CONNECTION BETWEEN PEACE AND ECONOMIC SECURITY MUST BE REDISCOVERED, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN ADDRESS TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY
Press Release
SG/SM/6707
GA/9445
CONNECTION BETWEEN PEACE AND ECONOMIC SECURITY MUST BE REDISCOVERED, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN ADDRESS TO GENERAL ASSEMBLY
19980921 Describes It As `Unifying Principle' upon Which Organization Founded, If Poor Lack Development,`Even Richest on This Planet Will Not Be Safe'Following is the statement of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the General Assembly, as it began its general debate on 21 September:
It is my great pleasure and privilege to welcome you all to this fifty- third session of the General Assembly. I believe this could be a singularly inspiring and forward-looking session. Indeed, it could open up new vistas for the Organization, and even for the world, provided we have the courage to confront what lies before us with open eyes.
When I spoke to you from this podium a year ago, my emphasis was on the reform of the United Nations itself. Reform was and is essential if we are to play our full part in the new era. Today, I can say with satisfaction that the "quiet revolution" is happening. The United Nations family has begun to act with greater unity of purpose and coherence of effort than it did a year ago. This is particularly true of the Secretariat and its relations with the programmes and funds.
That does not mean we can now afford to rest on our laurels. Reform is an ongoing process, and I shall continue working on ways to improve our performance. During this session I hope you, the Member States, will carry the process forward, by adopting further measures to refine or revise those aspects of the Organization which only you have the power to change.
But, probably the single greatest impediment to good performance is the financial straitjacket within which we are obliged to operate. Financial stringency is a feature of today's world; it has helped concentrate our minds on giving you better value for your money. But, without money there can be no value. Stringency is one thing, a starvation diet quite another. I appeal once again to those few Member States who have fallen seriously behind with
their contributions, to follow the good example set by others. There can be no substitute for full and timely payment of what is due.
Reform is gradually giving us a more functional United Nations, meaning one that can perform the tasks assigned to it by its Members. Now we need to define the new challenges we face, and devise suitable means for meeting them.
In 1945, the end of the Second World War gave our founders both the chance and the obligation to recast the world order, creating this Organization to save later generations from repeating the ordeal which they had faced. Today, we, in our turn, are living through a vast transformation.
In some ways our task is even more difficult than that of our founders. They could work from tabula rasa, whereas we have to respect established procedures and overcome long-ingrained habits of thought. They faced the awesome but clearly defined challenge of world war, while we are wrestling with new political uncertainties and with forces of economic change, which are very hard to pin down.
But, an accident of the calendar gives us a precise and dramatic deadline to focus our minds -- the opening of the third millennium. You have agreed to designate your fifty-fifth session, which falls in the year 2000, as the Millennium Assembly. I have proposed that I present a report to you on that occasion, outlining a set of workable objectives for the Organization as it moves into the new era, along with the institutional means for achieving them.
We have exactly two years before that Millennium Assembly meets. My idea is that we should use those two years to reflect carefully on what we need to do. We are not going to tear up the Charter and write a new one, nor will we produce a blueprint for utopia. What we must do is identify a select few of the world's most pressing problems and set ourselves a precise, achievable prog1ramme for dealing with them. Much, if not all of that programme, I suspect, will be subsumed under a single rubric which has become the catchword of our time: globalization.
I believe that, taken all in all, over the long term, globalization will be positive. It draws peoples closer together and offers many of us choices that our grandparents could not even dream of. It enables us to produce more efficiently and allows some of us, at least, to improve our quality of life.
But, alas, these benefits are far from being felt equally by all. The long-term positive change is, for millions of our fellow human beings, simply too far off to be meaningful. Millions still live on the margins of the world economy. Millions more are experiencing globalization not as an opportunity, but as a force of disruption or destruction, as an assault on their material
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standards of living or on their traditional way of life. And those who feel marginalized in this way are growing more and more numerous.
The Asian downturn has triggered a worldwide economic crisis, with devastating social consequences. Some of the most successful economies have been plunged into recession at a speed which has taken the whole international community by surprise. As usual, it is the most vulnerable groups which are hardest hit. And the countries whose economies had taken only the first faltering steps on the road of recovery are the ones that now find themselves in greatest jeopardy.
