EFFECTIVE TOOLS, WILL TO USE THEM NEEDED TO MEET UN'S GLOBAL CHALLENGES SAYS DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL IN MONTREAL ADDRESS

Press Release
DSG/SM/60

EFFECTIVE TOOLS, WILL TO USE THEM NEEDED TO MEET UN'S GLOBAL CHALLENGES SAYS DEPUTY SECRETARY-GENERAL IN MONTREAL ADDRESS

Following is the address by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette to the Montreal Council on International Relations delivered on 18 June;

First of all, I would like to thank the Council for inviting me to address you. I am a native of Montreal, and I remain a Montrealer at heart, so I am thrilled to be back home, surrounded by compatriots and very dear friends. I am especially grateful to François Tascherau for his kind words. François has been an excellent colleague, and Canadian diplomacy lost one of its luminaries when he decided to start a new career in the private sector.

As the title of my paper indicates, I would like to share with you a few thoughts about the United Nations on the threshold of the twenty-first century, and about the tasks and challenges that lie before it.

When we mention the United Nations, we immediately think of questions of peace and security. That is only natural, for the maintenance of peace and security is the primary purpose of the Organization. As the very first words of the Charter state, the goal of the founders of the United Nations was to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war".

The half century that is about to end has shown how difficult that task was and still is. For 40 years, the Security Council was paralysed by the effects of the cold war. It was only after the Berlin wall came down that the Council fully recovered its ability to act.

People tend to be very negative in assessing the record of the United Nations in the area of peace and security over the past decade. Because the United Nations did not have an unqualified success in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, because of its stinging setback in Somalia, because of its absence during the genocide in Rwanda, people forget not only the Gulf war, but also the success of complex missions such as those in Mozambique, Cambodia and El Salvador.

The most recent was the United Nations mission in Eastern Slavonia. This involved the deployment of some 2,400 troops and 400 civilian police officers, as well as a United Nations-led civil administration in the territory for two years. The mission ended in January 1998 and was most successful, but I bet you have never heard of it. The moral is: Let us be wary of making rash judgements.

The experience of the past 10 years points to three types of issues to be addressed by the international community in the years ahead.

The first has to do with the very principles that should govern action by the international community in the area of peace and security.

One of the most notable developments at the close of this century has been the growing importance of human rights. Governments throughout the world are less and less willing to allow States to use sovereignty as a pretext for trampling on the basic rights of their citizens. But we are a long way from unanimity on the question of intervention, by force if necessary, in what has traditionally been regarded as "the internal affairs of States". As long as opinions remain divided on this fundamental point, there will be a question mark over the ability of the Security Council to act.

The second type of issue has to do with the effectiveness of Security Council action in enforcing its decisions. When it comes to ending conflict, the full array of diplomatic instruments is often found wanting. Sanctions can easily be circumvented, unless they are accompanied by very costly monitoring. More stringent sanctions regimes have a severe impact on civilians, but rarely move dictators. And the use of force is always fraught with repercussions and does not necessarily bring instant solutions. We must therefore refine our means of action and invest much more in conflict prevention.

The third type of issue can really be summed up in two words: political will. The will to apply the same standards and show the same determination whatever the region in which a conflict is taking place. The will to give the Organization the necessary means to implement the decisions of the Council. The credibility of the Council, and of the Organization as a whole, is at stake.

An agreement on reform of the Security Council to bring it more into line with the realities of the year 2000 would help strengthen its legitimacy in the eyes of States and peoples.

As for us, in the Secretariat, we have to show that if we are given the means, we are capable of "delivering the goods", in other words, acting rapidly, consistently and effectively.

This is the challenge which awaits us in Kosovo. Excluded from the decision on the bombings, the United Nations is now in the midst of the action, having received a mandate to implement all the civilian components envisaged in the recent decision of the Security Council. This means, in practice, provisionally assuming responsibility for the administration of the territory, including the police and the judiciary; rebuilding institutions on democratic foundations, with respect for human rights; providing humanitarian assistance; helping hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons to return to their homes; and coordinating reconstruction and the economic recovery of the territory.

The civilian mission is not only complex, but also very innovative in certain respects. The implementation of some of the components of the mandate received from the Security Council will actually be entrusted to two organizations outside the United Nations: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union, which will work under the authority of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General.

I have just come back from a quick visit to Geneva, where I met with representatives of those two organizations, and also representatives of the military component, which does not come under the United Nations, but with which close coordination is required. The meeting was very productive and I am convinced that we will be able to work together if we all show a little good will.

It will take several months for the civilian mission to be fully deployed, but I am happy to be able to say that 24 hours after the arrival of the first military contingents, our humanitarian agencies were already in place with the first relief convoys, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General was installed at Pristina with a preparatory team of about 40 people.

