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53rd Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs
Advancing Human Security: The Role of Technology and Politics

Halifax and Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada
17-21 July 2003

Introduction: "An Eye That Does Not Slumber"

President Wilson articulated this aspiration for a global watch at the very dawn of international organization for peace, when the nations of the world were recovering from the throes of the First World War. The national leaders who had gathered in Paris in 1919 to negotiate a peace were only partly committed to the idea of a new system of international rules and collective action. Nonetheless they created the world's first international organization for peace, the League of Nations. Though the League was a important step forward for international relations, it never became the "everywhere watchful and attentive eye" that Wilson envisioned. Its investigative bodies proved slow and cumbersome; its procedures for dispatching missions rudimentary and subject to veto by member states, and its Secretary-General relatively powerless to monitor situations of conflict. Still it was a bold experiment in international organization that proved extremely useful in the design of its successor.

The advent of the United Nations in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, was a major step in international organization. The UN began dispatching increasingly ambitious missions to the field, with greater frequency and more functions than did the League. Its many field operations, offices and missions have served as the organization's "eyes and ears" in conflict areas. The UN Charter empowered the Secretary-General to bring concerns directly to the attention of the Security Council, a role that went well beyond the role specified in the League Covenant. The Secretary-General has, over time, become not only a vital "clearinghouse" of information from nations on the state of the world but also an important monitor of the world's conflict situations through his own representatives in the field. True, during the Cold War, the Communist world, led by a veto-wielding Soviet Union determined to maintain secrecy behind an iron curtain, held the UN back from much investigation and action, but the organization still gained a great deal of experience in fact-finding and peacekeeping operations. With the end of the Cold War another "evolutionary step" was taken.

The United Nations now conducts monitoring on an unprecedented scale and in new fields, covering an ever-growing range of security concerns for both nations and individuals. In addition to verifying peace agreements and documenting human rights abuses, the organization has been monitoring elections, tracking arms shipments, identifying sanctions busters, overseeing military and police forces, inspecting for weapons of mass destruction, exposing terrorists, warning of incipient crises, and gathering evidence for international criminal tribunals.

It is appropriate that President Woodrow Wilson, the League's principal founder who set out the initial plan for international organization, should have given voice to such a far-reaching vision for worldwide monitoring. The United Nations, as we shall see, is moving towards a global watch to fulfill its growing realm of responsibility. The UN is now the world's chief information-gathering instrument for actual or potential threats to the peace. From the halting baby steps of the League, to the slow march of the UN during the Cold War, the world organization now finds itself in a fast run as it tries to keep up with world events that affect peace and security. With the end of the Cold War, the United Nations began monitoring peace and conflict in ways that would have surprised and pleased its originators, Wilson included. A decade and half after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the bipolar world that it symoblized, it is worthwhile to take stock of this progress.

Expanded Information-Gathering

The new and expanded monitoring activities of the United Nations in various countries make for a long and impressive list, including: tracking the distribution of humanitarian aid in combat zones; supervising the disarmament and demobilization of ex-combatants; monitoring elections; monitoring and training police and military forces during reform processes; following domestic court proceedings to verify that they are conducted with due process; following and encouraging the growth of civil society; patrolling the borders of states to prevent spill over from aggressive neighbours; determining responsibility for the initiation of wars; delineating borders between and within states; reviewing the implementation of arms control treaties, and many other novel activities.

In addition to verifying and confirming positive, peace-promoting activities, the UN must also carry out monitoring to detect a host of illegal or negative activities: observing attacks and the movements of fighters in combat zones; searching intrusively for hidden weapons, including small arms, bio-weapons and nuclear bomb-making materials; tracking planes in no-fly zones or trespassing into foreign airspace; uncovering clandestine arms shipments through the cascade of arms brokers; catching sanctions busters, especially groups selling illegal commodities that fuel wars (e.g., "blood diamonds"); revealing secret bank accounts and exposing front companies of organized crime and terrorist groups; identifying forged documents that aid the illegal movement of people and arms across borders; determining if national secret agents have violated international laws; exhuming the bodies of persons killed by paramilitary groups; identifying deliberate attacks against civilian targets; gathering evidence for war-crimes trials; uncovering assassination plots before they hatch and warning of impending violence.

