In progress at UNHQ

SG/SM/6567

SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES IMPORTANCE OF MANAGING MULTILATERALISM FOR PEACEFUL CHANGE

20 May 1998


Press Release
SG/SM/6567


SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES IMPORTANCE OF MANAGING MULTILATERALISM FOR PEACEFUL CHANGE

19980520 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to the Columbia University Alumni Federation's centennial commencement day luncheon today:

Thank you for those generous words of introduction. I am deeply honoured to receive this degree today. Columbia University is not only our neighbour and ally in this great city, but has set many fine servants of the United Nations on their path to our cause. Let me mention just one of them here today -- Professor John Ruggie.

You all know him as the distinguished former dean of the School of International Affairs. In the year that he has served in my office as a senior adviser, he has been the focal point for our relations with Washington and a key member of my reform team. You will be relieved to know that the question of United States arrears is in the safe hands of a Columbian. And he thought his fundraising days were over.

Today, you honour not only me but the entire United Nations. You honour the highest ideal that we hold in common -- the ideal of universal peace. This ideal, like all ideals, reflects not only the hope for human progress, but also the dread of human conflict. It reflects our experience of evil no less than our quest for human coexistence. Indeed, the prevention of war is the achievement of peace.

From these twin reflections of the human experience, the United Nations and the international community have sought over 50 years to construct a global architecture of peaceful change. For even as we know that change is inevitable, we know that conflict is not. We recognize that peaceful change is possible -- if only we are determined enough to make it a reality.

The achievement of peaceful change will be measured by the successful management of multilateralism. I say management because the threats we face today cannot be defeated simply or in one fell swoop. They must be met with patience, determination, perseverance and a lasting commitment to progress. They must, in other words, be met in concert.

Not that I believe that national interest is a thing of the past or that the nation-State is about to disappear. In fact, it was one of the seminal mistakes of the immediate post-cold war period to assume that national allegiance would go the way of communism; that a globalized economy would answer every human need, including the need for belonging. We are slowly, but only fitfully, recognizing the danger of this illusion today.

Rather, the multilateral challenge must be met with the nation-State at its core and with international organizations as the instruments of progress. The United Nations was founded, in the words of the Charter, as a union of peoples, of "nations large and small" seeking to "live together in peace as good neighbours" -- not as a world government.

Ever since, we have sought, as catalyst and as instrument, to enable the common interest in peaceful progress among nations to prevail. Wherever I have travelled in the past year -- and I have travelled many miles -- I have found that peoples and leaders from the Middle East to Africa and to Latin America look to us not for salvation, but for practical solutions to shared problems.

In that realism, I have found hope. Why? Because from Uganda to Guatemala to Afghanistan, it is the parties and the peoples themselves who must make the crucial choice for peace. It is a choice that no one else -- not the United Nations, not the international community -- can make for them. We can facilitate; we can mediate; we can even propose solutions. But we cannot make the choice for them.

Once they do, however, the multilateral promise knows literally no bounds. For in the beginnings of peace in Afghanistan, or progress in Uganda, the entire world will find solutions to problems that affect us all -- from drugs to refugees to the uncontrolled and illegal flow of arms. And in joining forces to meet these challenges, nations will be strengthening their sovereignty, not weakening it, for the result will be stronger, safer societies for their peoples.

It has now become conventional wisdom that the environment is an asset shared by the entire planet; that pollution in one ocean can and does spread to other oceans; that clean air and an intact ozone layer are in the vital interests of all; that the steps we take to protect that asset will be more effective if they are universally coordinated.

The task before us is to make the challenges of drugs, refugees, illegal arms and human rights as urgently and as globally engaged as the challenge to preserve our environment. I believe we are seeing a genuine commitment to these challenges in every part of the world.

