UN Centre Research Articles

FREE ECONOMIC ZONES IN THE MODERN SYSTEM OF FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS

Today, FEZs exist in states that are different in level and nature of economic development. They are in industrialized countries (IC), in new industrial countries (NIC), in developing countries (DC) and in countries transitioning to a market economy. Their distribution on the planet is very uneven. The process of creating free economic zones is characterized by the greatest dynamism in developing countries. So, if in 1960 there were two of them in this group of countries, in 1975 – 79, 1981 – 96, 1985 – 264. Then by the mid-90s, there were already more than 900 zones. About 10 % of the global commodity circulation passes through the FEZ, and the growth rates of export and import volumes in them are very high. According to experts of the UN Center for Transnational Corporations (TNCs), by the mid-2000s the number of people employed in the FEZ exceeded 3 million people.The task of today is to provide the necessary theoretical and methodological basis for the phenomenon of free economic zones in world economic relations, to generalize the world experience of their creation and functioning in countries with different levels of economic development, and on the basis of a critical analysis of world and domestic practice to ensure the assimilation and successful application of the knowledge gained in practice.

Multinational Corporations in World Development: 40 years on

In light of the 2014 Ecuador-sponsored resolution at the UN Human Rights Council to examine the link between Transnational Corporations and Human Rights, in this paper I review the first major discussion at the United Nations of the role of multinational corporations. The report on Multinational Corporations in World Development (1973) for the UN Department of Economic and Social affair launched the (then) new UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. I examine the report in some detail, compare and contrast this with the Ecuadorian resolution from 2014, and reflect on the continuities and changes in attempts to regulate the conduct of global corporations over the 40 years between these two moments.

The John Holmes Memorial Lecture: International Organizations at the Moving Public-Private Borderline

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN A PUBLIC AND A PRIVATE SPHERE IS ESSENTIAL TO politics. The public sphere is commonly associated with the state and politics whereas the private sphere encompasses markets and civil society. Political power and state sovereignty rest on set of institutionalized authority claims. (1) The sovereign state's authority claim over its population imparts it with metapolitical authority. That is, the governing bodies of states claim to have, and are recognized as having, the authority to define what is public (and thus political) and what is private (and thus beyond political authority). (2) The range of activities over which political bodies can legitimately exercise authority may vary over time and between states. For instance, the authority claims of modern welfare states are far more extensive than those of medieval or nineteenth-century states, as formerly private aspects of people's lives have become included in the public realm. The public-private distinction can be seen as one of the grand dichotomies of Western thought, subsuming a wide range of other distinctions that shape our understanding and organization of social life. (3) Rather than essential and categorically separable, the terms of this formative distinction are relational and their interpretation has varied over time. The establishment of a distinction between a public and a private sphere is the result of a prolonged and often conflictual historical process. (4) For example, warfare and diplomacy--which we today unquestionably include in the public sphere--were marketized and internationalized well into the nineteenth century. For several centuries, mercenaries were the foundation of European military power. (5) And until the early nineteenth century, diplomacy was an pursuit; diplomats who had a sense of belonging to a single cosmopolitan fraternity or aristocratic could easily change from one monarchic employer to another. (6) Conversely, there are activities that today are considered primarily commercial, but not long ago were seen to belong to the public sphere. For example, from its inception in the late 1920s through the immediate post--World War II period, international civil air transport was essentially a government enterprise. The value of aviation was first demonstrated in World War I. Born in an era of war and rampant nationalism, air transportation received much more attention by its parents (state governments) than its older siblings such as shipping and railways. The relative lack of multinational enterprises that remains today in civil air transport is a vestige of its birth in the public sphere. (7) Simplified understandings of the distinction between public and private neglect the range of variable interpretations and alternative implications of these concepts. And in today's globalized world, the borderline between the public and the private sphere is becoming increasingly diffuse. Domestically as well as internationally, private actors become politicized and public actors become marketized--the public goes private and the private goes public. (8) What are the consequences for international organizations in general, and the UN system in particular, of this diffuse and moving public-private borderline? While the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations (IG0s) are traditionally firmly grounded in the public sphere, the global private sphere comprises business (for-profit) actors as well as civil society (nonprofit) actors. The interface and interplay between these types of actors have changed in recent decades. UN attitudes toward the business community have shifted dramatically. The private sector has traditionally been held at arm's length by virtually all parts of the UN system. (9) The UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) was inaugurated in 1974, at a time when giant transnational corporations (TNCs) were seen as a threat to state authority. …

Human Rights in Global Business Ethics Codes

ABSTRACTThe last decade has witnessed renewed attempts to regulate the conduct of transnational corporations. One way to do this is via global ethics codes. This paper examines seven such codes (the Sullivan Principles, UN Center for Transnational Corporations’ Draft Code, OECD Guidelines, ILO's Tripartite Declaration, the Caux Round Table Principles for Business, Global Compact, and the United Nations Norms) to determine their coverage of human rights and concludes that if these initiatives succeed, particularly the more recent codes, transnational corporations may emerge as a major force in promoting human rights globally.