The crisis has now spread to Russia. Even the markets of North America and Europe are not immune. You, President Clinton, recently recognized the threat which this wildfire poses, even to the largest economy in the world.
We have to get together to find the answers, but who should sit at the table? The day is past when the seven major industrialized Powers could or should take on the task alone. Nor can this crisis be left only to finance ministers and central bankers, although their contribution is essential. I have no desire to belittle the role of the institutions where they get together, such as the Bank of International Settlements, the World Trade Organization, or our beloved sisters in Washington, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As many of you know, I have worked hard to forge closer ties between the United Nations and those bodies, and I am glad to say they have been very responsive. They want to work with us and we must be ready to work with them. All parts of the international system need to come together to find global solutions to this truly global crisis.
For the issues this crisis raises are not just financial or economic -- or social or political for that matter. They are all of those things at once. They must be addressed on all those fronts. They must be dealt with both locally and globally. That is why I believe that this institution, the United Nations -- which is the global institution par excellence -- has an inescapable duty to respond. I, therefore, look forward to United Nations participation in discussions on the new world "financial architecture", such as those suggested by President Clinton.
Technical economic and financial strategies are certainly needed. But, we have to define the political framework within which they can be applied and we have to make sure that the interests of those so far left behind by globalization are not forgotten. Our special responsibility is to restore development to its rightful and central place in global economic strategy.
On the eve of the millennium, the needs and aspirations of the great majority of human beings can still be expressed simply and starkly: safe water; shelter from violence -- that of nature and of one's fellow men; enough
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food for the family; a job; schooling for the children; and a State which does not oppress its citizens, but rules with their consent.
We should not forget that the present crisis springs partly from the neglect of political factors, during years when some believed that markets alone would bring worldwide prosperity. It was sometimes forgotten, in the exuberance of rapidly rising wealth, that in the long term a healthy economy depends on healthy politics: the politics of good governance, social justice and the rule of law.
I am not suggesting a one-size-fits-all political model as a panacea for all the problems of globalization. That would be as misguided as the one-size-fits-all economic policy which has now come to grief in many countries. Local traditions and circumstances must be borne in mind, both in politics and in economics. But, certain principles are common to all. They include: legitimate, responsive, clean government -- whatever its form; respect for human rights and the rights of minorities; freedom of expression; the right to a fair trial. If these essential, universal pillars are neglected, the structure of both State and economy is deficient and is more likely to collapse when the storm comes. Which means that the greatest challenge posed by globalization is that of good governance in the broadest sense.
Let me now turn briefly to the work of the Organization over the past year. I will not bore you with a recapitulation of my annual report, which I am sure you have all read by now from cover to cover. But, forgive me if I draw attention to a few of our successes and tell you candidly where I feel we are currently failing.
The thing I am happiest about is not what we do by ourselves, but the fruitful cooperation between this Organization and the non-State actors which, taken together, form the embryo of a global civil society. Two shining examples from the past year are the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the coalition of non-governmental organizations which lobbied for an international criminal court.
The former was the driving force behind the Ottawa Convention on anti-personnel mines, which I am delighted to say entered into force with the fortieth ratification last week. And the latter, of course, helped us achieve the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, whose adoption I was privileged to witness in July. This promises, at last, to supply what has for so long been the missing link in the international legal system, a permanent court to judge the crimes of gravest concern to the international community as a whole -- genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
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This month, the first judgement by an international court for the crime of genocide, delivered by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, showed us that the institutions of international justice can have teeth. It also gives us hope that the International Criminal Court will, before too long, fulfil its aim of putting an end to the shameful era in which a murderer is more likely to be convicted for killing one person than for killing 100,000. Gradually, with the help of civil society, the United Nations and its Members are strengthening the international legal order. The fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes us conscious this year more than ever of our responsibilities in this field.
