United Nations Politics: International Organization in a Divided World by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, World, General, International Relations, Diplomacy, History & Theory, Civil Rights
ISBN: 9781317342670
Google: x_QoCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-07-14T03:37:12+00:00

CHAPTER 6

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The Politics of Culture

The UN is an institution in which solutions to global problems are debated and sometimes crafted. But at a deeper level, the UN is also a place where the international community attempts to identify commonly shared values. Actionable political positions and policy choices depend on value consensus, and disagreements about fundamentals like ends and means concerning the human condition are often at the roots of inaction at the UN. Agreeing on universal values in an organization of 192 member states composed of thousands of ethnic, religious, and cultural groups is difficult. Difficulties are compounded by the lobbying activities of countless NGOs that tend to be passionate about promoting singular values. They are compounded even further when questions of values get politically transformed into issues of hegemony, autonomy, privilege, and power.

This chapter details the politics within the UN fought out, rather intensely these days, over defining universal values. There is in the world today a highly contentious politics of culture. This has infected the UN in destructive ways by reinforcing divisions between developing and industrialized countries, sometimes complicating North-South issues by making them also West-non-West issues. Whether or not values are universal or culturally contingent is one dimension of the politics of culture. The intensity of current UN debates about cultural issues was driven home to us in two interviews conducted in New York in 2002. One was with a Latin American diplomat, whose assignment in New York was to represent her government in the General Assembly’s Third Committee. The other was with a Central European ambassador. To get the full effect of the information being conveyed, we need to quote at some length from our interview transcripts. First, our Latin American respondent:

Because Ms. L’s. description of her work in human rights opened the way, we asked about cultural relativism in the human rights debates. Her eyes lit up! She said that cultural sensitivity was a real issue. She also said that the nature of the confrontation had changed inasmuch as the opponents of universalism had heretofore been using a defensive strategy of watering down resolutions, or inserting loophole paragraphs into resolutions that otherwise endorse universalism. But today, the opponents are on the offensive and are offering their resolutions, trying to rally support from the international community. She offered as examples an Iranian resolution on cultural diversity, a call for a world conference on dialogues among civilizations, and the resolution on the culture of peace at the General Assembly. The way Ms. L. described it, there is real fighting in the trenches over these issues of morals, values, cultures and traditions, and those engaged in the debates look very seriously on what’s developing. She described the atmosphere as “not cooperation, rather confrontational.” She acknowledged that a good deal of the dissent was a rejection of Westernism, a defense against the imposition of Western values. But she said that years ago there was a search for common standards that could be agreed. “Not anymore!” The division is not North-South so much as West-non-West.

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