bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2005) — Spring 2005 // Printemps 2005, pp. 27–28
TESTS OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE:
CANADIAN DIPLOMACY AND
UNITED NATIONS WORLD
CONFERENCES, by Andrew F. Cooper,
UN University Press, 2004.
Andrew Cooper’s welcome book fills a gap in Canadian foreign policy literature, Tinking UN thematic conferences to global governance and “new diplomacy” involving non-state actors. While noting the detachment generally shown for UN summits by Prime Minister Chrétien, in contrast to Prime Minister Mulroney’s activism and the often fragile relations with civil society, Cooper gives credit for the industry and skill of Canada’s foreign service. Cooper is Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Associate Director of the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Cooper considers Canada as both a representative and unique case. He argues that our relative decline as a global security broker was compensated by a quick adjustment of Canadian diplomacy to enhance our role as “a good international citizen and status-seeker.” As a comfortable “UN insider,” Canada often showed flexibility and creativity in striking partnerships with NGOs. His main contention is that UN conferences have played a role in bending the rules of and patterns of diplomatic interaction. He argues that Canada’s international negotiating techniques and tolerance for debate offer a model for how foreign policy should be structured.
Cooper reminds us that the development of thematic UN world conferences is a relatively recent trend. Few were held during the early Cold War period. Those held in the 1970s and 1980s suffered from the intrusion of East-West and Middle East political issues and played lesser roles in developing progressive international standards. The role of civil society was restricted
UN conferences rose to the top of the international policy agenda during the post- Cold War transition with the 1990 New York World Summit for Children, the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights, the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development, the 1995 Copenhagen Summit on Social Development, the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference and the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism. As Cooper notes, a great deal of thematic continuity can be traced through these events though each had its own mix of issues and personalities.
The growing role of NGOs is well tracked and assessed against each event. Last-minute and pro-forma Canadian domestic consultations grew over the 70s and 80s as documented by Cooper. He also provides an interesting chapter comparing Foreign Affairs’ management of conferences, drawing comparisons between the sustainable development and human rights sectors, looking at rivalries with other departments, and comparing the composition and success of the different NGO caucuses and the growing interaction between NGOs and governments. The three main environmental conferences: Stockholm (1972), Rio (1992) and Johannesburg (2002) each created successive new benchmarks in terms of NGO involvement. Human rights, disarmament, and women’s NGOs were not far behind in securing space and legitimacy. These changes paralleled domestic and international trends towards more transparent decision-making as well as legal developments (e.g. adoption of Canadian Charter of Rights). As any diplomat posted to a multilateral organization can attest, the role of NGOs remains sensitive and is frequently tested.
Cooper devotes an interesting chapter to the respective leaderships of Prime Minister Mulroney and Prime Minister Chrétien, suggesting Mr. Mulroney was more of an activist (e.g. Summit for Children, Rio Summit for Sustainable Development) and more willing to seize opportunities and commit resources. He postulates that Mr. Chrétien was more selective in his engagement, preferring smaller summits focussed on specific issues where he could engage one-on-one (G8, APEC, NATO, Summit of the Americas) and noting that he did not attend the 1995 World Summit on Social Development, which attracted 117 leaders.
Another chapter assesses the theme of sharing sovereignty in light of the role of Canadian indigenous peoples in the lead-up to the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights. Cooper does not give high marks to our diplomatic performance. Reading today, it is striking how far Canada and the UN have come in terms of engaging with indigenous groups and how detensive our positions were little more than a decade ago. The Chapter on the Cairo Population Conference demolishes Huntington’s thesis about a clash of civilisations by pointing out the many cross-cultural alliances which in fact put moderate Islamic women players (e.g. Pakistan’s Benazair Butto and UNFPA’s Nafis Sadik) on opposite sides of issues with the Vatican and USA. The Beijing Women’s Conference receives the most thorough and interesting assessment in terms of the increasingly massive and active role of women’s NGOs as well as the crosscutting, cross-regional and shifting alliances, the role of the Chinese Government, the teamwork of Canadian “femocrats” (Cooper’s term) from Foreign Affairs, Status of Women Canada, and CIDA.
The final section deals with the Durban Conference on Racism (2001) and its sad proceedings. His analysis of the domestic Canadian process and of the divisions among NGOs and personalities appears sound. But Cooper does not bring out the behind-the-scenes roles played at Durban by High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson and the European Union Presidency (Belgium) in reaching the final, and ultimately unsatisfactory, outcome for Canada.
Cooper’s book might have benefited from more interviews with practitioners involved in UN conferences: diplomats, NGOs, secretariat officials. (While some material may be based on interviews, none are cited in the notes or bibliography.) He does not address the impact of the Internet in facilitating networking by NGOs, nor their growing skills and reputations as credible spokespersons. He does not focus at all on the growing role of the European Union in such conferences. With a few exceptions, he does not assess the extent to which these conferences acted as catalysts for domestic policy change. My experience has been that they do indeed oblige Canadian authorities to address difficult issues with departments and provinces in order to get our international act together. Such exercises can lead to lasting changes or, for example, early ratification of new international instruments, domestic legal changes, additional resource commitments, and improved consultative machinery. These themes would be other fertile areas for academic research and would, I believe, confirm the value of such UN gatherings. Admittedly one book cannot address all issues and Cooper has already surveyed an enormous subject.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2005) — Spring 2005 // Printemps 2005, pp. 27–28. Read the rest of this issue →
