ACHIEVEMENT OF EFFECTIVE PREVENTION IS TESTAMENT TO SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS 'THAT OURS HAD THE WILL TO SAVE THEM FROM THE SCOURGE OF WAR'

5 February 1998

Press Release
SG/SM/6454

ACHIEVEMENT OF EFFECTIVE PREVENTION IS TESTAMENT TO SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS 'THAT OURS HAD THE WILL TO SAVE THEM FROM THE SCOURGE OF WAR'

19980205 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Secretary-General States in Address to Forum On Final Report of Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict

Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to the forum convened at Headquarters today in connection with the final report of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, on the theme "The Centrality of the United Nations to Prevention and the Centrality of Prevention to the United Nations":

It is a special pleasure for me to welcome today so many trusted friends and servants of the United Nations. Thank you, Cy, [former United States Secretary of State Cyrus Vance] for those kind and generous words. That you and so many distinguished allies of the United Nations have convened here to address the prevention of global conflict is a source of great encouragement.

Before sharing with you my vision for the United Nations mission in conflict prevention, I would like to acknowledge the extraordinary accomplishment that we mark today. In an era when violent conflicts too often are ignored and too readily accepted, at a time when people would rather look away than look ahead, the Carnegie Commission has called the world to action. You have reminded us that prevention is always better than cure. And you have detailed, as never before, the means, the uses and the promise of prevention. We are in your debt.

The final report of the Carnegie Commission is guided by three central observations: first, that deadly conflict is not inevitable; second, that the need to prevent such conflict is increasingly urgent; and third, that successful prevention is possible.

It presents a clear challenge to the international community to create a "culture of prevention" -- a challenge the world can and must meet.

For the United Nations, there is no higher goal, no deeper commitment and no greater ambition than preventing armed conflict. The prevention of conflict begins and ends with the protection of human life and the promotion of human development. Ensuring human security is, in the broadest sense, the United Nations cardinal mission. Genuine and lasting prevention is the means to achieve that mission.

Throughout the world today, but particularly in Africa and other parts of the South, intra-State wars are the face of modern conflict.

In these wars, the destruction not just of armies, but of civilians and entire ethnic groups is increasingly the main aim. Preventing these wars is no longer a matter of defending interests or promoting allies. It is a matter of defending humanity itself.

And yet we seem never to learn. Time and again differences are allowed to develop into disputes and disputes allowed to develop into deadly conflicts. Time and again, warning signs are ignored and pleas for help overlooked. Only after the deaths and the destruction do we intervene at a far higher human and material cost and with far fewer lives to save. Only when it is too late do we value prevention.

There are, in my view, three main reasons for the failure of prevention when prevention so clearly is possible. First, the reluctance of one or more of the parties to a conflict to accept external intervention of any kind. Second, the lack of political will at the highest levels of the international community. Third, a lack of integrated conflict-prevention strategies within the United Nations system and the international community.

Of all these, the will to act is the most important. Without the political will to act when action is needed, without the will to answer the call that must be heeded, no amount of improved coordination or early warning will translate awareness into action.

All Member States facing situations of conflict must recognize that far from infringing upon their sovereignty, early warning and preventive diplomacy seek to support and restore legitimate authority and global order. To ensure this, the membership of the United Nations as a whole must provide the mandate and resources available for preventive activities. Fortunately, the United Nations work in prevention is as old as the Charter itself.

In every diplomatic mission and development project that we pursue, the United Nations is doing the work of prevention. The Secretary-General's own good offices in preventive diplomacy have been exercised with success over the years. Though this practice is long established, the potential for progress is still greater.

Within my first year as Secretary-General, I have renewed our peacemaking efforts in Cyprus, East Timor, Western Sahara, Afghanistan, and the Great Lakes region of Africa. These are long-standing disputes with hard and bitter roots. We will continue to seek new ways to narrow the divide in each case and promote a durable peace that can provide security and prosperity to all sides.

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Throughout the entire United Nations system, a more systematic and integrated framework for prevention is being developed. Joined by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Political Affairs is now taking lead in the early- warning and preventive efforts of the United Nations.

