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U.N.: Somali militia storm agency offices

 Militia loyal to a warlord who gave refuge to Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf's fledgling government in Jowhar have taken over the offices of the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) in the makeshift capital, disrupting humanitarian activities, a UN official said.

UNICEF was operating several projects in Jowhar run by local staff following the evacuation of 13 international U.N. staff last week after militiamen arrived in Jowhar raising the potential for fighting between rival factions of the new Somali government.

 UNICEF's head of mission Christean Balslev-olesen told Reuters that Mohamed Omar Habeeb, a close ally of Yusuf and Jowhar's administration chairman, had ordered 18 UNICEF local staff to vacate their office and hand over the keys.

 "Mohamed Dheere and his police took control of our compound and insisted that the staff hands over the key to him," Balslev-olesen said, referring to Habeeb's commonly used nickname of Mohamed Dheere.

 Somalia's transitional federal government is deeply split over where to base while security is restored in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation. 

One faction led by President Yusuf is in Jowhar and another in Mogadishu, leaving the 14th attempt to restore government Somalia since 1991 stuck in a stalemate that has grown acrimonious.

 Balslev-olesen said UNICEF programs in Jowhar included water, education, HIV/AIDS and youth projects.                                                         Burundi's rebels keep on fighting

Burundi's last remaining rebel group, the Nati-onal Liberation Forces (FNL), has attacked the north of the capital, killing one civilian, the army said.

This follows their rejection of an offer of peace talks with the new government. UN leaders have called on the FNL to join the peace process that has ended the war between the main Hutu rebels and an army led by the Tutsi minority. A new constitution guarantees a balance of power between the ethnic groups.

 On the eve of his inauguration last month, President Pierre Nkurunziza, who led the larger FDD Hutu rebel movement in the war, vowed to engage the FNL in peace talks.

 Some 300,000 people were killed in the civil war, which was sparked in 1993 by the assassination of Burundi's first Hutu head of state and democratically elected president, Melchior Ndadaye.

 Determination

 Late on one night explosions in northern Bujumbura could be heard throughout Burundi's capital. "They launched some rockets and hand grenades. One civilian was killed by a rebel shell fired near some homes in the area," army spokesman Adolphe Manirakiza told reporters.   

 He said soldiers were pursuing the rebels in the hills surrounding Bujumbura.

 Correspondents say the attack reiterates the rebel group's determination not to talk peace with Mr Nkurunziza.

Peace in Burundi is seen as essential to a wider settlement in the troubled Great Lakes region, but analysts say that the country's peace prospects depend on Mr Nkurunziza's success in bringing the rival FNL group into government.

 In New York, nine African leaders and UN head Kofi Annan have donors to make good their support for the new administration in Burundi. Donors have pledged $1bn to rebuild the war-torn country, but so far have provided only 20%.                         g 

Madagascar boat 'safe and sound'

A boat missing for more than a week in the Indian Ocean with more than 30 people on board has been found, officials from the Comoros Islands said.

"The passengers are safe; some are very weak," Transport Minister Mohamed Chatur Badaoui said, AFP reported.

Contact with the vessel traveling from Madagascar to the Comoros was lost after the crew reported engine failure.

It was found off the north-east Coast of Grande Comore Island by a search plane late.

Nearly all the passengers were from the Comoros. Eight of them had been expelled by the authorities in Madagascar.                                             

Sacked Malawi minister detained

Malawian politician Gwanda Chakuamba has been arrested following his sacking as a cabinet minister.  

He has been detained for questioning over a speech at the weekend in which he predicted that the president would be out of office by Christmas. His party's MPs planned to join the opposition to impeach President Bingu wa Mutharika, he had warned.  He was one of the main opposition candidates in last year's elections but joined a reconciliation government.  The veteran politician was dismissed as agriculture minister and replaced by the transport deputy minister, Sidiq Mia last week. He has served more than a decade in jail for sedition under the late Malawian leader, Hastings Banda.

 Viva Nyimba, Mr Chakuamba's lawyer, said the charge was for a misdemeanour which he said carries a fine of up to $15. He described the arrest as political persecution because his client has been denied police bail for what he called "a minor offence".                                                   

 Ugandan rebel attack shocks Sudan

 Ugandan rebels crossed the White Nile river for the first time and attacked an area on a major road near the capital of southern Sudan, Juba.

