NationStates Jolt Archive

This thread has been started to open discussion to the public on the proposal given below. The text of this proposal will be edited in line with the comments made on this forum, and it will be submitted to the UN for approval in a few weeks.
Thank you.
Nataljans.


TO BE POSTED FOR APPROVAL: 1st SEPTEMBER, 10:00 GMT.

Pooled Resources

Social Justice
Significant

Description:
NOTING the lack of Research and Development into areas of basic survival; Including, but not limited to: Affordable Healthcare for predominantly 3rd World Diseases, Cheap effective Technologies for Irrigation & Water Treatment.

ALSO NOTING the justified reluctance of industry to invest in potentially unprofitable R&D ventures with incalculable risks to said corporations, without whose help, equality of access becomes inordinately more difficult.

ALSO NOTING that R&D is a predominantly first world industry, concerned primarily with first world technological development, at the cost of the third world.

DRAWING ATTENTION to the disparate and poorly co-ordinated nature of many government contributions to Third-World Aid.

PROPOSES the formation of a Pooled Fund, regulated by a UN Allocation Panel.

The UN would form an Allocation Panel, composed of Technological Experts, Sociologists, Economists and Political Scientists who:

1: Would collect the many small voluntary donations of individual UN members towards such equality of access projects into a single fund.

2: Would offer contracts publicly to corporations and industry to invest in Research and Development in the aforementioned technologies and reduce production costs of medicines, technologies etc. to improve third world access to such items.

3: Would offer the aforementioned fund as a single lump sum 'prize' to the company/corporation which wins the UN contract as payment for the patent rights so as to provide such technologies to the thirld world without prohibitive royalty payments.

4: Would maintain a proportion of this fund as a similar 'prize' to those thrid world industries who can most effectively prove that they will be able make the most use of such a fund in developing native industries.

THUS improving equality of access of third-world nations to often expensive and principally first world technological developments;

Providing corporations with a calculable risk and profit, ensuring their willing co-operation in such projects alongside the UN;

Supporting local industries directly, thus aiding local social and economic development;

And improving the efficiency and distribution of member nation donations.

Does anyone have any comments on it?
Practical difficulties with implementation?
Privatisation of charity?
Anything like that?
Also, those who have voted in the poll, for or against, it'd be great if you could post your reasons or suggestions, so that I can reword or amend the proposal to improve it.
Nataljans

This thread has been started to open discussion to the public on the proposal given below. The text of this proposal will be edited in line with the comments made on this forum, and it will be submitted to the UN in 6-8 weeks.
Thank you.
Nataljans.

Unless you have another source for discussion and suggestions, I'd suggest you halve that time.

Pooled Resources

Description: NOTING the lack of equality of access to basic items of survival,

Hmm....not sure I like this trend

e.g. Medicines,

Done in past UN resolutions

Affordable Healthcare,

Made a national issue by RBH replacement iirc

Affordable Technologies for Irrigation, Water Treatment

Wouldn't the recent water acts cover that?

etc.

No - please keep going

ALSO NOTING the justified reluctance of industry to invest in potentially unprofitable ventures with incalculable risks to said corporations, without whose help, equality of access becomes inordinately more difficult.

Not to mention whatever dictatorship they prop up so they can continue to abuse workers' rights

DRAWING ATTENTION to the disparate and poorly co-ordinated nature of many government contributions to Third-World Aid.

PROPOSES the formation of a UN regulated pooled fund.

Now this resolution is starting to get good

The UN:

1: Would collect the many small voluntary donations of individual UN members towards such equality of access projects into a single fund.

Good

2: Would offer contracts publicly to corporations to invest in the aforementioned projects and reduce production costs of medicines etc. to improve third world access to such items.

Not good. You're saying the UN will offer contracts to the lowest bidder to supply whatever resources we consider necessities for third world countries..... especially considering that medicine has been done already - the major issue is services (Education, Health Care, etc) which are unlikely to get investment from corporations and you'd be better off making them government or UN run

3: Would offer the aforementioned fund as a single lump sum 'prize' to the company/corporation which wins the UN contract.

That's very much a short term goal. If the nation still can't fund the corporation sufficiently, long term we'll have to start the process over again

THUS improving equality of access of third-world nations to often expensive and principally first world technologies;

Providing corporations with a calculable risk and profit, ensuring their willing co-operation in such projects alongside the UN.

Because they can make a profit from people that have no money :rolleyes:

And improving the efficiency and distribution of member nation donations.

