NEW SYSTEM TO DEAL WITH GLOBALIZATION MUST BE ROOTED IN VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF UNITED NATIONS CHARTER, DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL STATES

28 October 1998

Press Release
DSG/SM/26

NEW SYSTEM TO DEAL WITH GLOBALIZATION MUST BE ROOTED IN VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF UNITED NATIONS CHARTER, DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL STATES

19981028 Louise Fréchette, at Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Stresses That Those Who Want More Out of UN Must Be Prepared to Put More In

Following is the text of the statement delivered by Deputy Secretary- General Louise Fréchette as part of the John Holmes Memorial Lecture series, at the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, in Toronto on 27 October:

Permettez-moi tout d'abord d'exprimer ma gratitude à M. Alan Sullivan, qui m'a demandé de prendre la parole aujourd'hui. C'est avec grand plaisir que j'ai accepté son invitation.

Je tiens à vous remercier tous de votre présence et de l'intérêt que vous témoignez à l'Organisation des Nations Unies.

Croyez que je mesure bien l'honneur que vous me faites en me permettant de participer au cycle de conférences dédié à la mémoire de John Holmes. Ce grand diplomate, connu tant pour son érudition que pour son humanité, était persuadé que le meilleur moyen de défendre les intérêts de son pays est d'aider les nations du monde entier à mieux se connaître et à mieux se comprendre.

Si je ne partageais pas sa vision des choses, je ne serais pas ici aujourd'hui. Car je ne pourrais représenter l'Organisation des Nations Unies, qui ne se donne, en définitive, d'autre objectif que de favoriser l'entente entre les peuples.

L'Institut canadien des affaires internationales veut faire réfléchir, de l'intérieur, au rôle que joue le Canada sur la scène mondiale. Porter sur les affaires internationales un regard proprement canadien. Pendant la plus grande partie de ma carrière, passée dans le service diplomatique de ce pays, c'est sous cet angle que j'ai vu le monde.

Aujourd'hui, je suis en quelque sorte passée de l'autre côté du miroir et c'est à travers le regard de l'ONU, plaque tournante de la communauté internationale, que je suis amenée à contempler mon pays et le reste du monde. Pour être différent, le spectacle n'en est pas moins captivant!

Historians tell us that the advent of the year 1000 was anticipated with considerable fear and trepidation. Our distant ancestors turned to their priests and village elders for answers to the doubts and questions which tormented them.

A thousand years later, we have our own fears and our own questions. But this time, clearly, we need to look for answers beyond the borders of our villages or cities, indeed beyond the borders of our countries.

Perhaps that is why so many people today seem to place their hopes in the United Nations. They realize that many of today's problems can only be dealt with in a global setting.

Yet, at the same time, there are incessant calls for United Nations reform -- reflecting widespread concern that the one truly global organization may not be up to the job. Many people think of the United Nations as an organizational dinosaur, incapable of evolving and therefore doomed to fail.

Incapable of evolving? How far is that charge justified? Let's take a minute to look at how well the United Nations has adjusted to evolving circumstances in the past.

I will start with my own first exposure to the United Nations, in 1972. As a woman delegate, I was at that time almost a curiosity. The senior ranks of the Secretariat were an exclusively male preserve.

Now, several of the best known and most effective heads of United Nations funds and programmes are women: Sadako Ogata as High Commissioner for Refugees; Mary Robinson for Human Rights; Carol Bellamy at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); Nafis Sadiq at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA); Catherine Bertini at the World Food Programme; and I should not forget our compatriot, Sharon Capeling-Alakija, who coordinates the United Nations Volunteers. We have not quite reached the point where we shall have to appoint a male head of United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as a gesture of affirmative action, but change there has been.

This change within the United Nations reflects a corresponding change in the wider world, to which the United Nations has contributed, notably through the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. While women's rights are far from being fully implemented in most parts of the world, very few governments any longer contest them in principle.

At that same session of the General Assembly, in 1972, I witnessed the beginning of another major change in which the Organization has played a leading role: the arrival of the environment as an international issue and a subject of international cooperation.

- 3 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

The Stockholm Conference, held at that time, pointed forward to the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. In the intervening 20 years the United Nations thinking evolved from a narrow focus on discrete environmental issues to the more holistic notion of sustainable development: a conceptual breakthrough that should increasingly inform decisions at both national and international levels.

