JAMES DILLOWAY

BECAUSE every facet of UN activity is represented at Geneva, and because global issues are beginning to be tackled with a new realism and resolve, it is possible, in this statement, to attempt three things: to report action taken by your representative on behalf of IHEU; to outline salient developments of potential interest to the Board or to national humanist groups; and to draw out some conclusions on possible lessons offered by current international effort for a full world-wide development of humanist ideas.

Let me begin by explaining a seeming paradox of international action. The whole process consumes mountains of paper, with simultaneous interpretation in up to six languages. It consumes endless time and travel, with meetings continuing sometimes to midnight. Decisions must pass through many stages of deliberation, while at Geneva they cover virtually every aspect of practical or · intellectual concern. Of its nature this whole process seems at once endlessly bureaucratic and politically dubious, that is simply because full power to activate the decisions reached is still lacking.

But for the slow rise of a still-incipient humanness, this view conceals an important truth; that the world's top experts on every subject under the sun - sent to Geneva by self-interested politicians - are moved to seek a true scientific consensus where such can be reached. Thus the full know-how of global development is ever advancing, even if a synthesis of political will still lags far behind! But that, surely, is for the will of the people to enforce, or -- where consumerist values prevail -- for international humanists to promote.

If humanists are concerned positively with the entirety of existence, and not just with dogma-demolishing, then today's total conspectus of UN activity, as seen from here, does address the full range of humanist interest. It embraces, for example, a new global attack on the horrifying scale of discrimination against women; an all-embracing probe into advancing environmental decay and resource depletion; preparation of a 'World Summit for Social Development', at Copenhagen {March 1995), with full NGO {Non Government Organisations) participation -- a preparatory meeting for which I have attended in 1993; and a new attention to creating a New Humanitarian Order. Perhaps because IHEU is the focal NGO for humanist concerns in the UN, I have received, among many others, a letter (February 1994) from the Human Rights Centre here asking for support for recommendations of an Independent Commission on Humanitarian Issues, followed by a General Assembly resolution (47/106) of December 1992.

These matters, of course, are only a beginning. There is now a concentrated UN attack on the overall Development problem. I took part in the original Working Group on the 'Realisation of this Right', and I hope to take part in its next session. Social development inevitably links up with economic development, environmental conservation, the prevention of civil conflict and an overarching machinery of human rights. The mass credulity of religion and factional conflict, now spreading everywhere, is easily induced by economic factors -- today by trade in arms and by spreading poverty. This last was inflamed by enormous bank-inspired lending of surplus oil revenues to developing states, following the Arab-Israeli war, and a subsequent inability of those states to repay capital and interest in the climate of economic depression that ensued. (For a full analysis of today's world crisis and proposal refer to my book published in 1993, under the pseudonym Adam Swift: Global Political Ecology: The Crisis in Economy and Government, Pluto Press, London and Boulder, Colorado.)

Here we can note also some recent activity of the International Law Commission, which meets in Geneva. It is drafting a 'Code of Crimes Against Mankind', and a draft of Article 26 states: 'An individual who wilfully causes or orders the causing of widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment shall, on conviction thoreof, be sentenced to ...'. We can here note too that an international War Crimes Tribunal to cover violations of international humanitarian law in the former Yugoslavia also started work in November last at the Hague.

Other current UN efforts cover many issues that are humanly fundamental. The World Food Programme's recent disclosures of an imminent world water and food shortage underline a series of global initiatives now being prepared - culminating in World Conferences like that on Human Rights, but dealing with Human Settlements; with Natural Disaster Reduction (May 1994); Population (September 1994 -- see front page); the Social Development Summit (1994); and the Conference on Women (September 1995). The idea is to reach a global consensus on some basic human needs in time for the UN's fiftieth anniversary in 1995. From that global consensus should emerge some new ideas on the real core issues - progress towards some standing and permanent machinery for an overall global control and other key advances, e.g. towards a true system of environmental accounting and, say, a Council for Economic Security. Having attended the first UN General Assembly in 1945, and worked for 46 years since on these questions, it is not difficult to discern, first the political-economy dimension, and then that of permanent global overseeing, as the next vital areas for true advance - if we proto-humans are ever to become fully humanised!

That obsolete dogma of authoritarian religion and economy, plus mass credulity and ignorance, are the main barriers that remain, has long been known to the world's great humanists. Voltaire, who like J.J. Rousseau, lived in Geneva, already said it well: 'As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.' H. G. Wells, the great humanist of our century, has also to be mentioned in this report, though later and partly in a different context. Here, one can note that today's enormous body of national and international humanitarian or human rights developed between 1940 and 1942. We can sum up this overview with a Wells quote from a radio broadcast in 1930: 'To be a social animal is to be a moral animal, and these 'emancipated' human beings are still under an inherent.., necessity to keep standards and respect obligations. The very decay of 'faith' is due to a profounder virtue - the disposition and the courage to seek and find the truth'.

A continuation of this report dealing with Human Rights will appear in the next issue.