Tokyo, Japan — Japan should not risk losing its leverage in the world by cutting its aid to developing countries too dramatically, a retired senior Japanese diplomat has warned. Yasushi Akashi, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, questioned the decision of Japanese politicians to decrease the country’s official development assistance, or ODA, in order to achieve domestic financial goals.
At its current rate of assistance, "Japan can hardly achieve the ODA target equivalent to 0.7 percent of gross national income, a goal set a long time ago by the United Nations," Akashi told a gathering of scholars, politicians and journalists on July 26. If Japan is unwilling to be involved militarily in international affairs, it should at least contribute financially; otherwise "Japan would lose its face to the world," he cautioned.
Japan’s ODA peaked in 1997, when it was the world’s top benefactor in monetary terms. Then the country’s bubble economy burst, followed by stringent financial reforms. By 2007, Japan’s ODA was only 60 percent of the peak year, and it was fifth in the world ranking.
Still an active diplomat, Akashi has good reason to worry about Japan’s most viable diplomatic leverage being weakened. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has promised to double Japan's ODA to Africa over five years, but the rest of the world may not find Japan so generous. The Finance Ministry is adamant that it will stick to a policy decision to achieve a primary budget balance by 2011.
Akashi was speaking at a weekend conference held in Tokyo by the Japanese chapter of the New York-based international NGO, the Universal Peace Federation. The organization advocates U.N. reform that would allow the world body to work toward global interests, rather than national interests, and in a manner that would enlist religious traditions and spiritual values in the resolution of international disputes.
Yasushi Akashi is considered Japan’s foremost authority on the United Nations. He was the first Japanese to hold a U.N. post, in 1957, later rising to become undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, among other posts. He now advises the international body as well as the Japanese government on matters of diplomacy.
Japan has long aspired to becoming a member of the U.N. Security Council. In Akashi’s opinion, the United Nations' failure to include influential nations like Japan, Germany and other rising powers around the world makes the Council “unrealistic" and unable to muster the power to tackle global problems. Still, including too many nations in the world’s most powerful international security group would also diminish its effectiveness, he said.
Retired from the United Nations, but not retreating from his pursuit of peace through diplomacy, the 77-year-old Akashi now represents the Japanese government in peace talks on Sri Lanka's protracted civil conflict. In the past he served as a mediator during the civil war in Cambodia and was well known for his tireless efforts to bring peace in Yugoslavia, where he represented the U.N. secretary-general in the field.
He currently shuttles between Tokyo and Colombo, participating in international mediation efforts involving Norway, the European Union and the United States. Japan provided generous financial support in 2002 when Sri Lanka's warring parties, the minority Hindu Tamils in the north and majority Buddhist Sinhalese in the south, signed a peace deal.
But the fragile peace collapsed and military clashes still continue. "Internal conflicts within a nation are much deeper-rooted than international ones," said Akashi.
Thousands of miles away from Japan, Sri Lanka is not prominent in most Japanese minds. But Akashi advised perseverance in seeking a peaceful settlement in any conflict situation. Conflicts in other parts of Asia could spill over, even to the Japanese archipelago, he warned.
Akashi entered the United Nations in 1957, only one year after Japan was admitted to the world body. Nearly half a century later, the U.N. Charter still retains the so-called "enemy clauses" in Articles 53 and 107, referring to Germany, Japan and Italy, the Axis nations of World War II. All these countries are now responsible members of the United Nations, and there is universal agreement that these clauses are redundant.
In the meantime, Japan has become the second-largest contributor to the United Nations, after the United States, shouldering more than 19 percent of the organization’s budget. Directors of U.N. agencies such as the World Food Program, U.N. Development Program and U.N. High Commission for Refugees, appreciate that Japanese funds sustain their operations worldwide.
During the last session of the Diet, Japan’s Parliament, Prime Minister Fukuda declared he would make his country a "peace-fostering nation." But Akashi did not hide his concern over Japan's international posture.
As a man with a high profile in the international arena, Akashi wishes to see his countrymen and women play a more prominent role on the world stage, even if it may entail some risk. He disagrees with his country’s persistent reluctance to send its nationals to global flashpoints. "As long as the U.N. flag is hoisted, personnel from Japanese self-defense forces may be allowed to be stationed and operate there together with other countries," he said.
Akashi compared Japan’s contingent of less than 40 troops in the Golan Heights along the Israel-Syria ceasefire line with that of Nepal – which is one of the top five contributors of U.N. peacekeepers – and China, which contributes around 2,000 troops to various U.N. missions.
In tandem with Japan's diplomatic and aid efforts in Africa – as prominently demonstrated in the Fourth International Conference on African Development in May in Yokohama – he urged Japan to contribute self-defense force personnel to African missions, which are the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping operations.
Likewise, Japan could assist the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, Akashi recommended. Though well aware of the difficulties in the field, where a Taliban backlash is hampering NATO's security operations, Akashi suggested that Japan could have a presence in the relatively safer northern region of Afghanistan, as Germany does. Even Canada, which opposed dispatching troops to Iraq without a U.N. consensus, has sent troops to Afghanistan, he said.