NGO PRESS CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENT, PEACE AND SECURITY

NGO PRESS CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENT, PEACE AND SECURITY

Civil society was in great danger of being let down by the lamentable performance of government representatives purporting to negotiate a final document for endorsement by ministers at next week’s Summit, Gareth Evans, President of the International Crisis Group, said this afternoon.

Addressing a Headquarters press conference by scheduled speakers for this afternoon’s session of the DPI/ NGO Conference –- entitled “Our Challenge:  Voices for Peace, Partnerships and Renewal” -- he expressed shock at the present condition of the negotiations on all the key security issues and great principles.  They included the principle of responsibility to protect, as well as those governing the use of force; institutional issues such as a peacebuilding commission and an effective human rights council; policy issues such as arms control, disarmament and terrorism; and norm-setting issues like reaching agreement on a definition of terrorism.

There was practically no visible agreement at the moment on anything that mattered, said the former Australian foreign minister.  With the Summit four working days away, there was no visible process yet at work that could possibly deliver a sensible outcome.  A so-called core group of about 30 country and regional group representatives, totalling about 130 diplomats, was still purporting to negotiate, line by line, the content of a 45-page document which was absolutely full of square brackets and with no obvious plan B in existence as to how that could be distilled into a credible, workable outcome.  If nothing else, this week’s DPI/NGO Conference could be a wake-up call or a “cry of pain” from civil society that would be heard.  Hopefully, the few days remaining before the Summit would see the emergence of something more than a “collection of pious generalizations”, which seemed the most optimal outcome at the moment.

Also addressing the press conference, Mamphela Ramphele, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on International Migration, said it was the role and important duty of civil society to continually remind government leaders to be true to the commitments they had made at the 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development to work in partnership so as to set a platform for a more prosperous global community.  The Millennium Development Goals were, after all, minimalist targets, the senior World Bank adviser pointed out.  The Global Commission on Migration had repeatedly found the critical role of civil society in holding governments accountable for their stated commitments to make the world better.

Antonio Maria Costa, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, stressed the essential role of non-governmental organizations to the efforts of that Office to address some of the most serious threats, not only to global stability and security, but also to the security of Member States and to individual security.  Such complex problems as drugs and crime could not be resolved by single-issue instruments, but only by the commitment of civil society at large.  Non-governmental organizations, given the role they played in society at large, were instrumental in triggering a society-wide reaction in curbing threats to security.

Speaking from a military perspective was Daniel Opande, former Force Commander of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) and a key actor in several other United Nations peacekeeping operations.  He stressed the importance of civil society’s role in exposing the ills that gave rise to conflict, saying it must re-energize itself to ensure that its voice was heard by world leaders, as well as by those seeking to rule by the sword.

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For information media • not an official record