21 September 2024 | Starting Sunday 22 September, a Future Summit will take place in New York as part of the UN General Assembly. A Pact for the Future is to be adopted there. Until a few days ago, the draft of this pact contained the plan to give the UN Secretary-General the power to declare a global state of emergency on his own and to coordinate how to deal with it. This plan has now been quietly removed.
The emergency powers that the UN Secretary-General was to be given at the UN Future Summit have not at all been covered by the established media. I reported on September 9 and 11 in German and English:
A few days ago, Republican MPs appeared before the press in Washington and drew attention to the Future Summit and the Pact for the Future. They declared an authority of the UN Secretary-General to curtail the sovereignty of the US government by declaring a global emergency for health, climate or other reasons to be unacceptable.
By this time, however, the governments of Germany and Namibia, which are coordinating the negotiations on the Pact for the Future, had already rewritten the relevant passage. On 13 September, they circulated a new, fourth revision of the draft. It was made available to the public on 16 September. The third revision had stated in “Action 57”:
“We request the Secretary-General to present for the consideration of Member States protocols for convening and operationalizing emergency
platforms based on flexible approaches to respond to a range of different complex global shocks, including criteria for triggering and phasing out emergency platforms (…).”
In an earlier publication for insiders, UN Secretary-General António Guterres had explained how he’d envisage these emergency platforms and the declaration of global emergencies. He would want to be able to declare these on his own authority because of pandemics, the climate and cyberattacks for example. After declaring a global emergency, he would want to decide freely which international financial organizations (IMF, World Bank), other organizations, willing governments and corporations and “civil society” organizations would be called in to participate in overcoming the crisis.
In the fourth revision published a few days ago, the respective Action, now #56, states:
“We request the Secretary-General to consider approaches to strengthen the United Nations’ system’s response to complex global shocks, within existing authorities and in consultation with Member States(…).”
In other words, the UN Secretary-General is being told: ‘Think again. You can forget about the emergency platforms and emergency rights for you, dear António Guterres.’
Those responsible at the UN, the German government and the Namibian government are obviously embarrassed by the failure of their plan to give the UN chief the right to decide on a state of emergency. In the letter explaining the changes – also sent on behalf of his German colleague – the Namibian representative to the United Nations mentions some areas in which there were changes, but omits this most important change.
World Economic Forum holds companion-meeting
At the same time as the UN General Assembly, the World Economic Forum is holding its annual “Sustainable Development Impact Meeting” – also in New York. According to the lobby organization of the world’s largest corporations, over 1,000 “business leaders, policy makers, international and civil society organizations, innovators and social entrepreneurs” will come together to “drive action and partnerships across all sectors to advance the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals, N.H.), with a renewed commitment to leave no one behind.”
The World Economic Forum is recognized by the UN as an international organization and has a seat at the table on many issues. The Forum and the UN have concluded a cooperation agreement to promote the SDGs, which the UN is so embarrassed about that it does not publish it. The World Economic Forum also holds its own companion-onferences before the meetings of the G20 club of major economies to help shape their agenda and outcomes.
In line with the agenda of the UN Assembly, the topics addressed at the meeting of the World Economic Forum include global governance and digital inclusion. Participants include the Belgian Prime Minister, the President of the EU Parliament, the UK’s minister for net zero, the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank and a number of UN organizations that are particularly dependent on corporate money.
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