This is true

Thanks,
Criticism, but of a constructive nature.
I dig what you're saying about the timescale. (This is my first thread, still a bit of a newbie, I'll shorten the timescale a bit)

As for the particulars I quoted, yes, access to many of these are covered by past proposals, though this proposal is meant to refer to encouragement of research and development in these areas, which in such basic areas, simply offers no realistic return of investment to the company. I'll clarify this in the next draft.

Abuse of workers rights is a serious issue, but one which this proposal does not seek to amend... leaving that to other proposals.

As for the lowest bidder problem, I think that this issue arises once more from me not clarifying that it's investment in R&D, not native industry. (this also comes in in the above point on workers rights.)

-R&D generally occurs in the first world nations, which have predominantly tertiary industries this proposal hopes to divert some of this industries focus away from first world needs by making it profitable to invest in R&D which would benefit third world countries.

As regards the short-term nature of the 'prize' this is intentional, as we are looking to reward companies for investment in technological research, they do the research, and then recieve the 'prize' as payment for the patent rights, (which 3rd world countries can't afford to pay royalties on, which is the source of the problem in the first place).

The UN then operates this patent at no royalty to 3rd world countries, allowing free access to these technologies. The company still wins 'cause it made a profit from it's endeavours, the UN wins because it can choose to charge nominal royalties to first world countries using these technologies if it wishes, and third world gets free access to expensive R&D.

As for your final point, the company is obtaining not one cent from the poorer nations, as the entirety of the 'prize' is obtained from the donations of more affluent countries.

I hope that gets everything, I'll amend the proposal to reflect these points better, thanks for the comments!

Also thank you to The Great Punk, who suggested that some of the fund should be allocated to local industries to encourage growth.

Greetings,

On behalf of the Government and People of the Republic of Sarnatha, I have been instructed by Sarnathan UN ambassador Miles May to commend you for putting forth the effort to assemble this draft proposal.

While I intend to reply to your invitation for comment more extensively in the next few days, I would like to begin by asking who you propose would set the priorities for this fund. It seems to me that a designated body would have to be established by the proposal itself, bearing in mind the following:

1. the governing body should be semiautonomous, i.e. "of" the UN but not "in" the UN
2. the governing body should be multinational and diverse
3. it should be composed of scientists and specialists, not political cronies
4. it should have specific incentives to act quickly and decisively

Again, on behalf of my Government, I commend you. Thank you for your attention to my inquiry. I look forward to our further discussion on this subject.

Unto the stars,

Alana Grosvenor
Science Advisor to the Ambassador to the United Nations
Republic of Sarnatha

Alana Grosvenor,
Thank you for your suggestions, these points were in fact my intentions with the proposal, yet I increasingly realise the importance of fastidiousness!

One thing I'd like to clarify before I edit the proposal is what you mean when you refer to 'of' rather than 'in' the UN, my intention was a specialist body composed as you say, of scientists, economists, social scientists, though I would have included political advisors and people of various political persuasions to ensure the fund was not abused by corrupt governments.

Given the nature of the fund, it does not give money directly to third world governments, leaving that to other funds, but rather it removes some of the barriers to technological development, thus avoiding corruption, though I'd maintain that those of a political bent would still be required to ensure this was maintained.

This panel would not be composed of member nations however (I'll clarify this in the next draft), but rather of the specialists aforementioned.

Another question would be your final point on being quick and decisive, what do you mean by this?
-The panel selects an area that requires attention, offers a contract (including a target timescale), and enters into discussions with potential corporations. Do you have any thoughts as to how this can be accelerated without lending itself to poor management through wasteful speed?

Thank you for your post, and I look forward to your future thoughts,
Nataljans.

I did support this earlier but now I must insist that we as an UN STOP repeating itself.



I feel that this bill, although incredibly well meaning, is mostly covered by past resolutions.





You know people...there's barely ANY environmental, Security...Commerce.


The UN Constitution almost entirely consists of Human Rights-Civil Rights-Social Justice.


I'm kind of sad that I'm not a Gay, Transsexual, lesbian with a dog tail (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I did support this earlier but now I must insist that we as an UN STOP repeating itself.



I feel that this bill, although incredibly well meaning, is mostly covered by past resolutions.





You know people...there's barely ANY environmental, Security...Commerce.


The UN Constitution almost entirely consists of Human Rights-Civil Rights-Social Justice.


I'm kind of sad that I'm not a Gay, Transsexual, lesbian with a dog tail (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Well....let's see - there's something like 10 environmental resolution......~8% of UN law. International security is also a considerable percentage - though personally (and I think many of the no-military nations will agree) that this is very much something that needs to be addressed at a national level (for example, with my 1billion population, I have little police force, no jails, a miniscule military, and yet - neither crime nor significant terrorist threats - yet Angel Fire, my puppet - pours significant amounts into defense and police and has a significant crime problem. Commerce is COMPLETELY a national issue - and things like the NSoT effectively works to protect individual nation's tax systems.

