UN Millennium Declaration
Who Pays The Bills?

By M. R. Josse

THE UN Millennium Summit, which took place in New York from 6-8 September 2000, was climaxed by the adoption by acclamation by world leaders of a "visionary declaration" on the future of the world organisation.

DECLARATION: The Declaration which "affirms that the UN is the indispensable common house of the entire human family" was adopted following meetings which brought together the largest gathering of world leaders in history.

That included 100 Heads of State, 47 Heads of Government, three Crown-Princes, five Vice-Presidents and three Deputy Prime Ministers. All but four of the organisation’s 189 member states attended.

The 32-point document stresses that the UN must be strengthened and made more effective. It reasserts "the sovereignty equality of states" but says "the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world’s people."

In charting a new course for the UN in the years ahead, the Declaration, which concretizes what UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called a "remarkable convergence of views", sets out a number of ambitious goals or targets, including its first priority: the eradication of poverty.

On poverty, it resolves by the year 2015:

* to half the 20 per cent of the world’s population currently without access to safe drinking water, and the 22 per cent living on less than one dollar a day;

* to ensure that all children complete primary education;

* to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters and infant mortality by two-thirds;

* to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases; and

* to provide special assistance to AIDS orphans.

Besides the above, it resolves, by 2020 "to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers." On the environment, it resolves by 2002 "to make every effort to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol" which sets limits to greenhouse gas emissions.

Further, the list of targets resolves to intensify collective efforts to preserve forests, and to "stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources."

PEACE AND SECURITY: The Declaration, naturally, also contains goals relating to international peace and security. In the section dealing with peace, security and disarmament it endorses a Security Council report calling for radical structural and policy reforms in peacekeeping.

It also resolves to "take concerted action against international terrorism" and "small arms trafficking, to intensify the fight against international crime and to redouble efforts to counter the global drug problem. It also resolves to "keep all options open" for eliminating nuclear weapons.

Coming back to the Security Council’s promise for an overhaul of UN peacekeeping operations, it may be mentioned that Council leaders underlined the importance of rapid development of UN peacekeeping and called for realistic mandates that the soldiers can fulfil, proper training and equipment for them, besides improvement of the UN peacekeeping department.

While all that sounds fine, according to media reports from the UN, diplomats were divided on whether the commitments above, contained in an annex which the Council "decides to adopt", was legally binding (as are formal Council resolutions).

In any case, it will be in order to recall that currently the UN is engaged in 14 peacekeeping operations with over 37,000 troops and civilian police deployed from East Timor to Cyprus to Sierra Leone at an annual cost of about $2.2 billion.

Similarly, it may be fitting to remember that Council members met against this sombre backdrop: the murder of three UN workers assisting refugees from East Timor; the rebel seizure of 500 UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone; and highly critical reports of the UN role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the 1995 slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslim in Srebrencia.

All the above will, of course, entail great, expenditure. Or, as US President Bill Clinton, stated bluntly: "All these things come with a price tag and all nations, including the United States, must pay it."

Significantly, Clinton also emphasised that costs must be fairly apportioned and the UN’s financial structure should be apportioned so that the organisation could function effectively.

In that context it may be noted that the UN scale of assessments for member states has not been revised since 1972 after which as many as 55 new members have joined the organisation. Also deserving of notice is that the UN’s’ contribution alone amounts to 25 per cent.

Combined with contributions from Japan, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Russia, it reaches a staggering 72 per cent. Are the other members—including those who aspire to dine at the High Table of Permanent Members of the Security Council—prepared to match commitment to increased funding with their airy rhetoric?

MONITORING ROLE: While that, of course, remains to be seen, it is meaningful that the Millennium Declaration has called for specific follow up, including regular overview of progress in its implementation by the General Assembly.

Moreover, it is also notable that the Declaration directs the UN Security-General to regularly review progress in its implementation through periodic reports which would form the basis for further action.

Japan’s Parliament: Some Worthy Lessons

By Dr. Sadmukh B. Thapa

EVER since the emergence of the parliamentary system in the 13th century England, "the mother of democracy," this system of government by people’s representatives has been a very popular democratic system of liberal governance in the world. Though, these days, most of the emergent liberal democracies in the world have gone the way of the presidential system of government, the parliamentary system is the oldest in its form, and shall stay as the most effective one. Japan had, in the same vein, adopted this system of government, the first in Asia, in late nineteenth century, for the sake of unified leadership in the government. This has been justified as the most reasonable and efficacious democratic system for modern Japan, too.

