SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS UNITED NATIONS OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MUST BECOME GLOBAL CENTRE FOR VISIONARY AND EFFECTIVE PREVENTIVE ACTION
Press Release
SG/SM/6535
SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS UNITED NATIONS OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY MUST BECOME GLOBAL CENTRE FOR VISIONARY AND EFFECTIVE PREVENTIVE ACTION
19980423 Addressing 'Challenge of Conflict Prevention' at Rice University, Texas, Kofi Annan Says Promise of Prevention Must not Be DeferredFollowing is the text of the address by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, at Rice University, in Houston, Texas, today, on the topic "The Challenge of Conflict Prevention":
Thank you, Jim [former United States Secretary of State James A. Baker III], for those very kind and generous words. It has been one of the great privileges of my service as Secretary-General to have worked with James Baker on one of the most persistent disputes facing the United Nations: namely, Western Sahara. I had not imagined, however, that we would have seen as much progress as we have in the short time since I appointed Jim as my Personal Envoy.
Within just a few months, in four rounds of talks held in Lisbon, London and Houston, Jim secured the agreement of the two sides -- the Government of Morocco and the Frente POLISARIO -- on the outstanding issues for the implementation of the United Nations peace plan. This remarkable breakthrough revived the entire process and gave all sides new hope that a final settlement including a referendum on the self-determination for the people of Western Sahara is within our reach. We are all in your debt, Jim. Thank you.
I have chosen to speak to you today about the challenge of conflict prevention because I believe it goes to the heart of the United Nations mission for the next century.
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 United Nations must and will become a global centre of preventive action.
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 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, 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, Afghanistan and the Great Lakes region of Africa, in addition to Western Sahara. These are long-standing
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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.
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.
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 of 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.
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.
It was in support of the United Nations Special Commission's (UNSCOM) mission that I went to Baghdad, in order to secure Iraq's compliance with the demands of the international community. I went to Baghdad, with the full authorization of all members of the Security Council, in search of a peaceful solution to the crisis. That crisis has, at least for now, been averted.
The mandate of the Security Council has been reaffirmed. The access of United Nations inspectors has not only been restored, but expanded to include any and all sites. The authority of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission has been acknowledged and strengthened.
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Iraq's complete fulfilment of these obligations is the one and only aim of this agreement. Nothing more and nothing less will make possible the completion of the United Nations-mandated disarmament process and thus speed the lifting of sanctions in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council.
The agreement reached in Baghdad was neither a "victory" nor a "defeat" for any one person, nation or group of nations. Certainly the United Nations and the world community lost nothing, gave away nothing and conceded nothing of substance. But by halting, at least for now, the renewal of military hostilities in the Persian Gulf, it was a victory for peace, for reason, for the resolution of conflict by diplomacy.
It underscored, however, that if diplomacy is to succeed, it must be backed both by force and by fairness.
The agreement was also a reminder to the entire world of why this Organization was established in the first place: to prevent the outbreak of unnecessary conflict when the will of the world community can be achieved through diplomacy; to seek and find international solutions to international problems; to obtain respect for international law and agreements from a recalcitrant party without destroying forever that party's dignity and willingness to cooperate; to secure, in this case, through on-site inspections and negotiations, the assured destruction of weapons of mass destruction that aerial bombardment can never achieve.
If this agreement is fully implemented and leads over time to a new day in the Persian Gulf; if this exercise in diplomacy, backed by fairness, firmness and force, stands the test of time, it will serve as an enduring and invaluable precedent for the United Nations and the world community.
The agreement showed, finally, that 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.
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 sub-regional 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
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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. 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 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 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.
At the dawn of a new century, we must restore 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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