A parade of cliches
With unrealistic bravado, some are actually applauding the outcome of the just-concluded United Nations summit involving some 170 world leaders, and the resulting document aimed at making the 60-year-old organization more representative and better able to meet 21st century challenges.
We do not agree.
The gathering could have been the most important since the UN's formation in 1945, but sadly it became another powwow filled with double speak. This shows just how far this cherished body has strayed from the realities of the world.
The concluding document may be satisfactory to meet the challenges of the 20th century, but certainly not of the 21st. Perhaps we were all hoping for too much when earlier this year UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan first made a call for world leaders to introduce sweeping reform at this month's general assembly meeting.
In the end, the meeting only affirmed global perceptions that the UN has turned into a convention of humbug and diplomatic aristocracy.
We could not agree more with former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans -- a member of the UN panel who drafted the original reform concept -- who described the meetings as "a depressing parade of cliches".
The highbrow rhetoric and pomp ceremonies in New York cannot conceal the reality that an opportunity has been missed to make the UN more relevant to contemporary society.
Others might argue that progress was made, but this is not the time to celebrate incremental steps forward. What was sought was a breakthrough in the poverty and development agenda, the security agenda and the UN's internal management.
In the end, on almost all issues, delegates adopted a fairly self-interested position on the key subject questions.
The ensuing debate only reinforced the belief that developed countries were not ready to fully accept developing states on an equal political footing and were using the UN as a means to create new positions of privilege.
Nowhere was this more evident than in United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remark on the pivotal issue of UN Security Council expansion when she said that "developing countries" deserved greater representation.
On the simple task of defining "terrorism", the meeting failed miserably. Instead it choose to defer to more talk on concluding a comprehensive antiterror convention, which has been in discussion for some eight years.
On targets to reduce global poverty, as prescribed by the Millennium Development Goals for 2015, it became increasingly evident that the much-needed developmental assistance promised was contingent upon conditionalities of trade and market access.
One reason the meeting ended the way it did was, perhaps, because such an important global agenda was left to the purview of diplomats alone. They in turn treated the process as they would any document that needed to be passed: With haggled principles, pretentious posturing and a scorecard based on a quid-pro-quo attitude.
Civil society did not pay enough attention to these issues when the voice of the people was needed. We are now paying dearly for our negligence.
The UN belongs to every citizen of the world. More than any other international body, other than our own respective national governments, it is the single most influential force shaping global politics.
Without it we are left with global chaos, international corporate exploitation, or the American hegemony -- none of which is an inviting prospect.
There is still hope for change, if civil societies around the world speak as one on the need for a more compassionate and representative UN.
Major powers may still have veto powers -- especially on the UN Security Council -- but an overwhelming majority of the 191- member UN General Assembly comprise developing states. Change is possible.
And possible now -- if citizens of Asia and Africa can only unite.