Diamond Light
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Newsletter of the Aquarian Age Community
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2007 No. 1
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The United Nations as One
René Wadlow
Hard is the pathway that leads to the WISDOM,
hard is the pathway that leads to the LIGHT. Many shall ye find, the stones in your pathway; many the mountains to climb toward the LIGHT. Yet know ye, O man, to him that o'ercometh, … in the END light must conquer and darkness and night be banished from Light.
The Emerald Tablets of Thoth, Book VI
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Basically, the function of the UN is to create consensus (being of one mind) on crucial world issues. Such consensus-building is slow, and it is done by repeating endlessly in resolutions of the General Assembly and other UN bodies, year after year, the same idea until it becomes common place. Slowly national governments align their policies upon this common core as non-governmental organizations and the media take up the issues—sometimes a little ahead of governments and sometimes only later. In 60 years, there have been six issues which have moved from the stage of the ideas of a few to become common policy. This evens out to an idea per decade, and the UN has tried to push "theme decades" with only limited success as we see from the current "UN Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence." I see the six ideas as follows:
There is now a seventh idea, increasingly articulated but not yet manifested in action. The idea is that there is a relationship between the goals of the UN—an idea often stressed by Kofi Annan during his period as Secretary-General: the need to accept or acknowledge the indivisible links between security, development, and human rights. "It is clear that security cannot be enjoyed without development, that development cannot be enjoyed without security, and neither can be enjoyed without respect for human rights."
Many of us as NGO representatives have tried to push other ideas within the UN system, especially disarmament and improved techniques of conflict resolution, without success. Today, the UN has little impact on issues of violence, but no other organization does either. Thus we have violence and a good number of tension areas where greater violence may break out. Violence-reduction is probably the chief task facing the new Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. There is little common ground on what can be done to reduce violence and settle conflicts peacefully. We must not underestimate the time and difficulty that it takes to build consensus within the UN, but I believe that violence-reduction (sometimes called peace) is the next "big idea" whose time has come to the UN. |