This tremendous expansion of UN monitoring tasks is paralleled by the creation of a host of new UN bodies, offices and operations with monitoring mandates. In peacekeeping, where international military and civilian personnel are deployed to conflict areas to help keep or create peace, the number of operations saw a tenfold increase in the 1990s compared to any previous decade. The thirty-five new operations in the one decade is double the number created in the previous 45 years of the organization. Monitoring is a principal function in all peacekeeping operations, and in most of them (observer missions), monitoring is the principal function. While there are definite limits to information-gathering or "intelligence" activities in peacekeeping, the 1990s saw an expansion in the use of overhead reconnaissance, radio message interception, and technological surveillance (e.g., using night-vision and radar), as well as more controversial activities such as deploying peacekeepers out of uniform (briefly) and employing paid informants from the local population².

The 1990s also witnessed the creation of over a dozen missions of a new type, called "political and peacebuilding missions," deployed to the field to monitor and assist with physical reconstruction and social reconciliation in countries coming out of war and even to prevent conflicts in the first place³. The Special Representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs), who work in trouble areas or on special issues and who are often in charge of peacekeeping operations, currently number over thirty, more than at any other time.

In the human rights field, the Special Rapporteurs who report to the UN's Human Rights Commission on specific countries or themes (types of rights violations) have multiplied, going from six in the 1980s to 17 in the 1990s. In the first two years of the new millennium alone, five new posts of this type were added. In addition, the new position of High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), heading an office of the same name, was created in 1993. UN-sponsored Truth Commissions (or similarly named bodies) saw their advent in the 1990s, first in Central America, then Africa and Asia. In Guatemala, for instance, a "Historical Clarification Commission" was created in 1994 on the principle that the Guatemalan people had the "right to know the truth" concerning acts of political violence and violations of human rights in their country for some thirty years. This was complemented by an ongoing mission to monitor human rights using in-country fact-finding teams.

Sanctions committees, with responsibilities to monitor the implementation of specific sanctions imposed by the Security Council, have also proliferated. Only two were established prior to 1990 (for sanctions against Rhodesia and South Africa), while ten were created in the 1990s and two have already been established in the first two years of the new millennium. These bodies are making increased use of expert panels and special monitoring mechanisms, which have broken new ground in the realm of international investigation. The expert panels have published detailed documentary evidence to identify and then "name and shame" individuals, organizations and governments (including heads of state) caught violating Security Council sanctions or not doing enough to catch sanctions-busters (or terrorists). In addition to catching sanctions-busters, the UN has tried on numerous occasions to assess the impact of sanctions to determine any unwanted effects that sanctions may create, especially affecting innocent citizens.

Similarly, in the disarmament field, monitoring and inspection agencies have flourished in recent years. For decades the only agency in the UN system conducting on-site inspections was the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), headquartered in Vienna. This "nuclear watchdog" has been sending inspectors to declared nuclear facilities in about 70 countries to verify that nuclear material has not been diverted for unlawful or prohibited purposes, in particular to produce nuclear weapons. In the 1990s, several new international verification bodies for arms control were established. A sophisticated system for the detection of nuclear tests in all environments (underwater, underground and above ground) was developed and tested by the preparatory Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO). It employs an array of advanced seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound and radionuclide technologies at stations around the globe which feed information back to headquarters at the Vienna International Centre.

UN investigations of chemical weapons use were first carried out in 1984 in Iran and Iraq by teams sent out by the Secretary-General, providing conclusive evidence that Iraq had used chemical weapons extensively in its war with Iran, in violation of its treaty (Geneva Protocol) obligations. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), established in The Hague in 1996 as part of the UN system, conducts hundreds of inspections each year to verify compliance with a comprehensive ban contained in the Chemical Weapons Convention. Under its "challenge inspection" procedure, the OPCW is authorized to carry out inspections on an "any time, any site" basis upon request of a party. The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, covering the third category of weapons of mass destruction, has no similar inspection system, though most states are in favour of finalizing a verification protocol and instituting a global monitoring and confidence-building system.