Edict

The germ of people’s assembly could be found in the five-article-Charter Oath edicted by the Meiji emperor in 1868. The ‘Tosa Memorial’ of 1874 had called for the same in the development of democratic parliament in Japan. Then in the wake of the "Political Crisis" of 1881, an imperial prescript had proclaimed to convoke a national assembly in 1890. This remarkable history of Japan’s parliamentary development happily coincided with the implementation of the Meiji Constitution in 1890, in the inauguration of the first modern Asian parliament, the Imperial Diet, after the first general election held in the same year.

Japan, the mother of parliamentary democracy in Asia, can lend to Nepal much in political system and lessons. The second economic superpower in the world is, in the words of Chalmers Johnson, sure to rule the 21st century knowledge economy. The commonalities in constitutional monarchies, bicameral parliaments and separate electoral processes for the two houses, invite Nepal to emulate much more from Japan than from any other country in the world, Japan, as the oldest and the most stable Asian parliamentary country, is poised as a unique model for Nepal. Our parliamentarians are well advised to appreciate Japan’s parliamentary workings.

Nepal and Japan are constitutional states. Both of them are constitutional monarchies and have parliamentary systems of government. Both of these countries have historical similarities and are regioned by the oldest Houses. They have geographical similarities and social affinities. Moreover, the Japanese are much fascinate by the lofty Himalaya in Nepal. They pay tribute to Buddhism and the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal. On the other hand, the Nepalese admire and appreciate the exceptional social, economic and familial virtues of the Japanese people. They adore Japan as a model Asian nation. This will be more so in the new millenniun. For, Japan stands aloft as a first rank modern nations to assist Nepal in its efforts for national development.

Apart from the affinities, there are differences between these two countries too drastic for contrast. Japan is the third largest democracy after India and the USA, in the world. She is, however, the biggest constitutional monarchy on earth, reigned by one of the oldest royal Houses in the world. However, as the first constitutional state with the first parliamentary system of government in Asia, she has very successfully traversed the century-long history of parliamentary system of government next only to the British, in glory and dignity, and surpassing even the Westminster model in some respects. Nepal is by all means, dwarfed by these contrasts. What is more, Japan enters the 21st century as a great nation. Her national advancement would surely command the new millennium. She would, to the same extent, throw her impacts on the future of Nepal.

In contrast, Nepal has a very brief and scattered history of parliamentary practices. In the 1959 to 1960 period she had had only one and half years’ experiment with a modern parliamentary system of government. And recently, since 1991 she has sailed over the rough tides of parliamentary system only for ten years. She has Britain and India as parliamentary models before her.

But to be sure, there can be no better model than Japan for Nepal’s future of parliamentary system of government for both have so much socio-culturo-political affinities along with having constitutional monarchies, parliamentary practices and being bonafide Asian nations. With tremendous experiences in parliamentary system of government, Japan can lend her novel contributions to Nepal.

From the inauguration of the Imperial Diet in 1980 to that of the National Diet in 1947, Japan has mastered the ingenuity of parliamentary operations from which Nepal draws tremendous inspirations, and there is much in store Nepal can learn from. In Japan, the Diet being the "sole law-making body" and the "highest organ of state power", (Art 41) is the "backbone of the democratic parliamentary system of government". It has many unique and outstanding operational features Nepal can take as paradigms.

First, Japan’s modern democratic parliamentary experience has matured through 3 stages of development from the 1950s to the ‘60s to the -‘70s and on. The "1955-setup" has helped evolve a bi-party system in operation, which persists in an atmosphere of mutual "tolerance and patience" working through bargain and compromise. The existing rough parity between the leading LDP and opposition parties combined, has generated a very stable and the most successful democracy in this continent. Consequently, the advent of a modern middle class nation has reinforced the fact.

Secondly, Japan is a paragon of the mix of parliamentary power and cabinet’s or more specifically Prime Minister’s role. On the hand the Diet has pronounced controls over the Executive including the Emperor and the Cabinet (Art 59-63). On the other, the Executive plays the role of disarming the diet through measure like dissolution of the Lower House particularly through the Emperor’s decree on the advice of the PM (Art 7). The Diet’s management of the Impacehment Court for trying the judges typifies stark pragmatism in the Japanese politics (Art 64).