05/01372 Sectoral energy consumption in Iran

Although somewhat neglected in the housing literature, the progress of whole sector housing development very much depends upon long-term development policies and performances over periods of some 30 years and more. Housing sector development is also dependent upon shorter term macro-economic policies and performances. Countries which have developmental instability and highly fluctuating macro-economic performances are likely to experience generally significant constraints and even some setbacks in housing sector development, with policies becoming fragmented and detached from an appropriate integration with development. Such has been the experience in Iran. Instabilities arose in the redirection of political power with the overthrow of the Shah's regime in 1979 and the installation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Political revolution and change also affected economic policies for development. The Shah's regime had sought a quick route to modernization by way of selected development of industry, but at risk and with rural-urban imbalance. Then under the Islamic Republic regime, development policies have sought to achieve the multiple objectives of social justice, modernization, and ‘politically correct’ Islamic institutional conditions. These objectives have not been readily reconciled with each other, and Iran has experienced the further instabilities of war with Iraq in the years 1980–1988 and the severe earthquake of 1990. Housing sector development has consequently experienced significant constraints, notwithstanding the post-1979 regime's necessity to try to maintain some degree of popular support, with housing being significant in this. Issues of developmental (in)stability are relevant to the UN Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS-Habitat) and World Bank's Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS), developed in the years 1986 to 1993.

Human Settlements and Urban Life: A United Nations Perspective

Since 1978, the United Nations has formally recognized the important role of human settlements in reaching the goals set by the UN Charter. In 1978, following the first HABITAT Conference, held in Vancouver in 1976, the General Assemble established the UN Centre for Human Settlements. With the growing pressure of urbanization, the second and formative conference on Human Settlements was held in Istanbul in 1996. The documents for HABITAT II led, in 2002, to the General Assembly's expansion of UN – HABITAT into the lead UN Agency on issues facing human settlements, both rural and urban, with the clear recognition of the shift from rural to urban life and the increasing number of mega-cities, particularly in developing countries. This article samples the work and transition in the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (UNCHS) from 1976 to the present.

The Future of the Multinational Enterprise in retrospect and in prospect

We are sometimes asked how The Future of the Multinational Enterprise came to be written, and whether we think that a similar book could be written today. It is always difficult to be objective about your own work, but we doubt that a similar book could appear today. This is not because there is a dearth of talent, or because all the important issues have been resolved. It is simply that the academic environment in which research in international businesses is carried out has fundamentally changed. Political salience. The Future was written at a time of great debates in international political economy. Multinationals stood accused of global hegemony. There were strident calls for the ‘American challenge’ to European industry to be repelled (Servan-Schreiber, 1968). Foreign investment in Third World countries was leading to ‘uneven development’. Technology was overpriced. A conspiracy of oligopolistic firms was holding consumers and workers to ransom. What nonsense, you might say. But the United Nations took it seriously enough, and set up a Committee of Eminent Persons to consider a possible code of conduct for multinationals – a process that led to the formation of the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. In this heady atmosphere, separating fact from fiction was crucial. A lot of good statistical work was being done – indeed, it is probable that more was known about patterns of foreign direct investment than about any other aspect of industrial economics at the time (US Bureau of Commerce, the Harvard Project led by Raymond Vernon). But how could the statistics be interpreted? General equilibrium theory did not seem to be up to the task. A new framework was needed that would allow the statistics to reveal the underlying dynamics of multinational behaviour. With the right theory it would be possible to use the statistics to pass judgement on competing views. Positivism. Political salience prompted many scholars to write about multinationals. The Future was distinguished by its strongly positivist stance. The book began by summarizing the stylized facts revealed by the published statistics. The well-known distinction between direct and indirect investment was carefully examined. Journal of International Business Studies (2003) 34, 219–222 & 2003 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved 0047-2506 $25.00

Developing countries and poorest people targeted by UN centre.

Developing countries and poorest people targeted by UN centre.

