A position paper issued lately by the Chinese government on reforms of the United Nations embodies the fundamental interests of all nations, particularly developing nations, and expresses a strong aspiration of the international community for promoting socioeconomic development around the world through reforms of the United Nations.

The Position Paper of the People's Republic of China on the United Nations Reforms, which lists principles for the UN and UN Security Council reforms, expounds on China's positions on the reforms. It was issued with the advent of the 60th birthday of the world body in September and amid heated discussions on UN reforms.

Under the UN Charter, one of UN's important tasks is to promote common development of human society. But a trend of "UN giving priority to security over development" has prevailed for long due to various factors in history and reality.

The world body can only live up to the expectation of all countries by stepping up reforms on development issues as increasingly called for by most developing countries.

On the issue, China maintains that UN reforms should be all-dimensional and multi-sectoral, and aim to succeed in both aspects of security and development. Especially, reforms should aim at reversing the trend of "UN giving priority to security over development".

To promote development, the United Nations must firstly strengthen its capacity to deal with four grave challenges, namely,poverty, diseases, environmental degradation and natural disasters,facilitate the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and play the leading role in promoting development in a better way.

Efforts to address the first three challenges were meticulously elaborated when world leaders put forward the MDGs in their September 2000 summit. In recent years, however, natural disasters have increasingly caught people's attention following their frequent occurrence, and their devastation has never been more strikingly seen than in the tsunami disasters last December around the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese government, therefore, stressed the importance and urgency of dealing with the four challenges in the position paper,and made a series of suggestions. It supports the efforts of developing countries to promptly formulate and implement comprehensive strategies in light of their own national conditions for the realization of the MDGs. The international community should also provide necessary assistance to support these efforts.

Secondly, the United Nations should reform the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and other relevant agencies, enabling them to more effectively address problems facing global development.

The reforms should help ECOSOC, which is charged with coordinating economic and social work within the UN system, better lead in efforts to formulate rules and make strategic decisions.

Meanwhile, the guiding and coordinating role of the World Health Organization and other relevant international organizations in disease prevention and treatment should be strengthened. The coordination and cooperation of existing environmental institutions should also be stepped up.

Thirdly, the United Nations should encourage more international aids, strengthen North-South and South-South cooperation during the reforms, particularly urging developed countries to honor their international duties.

International efforts to offer development aids still fall short of public expectation in recent years. The Official Development Assistance (ODA) of developed countries takes up only 0.23 percent of their gross national product (GNP).

China said in the position paper that it is in favor of the secretary-general's recommendations of a timetable for increasing the ODA to 0.7 percent of the GNP, and believes that it is necessary to draw detailed implementation plans and set up a monitor and assessment mechanism. In addition, international development assistance should be provided in a way that takes into full consideration the national conditions of developing countries, and increases the recipient countries' autonomy and participation in this process for better results.

Like poverty, diseases, environmental degradation and natural disasters often spill over borders. Improper handling of the issues in developing countries will bring negative impacts on developed countries as well.Very often, it is beyond the capability of developing nations to tackle the problems alone. Developed countries should earnestly honor their commitment and render more technologic and financial assistance for developing countries to help them overcome difficulties during the process of development.

In order to promote development, the United Nations must through its reforms strengthen the democratic decision-making mechanism in international economic affairs, improve the world financial system, establish an open and sound multilateral trade relationship, boost efforts to build a fair, reasonable, mutually beneficial and win-win international economic system.

Many people must still have fresh memories of the financial crisis that hit Asia in the 1990's, and the subsequent extension of controversial "aid" by some international financial organizations with various conditions attached. The purpose of reforming and perfecting the international financial system is to monitor and guide a rational flow of the international capital so as to prevent financial crisis from reoccurring.

Meanwhile, developing countries should be given more say in the decision-making processes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)and the World Bank.

In multilateral trade, development through the promotion of trade is the core content of the Doha Declaration. Under the UN trade reforms, subsidies to farm produce, tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers should be abolished or substantially reduced as soon as possible.

Paramount as it is, development acts as the most urgent task not just for China, but also for all other countries in the world,especially developing countries. As the world's most authoritativeand representative organization, the United Nations needs to take effective reforms to promote development among all countries and bring prosper to the world and its people. No doubt development issues lie on the focus of the UN reforms. Seeing how the world's development goes will be a touchstone for the seeing of how the UN reform goes.

Source: Xinhua