SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES 'VITAL TASK OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE' IN ADDRESS TO SWEDISH PARLIAMENT
Press Release
SG/SM/7013
SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES 'VITAL TASK OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE' IN ADDRESS TO SWEDISH PARLIAMENT
19990528 Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to the Parliament of Sweden on the theme "The United Nations and Global Governance" delivered in Stockholm on 26 May:It is always a great honour to be invited to address the Parliament of a Member State. Today that honour is combined, for me, with a kind of homecoming -- not just because I am married to a Swede, but because the United Nations has a close family relationship with the whole nation of Sweden.
This country is not only an island of stability in an unstable world. It is also a bastion of solidarity. Throughout the history of the United Nations, you have shown exemplary commitment to its goals and activities: to peacekeeping and peacemaking; to development and international law; to human security and human rights. By so doing, you have helped people far beyond your borders feel that the world is a safer place.
Today, your solidarity is more important than ever. Safety and stability are in short supply not only on other continents, but even in parts of Europe. In this day and age, people in different parts of the world are directly affected by each other's actions more than ever before in human history. An automobile may be assembled in one continent from parts manufactured in two or more others. Billions of dollars are moved across the world in seconds by pressing a few keys on a computer terminal. A sporting event or a rock concert can be watched in real time by people thousands of miles away. So also can scenes of war and terrible suffering.
Like almost everything else in life, this phenomenon has good and bad aspects. It brings us many opportunities to learn from each other and to benefit from a wider range of choices.
But, it can also seem threatening. Workers may find their jobs made suddenly obsolete by imported technology or foreign competition. Parents find their children attracted by products and role models from alien cultures. Sometimes the world even seems to be losing all its spice and variety. Instead of widening our choices, globalization can seem to be forcing us all
into the same shallow, consumerist culture -- giving us all the same appetites but leaving us more unequal than ever in our ability to satisfy them.
That feeling accounts for much of the fear and anger we see in today's world. In many places, very destructive forces have been unleashed. We like to call them inhuman, but in reality they are all too human. They are one of the ways our human nature reacts when we feel ourselves threatened.
These are global challenges, which need global solutions, hammered out multilaterally, so that all States accept them as legitimate, and feel committed to implementing them. There has to be a forum where these issues can be debated openly -- where all parties can feel they have a say. You will not be surprised to hear that, in my view, that forum must be the United Nations.
Of course it is not easy. There are times when the process of reaching agreement in the United Nations seems so slow and cumbersome as to make swift, decisive action impossible. And then States feel that they are justified in taking the law into their own hands -- as the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) did when they took unilateral action, rather than watch the horrors of Kosovo continue unchecked.
I fully understood that feeling. In this age when the power of States to control their economy or their environment is limited by global forces, surely we cannot allow their one unchallenged power to be that of persecuting their own citizens.
On the day the action began, I expressed my own frustration at the rejection of a political settlement by the Yugoslav authorities, and said that "there are times when the use of force may be legitimate in the pursuit of peace". But I also reminded the world, with equal emphasis, that under the Charter of the United Nations it is the Security Council which has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.
I believe the way the conflict has developed since then shows that I was right. There are two principles on which all parties seem now to agree. One is that the Kosovar Albanians must be enabled to return to their homes in safety, with their political and human rights internationally guaranteed and protected. The other is that ultimately such issues of war and peace must be settled within the framework of the United Nations.
The sooner we can reach a political solution giving effect to both those principles, the better it will be for everyone, and especially for the suffering people of Yugoslavia, whatever their ethnic affiliation. Ever since 1945, the United Nations and its Charter have provided the recognized and indispensable framework of international cooperation. If anything, that has
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been even more true since the end of the cold war, which removed the biggest obstacle to such cooperation.
Increasingly, not only governments but people the world over have looked to the United Nations as the forum in which agreements can be reached to safeguard their interests. You, as parliamentarians, know this. You are elected by the people, and you have to listen to them. You are often the medium through which civil society makes its views known, both to national governments and to international bodies.
You know well the importance that people in Sweden, and elsewhere, attach to "Agenda 21" -- the principles of sustainable development agreed to at the United Nations Conference in Rio, in 1992. You know well how much people care about the barbarity of anti-personnel landmines. It was pressure from your constituents, alongside many thousands of others, that pushed governments into signing the Ottawa Convention. It is partly thanks to you, and other parliaments around the world, that that Convention is now in force, and has been ratified by 81 countries. I hope that other parliaments will soon follow your example, particularly those of several major landmine producing and exporting countries which are not yet parties to the Convention.
To give one more example, you know well how strongly Swedish people feel -- as do those in many other countries -- about the crimes against humanity whose authors too often get away scot-free, as though the murder of a thousand people were somehow less culpable than that of one. It was thanks to popular pressure from all over the world that governments agreed in Rome last summer on the Statute of the future International Criminal Court. I urge you and your fellow parliamentarians around the world to speed up the process of ratification of the Rome Statute. We must no lose the momentum in bringing this extraordinary achievement to fruition at the earliest possible date.
I hope that the court will be ratified and that we can begin to function by December 2000. It will be a wonderful gift to give to future generations, particularly as we enter a new millennium.
Your constituents understand, I believe, how important it is for a global society to have shared norms and values, codified in a framework of international law -- just as a national community can only survive so long as its members agree on certain core values which are reflected in domestic law. What they may not realize is how much the United Nations does, in quiet, unreported ways, to provide the world community with a framework of codified international law.
