Posted: 3/21/2005 7:16:22 PM EDT
Earlier today Kofi Annan and company released a proposal for "helping the world", and making a UN that would be more likely to step in and "defend/save/help impovished/oppressed people". Sounds all fine and dandy until you look at his proposed proposal to remove "fear" in the world of terrorism:
http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/chap3.htm
some specific areas that I found interesting:
81. On this interconnectedness of threats we must found a new security consensus, the first article of which must be that all are entitled to freedom from fear, and that whatever threatens one threatens all. Once we understand this, we have no choice but to tackle the whole range of threats. We must respond to HIV/AIDS as robustly as we do to terrorism and to poverty as effectively as we do to proliferation. We must strive just as hard to eliminate the threat of small arms and light weapons as we do to eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, we must address all these threats preventively, acting at a sufficiently early stage with the full range of available instruments.
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106. No task is more fundamental to the United Nations than the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Prevention, in particular, must be central to all our efforts, from combating poverty and promoting sustainable development; through strengthening national capacities to manage conflict, promoting democracy and the rule of law, and curbing the flow of small arms and light weapons; to directing preventive operational activities, such as the use of good offices, Security Council missions and preventive deployments.
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120. The accumulation and proliferation of small arms and light weapons continues to be a serious threat to peace, stability and sustainable development. Since the adoption in 2001 of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects[15], awareness of the problem has grown and there have been various initiatives to tackle it. We must now begin to make a real difference by ensuring better enforcement of arms embargoes, strengthening programmes for the disarmament of ex-combatants and negotiating a legally binding international instrument to regulate the marking and tracing of small arms and light weapons, as well as one to prevent, combat and eradicate illicit brokering. I urge Member States to agree on an instrument to regulate marking and tracing no later than next year's Review Conference on the Programme of Action, and to expedite negotiations on an instrument on illicit brokering.
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Seems the UN wants an international weapons registration system, along with a plain "ban" for "non-combatants"... I wonder if he should replace "non-combatants" with "peasants".
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