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Problems without Passports
MUSIC:
BUSH: All the world now faces a test and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment.
BUSH: Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding or will it be irrelevant?
MUSIC: dips under
ED: George Bush challenged the UN to live up to the ambition which inspired its creation; the ideal of an international institution which could keep the nations of the world secure and at peace.
Nearly four years ago Kofi Annan used his moral authority as the United Nations Secretary General to lay down a rather different set of challenges; the UN's millennium goals for tackling really big, entrenched problems like poverty, disease and hunger by the year 2015.
In this final programme in our series I shall be trying to assess what progress we have made towards those targets, and asking whether the UN is the right body to tackle them.
We began this series at the UN headquarters in Manhattan - an American island still traumatised by the attacks of what they call nine eleven, the day that defined the Bush presidency. We are ending it on Kofi Annan's continent - Africa.
MUSIC: CROSS FADES WITH FX MARKET
This is Kampala, the capital of Uganda in East Africa. The journey from here to Nairobi, the capital of Kenya next door, doesn't take long, but on the way you can find snapshots of most of the faces of misery that haunt Africa.
Nearly 300 million Africans live on less than a dollar a day - a handy definition of real poverty, although certainly not one we would accept in this country. The objective the UN has set for the world is to halve the number of people who struggle to survive at that level by the target date.
FX: STREET AND CARS
One of the busiest intersections in Kampala where you risk life and limb simply by trying to cross the road. If you can negotiate your way through what are known as taxis here, mini-buses crammed with what looks like an impossible density of humanity, a rather unpromising building of grubby concrete opens onto a successful furniture shop. It's been helped by a UN led scheme called Enterprise Uganda which is run by Charles Ochichi.
CHARLES: The long term goal of Enterprise Uganda is creating strong business entities and as such able to generate high quality jobs, beyond the public opportunities because it is in the private sector we are scope for job generation is most important.
ALICE: This is the workshop where we make curtains, we make the blinds and we do the upholstery work and cushions…It has made us improve on the marketing and the presentation in the shop. So it has improved, even my sales this month are much, much higher.
FX: WORKSHOP
CHARLES: I can see Enterprise Uganda being at the centre place of the government's poverty eradication programme. It is now creating the capacity amongst Ugandans to take advantage of the improved economic environment, to make for themselves successful businesses and generate sustainable income.
FX: IN WORKSHOP
A million dollars of UN money is going into the programme, and it seems to be working. But during the 1990s the number of poor in Africa actually INCREASED by a quarter - so the continent is, if anything, heading away from the UN target, not towards it.
There are plenty of people ready to argue that it isn't just Africa's problem - it's ours too. Clare Short was widely admired for engagement with Africa's problems during her time as Britain's International Development Secretary - she of course resigned from this government because Tony Blair failed to secure UN backing for the war in Iraq.
SHORT:
If Afghanistan was a danger to the world as a failed state in which a wicked organisation like Al Qaeda could hide and train people, how about a failed continent? I mean if Africa can't move forward, and it's got a lot of problems as it is - 20% of its people are living under conditions of conflict, HIV Aids is raging across the continent and in some countries a third of the adult population is infected and that has massive economic consequences as well as human suffering. We could have a failed continent full of criminality. It's got rich minerals, all sorts of ugly political and criminal forces could hide there. It's twenty miles from Europe, it's a danger to the world. So doing the right thing by Africa is actually in the intelligent self-interest of the US and of Europe.
And in addressing those sorts of problems and Aids, hunger, poverty and so forth, how important is the UN as an institution? What can it do that individual countries can't do?
The UN is fantastically important for its moral authority and its norm-setting ability. When it comes to hunger and famine and crises, it's the only organisation that can move anywhere in the world when there is a crisis and can quite rapidly deploy the right kind of people to move very quickly to bring in food, to bring engineers if you need water, refugees or whatever the kind of crisis is. The system is under strain because there are so many crises in the world and so much need for food and support but it's actually a very efficient system and there is nothing anywhere else. I mean individual bilateral development agencies like our own which is a fantastically efficient and high quality, we can't move to every single emergency in the world whereas they can and they have got pre-positioned equipment all over the world in different regions. We can't live without the UN, I mean it isn't an optional extra. We'd just have chaos and dreadful crises in the world if we didn't have it.
