UNITED NATIONS Seeing the Light?
Late last year I had the opportunity to attend two United Nations meetings. One was a visit to ESCAP (the Environment and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), the other a preparatory meeting of UNITAR (the United Nations Institution for Training and Research). I sensed in these meetings that the various UN organizations are aware that the population at large questions the UN’s functions, indeed, its usefulness.

Habitat II, the big UN meeting held in Istanbul in 1995, was a turning point as far as the involvement of NGOs (non-government organizations) was concerned. NGOs, including GEN, started to make their opinions heard and the UN seemed to be accepting that their contribution was valuable. However, expectations by NGOs were probably a little too high, and in recent years some of the UN bodies have been criticised for their reluctance to involve the NGOs.

UNITAR and Habitat are probably the two UN organizations which are most open to input from NGOs. GEN has decided to work with selected UN bodies in the hope that we can influence the direction decisions take. We are currently members of ECOSOC, and GEN representatives have been attending the preparatory meetings in New York with the idea of participating in the big UN “Rio+10” meeting to be held in Johannesburg in September. GEN plans to run ecovillage workshops in conjunction with a GEN Board meeting there – see p X for details.

The UN is excellent in keeping statistics up to date. Let me shock you with some recent figures published in a report entitled “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”. It is a report by Mr Milvan Kotheri, pursuant to UN Commission Resolution 2000/9.

• Of the world’s 6 billion people, 2.8 billion people live on less than two dollars per day, and 1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day.
• Women comprise 70% of those living in absolute poverty.
• According to UNCHS [better known as HABITAT] it is estimated that in the South 600 million urban dwellers live in overcrowded and poor quality housing with inadequate provision of water, sanitation, drainage and garbage collection. About 1 billion people live under similar conditions in rural areas.
• Homelessness also exists in affluent countries – USA at the rate of 1.5 to 2.5 people per 1000, and between 4 and 12 per 1000 in France, Germany and the UK.
• Globally, 1.7 billion persons lack access to clean water and 3.3 billion are without proper sanitation facilities.

Global Futures, a magazine produced by World Vision, also offers some disturbing statistics – there are now 36.1 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, 25.3 million (70%) of these live in sub-Saharan Africa, a region which barely represents 10% of the world population.

What does all this depressing information have to do with the GEN, you may ask? Luckily, we also regularly hear about positive, uplifting examples which show that not only problems but also solutions are around. As a networking organization we would like to spread the good news. If you know of success stories, or have seen a good idea, let us know. If we can spread the good news, others may want to follow.