Under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mines Treaty, the UN Secretary-General is responsible for organizing fact-finding missions, upon request, to investigate allegations of non-compliance with the treaty. Also, the Secretary-General receives annual reports from parties on the measures they have taken to implement the treaty, including the locations and quantities of any and all mines⁴. Instead of creating a new and costly organization to administer the treaty and perform inspections, civil society was entrusted with the task of monitoring implementation of the ban. The Landmine Monitor, created by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), is a network of experts and activists who analyse reports submitted by nations to the UN and compare them with other data gathered in the field. The annual report, Landmine Monitor, provides extensive new information with frank and objective assessments of national compliance. This is a good demonstration of how civil society can be freer to make accusations of non-compliance than governmental organizations and can work well with progressive governments and the UN to uphold a treaty. A similar partnership is developing around the small arms issue.

For decades, the UN has been the clearing-house for arms control reports sent to it by governments, for instance, in accordance with the 1968 Outer Space Treaty and the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (and its review conference declarations). At the request of the General Assembly, the Secretary-General has also established voluntary registers of military expenditures (1980) and of conventional arms (1992). For the latter, there is a surprisingly high number of submissions, typically 80-90 states reporting annually on their possession of conventional weapons in seven major categories: battle tanks, armoured vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers. Small arms are not included, but are the subject of a number of important UN and NGO studies. There are international attempts to create a UN register for small arms as well.

This expansion of international monitoring has demonstrated that, as more responsibilities are given to the UN, new precedents are set, new lessons are learned and new practices are put in place. Certainly there have been set-backs and misadventures (some of them instructive), but the enormous growth of international organization, from the League to the post-Cold War UN is indisputable. Still, many could correctly point out that the UN remains far from the lofty ideals that guide it.

While the evolution applies primarily to information gathering, to a lesser extent a growth has taken place in information analysis and dissemination^5.

Information Dissemination

Gathering information on this wide range of targets and situations, though an enormous challenge, is only half the battle for the UN. The organization then needs to analyse the information and then disseminate the conclusions, either in private meetings, at informal or formal meetings of bodies like the Security Council, or at official or public meetings, including the daily press conferences of the spokesman of the Secretary-General. The UN has become a major centre for information dissemination crucial to the world's well being. The UN and its agencies provide us with many of the statistics that paint a sobering picture of our troubled world.

From various parts of the UN system, we learn about conflicts that are raging around the world, some already making the front pages of newspapers, others in long-ignored parts of the world. The annual Report of the Secretary-General usually provides a survey and analysis of conflicts that are dealt with by the UN. Other UN agencies and offices provide telling details about the tremendous human toll of modern conflict.

For instance, UNICEF tells us that in the last decade of the 20th century, 2 million children were killed, 6 million injured or permanently disabled and 12 million left homeless because of conflict. In addition, "conflict has orphaned or separated more than 1 million children from their families states", states UNICEF's State of the World's Children report for 2002 ⁶. Even more tragically, an estimated 300,000 children were forced or induced into combat in 2001.

Yet another UN agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), tells us that there are an estimated 35 million refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) in the world ⁷, about one for every 160 persons on earth. About 80 per cent are women and children, fleeing conflict or persecution. The number of people assisted by UNHCR has been about 21-22 million annually in the years 1998-2001 ⁸. This figure includes12 million refugees (55%), 0.9 million asylum seekers (4%), 0.8 million returned refugees (4%), 6 million internally displaced of concern to UNHCR (27%), 0.4 million returned IDPs (2%) and 1.7 million others of concern (8%). Behind each statistic lie millions of face and desperate human beings. Asia has the greatest number of persons "of concern" to UNHCR, with nearly 8.5 million, followed by Africa with 6.1 million and Europe with 5.6 million people. Another UN organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), keeps tracks of and assists the 3.8 million registered Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Food and Agricultural Organization issues famine alerts, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issues international appeals for help, containing telling details about the conditions in areas of complex emergencies. The situation reports of UN and governmental agencies, as well as NGOs, are often posted in OCHA's excellent website Reliefweb. Furthermore, OCHA developed its own news service under the motto of "bridging the information gap" for conflict areas of greatest need: regions of Africa (West, East, Central, Great Lakes, Horn, South), Central Asia and recently Iraq. The reports, often with accompanying photos, are filed under the name IRIN or the Integrated Regional Information Network, which is a "UN humanitarian information unit" within OCHA, funded mostly by national development agencies in Europe, Australia and Canada.