Twenty-five years ago the United Nations was strictly the business of governments. I don't know whether the term NGOs had been coined then, but they certainly were not big players. Nowadays non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a powerful role in the work of the Organization. Their influence on policy-making has been evident in the last decade, particularly in the results of the major conferences, from the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development to the Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development.

The norms and standards that have emerged from these conferences provide a yardstick by which States' performance can be judged -- a stick, if you like, with which civil society can beat them. They also give other States a locus standi in the argument, depriving errant governments of the chance to deflect criticism by calling it "interference" in their internal affairs.

Yes, I know that States' proclaimed adherence to these norms is often hypocritical. But hypocrisy, as La Rochefoucauld said, is "un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu" -- a tribute vice pays to virtue. Such tribute is not to be despised, because the time sooner or later comes when it can be converted into more solid currency.

Twenty-five years ago, development was mostly concerned with the building of schools, roads and bridges. Policy thinking on development has evolved very significantly over the years, and much of that thinking has taken place at the United Nations. The United Nations has been a very powerful advocate of a people-centred development strategy -- a strategy that gives priority to raising the levels of health and education, empowering women, and promoting good governance and the exercise of civil and political rights by citizens.

The United Nations was the first to call for "structural adjustment with a human face", and it did not hesitate to place squarely on the table such thorny issues as corruption and the share of military spending in developing country budgets. Its annual Human Development Report does more to raise consciousness and provoke debate about development than any other initiative I know of.

Another striking change is the central role that human rights has acquired within the United Nations discourse in recent years. For many years the focus was primarily on setting the norms, through the negotiation of the various conventions that form the architecture of international obligations in

- 4 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

this field. But lately the United Nations human rights work has become much more pro-active.

Human rights concerns now occupy centre stage in both our political and development agenda. Since the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, and the creation of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, our activities in this field have become more intrusive -- and I believe also more constructive -- than in the days when State sovereignty could be invoked to foreclose discussion.

In one sense this reflects a change of global ideological fashion -- the end of the cold war. But that change did not happen by accident, or in a vacuum. It is practical experience which has taught us that human rights are an issue of international concern, not a purely internal affair to be left to the discretion of individual States.

Where human rights violations occur on a large scale, you can be sure that not far behind will come other problems -- usually starting with the flow of refugees -- which the international community is forced to address, often at enormous cost. And that has led the United Nations Security Council gradually to broaden its understanding of what constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The phrase can now include many kinds of domestic situation -- from genocide to wars of secession -- which the international community finds itself in practice unable to ignore.

Evolving concepts of international security have also brought with them important changes in the practice of peacekeeping.

Right from the start, United Nations peacekeeping was the fruit of improvisation and flexibility: there is no provision for it in the Charter. But in the last 10 years or so it has evolved spectacularly.

Twenty-five years ago peacekeeping was largely a matter of policing static ceasefire lines. Today, it often involves manoeuvering in very messy environments, where consent is patchy and chains of command unclear.

It has also broadened out into what has become known as "post-conflict peace-building", which requires peacekeepers to engage with civil society, for instance as election monitors, instead of concerning themselves only with military forces.

And, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, United Nations peacekeepers have for the first time been used preventively -- surely a precedent worth building on.

When the task at hand is likely to require muscular enforcement, the Council has generally preferred to authorize Member States to take action, forming what is sometimes called a "coalition of the willing". The classic

- 5 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

model for that is, of course, Desert Storm, which was in itself, at the time, a remarkable example of the United Nations capacity for creative innovation. It filled the gap left, ever since 1945, by the political impossibility of running enforcement according to the letter of the Charter -- which would put armed forces, provided by Member States, under the command of a committee of the Chiefs of Staff of the five permanent members.

In other cases, where there is a regional or subregional organization able to undertake a peacekeeping mission, it makes sense to let it do so, provided it acts with the authority of the Security Council and respects the general principles of peacekeeping which the United Nations has developed. In a sense we are simply practising, at a global level, the good old federalist virtue of "subsidiarity".

But I think -- indeed, I fear -- that in some parts of the world we are now testing that principle to its limit. By no means every region of the world boasts a regional or subregional organization as effective as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or even as well respected as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And some regions -- I am thinking especially of parts of Africa -- are racked by conflicts even more complex and destructive of human life than those we have witnessed in the Balkans.