More than 40 Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighters burnt houses on the Yei to Juba highway in broad daylight.  Since riots following the death of south Sudan's leader John Garang, this road has been Juba's main supply route.  

The BBC's Alfred Taban says authorities were surprised by Tuesday's attack and there is great tension in Juba. The LRA insurgency in northern Uganda has been marked by the massacre of civilians and the abduction of tens of thousands of children.

Stealing food  

Southern Sudan's Vice-President Raik Machar confirmed the attack and assured Juba's residents that security would be beefed up.  With the departure last month of northern merchants, whose shops were looted following the announcement of Mr Garang's death, little food has been arriving from the capital, Khartoum.  

Former rebel leader Mr Garang had just been sworn in as Sudan's vice-president when he died in a helicopter crash in July. Juba residents now rely on food being brought in on the road from Yei. Attacks by LRA have been taking place fairly regularly around Juba in the last few months, but always to the east of the White Nile, our correspondent says.  

In August, the rebels took control of several villages in the south-east harvesting and feeding on crops grown by locals, most of whom fled. The LRA has bases in southern Sudan and for years was backed by the Khartoum government while Uganda offered support to Mr. Garang's SPLA group.  

But with the end of Sudan's civil war in January this support has officially ended and the Sudanese military has been allowing the Ugandan army to pursue LRA rebels inside Sudan.    

 Africans trust religious leaders 

Religious leaders are particularly trusted in Africa, a BBC World Service Who Runs Your World? Survey of global attitudes towards power has revealed.

Three-quarters of those questioned in Africa identified religious leaders as the most trusted group, compared to only a third worldwide.  Politicians in Africa, as in the rest of the world, are the least trusted. Less than a third believes their government reflects the people's will, with Nigerians especially unhappy.

In Nigeria 85% of those questioned trusted religious leaders and a similar proportion were willing to give them more power.

Asked who had had the most influence on their decision-making over the past year, 13% of those surveyed in Africa said religious leaders. The global figure among more than 50,000 people questioned was just 5%.                                                  

India, S Africa demand UN reform 

The leaders of India and South Africa have called for a reform of the UN Security Council to address "the gross imbalance of power" in the world body. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the UN World Summit in New York that the council's structure reflected the world of 1945.   South African President Thabo Mbeki criticised "rich and powerful nations" for allegedly blocking the reform.  Both India and South Africa want a permanent seat in the 15-member body.  

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the gathering of some 150 world leaders carry out "constructive" reform of the UN. Mr Putin said the reform should "unite, not separate" the world community, stressing that the UN must also play a central role in the fight against terrorism.  

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani used his speech to urge leaders to help to overcome the "forces of darkness" in his country.  He said the so-called war on terror required "diverse" international participation.  

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said this week's withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip offered the Palestinians the opportunity to seize the chance for peace. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the reform deal was "a good start", but differences had prevented progress.  The summit marking the world body's 60th anniversary began on Wednesday - a day after UN ambassadors reached a watered-down deal on reform.

 'Democracy deficit'

 India has campaigned hard - along with Japan, Brazil and Germany (the Group of Four) - for an expansion of the five permanent seats on the Security Council.  In his speech, Mr. Singh said the organisation suffered from a "democracy deficit" as it did not reflect the new realities. "Until the UN becomes more representative of the contemporary world and more relevant to our concerns and aspirations, its ability to deliver on ... its own charter obligations will remain limited," he said. 

 He also reaffirmed that India would "never succumb to terrorism" in the disputed territory of Kashmir, which it disputes with Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf later denied Pakistan was involved in "cross-border terrorism".    

 Thousands of demonstrators have marched through Nigeria's main city of Lagos in protest at a 30% rise in fuel costs after subsidies were cut last month.  

It is the beginning of two weeks of peaceful protests to take place across Nigeria organised by trade unions.  

At one point, the noisy and colourful gathering stretched for more than 3km through the city's streets. Police have been ordered not to carry firearms in the first sanctioned anti-government protest in 40 years.

 Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter, but is dependent on imports of fuel because it does not have enough refining capacity to meet its own needs. "Stop fuel importations, make our refineries work," some placards read.

 Strike not ruled out

 The Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie, and Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka joined the 13km march.  