The UN also provides us with a picture of the arms holdings and transfers. From its voluntary arms register for major conventional armaments, we learn that the US accounts for about half of the global trade in these arms (tanks, planes, ships, and weapons of calibre larger than 100 mm) and the permanent five members of the Security Council account for well over four-fifths⁹. More startling, perhaps, is the statistic that more than 68 per cent of the arms trade was absorbed by the developing world, which can ill afford the cost, in terms of both finances and human life¹⁰.

Small arms are the main killer in the world, having caused millions of deaths in the past decade. In a 1999 press release titled "the UN takes aim at small arms"¹¹, UNICEF and the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs report that small arms have caused more than 3 million deaths in the past decade, with the vast majority of victims being civilians.

We also learn from UN reports of hopeful signs of disarmament, especially in countries coming out of conflict. Cambodia destroyed 15,000 weapons in public ceremonies in March and June 1999 alone. South Africa has pledged to destroy all surplus small arms, including about 260,000 automatic rifles and hundreds of tons of ammunition. In 1998, China undertook strong steps to confiscate illicit small arms, resulting in the destruction of some 300,000 weapons¹².

The most extensive international survey of firearm effects and regulations was prepared for the UN's Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice in 1998. The "United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulations¹³" includes data and narratives from 69 Member States on such issues as firearms-related deaths and injuries, firearms legislation and relevant initiatives in firearms regulation at the regional and interregional levels. The researchers sought to ensure equitable geographical representation of countries around the world but were hampered by lack of statistics for many. The later fact only supports the overall conclusion that small arms are not yet under proper regulatory control in most parts of the world.

Finally we learn about the human condition through the UNDP's flagship report, the Human Development Report. It is not only valuable for the extensive statistics provided on developing and developed nations, but also in its path-breaking analysis of these figures and the introduction of new concepts (such as the terms "human development" and "human security" themselves). The reports show an unfortunate, though logical correlation between underdevelopment and conflict. Of the 35 nations listed under the category of "low human development" in the Human Development Report 1999 ¹⁴ about half (18) have experienced civil war or fought in international wars in the past decade. If one includes nations with neighbours that have experienced such wars, the number rises to a startling 33 of 35 states!

The Need for Knowledge

To carry out its many responsibilities, old and new, for international and human security, the UN requires accurate and timely information. Finding itself in war zones and in the midst of aggressors, the UN needs background information on the history and culture of the local powers and personalities, as well as information on the current military and political situation, including both the capabilities and intensions of the parties. Without such information, the UN places its military and civilian staff in the field at great risk. These risks can prove unacceptable, as witnessed with the truck-bombing of UN headquarters in Bagdad. With this information, the UN can operate safer and be a more effective power for peace.

The various goals and roles of the UN can be conceptualized on a simplified timeline of conflict, as in Figure 1. As the conflict begins, the UN will seek to prevent an escalation. During the intensity of combat, the major UN goal is to mitigate the severity of the conflict and the impact on the civilian population. As the conflict de-escalates, the UN will seek to prevent another peak by moving the conflict into termination phase. Finally, once the fighting has stopped, the rebuilding can occur in earnest.

Figure 1. The predominant goals and roles of the UN at different stages in the timeline of conflict.

For each UN role, specific information is required. For early warning, the UN needs to know who is seeking to escalate violence, and spoil the peace process, and how they are planning to carry it out. To react through preventive diplomacy and deployment, it is vital to identify the key players and means of influence, and to understand the locations, strengths, goals and vulnerabilities, political and military, of potential "spoilers." UN officials mediating talks between combatants should identify areas for quick agreement and discern the more difficult problems to address in the long term. For humanitarian assistance, detailed information about the locations and needs of the affected populations, and about supplies and delivery routes is required. Peacekeeping involves constant patrols to monitor the level of security in the area of operation and identify potential hazards. Peacebuilding necessitates a wide range of economic, social and development indicators to decide which sectors and organizations are the most receptive and resistant to assistance.

