Monday, February 4, 2008

My Criticism on Final Essay

Criticism of UN agencies reform

There is no specifying target. There are many agencies that you suggest to reform. Thus, it makes your topic unclear because you don’t explain much on one specific agency.
You suggest UNEP to put sanction to countries which harm the environment. However, UNEP is just the agencies; it doesn’t have much power to do so. Since you don’t mention about the membership of this agencies, I also don’t know how many states are the member of this agency and how much power of this agency in dealing with the sanction. Therefore, it is better to strengthen this agencies power first before putting the sanction to other states.
In conclusion, you mention about “Lords of Poverty”, a name of a book, but you don’t mention about what this book focus on. Thus, I have no idea about what you what me to know.
Some agencies are overlapping each other such as UNINSTRAW and UNIFEM, or UNRISD and UNESCO. You said that it waste time and money to establish it. So, it is good to eliminate it, but you said that elimination is difficult. However, you didn’t explain why it is difficult to eliminate the agency. You use the suggestion to some scholar to compound these agencies into one in order to save the money. It is the good idea but it doesn’t save much money, so why don’t you find the way to eliminate it.

Criticism of World Food Program
WFP provides food aid to farmer who practices soil conservation by planting trees; it is useful strategy to fight hunger? There is no explanation about how to do it in detail.
There is no explanation about Food for Lunch program. I have no idea about what is it and how it would support and encourage the child to go to school and avoid of quit the school.
To buy the local food is good idea, but if the country face with natural disaster how can they produce and sell to WFP. Moreover, if the local food has higher price than other countries, it is not a good way to buy expensive product.
The body of the topic is too long compare to the part of suggestion and reform. I think we just put what related to the idea of reform rather than put the general informant about the WFP.

Criticism of UN Trusteeship Council
Impossibility and inefficiency of Trusteeship Council is the good reason to remove the Trusteeship Council, but overlapping with other agencies is not the reason. Trusteeship Council is the one of six organs of UN. Compare to other agencies, it is bigger than other agencies. If we want to remove one of them because of overlapping, why we remove the big one but not the small one since removing the small one is easier since it has small structure.
Are there any differences of putting Trusteeship Council under the Security Council? As you mention, since the Charter state that Trusteeship council need Security Council in order to perform its function, putting or not putting Trusteeship Council under the Security Council is the same thing. It is just different of title from organ to agency. Moreover, why do you want to convert Trusteeship Council into the agency under Security Council since it doesn’t have the job to function (no more trust territories)?
You also want the new Trusteeship Council which placed under the supervision of the Security Council should deal with any new problem occurring in the future. However, if there is the new problems which don’t related to the Trusteeship Council field, how it’s going to solve the problem. Therefore, we still need to create another agency to deal with the problems. Since we need to create the new one, there is no need to keep Trusteeship Council which doesn’t work with new problems.

Criticism of ILO reform
In reform on ILO part, you suggest that ILO should reform on labor law nationally. I don’t understand you mean. Why you want to reform and how to reform it.
You also suggest ILO to punish the employers who violate the labor law by making law. This idea doesn’t useful to protect the employee. ILO doesn’t have direct enforcement to the employers. What ILO has just the indirect enforcement such as influence government to protect the employee? Moreover, the job to making law to punish the employers is the job of government. For example, Cambodia has the Labor Law to protect the employee. Thus, there is no need for ILO to make law. What ILO should do is to influence the government to protect the employer by implements the Labor Law.
You said Cambodian government did not put any effort to reduce the poverty. Where do you get this information? As I know Cambodian government has the rectangle strategies which include the policy to fight against poverty.

Criticism of UN Security Council reform
One suggestion of override the veto power is to increase the proportion of voting. You said if there is a veto vote then the proportion of 9 out 15 will increase to 11 out of 15 (2 more votes needed). If there are 2 veto votes then the proportion will increase to 14 out of 15 (3 more extra votes needed). It is reasonable to increase to 11 out of 15, but increase to 14 out of 15 is unreasonable. If there are 2 veto votes, there are only 13 votes which left. Thus, how can you get 14 votes? It is reasonable if you increase to 13 out of 15 if there are 2 veto votes.
Other point is about the majority of P5. As you said if there are 3 veto votes than Security Council can not override the veto votes because 3 veto votes is a majority within the P5. If you use the principle of democracy, it is good reason. However, why don’t you consider about the majority of non-permanent member. The majority of P5 don’t represent the majority of Security Council. If all members of non-permanent member plus 2 of the P5 agree, it seems they are the majority of the Security Council (if 2 votes of non-permanent member equal one vote of P5). Thus, we still override the veto power.
Another voting procedure is a mechanism whereby Security Council members could call for a paragraph by paragraph vote on resolutions. By doing this, the whole resolution won’t get stuck because of the veto. Members of the UNSC could vote affirmatively on paragraph that they like and veto part that they don’t like. However, if the resolution contains one clause of one paragraph, how to pass the resolution if there is the veto vote. Moreover, if they agree of one paragraph and disagree on one paragraph, how can we issue the resolution which can implement only half to it? If the resolution has related clauses of paragraphs, disagreement of one clause or paragraph will make the whole resolution get struck.
As you suggestion, if we can override the veto power, it is unnecessary to increase the member of Security Council.

1 comment:

Vichet said...

it is another suggestion to apply the principle of democratic on all the 15 members. but to do so would mean that the P5 is giving more power to the non-permanent members, thus less for themselve. that's why i only consider a majority within the P5. since they wont give non-permanent members the power to stop their veto power then the only possible alternative is to give P5 to override the veto themselve. i think UK China and France would have agree to the concept of "principle of democracy with in the P5" since those 3 countries dont use their veto as much as US and Russia.