Thirdly, Nepal can emulate much of the advantage of the systems of the Special sessions and Extra Ordinary Sessions being practiced in the Diet. Equally important is the relevance of setting of Special Committees for specific purposes within the Houses.

Fourthly, the operational success of Japan’s National Diet has blazed trails of how ideological differences are and should be tackled along with economic prosperity, since the 1950s. The same can be said of the successful practice of Butskellism in the British parliamentary system of government.

Lastly, the rigid party discipline being effected in the Japanese Diet is remarkable for the success of a parliamentary system.

Examples

The mandatory and effective guidance of the ruling party in submitting and passing a bill in the House of Representatives has no parallel. Despite such rigors of party discipline in other parliamentary affairs, the Speaker and the President of the respective Houses, are expected to strictly maintain their neutrality in the Diet. And, the examples they have set are commendable.

Challenges Of Preserving Kirat Rais’ Languages

By Dhan Raj Rai.

THE Kingdom of Nepal, a land of geographic and ethnic diversity, represents a complex cross-section of linguistic and cultural multiplicity. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal (1990) defines the Kingdom of "Nepal as a multi-ethnic, multilingual, democratic, independent, indivisible, sovereign, Hindu and Consti-tutional Monar-chical Kingdom."

Prithivi Narayan Shah, the founder of modern Nepal, proclaimed the country as floral garden of four classes (verna) and thirty-six castes (jat). The linguists observed and estimated that at least sixty different ethnic communities live in Nepal and that over seventy different languages, belonging to four language families, are spoken in Nepal.

Last year the government also, in keeping with the spirit and norms of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990, approved a list of ethnic communities that includes sixty-one different ethnic communities of the nation. The list of sixty-one ethnic communities proves that Nepal is an unique land of multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural people.

Among the sixty-one ethnic communities, Kirat Rai is one of the major indigenous ethnic communities. Since over the centuries, Kirat Rai has its own unique mother tongue, an indigenous history, socio-cultural status, traditional rites and rituals, which are unique part and parcel of national asset.

The main core area of Kirat Rai settlement is Majh (Middle) Kirat that includes the districts of Sangkhuwasabha, Solukhumbu, Okaldhunga, Bhojpur and Udayapur. Also, the settlement area of Rais is expanded to the eastern hill districts of Dhankuta and Ilam.

The Kirat Rais shares three per cent of the total population of Nepal. Generally Kirat Rais are mongoloid in appearance. The Kirat Rai language has genetically been classified under Tibeto-Burman family. The Kirat Rais are divided into at least thirty-two different sub-clans speaking different dialects of their own.

Language is a powerful and most important element, which identifies the cultural and existence of a particular community. If, for instance, there is no language there is no cultural identity. And without cultural identity, no community can exist. Language, like the thread of a garland, connects and represents different colours of linguistic and cultural diversity among different communities, all the while unifying them into a single garland. Therefore; a language, is a priceless asset of human civilisation, and is taken as an important element for social interaction and discourse. Considering these facts, the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal (1990) recognises all the indigenous languages of Nepal as "National Languages" and guarantees each community the fundamental right to preserve, promote and develop its language, script and culture.

But at present the Kirat Rai language seems to be facing a rapid loss and experiencing a crisis to maintain its originality because most of the people belonging to the new generation are gradually switching over to other language, which in most cases, is Nepali. Indeed, this trend of language shift indicates a clear sign of possible language decay and loss. The Census Report (1991) shows that there are 439,312 Kirat Rai language speakers by mother tongue out of total 525,551 Kirat Rai people. It is, in fact, a serious case and a big problem of language loyalty and shift. The Census Report, compiled over the past four decades has recorded and clearly indicated the trend of rapid decline in number or Kirat Rai language speakers by mother tongue.

On the one hand, the Constitution of Kingdom of Nepal (1990) asserts the fundamental rights of opening the door for each indigenous community people to preserve, promote and develop its own mother tongue, script and culture; and to operate school upto primary level in its own mother tongue. On the other hand, Kirat Rai language is increasingly on the verge of losing its identification.

Therefore, it is essential that all the linguists and scholars concerned should study and contribute towards the development, maintenance, preser-vation and standardi-sation of this endangered Kirat Rai mother tongue simul-taneously. Kirat Rai community people themselves also should be aware about its importance to preserve and promote by imparting their mother tongue to new generation.

Hence, it has become urgent to initiate necessary measures and steps to introduce and develop script, design and publish the courses of Kirat Rai language for basic education up to primary school level.