DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS POOR COUNTRIES, STRUGGLING TO ADOPT GROWTH POLICIES, DESERVE GREATER SUPPORT IN THEIR EFFORTS

17 November 1998

Press Release
DSG/SM/31

DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS POOR COUNTRIES, STRUGGLING TO ADOPT GROWTH POLICIES, DESERVE GREATER SUPPORT IN THEIR EFFORTS

19981117 Tells D.C. Audience Growing Gap in Global Living Standards Can Be Encouragement to Militancy, Threat to Peace and Security

This is the text of an address by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette today to the Women's Foreign Policy Group in Washington, D.C.:

It is a real pleasure to be with you today. As you can imagine, one group I have no difficulty identifying with is women who are interested in foreign policy, and your agenda of "promoting women for leadership positions in international affairs" is one that I strongly support.

I am glad to say the United Nations, after a slowish start, is now setting a good example. My own appointment as the first Deputy Secretary-General is one obvious case in point. But there are many others. Some of the most prominent and effective heads of United Nations funds and programmes today are women. There is 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 Population Fund; Catherine Bertini at the World Food Programme; and now we have Gro Harlem Brundtland as head of one of the most important specialized agencies -- the World Health Organization.

We have not quite reached the point where we shall have to appoint a male head of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) as a gesture of affirmative action, but change there has certainly been.

Still, I have not come here today to address you as a "professional woman". I am a professional civil servant -- for long a national, now an international one. And I hope before long we shall reach the point where one's gender is no more a matter for serious comment in this context than the colour of one's hair.

What I want to talk to you about briefly today is the work of the United Nations, particularly in the area of conflict prevention. Article 1 of the

United Nations Charter calls for "effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace". So conflict prevention is a central part of our original mandate. Yet at least until very recently there has not been enough emphasis on preventive action. Instead, vast resources are spent on efforts to "cure" conflicts, when for many of the victims it is already too late.

When the United Nations has attempted to take preventive action, it has usually focused on crises that are already imminent, and therefore on measures which, if they are to be effective at all, must work immediately, or in the very short term. The first resort, of course, is good old-fashioned diplomacy -- which is sometimes taken for granted but is certainly not to be despised. One reason why its contribution is often overlooked is that it is usually most successful when most discreet.

In this respect the round-the-clock, real time news coverage we now enjoy is at best a mixed blessing. Perhaps sometimes it gives us an extra few hours' warning of an impending crisis. But, by the same token, it gives us less time for reflection before we react. And the glare of publicity often encourages the parties in a crisis to adopt public postures which render subsequent compromise more difficult.

Another measure often discussed under the heading of "prevention" is economic sanctions. These can in theory work preventively by serving notice that the international community takes a very grave view of a given situation or course of action, and thereby inducing the errant party or parties to change tack before more drastic measures are taken. Unfortunately it is hard to find a clear example of things working like that in practice.

One particular form of sanctions, an embargo on arms deliveries, is virtually a standard response of the Security Council to any imminent or incipient conflict. But in most cases it is imposed too late to prevent conflict from breaking out, or even from escalating. Well before an embargo takes effect, one or more of the parties have usually armed themselves to the teeth. Also, an embargo has the effect of freezing the present balance or imbalance of weapons between the parties, sometimes to the benefit of the one the international community least wants to help. We learned that the hard way in Yugoslavia.

The truth is that sanctions seldom work preventively in a crisis. They are used either punitively -- which is an indirect form of prevention in so far as it may deter other States or parties in other potential crises -- or as a measure of enforcement. It is indeed under the latter heading that the Charter provides for them, in Chapter VII.

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Much has been written about the need for early warning and proper analysis. There is also rather vague talk of an "integrated preventive strategy". All these things are, or would be, valuable. But what is most often lacking is the political will and resources to implement such a strategy.

Early warning is in fact usually available, to those willing to listen. We know well enough by now what the harbingers of conflict are:

-- ethnic or communal tensions, usually exacerbated by competition for scarce resources (Rwanda is the most tragic and eloquent example);

-- flagrant corruption and other forms of "bad governance", juxtaposing conspicuous wealth for the few with frustration and deprivation for the many;

-- above all, perhaps, large-scale violations of human rights.

In other words, genuine early warning symptoms take us much closer to the root causes of conflict. And it is in this context that the human rights work of the United Nations has to be understood.

Next month we shall celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But the Secretary-General did not wait until this year to designate human rights as the cross-cutting theme of all United Nations activities. He did so because bitter practical experience has taught us that human rights are an issue of international concern. Wherever human rights violations occur on a large scale, not far behind come problems -- the most immediate, and the most acute, being the flow of refugees, which the international community is forced to address, often at enormous cost. So human rights work is an essential ingredient of serious conflict prevention.