Two-thirds of Nigeria's population is still living on less than $1 a day, and the unions say the fuel price increases will badly affect all Nigerian workers.

 Last month, President Olusegun Obasanjo said that the government had financed more than $1bn in fuel subsidies in the past six month as a result of high prices of refined petrol on the international markets.  

"Petrol is God's gift to Nigeria. Why can't Obasanjo allow us to enjoy it?" asked a 24-year-old demonstrator. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) will meet to decide if further action is needed, depending on the government's reactions.

 The BBC's Sola Odunfa in Lagos says a general strike in October has not been ruled out.  

Last year, the NLC called three crippling general strikes against fuel prices rises.  

Under legislation passed in March, umbrella unions, such as the NLC, are not allowed to call a strike.    

eform of the United Nations has been under discussion for decades.  Although many reforms in the workings of the UN have been undertaken during the postwar period, really radial proposals, involving a substantial change in its functioning, have remained a dead letter.  The principal obstacle was the rivalry between the two superpowers, which paralyzed any attempt to endow international organizations with increased powers.  It is not surprising that one effect of the end of the Cold War has been a relaunching of the debate on the reform of international organizations, first and foremost of the UN. 

The fervour with which reform proposals had been advanced after 1989 was quickly ‘cooled’ by the interventions under the auspices of the UN Security Council in some regional crises of the post-Cold War era, and most notably in the Persian Gulf and in Somalia.  In other situations, such as the conflicts in ex-Yugoslavia and in some of the republics of the ex-Soviet Union, the UN has not taken any decisive part in preventing the outbreak of civil wars or in solving them.  These cases do not substantially differ from the impotence experienced by the UN during the Cold War, with the notable difference that the lack of effective action cannot any longer be attributed to superpower rivalry.   

Four years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the UN is far from playing the role of global governance for which it was created.  Moreover, it has been shown that the law of the United Nations can lend itself to ambiguous interpretations.  In some crucial cases, governments have misinterpreted it to support actions clearly at odds with those intended by its architects.  It is not surprising that distrust has quickly emerged about the possibility of using the UN institution as a vehicle of international democracy.

 Although some of the recent resolutions taken by the Security Council justify such a feeling, I believe that a central role should be given to the United Nations organization in the transition towards a new world order.  It is neither realistic nor useful to imagine more democratic global governance without assigning a principal role to the UN.  There is no alternative to the UN as such, and its reform is needed to allow for better use of the organization. 

This implies the development of two parallel and integrated actions: on the one hand, there is a problem of interpretation of the existing norms.  The UN in its current form could already play a more relevant and progressive role in the management of international affairs – if national governments were willing to allow it.  The legal principles of the UN Charter need to be restated to prevent a misuse of the organization.  But, on the other hand, there is also a problem of reforming the UN to make it a more effective instrument of democratic world governance.  Even with the most progressive interpretation of its constitution, the UN structure is not tailored to address successfully the challenges of the new world order. 

Not surprisingly, recent proposals to strengthen the UN initiative have been made by a variety of sources, including the UN Secretary General himself.2  The majority of these proposals, however, are more concerned with the powers of the UN than with its institutional design.  This issue is devoted to a critical account of the proposals made to reshape the constitutional structure of the UN.  Their declared aim is that of eliminating, or at least reducing, those periodic oscillations in international relations which existing institutions have proven unable to contain.  Even if they have little chance to be implemented in the short run, they represent an agenda for political action. 

The reforms may be subdivided into three principal headings: 

1.          projects for giving voice to world citizens in international politics, and most notably for creating an Assembly of the Peoples of the United Nations, which would directly represent citizens rather than their governments;

2.          proposals for strengthening world judicial powers, including the reform of the International Court of Justice;

3.          proposals to modify world executive powers, principally the Security Council and the veto power of its permanent members.

 These ambitious proposals have been widely supported on pragmatic grounds, while less attention has been given to the underlying theoretical rationale.  This issue, therefore, will concern itself more with the latter.  The proposals to be considered belong to a specific current of peace thinking: that which proposes to enhance global security by creating appropriate international legal institutions.  First, however, we need to specify both the potential and the limits of what I will call, following other, legal pacifism.  Second, these proposals have a value inasmuch as they will bring us closer to a desirable form of world order that is able to satisfy the principles of democracy within and between states.  We have labeled this agenda cosmopolitan democracy; its differences with the confederal and federal mode of international relations will also be discussed.