In its report, the Carnegie Commission has identified a valuable distinction between "operational prevention" and "structural prevention". The United Nations operational prevention strategy involves four fundamental activities -- early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive deployment and early humanitarian action. The United Nations structural prevention strategy involves three additional activities -- preventive disarmament, development and peace-building. Guiding and infusing all these efforts is the promotion of human rights, democratization and good governance as the foundations of peace.

Preventive deployment, in one particular example, has already had a remarkable effect in the explosive region of the Balkans. Such a force is only a "thin blue line".

But the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force's (UNPREDEP) role so far in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia suggests that preventive deployment, adequately mandated and supported, can make the difference between war and peace.

Preventive disarmament is another measure whose importance needs to be recognized and advanced. The United Nations has disarmed combatants in the context of peacekeeping operations from Nicaragua to Mozambique.

In other cases, destroying yesterday's weapons prevents them from being used tomorrow. This is also what the United Nations has been attempting to do in Iraq, where the inspections of the United Nations Special Commission have succeeded in destroying more weapons of mass destruction than did the entire Persian Gulf War.

Urgent action is also needed to curtail the flow of conventional weapons. In particular, we must do more to halt the proliferation of small arms with which most wars are fought today. As part of my reform agenda, I have, therefore, established a new Department for Disarmament Affairs with a range of new tasks. High on its agenda will be the challenge of "micro-disarmament", to work with governments in focusing on the illegal trade in small arms.

But we cannot do it alone. The work of prevention -- if it is to be lasting -- must be supported by all sides and carried to success by the peoples and parties themselves. Their role and responsibility is fundamental. So is the role of arms-producing countries and those that permit the transit of arms.

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Long-term prevention can, however, be facilitated by many elements of the international community. There are cases where the United Nations, mandated with unique universal legitimacy must lead. There will be other cases where a regional or subregional organization's proximity to a conflict and historical experience make it most able to prevent deadly violence. In all cases, the United Nations is poised to support those efforts and to coordinate multilateral assistance programmes.

The policies of prevention that I have outlined so far -- early warning, preventive diplomacy, preventive deployment and preventive disarmament -- will succeed only if the root causes of conflict are addressed with the same will and wisdom.

These causes are often economic and social. Poverty, endemic underdevelopment and weak or non-existent institutions inhibit dialogue and invite the resort to violence. A long, quiet process of sustainable economic development, based on respect for human rights and legitimate government, is essential to preventing conflict.

The United Nations of the twenty-first century must become a global centre for visionary and effective preventive action.

I will devote all my efforts to this aim, and I am grateful that a number of Member States are showing the way. Norway established the Fund for Preventive Action in 1996 to increase the capacity of the Secretary-General to undertake early and effective preventive action.

I am grateful to the other governments who already have contributed to this Fund. I also welcome the Government of Japan's recently convened International Conference on Preventive Strategy. Donor countries no less than those nations engulfed by conflict have realized the cost of ignoring prevention and the promise of putting prevention first.

A Chinese proverb holds that it is difficult to find money for medicine, but easy to find it for a coffin.

The last decade's intra-State and ethnic wars have made this proverb all too real for our time.

Have we not seen enough coffins -- from Rwanda to Bosnia and Herzegovina to Cambodia -- to pay the price for prevention? Have we not learned the lesson too painfully and too often that we can, if we will, prevent deadly conflict? Have we not heard General [Romeo] Dallaire say that 5,000 peacekeepers could have saved 500,000 lives in Rwanda?

Indeed, we have no excuses anymore. We have no excuses for inaction and no alibis for ignorance. Often we know even before the very victims of conflict

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that they will be victimized. We know because our world now is one -- in pain and in prosperity. No longer must the promise of prevention be a promise deferred. Too much is at stake, too much is possible, too much is needed.

The founders of the United Nations drew up our Charter with a sober view of human nature. They had witnessed the ability of humanity to wage a war of unparalleled brutality and unprecedented cruelty. They had witnessed, above all, the failure of prevention, when prevention was still possible and every signal pointed to war.

With this report, the Carnegie Commission has restored new promise to our founders' fervent belief that prevention is indeed possible and that humanity can learn from its past.

Indeed, my vision of this great Organization is a United Nations that places prevention at the service of universal security.

The achievement of human security in all its aspects -- economic, political and social -- will be the achievement of effective prevention.

It will be the testament to succeeding generations that ours had the will to save them from the scourge of war.

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