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by Alex Newman
October 01, 2024
from
TheEpochTimes Website
The symbol of the United Nations
at U.N.
headquarters
on Feb. 28,
2022.
AP Photo/John
Minchillo, File
The United Nations and its member
governments, with strong support from the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP), adopted a landmark agreement last week to bestow the U.N.
with more power and influence in global affairs.
The controversial agreement, known as the
Pact for the Future, outlines 56
actions for governments and international institutions to take over
the coming years.
Among the key provisions is "transforming global governance" and
further empowering international institutions across a range of
issues, including,
"sustainable development and financing for
development," as well as "science, technology and innovation,
and digital cooperation."
The pact includes a Global Digital Compact
to restrict "misinformation" and "disinformation" and a
Declaration on Future Generations that encompasses
the 2030 Agenda climate goals that
include the phase-out of fossil fuels.
It is also part of transforming the U.N. into what the organization
is touting in promotional materials as "U.N. 2.0."
U.N. leaders and top officials from the CCP celebrated the pact as a
historic effort to create a better future for humanity and increase
global cooperation on international problems.
"We can't create a future fit for our
grandchildren with systems built for our grandparents," U.N.
Secretary General
António Güterres said.
Despite opposition from various quarters, the
193-member body adopted the pact by consensus on Sept. 22 at the
Summit of the Future during the U.N. General Assembly after
about nine months of negotiations.
In the days before the pact was adopted, a coalition of U.S.
lawmakers and grassroots leaders held a press conference on Capitol
Hill criticizing the agreement as an effort to undermine national
sovereignty and freedom.
"We can't give up any more of our
sovereignty, any more of our geopolitical integrity, or any more
of our economic integrity to foreign actors who have no concerns
for the United States of America other than to take our power
and money away," said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former
leader of the House Freedom Caucus.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike
McCaul (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times that the pact
ignores the,
"malign influence of the CCP" within the
global organization.
McCaul said that although the pact isn't legally
binding,
"this 66-page pact is limitless in scope."
"It calls for dramatically increased public spending and vague
action on countless left-wing priorities," he said.
"The pact also completely ignores the most urgent issues facing
the U.N. today, like reforming UNRWA and combating malign CCP
influence.
It does nothing to advance U.S. interests."
Rep.
Michael McCaul (R-Texas)
walks past reporters with Rep. Joe
Wilson (R-S.C.)
as they depart a House Republican
Conference
meeting at the U.S. Capitol on
Sept. 24, 2024.
Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
The CCP, which plays an increasingly powerful
role within the U.N., boasted about its significant role in
developing the pact.
Speaking at U.N. headquarters, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
described the pact as an effort to,
"galvanize" the U.N.'s "collective efforts
for world peace and development and to map out the future of
humanity."
Wang talked about advancing,
"global governance"...!
On the other side, the Argentine government
officially distanced itself from the pact and the U.N. in general.
"Argentina wants the freedom to develop
itself, without being subjected to the undue weight of decisions
that are alien to our goals," said Argentine Foreign Minister
Diana Mondino, noting that Argentinian authorities are
pursuing a policy of freedom.
President
Javier Milei, in his
address to the U.N. General Assembly,
called the organization a,
"multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to
decide what each nation state should do and how the citizens of
the world should live."
Argentine President
Javier Milei
is surrounded by
media after delivering a speech
at the World Economic
Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland,
on Jan. 17, 2024.
Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
via Getty Images
Milei also criticized the global organization's
central role in prescribing what he called "crimes
against humanity" in responding to the China-originated
coronavirus.
He called
the U.N. 2030 Agenda, which
features prominently in the pact, a,
"supranational program of a socialist
nature."
The new pact makes repeated commitments to
expedite the implementation of the U.N. 2030 Agenda, also known as
the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
"We will urgently accelerate progress towards
achieving the Goals, including through concrete political steps
and mobilizing significant additional financing from all sources
for sustainable development," the pact reads.
The
Sustainable Development Goals,
which U.N. leaders described as the "master plan for humanity" when
they were adopted in 2015, encompass everything from education and
agriculture to health care and the environment.
After they were adopted, CCP-owned propaganda outlets around the
world boasted that Beijing played a "crucial role" in creating the
2030 Agenda.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has been
sounding the alarm for years.
"Since the U.S.-China Commission began
tracking officials from the People's Republic of China serving
in leadership positions in international organizations,
Beijing's influence has only grown over key U.N. agencies
responsible for funding and policymaking on a wide range of
important issues," the Commission told The Epoch Times.
"Contrary to the International Civil Servant Standards of
Conduct, they [Chinese officials] use those positions [in
the U.N.] to pursue China's foreign policy goals," the
Commission said.
When asked about the concerns of U.S.
policymakers and other critics, Güterres's spokesman, Stéphane
Dujarric, defended the pact.
"The Pact for the Future is not about world
government," he said at a press conference.
