ON THE UN's fiftieth anniversary one can begin by trying to sum up how the world is going as a scene of interdependence. I do so for two reasons. First because Geneva is not only a neutral city, poised near the theoretical centre of gravity of the earth's inhabited land surface - the home of ultimate sub-atomic physical research (CERN), the International Red Cross, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees and its Organizations for World Health, Weather, Labour, Trade, Patents, Centres for Human Rights, Disarmament, Social Research, Environment and Sustainable Development, UN Volunteers and much else; but it remains the world's main deliberative and conference centre for these and innumerable other international concerns, including even the World Council of Churches. This then is where the world's pulse can be felt and -because of its centrality and totally neutral status - where certain main global decisions should be made. The history of the UN would be different if they had been!

On the,run-up to its fiftieth anniversary the UN tried to focus its developmental urge through a series of World Conferences - on Environment and Development, on Human Rights, on Children, on Human Settlements, on Small Island Developing States, and most recently a World Summit at Copenhagen on Social Development. There have been others on Population and have been a major World Conference on Women at Beijing. But it can be seen that a few key concerns that underlie all these major issues have been totally ignored.

The results have been most visible in the area of recent civil conflicts. Because the Middle East is a focus of world oil reserves, Iraq received prompt military action. Because Yugoslavia has complex terrain and no strategic interest, the UN effort, though costly, has been stifled. Politics based on national economic interests have thus dominated the effectiveness of a comprehensive and global UN effort that is continuous but, publicly, almost invisible; and that political stronghold is needlessly adversarial, outdated and grossly ineffectual. Because of this, humanness itself now faces a climatic and unnecessary crisis, but the remedies cannot even be considered! The flaws as well as the strengths of humanity's still-evolving and complex social nature ought surely to be at the forefront of human debate; but for tactical reasons it would seem that they are too often ignored. Is there not scope here for some action or debate?

Today's human prospect

Having been the IHEU's representative at Geneva for 20 years, having attended the UN's first General Assembly in London in 1945 and served for 21 years on its senior Secretariat at Geneva, this fiftieth anniversary has been an occasion for overall reflexion. So far this year we have had both the celebration of that anniversary, that of the ending of World War Two, and innumerable meetings including the Economic and Social Council itself (which seeks to coordinate all effort of that kind), the Commission on Human Rights and its Sub-Commission of experts on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. Here I leave out much else -- e.g. on Trade, Climate Change, International Law, etc.

After 50 years of reflection, perhaps we can sum up human kind's ten most pressing concerns as follows:

• Rapid population growth and urbanism

• Overall global overseeing (its absence)

• Environmental decay

• Authoritarian religious intolerance

• Health standards - physical and public

• Systemic economic-financial defects and extreme poverty Natural disasters

• Arms exporting

• Crime, terrorism and the drug trade

• Human rights dereliction, and the treatment of women.

All these issues, except two, are covered by UN Programmes. The exception are global overseeing and the ineffectual economic system itself. Trends in population growth and health show long-term progress, but human settlements are growing unsustainably. Environmental trends are mainly still negative, and depend on urgent economic controls that are timid or absent. Lack of enough fresh water is a likely prospect. Urban air quality is deteriorating. Changing mid-latitude climate regimes are combining with earthquakes, desertification, low-lying coastal flooding and deforestation to produce, already, as many environmental refugees (25 million) as there are cross-frontier refugees now fleeing from conflict areas. Purely natural disasters are still producing each year enormous economic damage and loss of life. Daily, many animal and plant species are becoming extinct, programmes to bring clear water, elementary shelter and sanitation to the 1.2 billion extremely poor people show modest advances, but remain behind schedule. Rapid increase in urban populations that seek work in the world's conurbations is hampering this campaign.