- 3 - Press Release SG/SM/6567 20 May 1998

Next month, an unprecedented special session of the United Nations General Assembly will convene to counter the global drug problem. Every aspect of this threat -- from judicial cooperation to drug eradication to fighting money laundering -- will be discussed by those most affected and most able to propose solutions. I have made the fight against all elements of "uncivil society" a cornerstone of our mission in the next century.

The new head of our anti-drugs mission, Senator Pino Arlacchi, broke the back of much of the Mafia in Italy, and he is making significant progress. He has already visited Myanmar and Afghanistan to discuss killing off illegal drugs at the source and is addressing with equal force the issue of demand in the West and other parts of the world. The aim is to reduce dramatically, if not eliminate, the flow of illegal drugs by the year 2008. We now know it can be done.

The challenge of refugee flows is one that affects equally the countries from which they flee and the countries in which the seek sanctuary. Whether it the almost 3 million-strong Afghan refugee population in Iran or the hundreds of thousands of Bosnian refugees in Europe, this, too, is a global problem requiring multilateral solutions.

I have just returned from a visit to Africa where I attended a regional meeting on the plight of refugees in Central Africa. Leaders from all the affected nations gathered in the knowledge that only in concert can they resolve all aspects of the refugee question: whether it be preventing the conflicts that produce refugee flows or neutralizing the camps that too often become a haven for militias or promoting the safe return of refugees to their own communities.

With renewed resolve on the part of the countries themselves and a revitalized engagement on the part of the international community, we can do more to prevent the flow of refugees and secure the safe return of those men, women and children already in flight.

The United Nations efforts to combat the proliferation of arms -- nuclear arms, weapons of mass destruction, landmines and small arms -- is yet another case of meeting a global problem with global answers. Last year's Ottawa Conference marked a milestone in the abolition of landmines, and the agreement I struck in Baghdad in February preserved the most successful disarmament regime in our history.

Last week's events in Asia underscored the need to strengthen existing non-proliferation efforts and renew our disarmament efforts. That includes the fight to end the illegal traffic in small arms, which do far more damage to far more people in those parts of the world that are afflicted most by war and conflict.

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And finally, let me recall for you in this fiftieth anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights our struggle to bring human rights to life in every corner of the world -- to combat torture and violence and to ensure the fundamental dignity of every man, woman and child.

Mary Robinson of Ireland is breaking new ground as the High Commissioner for Human Rights and was awarded just last month with the Four Freedom Award for her efforts. I have said in every part of the world -- from Harare to Shanghai to Tehran -- that human rights are universal rights, that they are African, Asian, European and American rights.

Perhaps for the time in history this is no longer a matter of dispute, at least in principle. Now it is for us all to make it reality.

In every one of these struggles -- against drugs and crime, against the violence that creates vast refugee flows, against the proliferation of dangerous weapons, against the abuses of universal human rights -- our victory will be your victory. It will be the victory of every society and of members of every society. Its fruits will be for all to enjoy.

That is no less the case here in the United States, which remains affected by all these challenges and has always been a leader in meeting them.

That is why it is so regrettable and so unnecessary that the issue of arrears still stands in the way of America's unquestioned leadership role in the United Nations. I will not tax your goodwill today by explaining why the arrears should and must be paid. You know why.

I only wish to say how much America's energy, idealism and initiative is needed at the United Nations, how grateful I am for the support I have received personally throughout this country and how I hope this year will see the final resolution of this issue. If America is to lead at the United Nations, it must pay its way.

Perhaps the greatest American ever to serve the United Nations, Ralph Bunche, said upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 that "the United Nations exists not merely to preserve the peace but also to make change -- even radical change -- possible without violent upheaval". Every day, every hour -- in every part of the world -- brings a new challenge, a new opportunity to improve and secure the architecture of peaceful change.

Managed properly -- with vision, determination and an unshakable belief in the possible -- our era of multilateral promise does more than just prevent the worst of human fates. It can make what Bunche called radical change the daily reality of common efforts leading to common progress for all mankind.

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For information media. Not an official record.