Do you think that it's the UN's capacity to deal with some of those fundamental problems like poverty and Aids has been damaged by the difficulties in the Iraq crisis?
I think the setback has been to the enthusiasm that we could have an era of a greater commitment to justice, that the whole world was uniting around that kind of objective, that one of the biggest threats to the future safety and security of the world was these levels of poverty, and I think Iraq has depressed the world and made people feel "how can I say with vigour that we have got this era of commitment for justice". We mustn't give up, we must get back to it so I think it is not sort of organisational weakening. It's sort of motivation in the international system and belief that it is do-able and credibility.
Ed: Clare Short.
And there could be no more vivid illustration of the challenges facing Africa than its AIDS crisis. The disease is now the principle cause of death on the continent. Nearly thirty million Africans are infected with HIV. The young - Africa's hope for the future - have been hit hardest; in some of its nations life expectancy has fallen to 35 and an estimated 11 million children have been orphaned by AIDs. The UN's millennium goal is to stop the spread of the disease, and force it onto the retreat by 2015.
MUSIC: FADES UP AND STRAIGHT INTO JINGLE
FX: RADIO SIMBA
Radio Simba
CLIP OF RADIO ADVERT
MAN: This is a special message brought to you by the Aids support organisation, Tasso.
WOMAN: My name is Constance Catinga. I tested HIV positive in 1991 so I joined Tasso in 1998.
FADE UNDER ED
ED: Uganda's Radio Simba - one of many pumping out information about AIDs and HIV.
I got a counsellor who helped me so much restoring my hope for life, though I lost my husband, I have a family there, I feel happy, I can now help other people restore my hope for life.
MAN: Fight the stigma, reach out to positive people.
INTO STING
INTO MUSIC
Uganda has been widely praised for addressing its AIDS problems with rare openness - the advertising about risks and protection is everywhere. Once a month teenagers talk about health problems on air. The show comes lives from a teenage information centre on the outskirts of Kampala which is funded by the UN agency UNICEF. Anne is a regular on the show.
ANNE: This centre is a one stop centre where you can test for HIV but you'll get the counselling, you'll get the medical treatment, you will come and even just relax and watch a video, or play games so, and maybe because here there are also young people who are providing a service, also it makes them understand that I think this person really knows what I'm going through, unlike when it's an old person passing on the information. I think there is a generation gap.
BRING UP MUSIC
We also go to schools to tell them, that you know what, it's your choice, you can really choose to live or choose any other way but the thing is by the end of the day it's you who should take responsibility.
But Uganda's battle against AIDS was initially home-grown, driven not by the outside world through the United Nations, but by the country's president, Yoweri Museveni.
So how critical is the UN to solving problems of this kind? Partly as a result of that President Museveni is one of those African leaders with a voice that really matters on the wider world stage. George Bush graced Uganda with his presence during his recent African tour - though the way Mr Museveni first came to appreciate the scale of his country's AIDS crisis would not especially endear him to his American counterpart.
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI:
We had to send sixty soldiers to Cuba for military training. Fortunately for the Cubans, they're already testing the blood status of people while here we had not. In fact, there are only two machines in the whole of Uganda at that time. Now when they tested our sixty soldiers they found that eighteen out of the sixty had the virus. And when I was in the meeting in Harare - 1986 - Dr Fidel Castro told me of this and when I came back I … I had heard a little bit about AIDS one year before but this one sprung me into action. I made a thorough study of the AIDS, how it spreads and I was relieved to learn that it was not as infectious as I thought at first. I was relieved, for instance, to know that AIDS does not spread through insect bites - that had been one of my big worries. And it was also not spreading through casual contact. You know, greetings and things like that. Now when I knew the mode of transmission then I was able to mobilise my people and we design and answer which we deal which has now been called ABC by people outside. Abstinence, Being loyal to your partner, and if you can't using Condoms. So, that was how it all started.
