2005 World Summit
The 2005 World Summit was a United Nations summit held between 14 and 16 September 2005 at the U.N. headquarters in New York City. It was a follow-up summit meeting to the U.N.'s 2000 Millennium Summit (which formulated the Millennium Declaration of the Millennium Development Goals).
The 2005 World Summit is known for articulating a Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in order to address mass atrocities and human rights violations.
Summit Summary[edit]
The summit was billed as the "largest gathering of world leaders in history", (as was the 2000 summit),[1] and featured appearances of numerous heads of state and heads of government. According to the organizers, about 170 leaders were present. The majority of those present addressed the U. N. General Assembly (UNGA) and gave speeches reflecting on the U. N.'s past successes and future challenges. All 191 of the then member states gave an address in some form—if the head of state or government was not present, the nation's foreign minister, vice president, or deputy prime minister usually spoke. The meetings were presided over by the Prime Minister of Sweden, Göran Persson, since Swedish Jan Eliasson was President of the 60th UNGA. Negotiations for the World Summit Outcome Document had been under the watchful eye of the President of the 59th UNGA, Mr. Jean Ping of Gabon.[2]
The pre-summit negotiations were blown sharply off course by the appearance in early August at the U. N. of United States Ambassador to the U. N. John Bolton, appointed as a recess appointment by U.S. President George W. Bush. The position had been vacant since January, with responsibilities handled by professional U.S. diplomats. Bolton swiftly issued a list of new demands[3] (including dropping the use of the words "Millennium Development Goals"), which days before the summit had still not been settled. Some observers contended that on the eve of the summit the U.S. struck a more conciliatory tone than expected,[4] something partly credited as a consequence of the outpouring of international support for the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina.
As well as discussing progress on the Millennium Development Goals and re-iterating the world's commitment to them, the summit was convened to address the possible reform of the United Nations; much of this was eventually postponed to a later date. An exception was the endorsement of the "responsibility to protect" (known by the acronyms RtoP and R2P), a formulation of the "right of humanitarian intervention" developed by a U.N. commission[5] and proposed by Kofi Annan as part of his In Larger Freedom[6] reform package. The "Responsibility to Protect" gives the world community the right to intervene in the case of "national authorities manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity". There was also broad agreement at the summit to set up a new Human Rights Council.
During the summit, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption received its thirtieth ratification, and as a result entered into force in December 2005.
The inaugural session of the Clinton Global Initiative, organized by the family of William J. Clinton (former President of the USA), was held in New York City to coincide with the 2005 World Summit. This event attracted as many of the same world leaders as the main summit. During his presidency, Mr Clinton has twice hosted more than 150 world leaders during an UN summit, in 1995 and 2000.