AUSTRALIA: Senior diplomat to head UN Democracy Fund
Updated
An Australian diplomat is about to take the job of heading the new United Nations Democracy Fund, describing democracy as a concept that's still being contested in international relations. On October 1, Roland Rich will become the executive head of the Fund, which was created for the UN World Summit in 2005.
RICH: The democracy promotion work that the UN will do through the fund will be mainly to support projects in the field that enhance democratic institutions, or very importantly communications within the country between NGOs and government officials, and between parliamentarians and other institutions of those countries. I think what the challenge for the UN Democracy Fund is to identify where the UN can be most effectively involved, and that really means using the legitimacy that the UN brings to be involved in countries where bilateral democracy promotion projects are finding it difficult to be effective.
DOBELL: That issue of legitimacy, democracy is still a contested value in Asia for countries ranging from China to Vietnam to Burma, even at the moment to Thailand. How dangerous is this endeavour for the UN?
RICH: Well there are certainly countries in the United Nations that were not in favour of the establishment of the UN Democracy Fund and I think it's to the credit of the then secretary general and the current secretary general they pushed this through. Yes, democracy remains a contested concept, but I think we can now say that the ideal of democracy is universally accepted. And the problem is timing, the methodology, the means and so forth, people quibble about those sort of issues. But the ideal that democracy is the best form of governance I think is pretty universally accepted these days.
DOBELL: The use of democracy though as a political diplomatic weapon, China has been arguing recently about the danger of the idea of an alliance of democracies led by the United States and Japan, talking about this introducing new divisions into Asia. Can you see where that way of defining people using democracy as the measure could open up new divisions?
RICH: If countries want to use democracy for those sort of polemical and political purposes well that's for country governments to work with. But as far as the UN concerned I think democracy is seen as a far more procedural and fundamental process that is really at the level of the people of the nation, not at the level of international relations. And what the UN Democracy Fund will be working on is to improve and enhance the processes and the communications within the countries. Now if various countries want to use the concept and the term democracy for polemical purposes, well that's for them to decide.
DOBELL: Is that what the US President George W. Bush was doing, using it for polemical purposes when at the Asia Pacific summit he announced that the US wants to set up an Asia Pacific partnership of democracies?
RICH: Actually Graeme I'm not quite sure, I had a look at that and there was so few details that it was very hard to tell exactly what the role of that partnership would be. So I have to say I just need to wait and see what the details might be on that.
DOBELL: Will the UN be a partner to the partnership?
RICH: The UN is a partner to a number of institutions and there's a process for partnership with the UN Democracy Fund, which a dozen or so international organisations and groups have already taken advantage of. So it's certainly possible.
DOBELL: As you sit in New York working on this idea of democracy, what would you want to be putting out into the member countries? What is the democratic message that the UN needs to sell?
RICH: Well when you strip democracy down to very basic concepts, it really is about ideas and the ability to be able to have a contestation of ideas. I don't think there is any one set of ideas to solve all the problems of the world and there's one set of ideas that work everywhere. And what democracy hopefully can do is create this marketplace of ideas and allow the best or most appropriate one to win the support of the people of that country. So what the UN can do I hope is to contribute to that process of the contestation of ideas within these countries.
Presenter: Graeme Dobell
Speakers: New head of the United Nations Democracy Fund, Roland Rich