To establish an effective sanctions regime, it is necessary not only to identify and catch "sanctions busters" through careful border monitoring but also to prepare impact assessments on the effectiveness of sanctions, including both wanted and unwanted effects. When the UN finally finds itself, as a last resort, engaged in military enforcement or authorizing it, the organization should have detailed military information, including targeting information (to minimize, if not avoid, innocent deaths) and information on the defensive and offensive military capabilities of the targeted forces. Finally, when the UN authorizes a coalition to use military force, it should be able to monitor the coalition's actions to ensure they are strictly in accordance with their UN mandate and according to the rules of international humanitarian law.

In war zones, where "truth is the first casualty of war", there is a constant need for independent reporting. Even warring parties spouting propaganda appreciate a source of objective information, however much they may seek to bias it. After a peace agreement is signed, the objective voice of an independent outside body can make the difference between a lasting peace and a temporary ceasefire, as the UN has shown many times. Just as a referee is indispensable in a professional sports match, an impartial arbiter is essential for verifying and promoting the rules of a peace agreement. Usually, the two sides (conflicting parties) are so distrustful of each other that bilateral adversarial verification is problematic, if not impossible.

Outside monitoring itself can change behaviour. If the parties know that their illegal activities will be exposed they are often more careful not to engage in them. If they know that their positive actions will be verified by an independent agency, they will be more eager to undertake them. Thus monitoring provides a way for a feedback that builds confidence of the parties. Should one side attempt to subvert a peace agreement, it is important that the other side should know about it. False allegations can be disproved and true accusations placed in the public light. The "fog of war" is gradually replaced by the "transparency of peace."

In practice, peace agreements have loopholes, nuanced clauses and provisions that are subject to widely differing interpretation. This is another reason why it is vital to have an impartial body that can provide outside assistance in dealing with the complexities of implementation.

Countless times, the UN has used its monitoring functions to defuse potentially explosive situations. Whether it be UN military observers in the Middle East stopping a local dispute from escalating, UN control teams in Cambodia identifying assassination plots, UN civilian police in Central America preventing local police from extorting money, or traditional UN peacekeepers inserting themselves between two armies, monitoring the actual or potential combatants is a common and key element.

Lack of Information
When the UN is information-deficient, it invites a host of maladies and political disasters. First, it can appear weak and out of touch, thereby losing credibility and authority. If the UN officials appear ignorant of realities on the ground or the real issues on the negotiating table, they cannot make good mediators. Naive UN field personnel can be taken advantage of by combatants long accustomed to using trickery, disinformation and deception to gain an upper hand at the negotiating table as well as in the battlefield.

For lack of information, great blunders have been committed in UN history. In 1950 in Korea, the UN General Assembly and the Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, fully endorsed the advance of UN forces, led by the American General Douglas MacArthur, across the 38th parallel (and all the way to the Chinese border) in an effort to take North Korea by force, while ignoring the clear warnings that China would intervene. Over two years of war between China and UN forces ensued, leaving four million dead. Before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the UN (along with the US and Israel for that matter) failed to recognize Egyptian preparations for its surprise attack on Israel. In 1982, Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar was caught unawares of the impending Argentine invasion of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands, despite his familiarity with the region and the dispute. In 1993, the Security Council established UN Safe Areas in the former Yugoslavia without a proper assessment of the vulnerabilities of these areas. Indeed, the President of the Security Council at the time, Ambassador Diego Arria from Venezuela, later complained that the United States was not sharing information that was essential for proper decision-making. The tragic massacres within the "protected" areas of Srebernica and Gorazde in Bosnia are a testament to lack of foresight, political will and commitment. As we shall see, foresight to see coming tragedies and political will to react to them are intimately connected.

Some major "intelligence failures" occurred in areas where UN peacekeepers were actually deployed, bringing great embarrassment to the organization. Examples occurred:

In some cases, the blame for UN ignorance belongs to field officers; in others responsibility lies with UN headquarters and the Security Council. Usually, blame is spread rather widely but ultimately it can be traced back to the UN member states who do not provide the UN with the resources, finances staff and authority to carry out the much needed information gathering and analysis. Far from discrediting the roles and goals of the United Nations, these failures show how important it is for the organization to possess the means to predict and prevent emerging conflicts. The above examples only support the call for a stronger UN to be able to deal proactively with conflicts. Through a lessons-learned approach, the UN can discover ways to avoid repeating past errors and invest in new approaches and resources to head off future disasters.