I fervently hope that lasting peace agreements will soon be reached in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But the United Nations might well soon be called on to play a more direct role in negotiating peace in one or both of those conflicts. And even if the regional institutions do succeed in forging agreements, I strongly suspect they will look to United Nations peacekeeping operations, on quite a large scale, to give those agreements a chance of taking hold. If that happens, it will provide the Council with a crucial test of political will.

I hope that the Council's decision to authorize two new missions in Africa earlier this year -- small ones, admittedly, in the Central African Republic and in Sierra Leone -- is a good omen. It did suggest that the international community is at least beginning to overcome the reluctance it has shown, in the last few years, to make full use of the United Nations peacekeeping capacity.

Another area where we have seen a great deal of experiment and adaptation in recent years is in the use of economic sanctions as a tool of enforcement. Some of these experiments have, of course, been happier than others.

Some sanctions have been ineffective. Others have caused, or contributed to, terrible suffering among innocent civilians. There may even be some cases which fall into both those categories. The search goes on -- both inside and outside the United Nations -- for a politically and morally

- 6 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

acceptable doctrine in this matter, and for the elusive "smart sanctions" which will put pressure on regimes while sparing peoples.

I hope I have by now said enough to convince you that throughout its history the United Nations has shown, and continues to show, a remarkable ability to change, to innovate, and on many issues to set the global agenda.

But I will be the first to recognize that the history of the United Nations is also littered with missed opportunities, outdated and sterile debates, hesitant and inconsistent actions, instances of inefficiency and even down-right incompetence.

So, how confident can we be that the United Nations will indeed be capable of rising to the challenges ahead?

These challenges are as complex and as daunting as those faced by the United Nations founding fathers 50 years ago. Now, as then, the objective is to leave to future generations a legacy of peace and prosperity.

Many of our problems today fall under the general heading of "globalization". What do we mean by that? The simple fact that all of us today live in the same global economy.

A single automobile may be produced in many countries. The touch of a button can move billions of dollars round the world in a few seconds. And of course, images and ideas move just as fast.

This is a world in which no country can isolate itself. All of us are affected by what our fellow men and women are doing and thinking, wherever they may live.

In many ways globalization represents the greatest opportunity for self-improvement that the human race has ever enjoyed.

It draws us all closer together. It offers many of us the chance to enjoy things our grandparents could not even dream of. It brings some of us, at least, a better quality of life.

Unfortunately, however, its effect so far has been anything but uniform.

Some developing countries, notably in East Asia, appeared until last year to be doing very well out of globalization, while others, mainly in Africa, seemed to benefit little or not at all.

The crisis of the last year has hit the East Asian countries the most, but the effect on the developing world as a whole has been very severe.

- 7 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

Millions of people feel their lives are being disrupted, even destroyed, by global economic forces they cannot understand or control.

Perhaps there is a rough justice in the financial ruin that has befallen a few so-called "crony capitalists". But, for every one of them, there are millions of humbler people who are in no way responsible for the crisis, but who have seen their hopes dashed and their families thrown into terrible hardship.

In Thailand, unemployment has increased by 50 per cent. In Indonesia by next year there will be 10 million unemployed -- more than twice the number there were in 1996.

In the Philippines, national expenditure on basic social services has been slashed by 25 per cent. In the Republic of Korea the price of basic items such as sugar and cooking oil has leapt by 50 per cent; that of flour by 75 per cent.

Rice prices in Thailand have doubled, while Indonesia can only afford to import 40 per cent of the rice its people need. Seven and a half million Indonesians will suffer acute food shortages in the next few months. Already, anaemia in children has increased by 25 per cent in some parts of the country. In central Java, 30 per cent of all women are anaemic.

A crisis on this scale affects the future as well as the present. In Indonesia up to 8 million children have dropped out of school.

A financial system that allows such brutal and merciless shocks to occur is politically unsustainable as well as morally flawed.

In the immediate future, the international community must find a way to avoid a deepening of the crisis and to limit the social costs.

In the longer term, the rules of the financial game must be revised and the architecture of the international financial system redesigned.

The Secretary-General has taken every opportunity in recent months to stress two essential points.

The first is that the ultimate purpose of economic activity is the welfare of human beings. The new system we design to deal with globalization must be rooted in the values and principles that lie at the heart of the United Nations Charter.