You've been very widely praised for that campaign and for being so open about the whole problem of AIDS. Did you worry at all about the risks involved in that strategy?
MUSEVENI: Not at all. I wasn't worried because there was no other way. You remember that in the pre-colonial times there were other sicknesses that had no medicine at that time. One of them was syphilis. It did not have a very efficient cure. But people avoided syphilis by behaviour. And you would get parents admonishing the young ones about how to behave, you know, to avoid syphilis. We call it ochanna in one of our languages. So, all I did was just to ochanna my population to advise them - to advise them and to reprimand them and to guide them, that's all - which is part of our traditional culture really.
And to what extent did you find the United Nations in that campaign. Was their expertise and advice of value to you?
MUSEVENI: There was no advice as such from the UN in this particular field. You can really say that this was a sort of local initiative - our own local initiative. In this particular question of strategy I don't remember that I consulted them before but, afterward, they came and helped - after, they helped.
And if you look at the United Nation's record as far as peace keeping goes in Africa, I mean, obviously, Rwanda was a terrible disaster but Angola wasn't a great success either. What's your view of that?
MUSEVENI: Well that one is very true that the UN record on peacekeeping and peace preservation is not good. I think it is mainly due to the calibre to the people they rely on to do the peacekeeping. They just rely on careerists - people who are looking for jobs. You find that the people are just like international civil servants just worried very worried about their job security. They don't want to stand out on this or that issue. They should look for freedom fighters - for people who are fighting for causes - they can help them. Put better content in that, otherwise, good programme. I think that's why peacekeeping and the peace has not been so successful.
FX: MARKET ATMOS
A fifteen minute drive from President Musveni's offices takes you to a very different Uganda. The slums on the outskirts of Uganda seem to stretch into an infinity of mud walls and corrugated iron roofs, and the sewage runs freely along the roadside. This is the Kalerwe market. You can buy anything from a barbecued banana to, bizarrely a Chelsea strip here. And all this raw, grass-roots capitalism is generating rubbish like there is no tomorrow.
One of the UN millennium goals in Africa is environmental sustainability - in other words they want to make sure economic progress and industrialisation don't come with a big environmental price tag. And here in the market the UN is pursuing that goal on a modest scale.
FX: MOVING INSIDE SHED
Now where we are is what we call a buy back centre for polythene. This is a place community members deliver sorted polythene, and they are given, in return two hundred and fifty shillings per kilo. From here, sorted polythene is cleaned and delivered to a recycling plant.
FX: NOISY FACTORY
At a factory six miles away the plastic bags are recycled and turned into pipes. And what left the market as waste will return there as plumbing.
Now we are at the pipe making machine, where the pellets are now being introduced. They are heated up. This pipe entirely comes from plastic bags. Those plastic bags that are thrown out and are perceived as waste, here it is, it's a final product again and it's ready for use.
The dream of tackling the environment through the kind of multi-national action the UN thrives on was torpedoed very early on in the Bush presidency; long before his UN row over Iraq, George Bush pulled out of the Kyoto agreement on the environment. And Washington likes giving money to Africa through all American initiatives, going it alone, just as it did over Iraq.
Earlier this year President Bush surprised everyone by promising a really astonishing sum of money - 15 billion dollars - to fight AIDS in Africa. It won him some surprising friends; Bono, the vocalist in the band U2 is one of those fascinating figures who emerged from youthful celebrity with a rock music fortune and a passion for doing good on the grand scale.