The UN Secretaries-General have constantly complained that there is insufficient information to make the best decisions. "The pool of information available to the Secretary?General is wholly inadequate," wrote Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in his 1991 Annual Report on the Work of the Organization. Boutros Boutros-Ghali even recommended that the UN develop an "intelligence" capability, a proposal which was greeted with a chorus of nays from member states because the "intelligence" word, sometimes associated with nefarious undercover operations, had been used. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has made a bold and valiant effort to establish an Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat (ISAS) within the Secretariat, as proposed in the widly-acclaimed Brahimi Report¹⁵. But this initiative is being resisted by a number of developing states who fear that the UN might pry into their internal affairs. With the new emphasis on the protection of UN field workers, after the tragic Baghdad bombing, a system for realistic threat assessments may finally be created.

The UN and the Information Technology Revolution

Fortunately, a host of new developments are helping the UN overcome the natural and political barriers to information-gathering and to make it a significant player in the information age. Foremost among them is rapidly advancing technology. It is making information easier to access, store, analyse and disseminate. The primitive teletype machines of the 1980s used by the UN offices to print sequential reports from a few wire services are replaced with desktop computers for UN officials, permitting them to draw upon a huge number of sources, including dozens of wire services, using specialized software (e.g., NewsEdge). The Internet has increased the accessibility, scope and depth of information from sources world-wide. The World Wide Web, which is estimated to be doubling every year or so, offers new opportunities for both information-gathering and dissemination. As individuals and civil society in the developing world have begun to post copious amounts of information on the Internet, a new and special source of information becomes available globally, including to the UN. On a typical day, the UN receives over 200,000 requests for pages from its web sites.

Electronic mail has made global communications easier, cheaper and faster. It is quickly gaining a foothold in developing countries, thereby providing UN officials in New York with individual contacts at the grass roots level in countries far away. In addition, as UN information becomes more easily accessible to more groups from around the world, the UN benefits from feedback on its work. The greater world-wide access to UN documents, which were previously not widely circulated outside the UN centres in New York, Geneva and Vienna, and the subsequent analysis and commentary helps in the creation and improvement of new reports and action plans. For instance, the Internet site Reliefweb.int, operated by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), allows the UN to pool information resources from the myriad of UN agencies working in the field, as well as local and international non-governmental organizations, and even national aid agencies. Field reports that previously would have remained strictly within the confines of one department or agency are now available routinely in a timely fashion to virtually anyone in the world at www.reliefweb.int.

The wealth of electronic information would be overwhelming and impenetrable were it not for the excellent search engines on the Internet--"Google" being the search engine of choice among many experts, surfers and researchers. These search engines permit the web surfer to scan vast sections of the Internet--Google searches over three billion web pages--in a fraction of a second in order to produce results ("hits") corresponding to the search terms, however specialized these terms may be. For instance a search on the term "United Nations monitoring" gives 1,500 web pages in 0.18 seconds¹⁶.

Still, the concomitant problems of "information overload and underuse" are common in the UN, as they are all over the world. With an ocean of information available, more time and insight is required to sift through the mounds of news and background information that are constantly piling up, and less time seems to be available for analysis and reflection.

The growth of the Internet has other potential weaknesses for the world and the United Nations. It fosters a dependency on a system subject to break down and misuse. Examples of the latter include unwarranted surveillance by governments of electronic communications (including those of the UN), the propagation of computer viruses, the use of the medium for crime, corruption and other nefarious purposes, the invasion of privacy in the form of junk e-mail, etc.

But the overall effects are clearly positive. In this electronic revolution, it is harder for governments to control or suppress the flow of information. It is easier for people to span intercontinental distances using electronic communications. The global village is getting smaller. And the UN gains because of it.

Conclusion

True to Wilson's vision in 1919, the monitoring capability of the international community is slowly evolving into a global watch. The faltering but pioneering efforts of the League provided the UN with a foundation on which to build. The end of the Cold War allowed the UN to acquire expanded roles in many new fields to meet the needs of a very unpeaceful world. From early warning to peacebuilding, from disarmament verification to a terrorist watch, there are new and expanded responsibilities for the UN.