Legal Pacifism: Underlying Rationale

 A commitment to the value of peace unites individuals with various motivations, instruments and objectives.  Full and precise taxonomies of peace thinking have been developed. Legal pacifism, as one possible means for confronting the problem of war and peace, shares the merits and limitations of every judicial approach to social problems, being essentially normative.  It differs from other forms of peace thinking in that it concerns itself not so much with the causes of conflicts as with ways of preventing and resolving them. 

While social pacifism aims to pursue peace by removing the social or economic origins of conflicts, and religious pacifism by changing the nature of human beings, legal pacifism is an attempt to overcome conflicts by the establishment of specific institutions designed to solve controversies without violence.  The use of force, if needed, is delegated to institution entitled to apply laws.  Legal pacifism has already been successfully implemented within democratic states, since they are founded upon the principles of non-violent solution of conflicts and enforcement by a legal state authority. 

However, the judicial approach encounters special problems in the international sphere, which is a system characterized by the absence of a central authority capable of imposing a sentence on those – mainly states – who are found guilty by the court.  Consequently, an essential part of the work of legal pacifism involves attempts to create supranational institutions with legislative, judicial and executive powers.  Not all advocates of legal pacifism, however, deem it necessary to create an international executive power.  William Ladd, for example, held the creation of a legislative power and an autonomous international judicial power to be essential, but considered that executive power should be exercised solely by public opinion, which he optimistically baptized ‘the queen of the world’. 

From one point of view, the importance of legal pacifism is enhanced by the absence of an international executive power: while internal disputes within individual states may be resolved without recourse to force, since there exists an executive power with many instruments at its disposal to impose its will on the parties, in the international sphere there exist only two alternatives: either to submit to the decision of an arbitration which lacks the means for coercion or, instead, to accept that conflicts will be regulated according to considerations of political opportunism – not least the relative force at the disposal of the contenders. 

From this perspective of willful worldly wisdom the merit of the judicial approach lies not so much in its intrinsic ability to overcome problems that result from inter-state rivalry as in the absence of more effective solutions.  It is not surprising therefore that the battles waged by legal pacifists have been, at the same time, both huge successes and total failures. 

The success of legal pacifism cannot be denied when we recall that today’s international institutions themselves and the norms of international law are indeed its fruits.  Institutions such as the UN and the European Community are much more highly developed than would have been imagined possible by those thinkers and philosophers who as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had envisaged international institutions with the responsibility for guaranteeing peace and cooperation between peoples.  The same goes for today’s international law, which is certainly much more highly developed than could have been imagined form any seventeenth- or eighteenth-century treatise on the law of nations.  

On the other hand, the role of legal pacifism appears of scant import if we consider whether it has succeeded in holding in check and regulating international conflicts.  For nearly half a century UN actions have been frequently ignored in circumvented by member states.  In all conflicts, both great and small, both explicit and latent, the rules dictated by the raison d’état have taken precedence over legal principles.  Indeed, the actions of the international institutions have proven effective only in those cases where an accord, implicit or explicit, already existed between the more powerful states.  Where such agreement was lacking, the effects have been insignificant.  In other words, the role of international organizations has been most significant when least needed, and irrelevant when most needed. 

Legal pacifism has thus achieved on excellent logical construction, but one with little impact in reality.  The discrepancy between precept and reality is barely counter-balanced by the fact that the former has become an integral part of international politics.  The invasions of Afghanistan, of Granada, of Panama, etc., have been condemned by the international community and public opinion on the grounds of principles of law: without these principles, any condemnation would have remained exclusively moral. 

Legal principles, in other words, are in part forced to be the precursors of reality by being declarations of good intent rather than of actual positive legal rights.  These principles must therefore be assessed not on the grounds of their probable effective application in the world today, but on the grounds of their utility in an indeterminate future.  Norms, even without enforcement, have their symbolic value. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a declaration of good intentions 45 years ago and still is to a great extent today but, by following its outlines, it has been possible on a daily basis to defend some fundamental and quite concrete principles. 