BONO:
Well I have access to President Clinton's White House, I had a friendship and knowing him before he went into office, it was very informal. And that was good for me. When President Bush took office he at first wouldn't see me. He was going to run a much more formal operation and I realised that we were going to have to, you know, put on a suit and tie if we were going to get in. We opened an office in DC, we brought in some serious people to man that office. Bill Gates gave us money, George Soros gave us money. When in the door after looking at me like an exotic plant for a period, I think the arguments that struck home with the administration, and particularly with President Bush were the idea that he could so to speak reinvent the concept of foreign assistance. I think that as it stood he wasn't interested. The cliché was that the money was going down a rat hole. President Bush had real personal convictions that his tenure would be remembered by the way he did or didn't deal with the AIDS pandemic. The greatest health crisis in the history of the world in 600 ys since the Bubonic Plague was happening on his watch and he would be judged by history by how he did or didn't deal with it. But the concept - he still needed a new solution. So we helped, we worked with President Bush on an idea that has since been called the Millennium Challenge Account where we routed the old argument that corruption was siphoning off all of the funds by saying "look if we can show you good government where there is a clear and transparent process will you increase aid there?". They finally said yes.
Amongst others things a huge amount of money put into fighting AIDS, are you convinced by that because there are questions being asked, about the man appointed to run it and about the way the money has been dribbling out?
Yeah there are niggles. The money is substantial. It's an extraordinary amount of cash to have committed. But the thing that was in a way more extraordinary than the cash was to hear Pres, a Republican President of the United States put AIDS in African 3rd on the bill on the State of the Union speech in wartime. That was really remarkable and though they called me 3 times during the day I still didn't believe until I actually saw it come out of his mouth. That was the real moment because he was nailing his colours to the mask.
Is there an advantage to an extent sometimes of people like yourself being voices that operate outside the United Nations and indeed sometimes of individual organisations being better able to deal with a particular crisis if they are not involved in the UN bureaucracy?
Well I like to think I work in and out of the UN and that DATA, the organisation that I represent, we live off some of the statistics provided by let's say the UNDP's report - that's a bible for us because it gives us the facts so that when I rant I have something to go on. I think the world needs both. But without the UN there to back me up, I don't think I would have the same intelligence. I need to know what's happening on the ground. You need to have that massive cover that the UN brings you, not just in terms of its statistical analysis but then finally actual real cover when you describe a problem.
You sound quite optimistic, both about making America care about African and about the future of the UN.
The United Nations better work or we're all in trouble. We shouldn't forget why the UN was invented. Does it need reform? Yes. I'm not an expert on how; I just know that never before have we needed it, just from my own point of view from dealing with the AIDS pandemic just as one thing, or the reform of the international financial institutions which also needs to happen. The voice of the UN as a voice of reason, I have never needed to hear it more.
INSERT AUDIO OF ANTI-CORRUPTION CHIEF
"We cannot deny or ignore the fact that there is corruption in one form or another in all sectors in Kenya."
FADE UNDER SCRIPT
The director of the anti-corruption Commission addressing the police federation in the capital of Uganda's neighbour, Kenya. Corruption has been the scourge of most of sub-Saharan Africa since the process of decolonisation half a century ago.
FADE UP AUDIO FOR 2"
"This is a milestone in the efforts of preventing and fighting corruption in the police service in Kenya"
FADE OUT UNDER SCRIPT
There is no UN Millennium goal for corruption, no target for reducing instances of bribery - it would be pretty difficult to measure anyway - but under Kofi Annan's leadership the UN has become more and more involved in promoting what they call "good governance".
They have to do it discreetly - the idea of the United Nations telling one of its members how to run its affairs is obviously a sensitive one - you won't even find the famous UN logo attached to the anti-corruption programme here even though it's a UN operation.
But they are proud of what they have achieved here in the eight years during which they've insinuated themselves into every corner of Kenyan public life - and their local PR man, John Kaplich, is now able to show off a flashy new headquarters in Nairobi.
INSERT AUDIO POSTCARD
So we are going up the stairs to second floor, and the second floor is housing the investigators, the people who do the proper investigation of corruption, and who prepare case files for court action. So we go this way first…
This, poster here, you see it's called Stop Corruption, and it has been designed as part of our information, education and communication material and it depicts somebody who is at work and he is happy not to be corrupt, that is why it says, I'm busy at my place of work, don't corrupt me, please don't give me a bribe.
