wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] WCC chief calls for UN reform

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8897 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05472
Sept. 9, 2005

WCC chief calls for UN reform	

by Ecumenical News International  

GENEVA - The Rev. Samuel Kobia, general secretary of the World Council of
Churches (WCC), said the United Nations needs to be reformed so that it can
deal better with major world challenges ranging from AIDS to
under-development.  
  
	Kobia, preparing for a large gathering of international leaders at UN
headquarters in New York starting Sept. 14, said an "inclusive approach
involving the global South and the global North" is needed in a reformed UN.

	He called for "a reform that empowers and strengthens the UN and
achieves better representation, so that the world organization can
successfully address the global challenges facing humanity: wars, conflicts,
nuclear arms, environmental degradation, AIDS and other diseases,
under-development, extreme poverty and acts of terror."  
  
	Kobia made his comments in a Sept. 7 letter to the governments of
Britain and China. Britain is the current chair of the G8 group of leading
industrialized nations. China is the only member of the G77, a group of 132
developing nations, that has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.  
   
	The New York summit is being convened to discuss UN reform and the
status of the Millennium Development Goals, targets intended to cure of a
host of global socio-economic ills by 2015. About 180 leaders are expected to
attend.

	Kobia advocated 100 per cent debt cancellation for poor countries and
said all nations must implement the development goals. He warned against
human-rights compromises in the name of national security.  
  
	"If poverty and terrorism are to be eliminated, it is essential that
civil and political rights as well as socio-economic cultural rights of all
peoples be realized," he said.

	Kobia said a condition for any new permanent membership in the UN
Security Council "should be a clear and verified status as a
non-nuclear-weapons state."  
  
	He urged the UN to work toward restricting and limiting military
force in the framework of international law and the UN Charter.  
  
	Kobia added that the international community has a responsibility to
protect people in "extraordinary peril" if their own governments cannot or
will not provide it.

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