As we have come to understand this better, so the nature of our human rights work has evolved. It is no longer simply a matter of shining a spotlight on the unsavoury domestic practices of a select few regimes. Instead, Mary Robinson seeks wherever possible to work with governments, and always to work with civil society, in countries with serious human rights problems. Her recent visit to China -- controversial, but in the end constructive and promising -- was a well publicized example. But her Office is also providing lower-profile technical assistance in no fewer than 58 countries -- including the vital work of training in the administration of justice and law enforcement, so that lawmakers and law enforcement officers develop and enhance their role as human rights defenders.

And we don't leave it all to Mrs. Robinson, important though her Office is. For instance, both the Electoral Assistance Division, located within the Department of Political Affairs at United Nations Headquarters in New York,

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and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provide technical support to countries seeking to hold free and fair elections. Sometimes this is done as part of a conflict-resolution process, but often it is a form of prevention.

Where governments do need to be nudged into taking human rights more seriously, we often find pressure is most effective when exercised through their peers. So we are delighted to see that many regional and sub-regional organizations -- from the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum and the Organization of American States (OAS) to the Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference -- are now getting involved in the establishment and monitoring of common norms of good governance, based on the Universal Declaration and other international instruments.

Indeed, as the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum leaders gather in Kuala Lumpur today, it is surely encouraging that some of the loudest voices calling for fair treatment for Malaysia's former deputy prime minister have come from within the region -- from the Presidents of Indonesia and the Philippines. Increasingly, we are coming to understand that human rights problems are seldom simply the result of ill-will, however evil the individual torturers and ethnic cleansers may be. They almost always have a structural component, related to the level of development in the country -- development in the broad sense, measured not only by gross national product per capita, but other, less easily quantifiable indices, such as education, political culture and civility.

We also remember what western or northern advocates of human rights sometimes seem to forget, that the Universal Declaration deals not only with civil liberties but also with economic and social rights. "Everyone", says Article 25, "has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

I'm sure I don't need to tell you how far away from enjoying those rights many of our fellow human beings are at this moment. The gap is almost unimaginably wide between the standard of living we in this room enjoy and that of the poorest 20 per cent of the world's people. Indeed, of the 4.4 billion people in developing countries today, nearly three fifths lack basic sanitation. Almost a third have no access to clean water. A quarter do not have adequate housing. A fifth have no access to modern health services. Perhaps most worryingly of all, a fifth of children do not attend school to grade 5.

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Meanwhile we, the richest 20 per cent, account for 45 per cent of all the meat and fish consumed in the world, 58 per cent of total energy, 74 per cent of all telephone lines, 84 per cent of all paper and 87 per cent of the world's vehicle fleet. And the gap is getting wider.

While we consume more and more, the average African household today consumes 20 per cent less than it did 25 years ago. Even the Asian countries which really have developed spectacularly in the past 25 years are far from catching up with industrial countries, and this year the financial crisis has dealt them the most dramatic setback, throwing millions of breadwinners out of work and their families into destitution.

Am I straying from my theme of conflict prevention? I'm afraid not. If we continue to ignore human misery on this scale, we are stoking the fires of conflict ever higher. Because those people are not all going to wait patiently to see which reaches them first -- death or the benefits of the global market.

Their plight will provide arguments, and they themselves may provide recruits, to those who urge abandoning political and economic freedom in favour of alternative paths to salvation. Twenty years ago such thoughts would have evoked the spectre of communism. Now I could mention other "-isms": populism, fanaticism, nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, terrorism. All of those are stalking the world today, pointing to the alleged crisis of capitalism, and enlisting the frustrated and deprived as recruits to their cause.

And yet the solution lies within our reach. A World Bank report published last week shows that an annual increase in aid of $10 billion -- less than the amount Europeans spend on ice cream -- could lift an extra 25 million people out of poverty every year, provided it was targeted at poor countries with sound policies.

More and more countries, prodded and encouraged by the United Nations and its sister institutions here in Washington, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, are adopting such policies. But, sadly, levels of official development assistance continue to fall. As one of the report's authors said, "It is ironic and tragic that the volume of aid is declining just as the environment for effective aid is improving".

More developing countries need to adopt policies which really favour economic growth, and enable their poorest people to benefit from it. But as and when they do, donor countries must be willing to provide that aid, and to remove the enormous handicap of debt under which so many developing countries are struggling. Industrialized countries must also make sure their own

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markets are fully open to developing countries, both as outlets for exports and as sources of investment capital.

This may not be what you expected to hear. But a global economic compact, on the lines I have just suggested, might actually be the most effective measure of conflict prevention available to governments today. Certainly it is one we at the United Nations would dearly like to see, and will do our utmost to promote.

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