ED: But is the UN the right body to take on this task? One of the most successful good governance programmes ever was the work of a single, very rich individual - George Soros, the man who bet against the pound on Black Wednesday and won. He poured money into programmes designed to promote what he calls "open society" in the old communist nations of central and eastern Europe.
GEORGE SOROS:
Well I think the United Nations is not an organisation that is terribly effective in promoting open society because it is an association of states - sovereign states - and as Cardinal Richlieu was supposed to have said - 'states have interests but no principles' or as the geopolitical realists say, that states always put their national interests ahead of the common interest. So it's not a very effective organisation for changing condition inside states.
Do you think that your pursuit of the open society as a mechanism for changing areas of the world is applicable to Africa in the way you found it helped in Eastern Europe. Although in Eastern Europe life was pretty grim people weren't starving, they weren't afflicted with anything like the AIDS epidemic that currently is inflicting such devastation on Africa and that perhaps today Africa has rather more pressing problems to worry about than open societies and political systems, it just needs food and medicine.
Yes but you see even fighting HIV/AIDS, if you do it only through a governmental organisation you don't get very far. And we are actually involved in HIV/AIDS projects which involve people and its more effective, so you do need to rely on civil society.
So if you looked at the future of Africa and the challenges confronting it from what you say, or from what I understand you to say, you believe that the real solution to those lies with people like yourself or organisations like yours - non governmental organisations - rather than the United Nations?
Well no I think that the United is very important - I don't want to minimise it at all - but I think one has to put it in perspective. The UN is an association of states and that limits its ability to act but it also gives it powers that no civil society has. And it is very important to make the UN function better. But it's only as good as the member states and particularly the United States, because the United States is the dominant member and I have been extremely critical of the attitude of the United States toward the United Nations.
How much damage do you think was done to the UN as an institution by the divisions over Iraq?
I think that in some ways it may conceivably strengthen the United Nations because I think that the United States has over reached. You see what happens to extremists is that they go to extremes and then they go to extremes, then the falsehood in their ideology becomes apparent and in a democracy the electorate - which is not extremist - will punish them and they know it so they have to retreat and I think there is a good chance that the US will yet turn to a greater extent to the United Nations because they are now discovering that it is extremely painful and certainly costly to go it alone so in the end the outcome may be to strengthen the United Nations.
Can I just finally ask you how you do see the future of humanitarian work and what one might call philanthropy? You talked a little while ago about how you saw the UN as a useful organisation in this regard but not one that could really encourage open societies. On the other hand there aren't many people around like yourself are there?
No I don't believe one should put too much faith on philanthropy because that is voluntary and you do need laws and regulations and so on to get things done. But I think philanthropy can make a major contribution. I think for instance the Gates foundation is very effective in the field to which it devotes itself, namely fighting disease. It is a driving force.
FX: SCHOOL PRIZE GIVING MUSIC
It's prize giving day at Ayany Primary in the heart of Kibera, the largest slum area in sub Saharan Africa. The UN's millennium goal in education is that by that target date of 2015 children everywhere should be able to complete a full course of free primary education. In January Kenya adopted that goal as policy, and introduced free primary school education.
FX: SCHOOL PRIZE GIVING MUSIC
At schools like this the pupils simply came pouring in.
FX: CLASSROOM NOISE
Leah: Good morning
Children: Good morning our visitors
Leah: Good Morning. How are you?
Children: Fine thank you our visitors
Leah: Sit down
Children: Thank you our visitors
Leah Sego recently finished her training with Unicef and is now the area rep.
Leah: When the government announced free primary education, we had already sensitised to the teachers that they should expect so many children in the classes and even over aged children in this school and we were taught on how to deal with over age children in schools and you can see here in standard one.... we have some big children here. Ten years and eleven years also are still in standard one.
FX: KIDS - CLASS ROOM ACTIVITY
There are no desks in the classroom. So many children have turned up since the government offered free education that they have to be squeezed in sitting on the floor.