"It is about making an organization of
independent, sovereign member states work better."
"It's not as if anyone is granting the secretary-general
authority over governments - clearly not."
Still, according to Dujarric, it is important to
increase global cooperation because,
"not one country can deal with the rising
seas, not one country can deal with global pandemics, not one
country can deal with international terrorism."
"This is about bringing sovereign, independent countries, and
working together," he said, urging people to read original
documents to become well informed and "make up their own minds."
The strengthening of the U.N. and, in particular,
efforts to have the U.N. secretary-general lead the response to
emergencies, received special attention from opponents.
As The Epoch Times reported in April 2023, empowering the
U.N. as the central force in dealing with international emergencies
and "complex global shocks" was a key goal heading into the
Summit of the Future.
In his original policy brief on the issue, Güterres argued that,
all nations, businesses, governments, and
other stakeholders must recognize the "primary role" of
intergovernmental organs such as the U.N. and its agencies in
"decision-making," the document states.
António Güterres,
U.N. secretary-general,
speaks during the
79th session of the
U.N. General Assembly
on Sept. 10, 2024.
AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for
International Organizations Kevin Moley, who oversaw U.S.
relations with the U.N. during the previous administration, warned
of the dangers.
"Allowing the U.N. to deal with this is the
equivalent of putting the CCP in charge of global emergencies,"
Moley told The Epoch Times.
He warned that the CCP takeover of international
organizations represents a potentially mortal threat to the West.
Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the
University of Illinois College of Law, told The Epoch Times
that Americans must resist what he described as a "power grab" of
historic proportions.
"The U.N. secretary-general has arrogated to
himself dictatorial powers... upon his mere proclamation of an
'emergency,' as defined by himself," he said.
Boyle, who wrote the implementing U.S.
legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention and serves
on the board of Amnesty International, said that because of
the involvement of heads of state and government in the process, the
new U.N. pact could constitute a "treaty" with "legal obligations"
under both domestic and international law.
"This
totalitarian arrangement
constitutes a grave and immediate threat to the sovereignty and
independence of all United Nations member states," he said.
Free Speech, Free Press
One of the major components of the U.N. deal, adopted as an annex to
the pact, focuses on U.N. governance of
artificial intelligence (AI).
Wang said that the CCP,
"supports the U.N. in serving as the main
channel in AI governance."
Another major concern for critics is the
targeting of free speech in the Global Digital Compact,
approved as an annex to the
Pact for the Future.
Stating that it is protecting "information integrity," the U.N. deal
calls for drastically scaling up efforts to combat "hate speech,"
"discrimination," "misinformation," "disinformation," and more.
Global censorship about the COVID-19 pandemic, with YouTube removing
content that went against the World Health Organization's
pronouncements, has been cited by opponents of the plan as an
example of the threat.
The U.N. has also become more aggressive on this front.
In 2022, at a World Economic Forum (WEF)
sustainability event, U.N. Undersecretary-General for Communications
Melissa Fleming announced a partnership with
Google.
"We started this partnership when we were
shocked to see that when we Googled 'climate change,' we were
getting incredibly distorted information right at the top," she
said.
"We're becoming much more proactive. We own
the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the
platforms themselves also do."
Fleming has also highlighted working with CCP-linked
TikTok and recruiting "influencers" to promote U.N. messaging.
Asked about the U.N. partnership with Google, Fleming declined to
comment.
The compact calls for,
"Internet governance" to be "global and
multi-stakeholder in nature."
"We will strengthen international cooperation
to address the challenge of misinformation and
disinformation and hate speech online and mitigate the risks
of information manipulation in a manner consistent with
international law," the Global Digital Compact reads.
The mobile phone apps
for
Facebook (L),
Instagram (C) and WhatsApp
on a device in New
York.
Richard Drew/AP Photo
The repeated emphasis on the alleged "risks" of
misinformation is one of the most concerning elements of the
agreement, said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's
Rights Without Frontiers and co-chair of the Sovereignty
Coalition.
"We need only look back to the pandemic to
see that these terms will be defined as anything that is
counter-narrative to the U.N., the WHO, and their
collaborators," she told The Epoch Times, referring to
the World Health Organization (WHO).
"Controlling the narrative by suppressing dissenting voices is
an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech. It is,
moreover, a hallmark of totalitarianism, which begins with and
relies upon censorship.
"Further, censorship deprives both individuals and nations of
their sovereignty."
Littlejohn has been working with U.S. lawmakers
to protect U.S. independence from international organizations.
"Sovereign persons and nations make decisions
concerning how they will govern themselves," she said.
"They are deprived of this decision-making
process if they are denied access to the true facts upon which
their decisions will be made."
Littlejohn also said the pact should be
understood as a treaty under the traditional definition.
As such, treaties are required to be ratified by
the U.S. Senate - something she said would be unlikely to happen.
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