Confederation, Federation, Cosmopolitan Democracy 

nstitutional design should not be interpreted as a device to face a particular situation.  On the contrary, a commitment for institutional design implies that a long-term strategy is envisaged.  While institutional design is often intended to be tailored to the interests of specific political movements or agents, I believe that this attitude is shortsighted and counterproductive:  the actors of international politics change over time, and what might appear an appropriate institutional arrangement for a given balance of powers could be ineffective or even counterproductive for another.  Once created, international institutions are unchangeable for a long time, and they continue to operate in periods dominated by different international regimes. The United Nations, for example, was designed to promote cooperation among the victors of World War II, but suddenly had to operate in a framework of conflict rather than of cooperation among these nations.  Nations can also dramatically change their role in international politics: in a few years, the Soviet Union has been led by figures as different as Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and even the foreign policy of one of the oldest liberal democracies, the United States, has been inspired in less than 15 years by leaders as different as Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. 

International institutions should therefore be designed to withstand significant changes in political conditions.  Although an exercise in constitutional design might appear sterile because of lack of support from the main actors in world politics, it will nevertheless help to provide precise targets for political action.  In this paper, I have assessed the reform proposals of the UN not on the basis of their feasibility, but in relation to what I consider to be a desirable global regime. 

The perspective of cosmopolitan democracy requires us, in the first instance, to recognize the state as the central figure in international relations.  The very notion of thinking and acting politically presupposes the individual’s citizenship of a state; there can be no politics without a polis.  Notwithstanding the fact that states may be imperfect institutions of human communities, since linguistic, religious, ethnic and cultural homogeneity may be lacking, they will always constitute the first and chief institutional point of reference for the individual. 

The centrality of states as actors in international relations has not been modified by the crisis of nation-states that has not been modified by the crisis of nation-states that has occurred in the last few years.  Although some multi-ethnic state, such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, have emerged in countries as diverse as the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain are jeopardizing national unity, states still play a central role in international affairs.  

The function of states is not only that of allowing individuals the right to participate in the running of the polis, but also, importantly, that of representing their own citizens at an international level.  Individuals have no role in the international community, except as citizens of a state.  As Martin Wight noted, even the Pope, the individual who might be considered most inclined to set aside secular power, did not feel at ease in the sphere of international relations until he became the first citizen of a state.  The tragedy experienced by the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union, as well as by those without states – the Kurds, the Palestinians, the Irish minority – makes it clear how problematic it is for individuals devoid of a state to have a voice on today’s international arena and to have their individual and collective rights guaranteed.  

Once it has been accepted that states play the role of an oligarchy in the realm of international politics, limits must be set.  If the state, as an institution based on the inhabitants of a particular territory, acts in its own specific interests, then it cannot satisfy the needs of its own citizens if it is operating in an international community devoid of other institutions. 

The first justification for the existence of the state is that of security: the Leviathan liberates the individual from the terrors of the natural state, and thus provides conditions sufficient for his or her acceptance of the role of subject.  Following this observation by Thomas Hobbes, an organic theory of the power of the state has been constructed, posting the impossibility of extending the social contract beyond the state’s frontiers and leaving international relations in a condition of anarchy. 

The weak point in the Hobbesian line of argument lies in the fact that individuals cannot be considered free from a condition of fear as long as they are still exposed to the threat of war: in other words, security internal to the state is not a sufficient condition unless a parallel security is guaranteed in relations among states.  Until the state can eliminate the threat of war, its promise to liberate its subjects from the dangers of war cannot be considered fully realized, and consequently the subject has not the obligation of obedience.  

In the nuclear age, the ability of Leviathan to ‘wound’ prospective aggressors can no longer be considered a method of fulfilling the above promise; as strategic studies have shown, the states least exposed to a nuclear threat are those who neither possess not belong to alliances armed with nuclear weapons. This is the crucial contradiction for the state: on the one hand, the full realization of Leviathan requires it to seal a pace of peace with other states, yet, on the other; the state cannot undertake this without significantly changing is sovereign power.   

Still more problematic is the situation in those states which are obliged by their constitutions to fulfill the wishes of their own citizens, i.e., the democratic states.  The absence of truly international institutions often presents them with dilemmas.  Are they to defend their citizens’ interests at the expense of other states, or are they to follow the rules of international democracy at the expense of their own citizens?  They thus find themselves in a contradictory situation which can be solved only be entering into a contractual relationship with other states. 