Conducting Cambodia's Elections

Conducting Cambodia’s Elections Kassie Neou (bio) and Jeffrey C. Gallup (bio) When I was offered the job of vice chairman of Cambodia’s National Election Committee, friends and colleagues told me that I had no idea what I would be getting into. They said that there would be more work and more pressure than I had ever known. There was no guarantee of success, they added, and in any event, after the elections were over, I should expect not gratitude, but criticism. My friends advised me to take the job anyway, so I did. Their predictions were right on all counts. The National Election Committee (NEC) was charged with running Cambodia’s July 1998 National Assembly elections. Against all odds, it organized elections of a high technical quality. In the end, however, politics undermined the election process and led to turmoil and bloodshed. Eventually, in November 1998, the winning and losing parties decided to form a new coalition government. This episode demonstrated all too clearly that much of Cambodia’s leadership views elections not as the paramount political process through which people choose their leaders, but merely as one facet of a broader and relentless struggle for power. [End Page 152] When I was asked to join the National Election Committee in early 1998, the prospects for free and fair elections looked far from promising. The uneasy coalition government joining the first and second finishers in the 1993 UN-run elections, First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh’s United National Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia (Funcinpec) and Second Prime Minister Hun Sen’s ex-communist Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), had exploded in flames the previous year. On 5–6 July 1997, the military forces of the CPP had ousted Prince Norodom Ranariddh, and many senior government officials and members of parliament had joined him in exile. According to reports from the UN Center for Human Rights, close to 100 persons, many of them military loyal to Prince Ranariddh, had been summarily executed during and after the July events. The original Funcinpec effectively ceased to function as a party. Some senior Funcinpec ministers and officials in Cambodia remained loyal to Prince Ranariddh while others created new parties that joined hands with the CPP. Still other Funcinpec backers mounted a small armed resistance in the northwest of Cambodia, which Hun Sen’s forces failed to eliminate entirely. In effect, Cambodia had split into warring factions once again, but Hun Sen had the upper hand, having effectively removed all serious opposition to his party’s rule. The Cambodian peace settlement of 1991 was in tatters. The international community reacted with deep dismay. Many international donors cut off or suspended aid to Cambodia. The country’s prospective membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was postponed indefinitely and Cambodia lost its seat at the United Nations. Because of uncertainty about the country’s political stability, foreign tourism, trade, and investment declined, inflicting serious economic damage. Although the international community was initially at a loss for ways to revive the peace process, it eventually became clear that elections could be used to promote a renewed attempt at reconciliation and democracy. After all, Hun Sen’s government continued to promise that it would hold free and fair elections in 1998, as required by the Cambodian constitution. Leading donors made the restoration of economic assistance contingent on free and fair elections. They prodded and pushed the Cambodian government, eventually achieving a deal whereby Prince Ranariddh and other opposition leaders were able to return under international safety guarantees and to compete in the elections. Although at various points some of the opposition dreamed that Western countries would use military force to throw out Hun Sen, this was never a serious prospect. Thus the international community, the Cambodian opposition, and the Cambodian People’s Party all pinned their hopes on the elections. Clearly, whatever happened, some of them were going to be disappointed. [End Page 153] The job of organizing the elections fell to the National Election Committee, in principle a neutral and independent body completely separate from the Cambodian government. I, among others, had lobbied to create just such a...

Access to United Nations Human Rights Documentation

Although human rights is one of the three major pillars of the United Nations system, getting access to UN human rights information and documentation has never been easy. Some factors contributing to this are the way in which UN documentation is classified (by the UN body that generates them, rather than by subject); the low priority attached to human rights as compared, for example, with peace and security, coupled with the fact that many governments are not eager to see human rights reports widely disseminated; and the fact that, until recently, the UN Centre for Human Rights (now called the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights/ UN Centre for Human Rights-hereinafter HCHR/UNCHR) had resisted computerization and new methods of information handling.' HCHR/UNCHR

Sustainable development, global restructuring and immigrant housing

Sustainable development is frequently oriented towards aspects of environmental quality and carrying capacity. 1 A broader view, endorsed by the UN Centre for Human Settlements, includes aspects of social and economic equity as well. In this connection, global restructuring presents a significant context. Its associated processes, including international migration, help create and reinforce patterns of socioeconomic polarisation and spatial segregation. These patterns find expression particularly in urban housing. This paper examines various aspects of the housing situation of immigrants in the USA.

Third World urbanization in the 1990s: A commentary on the views of Cedric Pugh

Cedric Pugh has posited that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN Development Program, and the UN Center for Human Settlements have adopted more flexible and realistic policies related to developing countries in which they give greater attention to social programs, and emphasize public-private partnerships and the creation of an enabling environment rather than direct state involvement. The author agrees with Pugh. The institutions' new approach does not mean, however, that current agendas or policies are the best of all possible options and that all dissension between the institutions and borrower countries has been eliminated. The author finds Pugh's paper to be remarkably lacking of any critical perspective upon the international agencies in terms of the vast power they have over the policies and practices of debtor and borrower countries. Specific urban reform programs are having positive impacts in some areas, but relations are not ideal between the agencies and national governments. Furthermore, the author urges caution with regard to the potential applicability of public-private partnerships. He was also hoping for a more critical evaluation of the New Political Economy (NPE) rather than the advocacy offered by Pugh. The author has some concerns about the nature of the NPE and its theoretical underpinnings and notes that the most conspicuous omission from Pugh's paper is any reference to Harris's 1992 book, the most detailed and sustained published discussion available on the new World Bank and UNDP urban policy agendas for the 1990s.