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of the UN is to guarantee rights - so I consider human rights an important are. Social Justice I consider second priority, environmental third. Moral Decency I consider almost completely outside the UN's scope. Then there's Gambling, Gun Control and Recreational Drugs....so much a national issue it's not even funny.

Don't complain about what the UN does or does not prioritize - either write a resolution or - since you have that opinion about delegates and authoring resolutions - SUGGEST a topic of a resolution to someone so that they can think about it and write it. I see no need to expand our environmental category (in fact, I think we need to junk a few past environmental resolutions and repeal+replace at least 2 - outside VL's current campaign), but perhaps you can see something in the Environmental category that was forgotten and I missed. If YOU can't think of an idea, stop complaining - we can't write about what we don't have ideas for.

Hmm, New Hamilton, fair enough, though it'd be a help if you could point out which resolutions you're refferring to, I naturally looked through them but felt that this was a new angle that hadn't been explored. Given that this proposal was not reprimanded for duplication, an issue which I specifically investigated if you check through my previuos posts, I feel that while what you say is fair I can't accept that this proposal falls on that point unless further evidence can be given to which I can edit the proposal accordingly.
Thank you for the comment though!

Oh, and thank you forgottonlands for mirroring many of my own opinions on the UN!

Well....let's see - there's something like 10 environmental resolution......~8% of UN law.

Is that an adequate number for you?

8%?

I think that proves my point even more.

As far as I'm concerned, the purpose of the UN is to guarantee rights - so I consider human rights an important are.

That's one aspect sure. But to only focus on that will make the UN very Myopic.

It should also guarantee minimal Standards.

To say people are only affected by "civil/social justice" is giving no regard to people who are affect by Industrial waste (air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination).

To say the reduction of nonrenewable natural resources are not a problem that affects the UN Nations is...well...

Very Myopic indeed.

in fact, I think we need to junk a few past environmental resolutions and repeal+replace at least 2 - outside VL's current campaign.

Yeah I think we need another resolution protecting the multi-op transgendered.

You know, the guy who decided he wanted to be a girl but once he became a she...decided to go back being a guy....

They have rights too...

Forget the tumor that's been growing in he/she's liver due to unregulated pesticides and forget the lung cancer forming due to the burning of fossil fuel.

We have to make sure the multi-ops don't fall into the cracks.









Suddenly every Delegate in the UN ran around a dead horse and started to beat it.

Oh yes - because we of course have a absolute scientific solution to the current numbers of pollution that we can implement tomorrow and convert all of our engines and turbines over to.

Or do you intend for us to start spending money on R&D for renewable resources - something that has been done at least once (I think twice) by the UN. Or how about replacing trees so we don't see fewer objects conducting photosynthesis and producing our air for us (thus making it easier to breath) - oh way, we already have that one too.

So pray, my friend, tell me how we're supposed to expand UN resolution reach to actually help the environment? Care to enlighten us with your magical solution that would solve all these problems - thus permitting us to start passing resolutions that could address this problem? In the mean time - realize what is currently being done by the UN - and note that Environmental resolutions are getting to the floor and voted on - but the number that are worthy of hitting the floor are just as small a percentage as many other areas.

BTW - my original stat of 8~ was me trying to estimate the number of resolutions we had that were environmental - which I realize is now well above the 10 mark and the number of active resolutions is actually fewer than 110. As such, we're well above 10%. I'll get an actual stat for you later.

We know WHAT to do with Human Rights - not just what the problems are. The same is not true of the Environment. Unless you have some ingenius and practical idea, piss off. We write resolutions when we think of an idea that hasn't been tried yet - and people like Love and Esterel will have several resolutions going simultaneously because the ideas on both are flowing at them simultaneously (I've done similar things with my region's laws - and I expect I'll be doing the same thing once I decide I'm ready to write resolutions). If we HAD a Environmental resolution - one that actually was good and was getting ignored - THEN you would have a valid argument. We argue several resolutions every day - and if we had 50 resolutions being debated here, we'd (in a very stressed manner) be arguing all 50 resolutions. We don't need to prioritize because there is no priority of one resolution over another on this forum (with, perhaps, exception to the one at vote).

Thank you, try again

I've decided that this proposal will be put forward for acceptance or denial on the 1st of September at approximately 10:00 GMT.
Any further comments or suggestions on this proposal should be made by then.
Thank you to all those who have posted or TG'd me about it, and wish it luck!
Nataljans

THIS PROPOSAL HAS NOW BEEN SUBMITTED FOR APPROVAL