1. The third meeting in the series was on the subject of
The High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The
meeting was chaired by Sir Marrack Goulding, Warden of St
Anthony's College, Oxford; and the speaker was Lord David
Hannay, a member of the High Level Panel.
2. Lord Hannay began by setting out the background
within which the High Level Panel had been set up, referring
specifically to the note of alarm sounded by Kofi Anan at
the opening of the General Assembly in September 2003. It
was true that 2003 had been a bad year, particularly because
of Security Council paralysis around Iraq and the jousting
between members of the Security Council. The UN's momentum
had also been badly disrupted by the blowing up of the UN
mission in Baghdad and the murder of Sergio de Mello. However,
there were deeper concerns informing the Secretary General's
statement, not purely related to Iraq. Nor was it necessary
to solve the Iraq problem in order to do something constructive
about the problems facing the UN.
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3. Until the late 1980s, the UN had been dominated
by the Cold War and the two power rivalry that characterised
it. A major change had come about with the end of the Cold
War: unthinkable things had become both thinkable and doable
in the Security Council - for example the first Gulf War.
However, there had been no sustained attempt to think through
the institutional architecture. On the whole, member states
had opted for muddling through. And this had had consequences:
there had been fewer successes than there might have been,
and more failures. The UN needed to change if it were to avoid
being marginalised.
4. Lord Hannay said that there were two main
problems facing the UN. Despite some successes during the
muddling through period (for example, East Timor), there was
a real problem of effectiveness, demonstrated by the UN failures
in Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia. In particular, the UN was not
able to mount enforcement operations and had to rely on coalitions
of the willing. The second problem was to do with the conceptual
framework that might underlie effectiveness, in particular
the question of how to build a consensus for new forms of
action. This was particularly hard.
5. The panel had been set up to consider these
questions. It was about halfway through its work, had completed
its analysis of threats and challenges, and was now beginning
to work on prescriptions. Its report would be submitted by
1 December 2004.
6. Already, a number of points were clear. The Panel could
not take a narrow, 'western' view of threats, focusing only
on issues like weapons of mass destruction and security. It
was necessary to treat poverty, environmental hazards, disease
and other issues on an equal footing. By the same token, the
Panel had rejected the idea of establishing a hierarchy of
threats.
7. It was also clear that security threats as understood
during the Cold War had largely disappeared. Some old threats
remained, for example, the Palestine question and Kashmir,
but there were many new problems and these were often intractable
and difficult. Among these were the problem of state failure,
terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, peace-keeping, and
also the new social and economic threats, for example, HIV/AIDS.
8. The problem of state failure could be approached in terms
of diagnosis, prevention, intervention and rehabilitation.
The Panel was likely to focus on the first two of these. In
terms of diagnosis, data collection and analysis needed to
be systematised, and the Secretary-General needed an independent
remit to bring issues connected to state failure directly
to the Security Council. Prevention was hideously difficult,
but Lord Hannay thought there needed to be a discussion about
the role of the Bretton Woods institutions, and needed to
be brought more centrally into the debate.
9. With regard to intervention, there were important discussions
still to have about whether or not there should be rules.
Lord Hannay was attracted by the "duty to protect"
discussed in the recent Canadian report.
10. Finally, on rehabilitation, it was clear that there needed
to be a long-term commitment.
11. With regard to other issues, Lord Hannay noted the importance
of revisiting the conclusions of the Brahimi Report on Peace
Keeping, both picking up parts of the report that had not
yet been implemented, but also identifying some new issues.
One of these, he suggested, was the idea of "double-hatting"
the military advice to the Secretary-General, so that it was
also available as a matter of right to members of the Security
Council. He also had some specific suggestions on weapons
of mass destruction, involving the strengthening of the IAEA
and the biological weapons convention.
12. Turning to institutional aspects of the reform, Lord
Hannay said that he thought that it was important to remember
that the response to threats and challenges should be driven
by policy, not by the institutional reform agenda. It was
important not to play institutional tiddly-winks in New York.
13. Nevertheless, institutional reform was needed, though
some would be difficult to achieve. Lord Hannay thought that
Security Council enlargement would eventually happen, but
would be difficult. He doubted that there was a new role for
the Trusteeship Council. He was not sanguine about the need
for or the prospect of an Economic and Social Security Council,
or even of a stronger Executive Committee for ECOSOC. He thought
there was important work to do on sanctions, especially in
finding a middle ground between exhortation and force. The
most important point, however, was that it would be necessary
to build consensus among the Security Council permanent members
and the wider constituency. In this connection, it was essential
to engage with the US.
14. As far as the UK was concerned, Lord Hannay thought that
we needed to engage with this agenda. He emphasised particularly
the UK's role with the EU, and reminded the audience both
of the EU's paper commitment to "effective multilateralism",
as well as its support to specific initiatives like African
peace-keeping.
15. A number of points were made in the discussion:
There was quite a discussion about the role of the
US in UN reform. Some couched this in terms of finding
ways to draw the US more firmly into a multilateral
network. Lord Hannay questioned the value of a "multi-polar"
model. He doubted whether this would be stable and suggested
that there needed to be a strong balance at the centre.
Lord Hannay did not think it would be a good strategy
to try to bind the US against its will into multilateral
arrangements. He described this as the "Gulliver
Strategy".
A number of comments were made about the importance
of civil society participation in and G77 ownership
of the work of the High Level Panel. Lord Hannay agreed
with these points. He reminded the audience that the
majority of the members of the High Level Panel were
from G77 states. He also described the efforts the High
Level Panel was making to consult, with seminars and
meetings around the world. It also had an active website
On G77 participation, Lord Hannay had a particular
suggestion, which was to enlarge the G8 in order to
bring in the larger developing countries, including
(but not only) China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and South
Africa.
Finally, there was a discussion about how to achieve
change. Was it a question of leadership? Of creating
a change coalition? Of providing quick wins? Lord Hannay
thought that there was no template, and that an ad hoc
approach would be necessary. He said that the High Level
Panel would produce a number of ideas which could then
be tested out by the Secretary-General to see if there
was a consensus. This would provide the basis for moving
forward. He thought the most important factor inducing
change would be convincing demonstration that collective
action added value to unilateral action by powerful
member states.
