Inside the United Nations

I highly recommend this volume to anyone who wants to know how the United Nations really works. Nowhere else could one find so much wisdom about the world body packed into so few pages. From his unparalleled experience Ambassador Rosenthal draws invaluable lessons for diplomats, policymakers, scholars, and representatives of civil society. Edward C. Luck, Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia University and former Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General, the United Nations This admirably slim, deeply wise volume from one of Latin America’s leading social scientists assesses unsentimentally and in-depth a set of important negotiations in which he was involved at the United Nations, generally in a leading role, over nearly two decades. The narrative achieves a deep dive into intra-UN dynamics David Malone, Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Gert Rosenthal has written a fascinating and important book. Very few people can have seen this hidden landscape from as many different per- ches as Ambassador Rosenthal. This text will be an indispensable primer for diplomats and policy makers at the UN as much as for students and scholars of multilateral diplomacy. Sarah F. Cliffe, Director, Center on International Cooperation, New York University This page intentionally left blank Inside the United Nations This book illustrates the parameters surrounding consensus-building at the United Nations, seeking to provide new insights beyond what is already known. The author spent twelve years as P.R. of Guatemala at the UN, offering him privileged observatories in all three of the main inter-governmental organs: the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and the Security Council. In this book Rosenthal focuses on six case studies that offer the breadth and scope of what the UN does, and illustrate some of the main elements of the dynamics of consensus-building, providing concrete examples of the ingredients that shape decision-making in a multilateral setting. The chapters: cover the origin and preparation and outcome of two successful international conferences: the 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2002 Interna- tional Conference on Financing for Development; look at the 2000 negotiation on the scale of assessments to finance the United Nations’ budget in the General Assembly’s fifth committee (2000–2001); focus on the relevance of the Economic and Social Council, deriving from the author’s stewardship as its President in 2003; consider the internal politics involved in vying for elected posts in inter- governmental bodies, by focusing on the campaign to be elected to the Security Council between Guatemala and Venezuela in 2006; reflect on the peculiarities of decision-making in the Security Council. Providing an insider’s view on the UN and exploring a different facet of multilateral diplomacy at the UN this book will be of great use and interest to scholars of international relations and the diplomatic community. Gert Rosenthal is a Guatemalan economist. He has alternated his career between public service in Guatemala and international organizations. He was Secretary-General of the National Planning Secretariat before joining the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, where he served as Executive Secretary. After retiring from the UN secretariat he served as Permanent Representative of Guatemala to the UN, then as Foreign Minister, followed by a second tour to the UN to lead the Guatemalan delegation to the Security Council. He was the Chair of the Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 review of the UN’s peacebuilding architecture. Global Institutions Edited by Thomas G. Weiss The CUNY Graduate Center, New York, USA and Rorden Wilkinson University of Sussex, Brighton, UK About the series The “Global Institutions Series” provides cutting-edge books about many aspects of what we know as “global governance.” It emerges from our shared frustrations with the state of available knowledge—electronic and print-wise, for research and teaching—inthearea.Theseriesisdesignedasa resource for those interested in exploring issues of international organization and global governance. And since the first volumes appeared in 2005, we have taken significant strides toward filling conceptual gaps. The series consists of three related “streams” distinguished by their blue, red, and green covers. The blue volumes, comprising the majority of the books in the series, provide user-friendly and short (usually no more than 50,000 words) but authoritative guides to major global and regional organizations, as well as key issues in the global governance of security, the environment, human rights, poverty, and humanitarian action among others. The books with red covers are designed to present original research and serve as extended and more specialized treatments of issues pertinent for advancing understanding about global governance. And the volumes with green covers—the most recent departure in the series—are comprehensive and accessible accounts of the major theoretical approaches to global governance and international organization. The books in each of the streams are written by experts in the field, ranging from the most senior and respected authors to first-rate scholars at the beginning of their careers. In combination, the three com- ponents of the series—blue, red, and green—serve as key resources for faculty, students, and practitioners alike. The works in the blue and green streams have value as core and complementary readings in courses on, among other things, international organization, global governance, international law, international relations, and international political economy; the red volumes allow further reflection and investigation in these and related areas. The books in the series also provide a segue to the foundation volume that offers the most comprehensive textbook treatment available dealing with all the major issues, approaches, institutions, and actors in contemporary global governance—our edited work International Organi- zation and Global Governance (2014)—a volume to which many of the authors in the series have contributed essays. Understanding global governance—past, present, and future—is far from a finished journey. The books in this series nonetheless represent significant steps toward a better way of conceiving contemporary pro- blems and issues as well as, hopefully, doing something to improve world order. We value the feedback from our readers and their role in helping shape the on-going development of the series. A complete list of titles can be viewed online here: https://www.routledge. com/Global-Institutions/book-series/GI. The most recent titles in the series are: International Institutions of the Middle East (2017) by James Worrall The Politics of Expertise in International Organizations (2017) edited by Annabelle Littoz-Monnet Obstacles of Peacebuilding (2017) by Graciana del Castillo UN Peacekeeping Doctrine in a New Era (2017) edited by Cedric de Coning, Chiyuki Aoi, and John Karlsrud Global Environmental Institutions (2nd edition, 2017) by Elizabeth R. DeSombre Global Governance and Transnationalizing Capitalist Hegemony (2017) by Ian Taylor Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention (2016) edited by Elizabeth M. Bruch This page intentionally left blank Inside the United Nations Multilateral Diplomacy Up Close Gert Rosenthal EconomicEconomic EconomicEconomic First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Gert Rosenthal The right of Gert Rosenthal to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-23668-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-30179-2 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books Contents List of tables x Preface xi Abbreviations xiv Introduction 1 1 The 2000 Millennium Declaration: A General Assembly Summit with far-reaching consequences 9 2 The 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development 20 3 The 2000–2001 battle over the scale of assessments in the Fifth Committee 39 4 ECOSOC in 2003: A principal organ in search of its identity 58 5 Electoral politics at the United Nations: A contested election in 2006 74 6 The Security Council in 2012–2013: The perspective of small states 89 7 An overview: Some lessons learned 123 Suggested reading 141 Index 142 Table 3.1 Ratio of contribution of indicated countries or group of countries to the regular budget of the Unite Nations (percent of total), 2000–2001 55 Preface I have spent almost 12 years representing Guatemala at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, in two separate tours of duty, 1999–2004 and 2008–2014. I came to the job without being a professional diplomat, having dedicated my entire career to development economics, both at home and in international organizations. When I was invited in 1999 to take on this new responsibility, I gathered that it was on the basis of my previous experience as Executive Secretary of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) during the preceding ten years. Presumably, the offer was made under the assumption that I must have learned something about multilateral diplomacy along the way.

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