From the
Bottom Up: Supporting the UN
by Gretchen Noyes-Hull
From the top floors of the United Nations the message was loud and
clear:
"The people who have taken to the streets have been heard, and
the future of
the UN is in their hands." These were the words of Mr. Daniel Turk,
Assistant Secretary General of Political Affairs at the United Nations.,
who
reports directly to Kofi Annan.
Mr. Turk met on April 30 with ten members of a delegation bringing
a letter
to Kofi Annana. Headed by Dr. Narwal El Saadawi, Egyptian novelist,
activist, President and Founder of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association,
and a visiting professor at the University of Southern Maine, the delegation
of about 24 members, including a number of activists from Maine, had
assembled in New York to present the letter, which stated, "Despite
worldwide opposition to the war on Iraq, despite week after week of
anti-war
demonstrations in more that six hundred cities in North and South America,
Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, this sovereign state [Iraq] has
now been
invaded and occupied by the military forces of the Unites States of
America
and the United Kingdom."
It asks the United Nations to declare the war in Iraq illegal, and
to
condemn the policy of "pre-emptive" strikes, to ask for the
immediate
withdrawal of the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom
from Iraq, and to demand the return to Iraq of the $30 billion dollars
accumulated from the sale of Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people, and separate
payment of reparations to Iraq by the governments of Britain and the
United
States.
Mr. Turk stated openly that the United Nations is limited in its power
to
deal with the United States and acknowledged that the United States
wields
its own extensive power, largely behind closed doors, with the individual
member states. He pointed out that a body is only as strong as its members
and that the United Nations delegates from each of those states do not
always represent their citizens. They will only do so when sufficient
pressure is exerted at the grassroots level in each state. The Assistant
Secretary General urged the "international citizens" not to
let up on their
efforts and to join their movements together across boundaries. Confirmation
of what we all instinctively knew, but moving to hear it from such a
place
of power!
— Gretchen Noyes-Hull
Back to Peace Talk Index,
Summer, 2003