Leah: we are trying to bring back all the children who are on the streets back to school and once the classroom is like this, it is child friendly.
Now we are going. So can you sing for us one song.
CHILDREN SING
Across the continent only seven countries are likely to reach the UN's millennium goals on education by 2015, and on current projections universal primary education won't be a reality throughout Africa until the next century.
Many of the problems the UN is trying to take on these days weren't even on the agenda when the institution was founded at San Francisco in 1945. Most of Africa was under colonial rule then, and the big powers signed up to the UN Charter because they wanted to stop the kind of war they had just endured, not because they wanted to help the world's hungry, poor or sick.
So the UN's humanitarian ambitions have grown up in a haphazard manner - heavily dependent on the availability of resources and the prevailing political winds in the big member states, especially America.
There's little doubt that over the last year those ambition have taken second place to the heart-searching provoked by George Bush's challenge and the war that followed. The UN's Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has his vision about the way the institution could be reformed to reflect his continent's priorities - but he is a pragmatist as well as a dreamer.
KOFI ANNAN:
First Iraq is going to demand huge amounts of resources which means you won't have resources to apply to other regions. Secondly there is going to be huge demands for troops. Iraq alone is going to tie up 500,000 troops. You have other commitments around the world and as each crisis explodes and you need additional troops there's going to be competition for well-trained and well-equipped troops. On the economic and social aspects again the question of resources and focus being elsewhere, even take a look at Afghanistan. Afghanistan was in the news and on top of the agenda 2 years ago, but Afghanistan today is on the back burner. And this happens to the other crises. Some crises are almost treated like orphans.
And presumably, when it comes particularly when dealing with Africa, one needs to keep in mind the problems with poverty and so forth, can only be dealt with once security is in place so the peace and security aspect of your work continues to be extremely important there.
Absolutely crucial and that is the message I hammer away with the African leaders. That unless we take urgent and concrete steps to resolve the wars and the conflicts on the continent we are not going to be able to focus on the essential issues of economic and social development. Not only that, once we continue to fight each other and the continent is seen as a continent that is constantly in crisis from and in investment terms is seems as a bad neighbourhood, nobody invests in a bad neighbourhood, and we're not going to do it with development assistance. We need to create an environment which will release creative images of our own people that will encourage local entrepreneurs to want to take risk and want to invest and encourage other foreign investors to come in. So it is absolutely essential that we resolve these conflicts. You are right on the spot.
And looking ahead, a lot of people talk about reform, the possibility of reform, is there a case do you think for reforming the structures so that for example the concerns of a continent like Africa where so much of your attention are actually heard at a political level within the security council?
Yes I think there is a need for reform and I think most governments have accepted and recognised it, and we've talked about it ad infinitum in this building. We've talked about the need to reform the Security Council, various attempts have been made but they have all failed. I think everybody agrees that the membership and the structure of the council is a bit anachronistic, it reflects the geo-political realities of 1945 and here we are in 2003 stuck with this structure and there is this sense that the council needs to be reformed to make it more representative and more democratic and to bring it in line with today's realities.
One of the geo-political realities of today is that we have a single hyper power as it has been described, one country that is so much more powerful than everybody else. Iis it possible to build a structure which accommodates that and still maintains the kind of multilateral approach that you'd like to see?
No I think that one has to be conscious of that, you can not ignore that, it is a reality. It is a reality that one has to factor in. But at the same time, one also has to get the only superpower, or the hyper power, to understand the concerns of others and even hyper powers needs friends and allies in quite a lot of the issues that they are confronted today. We need to come up with a system that takes account of that but is also seen as fairly representative and democratic and a system which has rules that all will accept, not only when it goes your way.
Last week Kofi Annan threw a challenge of his own back at George Bush; go it alone, and you threaten our whole security system. But he also told the UN's other members they must learn to live with American power.
It has been a difficult year for the UN - one of the most difficult in its history - but it has survived, and it has proved that it is not irrelevant; indeed America is now quietly returning to the United Nations for help with Iraq.
MUSIC TO CLOSE
Ends
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