Even in this learned assembly, I suspect there are some members who have not heard of UNCITRAL -- the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Yet, this body plays an essential role in facilitating international trade and reducing transaction costs, through its work of standardizing the
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laws which govern commercial transactions. It is one of many parts of the United Nations system that establish, maintain and gradually extend the "soft infrastructure" making possible the international exchange of goods, money and information. When people say the United Nations is "no longer relevant", I believe they overlook, or underrate, the importance of such contributions to global governance.
Tomorrow, at the University of Lund, I shall speak at greater length about the work of the United Nations in upholding human rights and humanitarian law. Today, I just want to remind you that these form part of a wider principle: It is respect for the rule of law which distinguishes a civilized, secure society from an anarchic one.
That is true for countries, and in the end it must be true for the emerging international order as well. If we do not have established rules and procedures, or if we fail to abide by them, we are condemned to live by the law of the jungle, in which the strong devour the weak. It was to save humanity from that fate that the United Nations was set up.
In this vital task of global governance, you parliamentarians have a key role to play. I said just now that you have to listen to the people. But your role does not end there. You also have to act as leaders. You have to educate the people. Left to themselves, people can easily remain trapped in narrow ideas of local or national interests, to be defended at all costs against the rival interests of outsiders. Your job is to put across a broader understanding of national interest. You have to explain the interest that all nations share in working together to promote such values as democracy, pluralism, human rights and -- perhaps most important of all -- the rule of law.
International law is a fine concept. But it remains no more than that until it is implemented on the national level. As Secretary-General of the United Nations, I am the legal depositary of no less than 506 international conventions. That sounds impressive, but only means anything when those conventions are given effect in national legislation. It is your task, as parliamentarians, to do that -- and you can only do it if you carry public opinion with you in understanding why it matters.
Next year, as you all know, we celebrate the millennium. The accident of the calendar has given us an opportunity to do something unique. Many of you may also know that this momentous date will be marked, in the autumn, by a Millennium Summit of heads of State or government from all the Member States of the United Nations. My hope is that this will not be a purely ceremonial event, but an occasion for the human race to come together and rethink its priorities, as we embark on a new century. I hope, in particular, that it will help us to think out more clearly the goals of the United Nations, and the strategies it will need to achieve those goals.
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For such hopes to be realized, we need careful preparation. Above all, we need bold and imaginative thinking. I myself intend to make my contribution, and I am sure that governments will do their part. But I know that if we are to succeed, we have to cast our net wider than that. Non-governmental organizations have eagerly taken up the challenge, and will be holding a Millennium Forum at United Nations Headquarters in the summer of next year. But you, the parliamentarians, must also have a vital contribution to make. I am delighted to hear that the Speakers of all the world's parliaments also plan to hold a meeting. I urge you all to contribute your ideas, and as far as possible, to combine them in constructive and realistic propositions that will challenge us to act.
By "realistic" I do not mean defeatist or half-hearted. True realism springs from a combination of courage and creativity and I hope next year, when we all meet, we will be challenging ourselves. You Swedes have shown that many times in your remarkable history, and in your dazzling contributions to peace and development worldwide. Let me conclude by paying a special tribute to those many, many Swedes who have placed their courage and creativity at the service of the United Nations.
I am delighted to see some of them here today. Others, of course, are no longer with us. Some, like Hammarskjöld and Bernadotte, even gave their lives in the cause of peace. In preparing for the new millennium, let us all draw inspiration from their example.
Perhaps, Madam Speaker, you can allow me one more word on Kosovo -- to say that I know Kosovo is on all our minds. A great many activities are taking place in search of a political solution. I visited Macedonia and Albania a week ago. It was a really painful experience. I was able to hear first-hand horrible stories and heartbreaking stories from Kosovo.
A hundred-year-old woman, uprooted that day, sitting on the road, not knowing what happened to her, why she is where she was and where she was going. A mother with a baby who had been born when she had been on the run for two months, three weeks old, seeking refuge in Macedonia.
Earlier that day, I had had discussions with the Government of Macedonia, encouraging it to allow the refugees to come, to keep the borders open and to accept them as refugees and not as deportees, as some would describe them, who had no rights. They are deportees, they are refugees, and they are entitled to their rights.
I did talk about human rights, Madam Speaker. You referred to the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If those rights had been respected, the Kosovars would not be where they are today. The human tragedy we are witnessing in Kosovo is fundamentally a human rights
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tragedy. Yes, it is a humanitarian tragedy, but it is fundamentally a human rights tragedy.
I hope we will succeed in getting them back home for the summer. There are some difficult details to be worked out, differences between the G-8 to be sorted out, before the Security Council can take a resolution on the topic. But what is important, I think, is that everyone now believes the parties should turn to the United Nations in search of a solution, and that the Security Council should play a central role in the search for a solution.
At the beginning when the Security Council was ignored, we all were worried and anxious that it had weakened the Council. If they now turn to the Council for a solution, and the Council helps bring about a solution, then what appeared to have weakened the Council may indeed have strengthened it. It will prove to all concerned that sooner or later one has to turn to the Security Council. We hope sooner, rather that later. But that also implies that the Council and its members must be ready to do its duty in cases such as Kosovo.
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