The UNCTC Curricula on TNCs

This article traces the history of the involvment of the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) in the teaching of TNC ralated material to University students in developing countries. It also contains details of the economics and business studies course syllabi prepared by consultants for the UNCTC, and the reactions of University teachers in Economics and Business Studies from Asia and Africa to a number of intensive training seminars offered by the authors of this paper.

Developmental instability in Iran: Its impact on housing since 1962

Although somewhat neglected in the housing literature, the progress of whole sector housing development very much depends upon long-term development policies and performances over periods of some 30 years and more. Housing sector development is also dependent upon shorter term macro-economic policies and performances. Countries which have developmental instability and highly fluctuating macro-economic performances are likely to experience generally significant constraints and even some setbacks in housing sector development, with policies becoming fragmented and detached from an appropriate integration with development. Such has been the experience in Iran. Instabilities arose in the redirection of political power with the overthrow of the Shah's regime in 1979 and the installation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Political revolution and change also affected economic policies for development. The Shah's regime had sought a quick route to modernization by way of selected development of industry, but at risk and with rural-urban imbalance. Then under the Islamic Republic regime, development policies have sought to achieve the multiple objectives of social justice, modernization, and ‘politically correct’ Islamic institutional conditions. These objectives have not been readily reconciled with each other, and Iran has experienced the further instabilities of war with Iraq in the years 1980–1988 and the severe earthquake of 1990. Housing sector development has consequently experienced significant constraints, notwithstanding the post-1979 regime's necessity to try to maintain some degree of popular support, with housing being significant in this. Issues of developmental (in)stability are relevant to the UN Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS-Habitat) and World Bank's Global Strategy for Shelter (GSS), developed in the years 1986 to 1993.

Regional benefits from serious thought?

Regional benefits from serious thought? The Arab Construction Industry by Zahlan A.B. Croom Helm (London and Canberra), £25 and St Martin’s Press (New York), $35, 1984. Ward Morehouse Ward Morehouse Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Ward Morehouse is President of the Council on International and Public Affairs, Chairman of the Intermediate Technology Development Group of North America, and Research Associate in the Columbia University School of International Affairs. He is the author (with David Dembo) of a study of the construction and design engineering industry for the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. The Council is at 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017, USA. Author Notes Science and Public Policy, Volume 12, Issue 6, December 1985, Pages 354–355, https://doi.org/10.1093/spp/12.6.354 Published: 01 December 1985

International biotechnology: UN centre to be based in India?

International biotechnology: UN centre to be based in India?

Some Ways of Developing A Multiregional Input-Output Model of The World Economy

In our earlier article [l] we set out the results of the first stage of the experimental investigations carried out at the Institute for the Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Siberian Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences using two modified versions of a multiregional input-output model of the world economy - a model for global optimization and a model of optimal market interaction. The research has been carried out in collaboration with the UN Center for Development Planning, Projections, and Policies (the official in charge of the project at the Center is Professor S. M. Menshikov).

Training for the management of urban growth

This paper is in response to a request from the Director, UN Centre for Housing, Building and Phituring in connection with an Ad Hoc Meeting of Experts to be held at Enschede, Netherlands. The purpose of the meeting is to advise the Centre on the development of a training programme directed especially to professionals dealing with low-income settlements. The paper has been prepared in two parts: First covering what the Economic Development Institute (EDI) of the World Bank has been doing in the field of urban growth and what it plans to do in the near future. The second part responds to the points included in the Centre’s Aide Mtmoire.

Enschede — a personal account

The idea that the planners, designers, builders and managers of human settlements need special education and training for their tasks is of fairly recent origin. It has found wide acceptance only since the Vancouver Conference which stated in its Declaration of Principles that “International and National Institutions should promote and institute educational programmes and courses in the subject of human settlements”2 and stressed training as an area of concern requiring special attention in its ~~o~en~tio~ for National Action3 Since then, the need to expand and improve the training of professionals involved in this field has been a recurring theme in pronouncements of national and international institutions. The UN Centre for Housing, Building and Planning and the World Bank have been leading in insisting that an element of training be included in all intemation~ly sponsored or supported settlement or resettlement projects. Lately, the Centre has also advocated that special attention be paid to the education of those involved with the improvement of the situation of people in slums, squatters’ colonies and other low-income settlements.

Priorities for the New UN Centre for human settlements

Priorities for the New UN Centre for human settlements