Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations, Allan Rock delivered a lecture on campus, on January 21, 2005, in advance of the University of Ottawa Model United Nations Club’s annual high-school conference, scheduled for later in February 2005.
The uOttawa alumnus, who was appointed to his post a year ago, spoke of the divide at the UN between the rich, industrialized countries and developing nations.
“There is a divide at the UN, a gulf, a tension that contaminates every meeting; that undermines every effort to achieve consensus; that slows down progress on even the worthiest efforts. The developing nations simply do no believe that the developed countries are sincere in their commitments in sharing the wealth,” he says.
According to Rock, this distrust is making the world body dysfunctional because Third World countries, which are part of the so-called G-77 power bloc, usually refuse to take part in open meetings on urgent topics. Instead, they hold their own sessions that are at odds with the agenda of wealthy states.