The evolution of international organization in the past decade is manifested in many forms, but it is in its monitoring functions that we see the greatest growth of roles and responsibilities. How has this come about? Was it the result of a planned strategy or sporadic progress driven by the immediate needs of the day? The answer would appear to be "clearly both", as evidenced by numerous case studies. Creative UN leadership at specific times of international need, if not desperation, permitted the development of significant innovations that brought both progress and precedence to UN monitoring. An enhancement of the UN's capacity for observation was a natural step in the information age, and a much needed one, as the global body could report more impartially and objectively than national governments, especially governments involved in conflicts.

But how permanent is this progress and this process? The UN's evolution has been far from linear; it follows a path strewn with many obstacles and can be characterized as "two steps forward and one step backwards." Some capabilities and functions may again be lost (as happened with some League mechanisms). But much will remain in the form of permanent capabilities, new mandates and new procedures. Once a new role has been successfully demonstrated, the international community usually finds new applications, especially in an age when global governance mechanisms are sorely needed. The monitoring of national elections, peace agreements, sanctions, human rights, etc., gradually covered more countries as the value of these practices were proven and the UN's own expertise grew. Even still, the application of monitoring is not uniform. The choice of countries and conflicts that are monitored is still based more on national politics (especially from the Permanent Five members of the Security Council), and less on needs of the affected populations.

It is important to identify forces that have sought to undermine, or at least slow down the evolution of UN monitoring. There are many such forces. Some are natural and, indeed, helpful; others are hostile and obstreperous. Many developing countries are reluctant to allow the UN to monitor their activities for fear of negative publicity or the exposure of domestic incompetence, corruption, complicity or other wrong-doing. This also holds true for the activities of the most powerful countries as well. The United States is careful not to allow the UN to threaten its dominance in the intelligence arena, especially on matters where its intelligence reports might be challenged (e.g., on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) or US covert intelligence operations might be exposed (e.g., Contra armament in Nicaragua, assassination attempts on Prime Minister Lumumba in the Congo, complicity with Duvalier regime in Haiti, etc.). It has opposed a general purpose arms verification capability for the UN and kept the UN hobbled through its failure to pay its annual dues for about three decades. There are factions within the US right-wing that are openly hostile to the UN and paranoid elements hold that the UN is actually heading a conspiracy to overthrow the US government!

Are there legitimate pitfalls and prohibited zones for a UN global watch? The issues of privacy, confidentiality, misuse of information must all be examined. Some fear the creation of an Orwellian UN in which "big brother is watching." Those studying the UN and those knowledgeable about its capacities (and limitations) know that such a fear is unfounded. In the distant future, however, perhaps 2084 instead of 1984, could such concerns be validated? In human history, whenever and wherever power was over concentrated, such a concern has arisen, including in the Roman Empire, when the question was frequently asked, "Who will watch the watchman?" But the very nature of the UN, with its diverse membership and international civil service makes it difficult to keep secrets or to overstep the bounds imposed by its members or to take action that would dilute its moral authority. And with more democratic nations than ever before in history (both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the whole), a dependable system of checks and balances could easily be set up to regulate UN monitoring.

On a practical level, what concrete steps can be taken to produce a better system in the near future? Some feel that it is feasible for the UN to negotiate information-sharing agreements with governments so that it can receive a regular feed of information from a diverse set of nations (which would, presumably, reduce the dangers of bias). The present author is in favour of such agreements as well as other bold initiatives: to create a new legal status for new UN investigative powers within states; to curtail a state's "right of refusal" of fact-finding teams on certain issues such as human rights, to develop a UN Open Skies treaty, which would allow the UN to overfly national territories as a confidence-building measure (similar to the treaty regime that is now in force between NATO and the former-Warsaw Pact countries). While these proposals may seem radical it is not a departure from the historical development but a natural and fruitful outcome of present trends.