From all this,' one quarter of the earth's 5650 million people live sub-human lives and another quarter enjoy an annual GNP averaging 20,000 dollars per head. The half in between live mostly in varying degrees of misery. It is the 70 per cent above the minimum level who are too often prey to harmful traditional practices and the tyranny of male-dominated authoritarian religious dogma. Superstition is rampant at all levels - and notably in the USA. One main outcome overall is to produce fortunes for Western arms exporters who profit from religious and ethnic conflicts and areas like ex-Yugoslavia, the Sudan and elsewhere -- the first a direct outcome of an engineered breakdown in Eastern Europe. It is in this economic climate, too, that crime and the drugs trade are rising at 2-3 times the rate of Western economic growth.

This is the global reality - one that responds only slowly to comprehensive UN programmes worldwide -- programmes greatly hampered still by political manoeuvering in an uncontrolled sphere of trade, massive debt, pollution, unemployment and unbalanced distribution of goods and services. But scientific discovery, inventiveness and productivity rise yearly to ever-new heights. Despite this, governments are increasingly insolvent because ageing, unemployment and habitat decay are taxing public services. Since 1990, a new global fashion has been instilled - to deregulate financial services and privatise worldwide - something being pushed by UN financing agencies like the IMF and World Bank, which are largely political instruments.

Before turning to action taken on the IHEU's behalf, it is time to mention a few current developments at Geneva. One outcome of recent civil wars has been carpets of hidden anti-personnel mines - twelve million in Angola alone -- that are causing injury and limb loss on a large scale. At Geneva the UN Secretary-General has been involved in a drive to produce an international instrument to outlaw such weapons. Much effort too has gone into tackling many more of the world's trouble-spots - Rwanda, Zaire, Burundi, Yugoslavia and others, as well as various natural disasters. But where do they all get their arms? Luckily, the International Red Cross effort, plus those on Refugees, Natural Disasters and World Health, can all be coordinated from this same location. The original site of the League of Nations here is now also being converted into a massive Environmental Centre.

If the Conventions and hundreds of Resolutions adopted annually were respected world-wide, orderly development would prevail. One reason for this is .an enormous UN drive for human rights. Stemming from man's irreducibly social nature, a respected frame of rights and tueis is one necessary, if insufficient, basis for a developing world order- something already sensed nearly 2600 years ago in the words of Confucius: 'Do to every person that which, if you were that person, you would that they do to you'. At Geneva the UN Commission on Human Rights, its Sub-Commission of independent legal experts and monitoring Committees, are working to devise new Conventions and other rights instruments; to monitor national performance under existing legal Covenants; and to examine critical situations in the field. Recent concerns have included a Right to Development, the nature of rights to life, work, housing and those of indigenous peoples, women, the child, migrants, detainees and other concerns involving the natural environment. Apart from the Nordic countries and a few others, the record of Western states in this respect is at best indifferent. The USA, for instance, does not believe that economic social and cultural rights exist and votes, like the present UK government and a few others, against measures concerning a Right to Development. The UK was strongly criticised by the Human Rights Committee in July last for its performance on Civil and Political Rights -- its lack of a written Constitution, of a Bill of Rights or means for individuals to appeal to the Committee under an Optional Protocol, still not ratified. The Committee was met by a refusal, so far, to do anyting in these regards. These examples show that there remains much scope for national action on human rights by interested organizations. It was a voluntary UK body that gave evidence in the case mentioned. These biennial reviews of performance can have much effect.

At all recent sessions of the Commission on Human Rights and the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities your representative has spoken in the debate on certain agenda items, submitted documents for circulation in working languages, or both at the same time. He has participated in other meetings, including the Economic and Social Council.

Last year an oral intervention was made by the IHEU to the Commission on behalf of Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh and in August this year both an oral intervention and a UN document were before the Sub-Commission on the case of Dr. Xiao Xuehui of the Peoples Republic of China. So far (August 1995) there has been no official reaction on this.

On the occasion of the fiftieth UN anniversary, a wide-ranging intervention was made on behalf of the IHEU at the 51st session of the Human Rights Commission. Finally, the question of general acceptance of a right to conscientious objection to military service, which was earlier recognised by the Human Rights Commission after a successful IHEU intervention, continues to be under periodic review. These seems to be a gradual extension in acceptance of this principle by the international community.