To find a way out of such an ‘anarchical society’, political theory indicates essentially two ways of achieving an institutionalized system of states, in which each member would renounce its autonomy insofar as its relations with other states are concerned, while the second would be to enlarge the experiment already undertaken inside the individual states, and thus substitute the multitude of sovereign states with a world-wide Leviathan. Neither solution appears to resolve the unsettled problems of the international community. 

The confederal model, which took global form first with the League of Nations, and later with the United Nations, is based on the principles of equal sovereignty of states and on-interference.  Countries are represented by their governments, which are recognized on the basis of their de facto existence rather than on any grounds of legitimacy.  Without these preconditions it would not have been possible to secure the membership of governments and countries with such widely differing political systems and values.  The defects of this model are closely connected with its advantages:  on the one hand, the principle of non-interference must be safeguarded to avoid ‘the big fish eating the smaller’ with interventions often dictated by pretests; on the other hand, this principle sanctions the absolute autonomy of governments in their relations with their own subjects, and the total inseparability of the latter from the actions of their governments.  Until a state breaks the rules of the international community, there exists no effective legal channel for censuring its activities.   

It is not by chance that in the UN, itself blessed with a more advanced legal system, the traditional view of international law has prevailed, as was evident in the Gulf War: on the one hand, no sanctions for the internal abuse of power of the Iraqi government; on the other hand, sanctions inflicted on all the Iraqi population for a violation of international law committed by their government.  In the confederal model, in fact, individuals are represented at the international level only by their national governments. 

The failings of the confederal model are linked to more than the fact that some members have not been democratic.  In fact, if they had been, the objective of the political struggle would not have been in the sphere of international relations, but rather the achievement of democracy inside individual states.  The fundamental reason why the confederal model does not of itself secure international democracy is because each institutional state, however democratic, is forced to act on, and represent the interest of, it citizens on the basis of its own raison d’état.

Democratic regimes do not necessarily follow the same principles on the international stage: the United States and Israel have constitutions that are among the most democratic in the world, yet this has not impeded their violation of the most elementary norms of international of international law.  Nor do dictatorial regimes necessarily behave in a like manner in their international relations:  the former Soviet Union, for example, carried out interventions not only in open violation of international law – as in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan – but also in support of national liberation movements, for example, the Palestinian cause and the anti-apartheid movement.  In other words, there is not necessarily a concordance between a national constitution and international behaviour.  

The confederal model has traditionally been opposed to the federal state model.  The extension of the federal model to a world scale is based on radical hypotheses, since it implicitly assumes that the existence of a constellation of states is merely a particular inheritance of history.  The elements which unify individuals across states are seen as important as those which link citizens as subjects of a specific state.  For a system of states to be founded on democratic principles, its supporters affirm, it is necessary that there be the direct participation of individuals, for example, through the vote.   The objections to this idea are twofold: the first concerns its feasibility, the second its desirability. 

Federal states formed on the basis of a consensual accord of the parties – as in the case of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and, above all, the United States – have come about from the necessity of concentrating their forces for defence against an external foe.  However diverse their motivations may have been, these states figure as experiments similar to that of the Hobbesian Leviathan.  Could therefore the same system function in a dimension devoid of external agents, such as the entire world?  There are obvious reasons for doubting that the parties, i.e., the states, would be consensually disposed to transfer their forces to a central power – at least as long as states possess the attributes which characterize them in the modern age.  It is of course possible for a federal state to be formed by the imperial imposition of one party on the others.  However, if this state fails to conform to the rules of democracy at its inception, there is no reason to believe that it will do son once instituted. 

 As to the desirability of a world federal state, it is necessary to check how much it would be compatible with the effective operation of democracy.  The concept of a state presupposes the existence of a unity of purposes in the norms applied by the several parties.  For much of the world’s population, these norms would seem alien to their particular historical and cultural traditions, and would be considered as authoritarian impositions.  The creation of a world state, even in the remote future, can only imperfectly take into account the historical, cultural and, in the widest sense, anthropological peculiarities of the inhabitants of our planet.  The current crises in multiethnic states probably constitute the best indication of the difficulties inherent in administering large communities.  Rousseau’s empirical observation that democracy requires small communities in order to function should be constantly borne in mind. 