The help we get from civil society in establishing legal norms and strengthening human rights is one of the positive aspects of globalization. But, here too, the coin has its negative side. The non-State actors which exploit the new openness and technology of communication are not all so benign. Alongside global civil society there is what I call uncivil society; the networks of terrorism, trafficking -- in human beings, as well as illicit substances -- and organized crime.
We had perhaps the most frightening glimpse yet of this uncivil society a few weeks ago, with the terrorist bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Terrorism is a global menace, which clearly calls for global action. Individual actions by Member States, whether aimed at State or non-State actors, cannot in themselves provide a solution. We must meet this threat together.
What shocks us about terrorism is its indiscriminate character. Unhappily, we have also to be concerned about violence that is more precisely targeted. I regret to report that this year has seen a dramatic increase in attacks on United Nations and associated personnel. This prompts us to reflect on the conditions in which we send civilian staff into war zones where, too often, combatants seem less and less willing to respect their neutral status.
I regret to say, also, that the perpetrators of these attacks are almost never brought to justice. Let us hope this will begin to change now that we have the Rome Statute, which defines intentional attacks against humanitarian and peacekeeping staff as a war crime.
I dwell on that point because I am responsible for my staff, and for the ability of the United Nations to carry out its mandate. But, unhappily, humanity as a whole has much larger threats to worry about.
During the past year, the United Nations has been engaged in many parts of the world, often in difficult and dangerous conditions, in the sensitive diplomacy of peacemaking. I myself went to Iraq to try and achieve full
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compliance with Security Council resolutions -- something which, unhappily, has still not been realized.
Elsewhere, I believe we have had some successes in preventing conflict -- though one can never absolutely prove that, without our efforts, conflict would have happened. Where we fail, by contrast, the results are all too visible. And, the truth is, we are still far from achieving the primary task laid on us by our founders, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war".
Two examples have preyed especially on my mind in recent days: the continuing conflict in Afghanistan, with its horrific human rights violations, is now perilously close to drawing in neighbouring States: and, in Kosovo the international community seems to be watching impotently while the kind of brutal and indiscriminate abuses we saw in Bosnia are repeated, something we all swore must never happen again.
Once again we find ourselves deploying desperate humanitarian efforts to deal with consequences, when we should be addressing the political roots of conflict. I know the Security Council has both these conflicts on its agenda. I can only hope it will find effective ways of recalling the parties to their obligations under the Charter. Meanwhile, the spectre of nuclear annihilation continues to haunt us. As you know, two new countries have chosen this year to conduct their first nuclear tests.
And finally, Mr. President, I must say a word about my own continent of Africa.
There, too, there have been successes, notably the restoration of the democratically elected Government in Sierra Leone. In April, at the request of the Security Council, I submitted a report on the causes of conflict in Africa, which was well received. Some useful follow-up work has been done since. But, not only has conflict continued in many African countries, it has also broken out in several new ones and in one case between two Member States.
I am especially concerned by the apparent crumbling of the peace process in Angola, a country where the United Nations has made enormous efforts for peace, particularly under the leadership of Maître Alioune Blondin Beye, whose death in June was such a blow to us all.
And, worst of all, I believe, is the new conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which the forces of at least five other African States are now involved and which adds a new twist to the long-running agony of the Great Lakes. I feel acute concern for the ordinary people of that region, who have suffered so much in recent years, including the scourge of deliberately fomented racial hatred. A special effort by the international
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community is needed if stability is to be restored there and the suffering brought to an end.
I make no apology for ending on this bleak note. My intention is not to leave you in despair. On the contrary, if we, in this Hall, really make up our minds to pool our resources, to set aside our differences, and to work together, there is almost nothing we could not achieve.
In particular, we need to rediscover the connection between peace and economic security -- the unifying principle on which this Organization was founded. We need to learn again the lesson of which one of our founders, Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke, in the year of his death and of this Organization's birth, "that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away.
"We have learned", he said, "that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community." We understood, in other words, that if there is no development, no hope for the poorest, even the richest on this planet will not be safe. This Assembly, Mr. President, is not short of work. I have already detained you too long, and I thank you for your indulgence. Now, let us get on with it.
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