limits development paradigm — is elbowing its way to the front of the line to help design the new fund, almost guaranteeing itself a permanent role in its management.

More than 90 environment, development, human rights, and anti-debt organizations from around the world conveyed this concern in a letter to the Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the convener of the first fund design meeting.

In the letter, civil society leaders called for strictly limiting the World Bank's role in the design on the Green Climate Fund for the following reasons:

First and foremost, the World Bank continues to finance dirty coal, oil and gas projects. According to a World Bank Group Energy Sector Financing Update prepared by the Bank Information Center, the global lender supported fossil fuel projects to the tune of $6.6 billion in 2010, a 116 percent increase from the year before. That included $4.4 billion for coal power projects, more than it spent on all new renewable energy and energy efficiency projects combined for the year ($3.4 billion). So while the World Bank is undeniably increasing it renewable energy financing, the volume is still dwarfed by its fossil fuel lending.

Bobby Peek, director of groundWork/Friends of the Earth South Africa, an environmental justice group in Durban, South Africa, that endorsed the NGO letter, noted, “Only a year ago the World Bank made its largest loan ever to dirty energy, signing $3.75 billion over to the Eskom energy company to build a 4,800MW coal-fired power station in South Africa.” He asked, “Is this the institution we want to put in charge funding the solutions to the climate crisis?”

Bank officials say that the Eskom power plant — and similar coal projects in other countries — are important for bringing access to electricity for energy-poor families. But environmentalists and local activists argue that the project will benefit large mines and smelters, not the local community. In fact, in an independent review of the Bank’s 26 fossil fuel loans in 2009 and 2010, Oil Change International found that none of these clearly identify access for the poor as a direct target of the project. The Bank agreed that not a single coal or oil project could be classified as improving energy access.

To the World Bank’s credit, it may be about to change course to a degree. A leaked draft of its new 10-year energy strategy revealed plans to move away from supporting new coal projects in middle-income countries. But environment and development groups argue that the language used in that draft document is riddled with loopholes. The energy plan also includes a massive scale-up of hydropower mega-dams that threaten to displace communities, destroy fisheries, and release their own greenhouse gases.

The Green Climate Fund should remain fully independent from the World Bank. Its design committee should engage experts from UN agencies and all regions of the world. Experts on gender, sustainable development, poverty alleviation, renewable energy and efficiency technologies, indigenous peoples, human rights, and social and environmental safeguards should weigh in, too.

Janet is co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, where she provides analysis of the international financial institutions’ energy investment and carbon finance activities. 

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the fifth in the series.

As eye-opening revelations concerning international diplomacy begin to pour out from the Wikileaks document dump, it is increasingly clear that the administration of Barack Obama will have a massive public relations mess to clean up. The latest scandal: Hillary Clinton ordered American diplomats to spy on top officials in the United Nations, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

According to the Guardian, which received leaked documents directly from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange,

A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.

It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.

But it doesn’t stop there. Beyond these top-secret intelligence gathering operations, the State Department also

wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and "biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives".

The Guardian goes on to report that

The operation targetted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington's main intelligence agencies. The CIA's clandestine service, the US Secret Service and the FBI were included in the "reporting and collection needs" cable alongside the state department under the heading "collection requirements and tasking".

Of course, spying is hardly a new phenomenon in Turtle Bay. The National Security Agency, among other groups, was caught spying on Security Council members in 2003, and was accused of tapping the phone of then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Still, this latest episode will surely complicate matters between the world body and an Obama administration eager to mend the strained relations engendered during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The leaked cables reveal a wide-range of US interest in UN matters.

Washington wanted intelligence on the contentious issue of the "relationship or funding between UN personnel and/or missions and terrorist organisations" and links between the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah. It also wanted to know about plans by UN special rapporteurs to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and "details of friction" between the agencies co-ordinating UN humanitarian operations, evidence of corruption inside UNAids, the joint UN programme on HIV, and in international health organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). It even called for "biographic and biometric" information on Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of WHO, as well as details of her personality, role, effectiveness, management style and influence.

But cables reveal that the spying orders were not only issued for missions within the headquarters on Second Avenue. The Guardian reports further that

They are packed with detailed orders and while embassy staff are particularly encouraged to assist in compiling biographic information, the directive on the mineral and oil-rich Great Lakes region of Africa also requested detailed military intelligence, including weapons markings and plans of army bases. A directive on "Palestinian issues" sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, without explaining why.

In one directive that would test the initiative, never mind moral and legal scruples, of any diplomat, Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups.

The Obama administration seemingly wanted information on matters of less global strategic import as well. In one example,

a cable to the embassy in Sofia last June, five months before Clinton hosted Bulgaria's foreign minister in Washington, the first request was about government corruption and the links between organised crime groups and "government and foreign entities, drug and human trafficking, credit card fraud, and computer-related crimes, including child pornography".

Washington also wanted to know about "corruption among senior officials, including off-budget financial flows in support of senior leaders … details about defence industry, including plans and efforts to co-operate with foreign nations and actors. Weapon system development programmes, firms and facilities. Types, production rates, and factory markings of major weapon systems".

So far no comment has been issued from the Secretary-General’s office, nor any of the other agencies affected by US espionage. 

Michael Busch, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, teaches international relations at the City College of New York and serves as research associate at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. He is currently working on a doctorate in political science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.