Finally, the making of a world state with a monopoly on force, even if conceived and realized with the most perfect democratic constitutional engineering, would risk being transformed, as does any institution, into something at variance with the intentions of its founders.  There could be the qualification, however, that this world state would have such a concentration of force as to render any successful rebellion impossible – but for this reason a world federal state becomes an aspiration which jeopardizes democracy. 

Could there be a third model, uniting the positive elements of both the confederal and federal models?  Is it possible to limit the state’s monopoly of decision-making at the international level without ending with a world state?  The attainment of democracy at the international level requires us to steer between the Scylla of a mass of independent autonomous states and the Charybids of a planetary Leviathan.  Cosmopolitan democracy attempts to design such a model.  It is based upon a new concept of sovereignty and citizenship.   

On the one hand, cosmopolitan democracy intends to put some constraints on governments’ exercise of sovereignty.  According to cosmopolitan democracy, the constrains on sovereignty should not be exercised by other states, as is currently occurring in international relations in spite of de jure sovereignty, but rather by legally authorized transnational organizations.  In some areas of policy-making, this can effectively be done by intergovernmental action.  Other and more ambitious issues require legitimization by the global civil society. 

To achieve this goal, the inhabitants of the planet should be given a political representation beyond their borders and independently from their national governments.  In order to do this, a theory of world citizenship’s rights must be formulated. Several of the events affecting everyday life of citizens are beyond the scope of their political participation because of the economic, social and cultural globalization of modern life.  The specific route which leads to world citizenship suggests that the Cosmo-polis could be an end of history and not an attainable phenomenon – a political aspiration which must come to terms with the everyday actual citizenship, exercised by individuals within the narrower bounds of their own polis. 

It is necessary to clarify that a theory of world citizenship is something completely different from a doctrine of natural rights.  Any theory of natural rights is necessarily founded on a notion of the human being as outside a historical context and free of the baggage of social relationships to which the individual is constantly attached.  Following the path traced by Rousseau and Kant, it is necessary to found a theory of the Rights of the Citizen, who at the same time is seen as a citizen of a state, with which he or she shares some historical and cultural values, and as an inhabitant of the whole planet.

 The main aim of cosmopolitan democracy is to give voice to citizens in the world community in an institutional mode parallel to states.  The development of institutional linkages between national civil societies would help to strengthen democratic procedures both in international society and within the single national components.  But this does not imply that current states should be considered as a transitional from of political organization to be dissolved in a federal union which would have the same characteristics of national states but on a larger scale.  On the contrary, several of the functions carried out by sovereign states should be integrated into the cosmopolitan model.  On the basis of the model of cosmopolitan democracy, I will assess the proposals to reform the United Nations.                                                       g  

To be continued in the next issue

4. Human rights

- China is in favor of and supports the reform of UN human rights bodies. The essence of the reform is depoliticizing human rights issues, rejecting double standards, reducing and avoiding confrontation and promoting cooperation, so as to gear more resources to human rights technical cooperation projects and countries' human rights capacity building.

- Equal importance should be given to the economic, social and cultural rights on the one hand and the civil and political rights on the other. Emphasis on one category of human rights to the neglect of the other should be redressed.

- The UN Commission on Human Rights has played an important role in the area of international human rights. Its role and contribution should not be denied.

- The UN human rights bodies must abide by the principle of equitable geographical distribution in their composition to ensure broad representation. To have a small "Human Rights Council" to replace the Commission may not possibly overturn the serious "credit deficit" in the human rights area. It is necessary to conduct serious discussions on ways to improve the work of UN human rights agencies.

- China agrees to the global program to equip United Nations inter-agency country teams to work with Member States to bolster their national human rights promotion. The "country teams" should respect the sovereignty and laws of Member States, consider the actual needs of Member States in the human rights area and take the capacity building of Member States as the objective. An annual report on the work of the "country teams" should be submitted for the deliberations of Member States.

- China supports the High Commissioner for Human Rights in playing a more active role in the UN system within his/her term of reference. The Security Council and the proposed Peace-building Commission can invite, if needed, the High Commissioner to participate in relevant deliberations.

- The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights should be granted adequate resources to strengthen its capability to perform its functions. Meanwhile, its funds should be used more efficiently. The composition of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights should better reflect the principle of geographical equality so as to win broader support of Member States.

