UBUNTU - World Forum of Civil Society Networks

On the occasion of the opening of the Sixty-second Annual General Assembly of the United Nations: "LET US MAKE THE UNITED NATIONS THE CENTRAL INSTRUMENT IN DEMOCRATIC WORLD GOVERNANCE"

On 18 September this year, the sixty-second annual session of the General Assembly of the United Nations will be opened under an umbrella slogan proposed by the Secretary General: "Revitalisation of the work of the General Assembly". A necessary and worthwhile aim.

On this occasion, we, the undersigned organisations and individuals, at the initiative of the "World Forum of Civil Society Networks - UBUNTU", wish to convey the following thoughts and proposals to the member-State representatives at the United Nations and to world public opinion in general:

Whether the session is arranged in its normal form, as in this case, or in a special form as when it is preceded by a Summit meeting of Heads of State and Government (the last one of that kind having been in the year 2005), its opening should always be a particular time for the world to focus on the situation of the world and on the policies to adopt for tackling its problems, challenges and collective projects.
However, as is only too customary, this opening event will almost certainly be seen as virtually insignificant on account of its meagre projection and in particular its very meagre real substantive content and resolutions beyond "politically correct" diplomatic declarations.
A far cry indeed from the "noisy" G8 gatherings, which are becoming the meetings that set the political agenda for the year, with no legitimacy of course!
Insisting on the lack of legitimacy of the G8 to define the year's agenda, as those are topics which should be embraced by a United Nations of the kind we need, we wish to avail ourselves of this occasion to raise just some of the topics to be included in this agenda - without seeking in any way to be exhaustive.

The return to the arms race. Just when the Treaties of the Cold War period and the "fall of the Berlin wall" made us fancy that the world would cease once and for all to threaten self-destruction and that the "war economy" would cease to be a way for the world's most prosperous to get richer while controlling and impoverishing still further the poor... now everything seems to be sending us back to the most absurd and pathetic of human activities: the build-up of arms. The recent US initiatives on missile shields and 60.000 million dollars in arms for "friendly" countries in the Middle East are two more tokens of this trend that requires the most firm and universal rejection.
Greedy attempts to appropriate world public assets. One of the devastating effects of climate change (as referred to by the Ubuntu Forum in its statement http://www.ubuntu.upc.edu/index.php?lg=eng&pg=2&ncom=22 ) is the thawing of the polar regions. Now we are seeing a race by neighbouring countries to claim property rights over those regions, regions which no doubt hold major natural resources. Now is the time to move on further with the concept of, and legislation on, world public property rights, held by Humanity as a whole, over those global assets.
Global speculative financial movements. When a financial crisis risks affecting the pockets of the world's rich, those who invest in "'venture capital", the central banks rush to supply the liquidity the system needs, to make sure they suffer no loss. Almost exactly the opposite of what happened when such financial crises affected developing countries. The poor always end up losing everything.
Meanwhile, the IMF and the WB, institutions which are meant to watch over the macroeconomic and financial health of the planet as a whole, are now immersed in utterly antidemocratic processes in the "election" of their presidents. How long will it take us to refound those Organisations from the ground up as part of the United Nations system, placing them at the service of all, not just of the G8?

The above examples, the thoughts in section one, and many other realities besides, all lead as we see it to a single conclusion: the state of the world at the beginning of this twenty-first century of ours needs, as a matter of the greatest urgency, a democratic world governance system, centred on a thoroughly reformed United Nations, and possessing full legitimacy and capacity to tackle the issues and challenges facing us.

There is at least one pre-requisite for this in-depth reform: the democratisation and strengthening of the "new" United Nations system. Not just the world's States but its citizens too should be, and feel themselves to be, directly represented in that institution, thus transforming it into the central instrument of this new democratic world governance. In this sense, a Parliamentary Assembly or a General Assembly not only formed by States (as it is the case of the Governing Body of the ILO) could help recovering the main characteristic of the United Nations highlighter at the beginning of the Charter: "We, the Peoples".

Federico Mayor

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Mario Soares

Susan George

Nawal el Saadawi
Writer

Roberto Savio
IPS - Inter Press Service

Aminata Traoré
ASF - African Social Forum

Michael Christ
The Int. Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

Ricardo Díez
Honour President Club of Rome

Paul Belunger
ICAE - International Council Adult Education

Sara Longwe
FEMNET - African Women's Development and Communication Network

Colin Archer
IPB - International Peace Bureau

Fatma Alloo
DAWN - Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era

Anselmo Lee
Forum Asia

Shulu Koenig
PDHRE-People's Movement for Human Rights Learning

Paul Ortega
Pax Romana

Mehul Dhabi
MIEC Pax Romana

Juan Federer
Centre for War/Peace Studies

Dennis Brutus
Jubilee South Africa

Rómulo Torres
LATINDAD-Red Latinoamericana sobre Deuda, Desarrollo y Derechos

Luz Stella Velásquez
Red Latinoamericana de Estudios Ambientales Urbanos

Thomas Deve
MWENGO

Richard Falk
Princeton University, Emeritus Professor of International Law

Arcadi Oliveras
Justice and Peace Europe

Jorge Nieto
Centro Internacional para la Cultura Democrática

Johan Ernberg
Former ITU Director

Fčlix Martí
Former President Linguapax Institute

K. T. Suresh
YUVA - Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action

Antoni Giró
Rector UPC - Universitat Politčcnica de Catalunya

Lau Kin Chi
CSD - China Social Services and Development Research Centre

Seán Ó Siochrú
Senior Researcher Nexus Research

Antonio Papisca
Professor Padova University

Gabriel Ferraté
Ex Rector UPC i UOC - Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Ferran Requejo
Professor UPF - Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Josep Ferrer
Professor UPC - Universitat Politčcnica de Catalunya

Agustí Colomines
UNESCOCAT - Centre UNESCO de Catalunya

Josep Xercavins
UBUNTU Forum Ad Hoc Secretariat, Professor UPC