Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation as Threats to Collective Security: A UN Panel Report

Among the documents to be considered at the 2005 World Summit at the UN General Assembly in September is the report of the Secretary‐General's High‐Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The Panel, chaired by Anand Panyarachun, former Prime Minister of Thailand, brought together 16 prominent individuals to assess current threats to peace and security and the institutional capacity, especially within the UN, to respond to them. Its report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, was issued in December 2004. Most of the publicity surrounding the report focused on its recommendations for UN reform, especially its proposals for expansion of the Security Council. The first two‐thirds of the document, however, is concerned with the substance of collective security issues and prevention strategies. Defining a threat to international security as “any event or process that leads to large‐scale death or lessening of life chances and undermines States as the basic unit of the international system,” the Panel identified six clusters of existing or anticipated threats: Economic and social threats (in particular, poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation); inter‐State conflict; internal conflict (civil war, genocide, other large‐scale atrocities); nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons; terrorism; and transnational organized crime. The section of the report (paragraphs 44–73) treating economic and social threats, titled “Poverty, infectious disease and environmental degradation,” is reproduced below. Paragraph numbers have been omitted.