- China is in favor of reforming the current reporting and reviewing system so as to avoid redundancy of various treaty bodies' work and lighten the burden on Contracting Parties. A working code should be formulated for treaty bodies to strengthen communication and dialogue with Contracting Parties.

5. The proposed "Democracy Fund"

- The Secretary-General should first give explanations of the source, rules of use, and assessment procedure of the proposed "Democracy Fund" for the benefit of further discussions.

- China disagrees with the classification of countries into "democratic" and "non-democratic" nations.

IV. Strengthening the UN

1. The UN General Assembly (UNGA)

- The General Assembly is an important body of democratic decision-making. China is in favour of enhancing its efficiency and its decision-making capability through reforms.

- China favours the adoption of a comprehensive package of reforms to revitalize the General Assembly. We are open to proposals from any quarter.

- China favours streamlining and optimizing the UNGA agenda. Each year, UNGA may hold discussions on some major substantive issues of interest to various parties, the developing countries in particular. The unnecessary items can be removed from the agenda on a year-by-year basis and in a balanced way.

- China values the constructive role played by the civil society in international affairs, and is ready to continue discussions on setting up an interactive mechanism between UNGA and the civil society. Participation of the civil society in the work of UN should not alter the Organization's inter-governmental nature, nor should it hamper its working order and efficiency.

2. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)

- China welcomes and supports the reforms of the UN in economic and social fields, and is of the view that the reforms should comply with the orientations, principles, objectives and emphasis defined by the relevant UNGA resolutions, and should be government-led.

- The work in economic and social fields should aim at implementing the Millennium Development Goals and decisions made at other major UN summits and conferences and focus on financial assistance, technology transfer, capacity building, market access, and poverty alleviation with a view to maintaining the continuity and coordination of the policies of international economic cooperation and development, and implementing the UN economic and development agendas in a comprehensive, coordinated and balanced manner.

- China is in favour of turning ECOSOC into a high-level development forum for reviewing trends in international development cooperation and playing a coordinating role.

- China supports the leading normative and strategy-setting role of ECOSOC in mapping out a global development agenda.

- China favours holding an annual ministerial meeting to assess the progress made towards agreed development goals, particularly the Millennium Development Goals, and to discuss other development issues of interest to developing countries.

- China endorses closer coordination between ECOSOC and Bretton Woods’s system, WTO, UNCTAD and other UN development agencies.

- China supports the important role by ECOSOC in assessing famines, epidemics and major natural disasters and promoting collective responses to them.

3. The Security Council

- The reform of the Security Council is multifaceted covering such important issues as enlarging the Council's membership, increasing efficiency and improving working methods. The reform of the Security Council should apply the following principles.

- The reform should be conducive to enhancing the authority and efficiency of the Council and strengthening its capacity to deal with global threats and challenges.

- Increasing the representation of developing countries should be given priority. Developing countries, who account for more than two thirds of the UN membership, are seriously under-represented on the Security Council. This situation must be reversed.

- More countries, the small and medium-sized ones in particular, should be given more opportunities to enter the Council on a rotating basis to participate in its decision making process.

- The principle of geographic balance should be adhered to, with representation of different cultures and civilizations taken into consideration.

- All the regional groups should, first of all, reach agreement on reform proposals concerning their respective regions. The principle of regional rotation advocated by some countries also merits attention and consideration.

- Adhering to the principle of achieving consensus through consultation is in accordance with the spirit of the UN Charter .Its purpose is to accommodate the interests of all parties, especially the small and medium-sized countries .only decisions thus made can win the broadens trust and support .China opposes the approach to set a time limit for the Council reform or force a vote on a consensus-lacking proposal.

4. Reform of the Secretariat

- China supports the efforts of the Secretary-General to make the Secretariat smaller but more efficient through reform of the management.

- China endorses a more simple and practical planning and budgetary system and a timely examination of the programs and events approved by UNGA so as to determine their relevance and ensure adequate resources for them.

- The recruitment of the staff of Secretariat should conform to the provisions of the UN Charter and take account of the principle of equitable geographical distribution and gender equality.

- China considers it necessary to further increase the transparency, credibility, efficiency and accountability of the Secretariat.

5. The Military Staff Committee

- China has serious reservations on abolishing the Military Staff Committee and is of the view that reform does not mean abolition. We may, through consultation, entrust the Military Staff Committee with new mandates in peacekeeping operations and security areas.  

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