The second point is that the rules of the game cannot be defined by a fortunate few. Ways must be found to build a broad-based consensus that will ensure the legitimacy of, and support for, the new order that emerges.

- 8 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

The United Nations, with its universal membership and global mission, can and should contribute to the design of the new order. This is slowly being recognized.

Two weeks ago, for the first time in history, the Secretary of the United States Treasury came to New York to consult, not with Wall Street but with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Mr. Rubin wanted to brief Kofi Annan on the discussions that had been held in Washington on the world financial crisis, and to seek his views.

Development and the fight against poverty have been major challenges for the United Nations ever since its creation. They take on an added urgency when globalization appears to be widening rather than narrowing the gap between rich and poor countries.

Most of the poorest countries are being left behind and too many, particularly in Africa, are caught in the vicious circle of conflict and underdevelopment. The spread of HIV/AIDS promises to make the problems of poverty and underdevelopment even more intractable. Tomorrow the United Nations will publish a statistical report which shows that in 15 years' time average life expectancy in the 29 hardest-hit African countries may be only 47 years, where, in the absence of AIDS, it would have been expected to reach 63 years.

Such a dramatic drop means elders without children to support them, orphans left to fend for themselves, and a workforce dislocated by the premature disappearance of a large proportion of its members. HIV/AIDS may indeed be the single most difficult obstacle to development for many of the poorest countries.

For a brief moment earlier this decade, we dared to believe that the dream of a world "saved from the scourges of war" was about to be realized. But the sad truth is that the end of the cold war has not eliminated challenges to international peace and security. The old East-West confrontation has been replaced by a multitude of inter- and intra-State conflicts, in which civilians and aid workers seem to be the preferred targets. Ethnic cleansing and mass extermination are no longer unthinkable: they are becoming almost commonplace.

And so long as weapons of mass destruction are stocked and manufactured, the risk of global conflagration will remain.

Many more challenges will confront the international community in the years to come: international crime and terrorism, drug traffic, transborder environmental disaster, the transmission of deadly diseases. All these cry out for concerted action at the global level. And the cry will be addressed, more often than not, to the United Nations.

Are we ready? Will we be up to the task? Before we can answer in the affirmative, I see two fundamental requirements: (a) the right tools, and (b) the will to act.

- 9 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998

We, in the Secretariat, bear some of the responsibility to ensure that the first requirement is met. The Secretary-General's programme of reform announced last year was designed to make the United Nations a leaner and more efficient Organization.

Much has been accomplished already. The Secretariat has been rationalized. One thousand posts have been eliminated. For the first time, perhaps, the United Nations is starting to act as a coherent whole, both at Headquarters and in the field, thanks to the Secretary-General's strong leadership.

Sooner or later, however, we are going to have to face the larger problem of the budget. Under the present rule of "zero nominal growth" the United Nations budget is actually shrinking, in real terms, from year to year.

That may have had some salutary effects. We have had to concentrate our minds on eliminating waste, and on giving Member States better value for their money. But, as the Secretary-General said in his opening speech to the General Assembly last month, "without money, there can be no value". Those who want more out of the United Nations must be prepared to put more in.

More also needs to be done to adapt the intergovernmental machinery to the challenge of the coming years. In particular, Member States will have to find an acceptable formula for the expansion of the Security Council, so that it reflects the geopolitical realities of today rather than those of 1945.

That said, nothing we do to improve the machinery of the United Nations will make much difference unless Member States are willing to make use of it. It requires a sustained effort of political will. The will to mobilize the necessary resources to tackle the challenge of poverty. The will to sacrifice narrowly defined domestic interests and put in place a system of international governance that truly reflects the realities of the new millennium. The will to accept the costs and the risks involved in upholding the principles set out in the Charter. The will to share, to join forces, to unite.

The celebration of the millennium offers a great chance for the international community to set itself an agenda.

The Secretary-General has suggested that Member States use the General Assembly session in the year 2000 to identify a few of the world's most pressing problems, and then to settle on a precise, achievable programme for dealing with them.

This would be a fitting way to celebrate the millennium. It would also be an example of the United Nations adjusting to new realities and responding to new questions. I hope I have said enough this evening to convince you there is nothing unimaginable about that. Change and adjustment are inscribed in the very nature of our Organization, because they are the condition of its survival.

* *** *

- 10 - Press Release DSG/SM/26 28 October 1998