By Svend Aage Christensen
March 26, 1999
One of the responsibilities of DUPI is the preparation of reports,
either at the request of the Government, a committee established by
the Folketinget, or on the Institute's own initiative. On 26 February
DUPI released yet another report of this kind, "UN, the World, and
Denmark" (470 pp.). The report was prepared on the initiative of the
Board of the Institute. Apart from the main report a summary in
English (53 pp.) is available.
The purpose of the report is to provide an overview of the global developments setting the framework for the UN's activities; to shed light on the position and role of the UN, and to analyse the conditions, interests, and values that determine Denmark's UN policy. The report falls into three main parts. Part I includes an introduction to the UN, chapters on the history of Danish thinking and policy vis-í -vis the UN, and a chapter clarifying three overall perspectives applied by the report to the world and the UN. Part II includes chapters on the activity fields and organisation of the UN. Finally, Part III contains a concluding chapter summarising the findings of the report. In the last section, Denmark's policy concerning UN activity fields is summarised, and concurrently, light is shed on Denmark's opportunities in connection with the UN's continuing development.
The place which the organisation will find in the overall pattern of global organisation will be crucial for the future of the UN. At all levels there are types of cooperation and clubs of countries that both compete and collaborate with the central UN system. In some respects this entails renewed possibilities for the UN - in others, institutional competition. Ever more genuinely intrusive, politically and technically highly complicated coordination takes place within the system of "hard" global organisations, or at regional and interregional level in such a way that, either the UN risks being entirely bypassed or will be left in charge of tasks that are either narrowly defined or thankless or underfinanced. In keeping with the principal line of Denmark's UN concepts, the country has had a high profile in the field of norm-setting. Establishing norms can justifiably be seen as the life nerve in Denmark's UN involvement. What is remarkable about Danish UN policy is that Denmark has maintained and even intensified her commitments in all UN fields of activity during a period of change, in the course of which other countries have, directly or indirectly, distanced themselves from, at least certain elements in, UN activities. The democracies in the industrialized part of the world hold a dominant position in the international system and, therefore, have a special responsibility for creating the framework that will co-determine the possibility of continuing the trend towards political and economic value-sharing. It is in the best interest of the West - also in the longer term - to avoid the UN being seen as an organisation that belongs to the West or as an organisation that is being marginalised by the West. With her commitment Denmark has done a great deal to promote this common interest.
When the UN report was about being finished, DUPI was asked by the Government to prepare a new report on humanitarian intervention. According to the mandate the report has to consider the political and legal aspects of the possibilities of intervening in situations where states are violating international law thereby causing conflicts that due to their comprehensive humanitarian consequences affect the international community as a whole. This new assignment gives DUPI an opportunity to continue and expand its work in some of the issue areas already dealt with in the UN report.