It is clear that UN monitoring should be conducted where conflict is most prevalent or most likely to break out, but should the monitoring system be applied equally to the developed (first) world as well as to the developing (third) world? Should the UN monitor those states who act (or claim to act) as "enforcers" of UN decisions and resolutions, whether they be duly-authorized or self-appointed "coalitions of the willing"? What practical means have been adopted to keep track of such enforcers to make sure that human lives are not lost needlessly or carelessly (as "collateral damage") and that human suffering is reduced to a minimum. This type of UN monitoring lags well behind the others both in UN practice and in academic study. It would be well for academic/activist groups like Pugwash to examine the means of monitoring enforcers and further explore the notion of an emerging global watch. As an "eye that does not slumber", the UN could serve the world, not as "big brother", not as a "big bother" (as some might think it) but as "big helper" that would make both peace and justice more accessible on the planet.

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Endnotes

1. [return] Dr. Walter Dorn is an Associate Professor at the Canadian Forces College and Vice Chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group. He is currently writing a book with the support of a DFAIT Human Security Fellowship on the evolving "Global Watch." He is a scientist by training, with experience on chemical sensing and arms control verification. He served with the UN in East Timor, in Ethiopia, and at UN headquarters as a Training Adviser to the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operations. His homepage is <www.cfc.dnd.ca/dorn>.

2. [return] Dorn, A. Walter, "The Cloak and the Blue Beret: Limitations on Intelligence in UN Peacekeeping", International Journal of Intelligence and Counter?Intelligence, Vol. 12, No. 4, December 1999, p. 414.

3. [return] "Political and Peacebuilding missions" were established by the UN, according to the Department of Political Affairs under its mandate, in Burundi (1993), Afghanistan (1993), Guatemala (1994), Somalia (1995), Liberia (1997), Great Lakes Region (1997), Bougainville (1998), Guinea-Bissau (1999), Middle East (1999), Angola (1999), Central African Republic (2000) and Tajikistan (2000). See "Background Note: United Nations Political and Peacebuilding Missions, 1 June 2001", UN Doc. DPI/2166/Rev.4.

4. [return] These reports are publicly accessible on the UN's Web site: <domino.un.org/MineBan.nsf>, (accessed 20 November 2001).

5. [return] The previous two paragraphs may be deleted in the final version.

6. [return] <www.unicef.org/sowc02/feature6.htm>, accessed 20 November 2001. UNICEF generally defines a "child" as is done in the Convention on the Rights of the Child: every human being below the age of 18 years, though the Convention adds the qualification " unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."

7. [return] Kofi A. Annan, Foreword, "The State of the World's Children 2002: Leadership, United Nations Children's Fund," <www.unicef.org/sowc02/pdf/sowc2002-final-eng-allmod.txt>, accessed 20 November 2001.

8. [return] The number of refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) 'of concern' to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), has stood at 21-22 million in the years for the first years of the 21st century. Information provided on the Home Page of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees for the beginning of the year 2001 (<www.unhcr.ch>, accessed 5 October 2001).

9. [return] The six largest exporters of "conventional arms" include the five permanent members of the Security Council, with the US taking the lion's share: US, 47%; Russia, 14%; UK, 8%; France, 7%; Germany 6%; China, 3%. SIPRI yearbook, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Stockholm.

10. [return] Press release, "Transparency in Military Matters Grows", UN Doc. DC/2799 of 31 July 2001. available at <www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2001/dc2799.doc.htm>, accessed 20 November 2001.

11. [return] UNICEF Press Release CF/DOC/PR/1999/26 of 20 July 1999. Available at <www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr26.htm>, accessed 23 December 2003.

12. [return] United Nations Secretary-General, Report of the Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms, UN Doc. A/54/258 of 19 August 1999, p.13. available at <www.smallarmssurvey.org/source_documents/UN%20Documents/
Other%20UN%20Documents/A_54_258.pdf>, accessed 23 December 2003.

13. [return] "United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulations" (UNSFR), United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network, Vienna, 1998. The report and updates are available at <www.uncjin.org/Statistics/firearms>.

14. [return] United Nations Human Development Report 1999, United Nations Development Programme, New York, 1999.

15. [return] The Brahimi report is officially called "The Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations", UN document reference: A/55/305 and S/2000/809 of 21 August 2000. It is available at <www.un.org/peace/reports/peace_operations>, accessed 23 December 2003.

16. [return] Search performed with Google, <www.Google.com>, on 30 December 2001.