The United Nations in the Post-Cold War Era, Second Edition by Karen Mingst & Margaret P. Karns

Author:Karen Mingst & Margaret P. Karns [Mingst, Karen & Karns, Margaret P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000306743
Google: Kk2fDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-26T04:31:17+00:00

Developing countries challenged economic liberalism because of their conviction that it could not ensure equitable development for all peoples as enunciated in the UN Charter. Yet they found that voting power in the UN could not change the realities of economic and military power outside the UN.

By the mid-1990s there was much greater differentiation among the Southern countries and a widening gap between rich and poor worldwide. The 1996 UNDP Human Development Report depicted almost fifteen years of failing growth and lopsided development for many of the world’s people. “Over much of this period,” the report notes, “economic decline or stagnation has affected 100 countries, reducing the incomes of 1.6 billion people…. In 70 of these countries average incomes are less than they were in 1980—and in 43 countries less than they were in 1970.”11 Economic liberalism, adopted to some degree by many developing countries, was opening trade and investment throughout the world. The new WTO made special provisions for the least developed countries. Regional cooperation and South-South cooperation complemented continuing efforts to secure resources from the North. Private capital outstripped official aid flows to developing countries.

The United Nations today is less a forum for legitimizing principles for a new global order than an organization for providing aid to the least developed and poorest countries. It pays much more attention to capacity-building—that is to helping countries develop their own human resources, policies, and organizational structures. Poverty alleviation and sustainable human development have become central tasks. This policy and operational shift in the UN’s development role has taken more than twenty years to accomplish.

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