NationStates Jolt Archive

Please, Please, Please check out my proposal all delegates and please vote on it! We desperately need your assistance - People out there in the NS world are dying and suffering and you could help them!

The best approach is to provide a copy of your proposal, followed by a brief explanation. I don't recall 'begging' gaining much favour with the delegates ;)

Here you go

United Nations Charity
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.

Category: Human Rights Strength: Significant Proposed by: Canary Land
Description: We recognise the situation in many poorer countries that many people suffer in poverty and die from diseases that come from malnutrition and undernutrition.

We recognise that there are many charities which try to help but have trouble with funding. The more official government charities like World Bank for example only worsen poor nations problems by landing them in debt with interest - therefore any money the nation gets is spent on this instead of the needy. As the interest is always there the total debt amount stays the same.

We propose that the member nations should:

1) be encouraged to cancel as many debt as they can afford for poorer nations
2) a United Nations Charity should be set up funded by small amounts of money from all member nations which should accumulate into a large fund.
3) this charity should help the poverty striken nations by ignoring the problems of debt and giving aid straight to the needy.

Thank you for reading.
Please help.
Many need you.

Approvals: 10 (Canary Land, Womgeese, Yrrah, Atlantic Quays, Coolet, States of Stephenson, Lamoni, EcoVille, Painful intrusion, Akido)

Status: Lacking Support (requires 127 more approvals)

Voting Ends: Fri Jul 16 2004

Indeed the suffering citizens in poorer nations do need our help, however I don’t feel this proposal makes any inroads in helping the problem.

Article one does not define what is meant by ‘poor’ and lets us not forget that ‘poor’ UN members may owe monies to each other. Do we propose that they cancel this debt also? The lender being ‘poor’ themselves may rely heavily on that source of income to alleviate similar problems in their own borders.

Article two again suffers from lack of definition, what is ‘small’? Since ‘small’ could be considered mere change, I feel this body will almost certainly starve from lack of investment even before it is conceived. This article relies heavily on the good will of member states and in my opinion, considering the stance of some member states in the NSUN, is doomed to failure.

Assuming that by some miracle this body is actually realised and receives enough funds to deal with their mandate and fund its own administrative costs (which by the way would be enormous considering the scale of the problem) article three does not adequately explain how this goal is going to be achieved. Nor are there any safeguards that these huge sums of money will not be abused and will actually reach the intended recipients.

Simply throwing money at this issue is flawed on so many levels, especially considering governments who receive these funds may well be corrupt and will often use the funds for their own gain. The consequence of which is often an increase in military spending leading in some cases to aggression with their neighbours.

If the honourable member really wishes to see this issue addressed, I feel we should address the socio-economic reasons why these states are in this position in the first place. Secondly we as members should look at our own involvement with these states and ensure our trade relationships represents a fair trade for the citizens in question, rather than a consumerist approach of finding the cheapest goods.

Respectfully
Lydia Cornwall, UN Ambassador
Office of UN Relations
HM Government of Telidia

While I note with approval the intentions that have brought forth this proposal, I am afraid that my nation will not support it as it stands. Debt relief is a valid goal for an international body like the UN to seek; however, Ms Cornwall is correct in highlighting the flaws in the text before us and I concur with most of her observations.

Though, speaking as a representative of a moderately indebted and 'poor' country, I am gladdened that these problems are still deemed worthy of the UN's attention.

Varia Yefremova
Speaker to the United Nations