In order to prepare for this mission, I have for several weeks been chairing a working group bringing together all the services and programmes concerned. We are linked by video or teleconferencing with our colleagues in Geneva, Rome and, since Monday, Skopje and Pristina. As a result, our internal coordination has been greatly improved. It seems a long time ago that our critics were deploring the absence of elementary infrastructure -- for example, a situation centre operating around the clock to support our missions in conflict zones.

The task awaiting us in Kosovo is exceptionally vast. I can assure you that we will spare no effort to bring it to completion.

The Security Council is not the only guarantor of international peace and security.

When the Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted at Rome in July 1998, people said that it was the missing link in the international legal order. What is clear is that it demonstrated the will of States to put an end to the culture of impunity, whereby there is less risk in massacring 10,000 people than in killing one person.

And what is even clearer is that the true test of this will is yet to come, since the Court will not actually come into being until 60 countries have ratified its Statute. States will then have to provide it with the means to operate, by ensuring funding for it and cooperating with it.

The Secretary-General is the depositary of the Statute of the Court, but he is also the depositary of some 500 other international agreements based on values which are common to humankind. The translation of these values into a vast body of international instruments is one of the great achievements of the twentieth century.

If the twentieth century was the century of codification, the twenty-first will have to be the century of efforts to ensure true respect for all the instruments which have been adopted, so that the values which constitute the foundations of peace -- human rights, pluralism, democracy, equality of men and women -- are put into practice. At the United Nations, we all know that this ideal will be difficult to attain, but realism does not mean defeatism. The progress achieved in half a century convinces us that our efforts are not in vain.

No one can deny that security is not just a military issue. For the United Nations, the pillars of peace have always included development and poverty eradication. Indeed, the Preamble to the Charter mentions social progress and better standards of life as one of the goals of the Organization. This goal, too, has proved elusive. Even so, I feel that there is often a tendency to underestimate the real strides made in this area.

So it is worth noting that poverty has receded more over the past 50 years than over the previous 500 years; that since 1960, the infant mortality rate has been halved, the malnutrition rate has declined by one third and the proportion of children attending primary school has increased from 50 to 75 per cent; and that polio, which just a few years ago was taking such a heavy toll, has been virtually eradicated.

My purpose here is not to glorify the United Nations -- which does not deserve full credit, anyway, far from it -- but to stress again, with proof in hand, that while our quest may be ambitious, it is not utopian.

In the years to come, this quest will remain centred on the attainment of the goals decided on by governments themselves, with the active participation of a civil society ever more determined to make its voice heard, as it was during the major conferences held during the first half of the 1990s. Environment, population, the status of women, social progress -- those world conferences held under the auspices of the United Nations touched on all aspects of sustainable development.

This final year of the millennium and the first few years of the next one will be an opportunity to assess the progress made. As I said recently at a meeting on social development, there were no miracles. Policies were changed and initiatives were adopted. This is commendable and it is a first step. Overall, however, the situation of a very large number of developing countries remains serious.

In 1995, there were a billion people living in poverty. Since then, 300 million more have swelled the ranks of the world's poorest. In some countries, particularly in Africa, over 90 per cent of the population live in abject poverty, and AIDS is decimating an entire generation.

Given this situation, the organizations of the United Nations system have designated poverty reduction as one of their main priorities. Their action in the field is literally vital to the poorest people on Earth, but there is very little they can do without the commitment of the international community as a whole.

That is why we keep repeating that the decline in official development assistance, now at its lowest level in 50 years, is a trend that must be reversed at all costs; that debt is choking a large number of countries, some of which devote as much as 60 per cent of their annual budget to debt service; and that one of the best ways to help developing countries is to make it possible for them to participate fully in the global economy, particularly by giving them access to more markets.

This leads me to the unavoidable issue of globalization. I say "unavoidable" because, since coming to the United Nations, I cannot remember making a speech in which this word did not appear. At the same time, however, I am well aware that globalization is not a fad. In many respects, it is a genuine revolution.

Like any revolution, it is opening up new and unprecedented prospects. Like any revolution, it is sowing confusion. Like any revolution, it is toppling familiar structures and requiring major adjustments. Like any revolution, it has its winners and its losers, those who refuse or are unable to follow the trend. Something must be done so that entire regions of the globe and vast segments of the population within our societies are not excluded from the real benefits that globalization can provide.

There is another aspect of globalization with which the United Nations is seriously concerned. The porousness of borders and the communications revolution are fostering not only legitimate exchanges -- factors of development and prosperity -- but also drug trafficking, terrorist activities, money-laundering and organized crime -- factors of social disintegration.

The list of global problems requiring global solutions is long. The environment, AIDS, electronic commerce and many others must be added to those which I have already mentioned. The United Nations system is very active in all these areas and expects to continue to make a contribution to them.

I have spoken a great deal about the problems requiring the attention of the United Nations. But, some will ask, is the United Nations equal to its ambitions? That is an excellent question, even if it is sometimes asked in a purely rhetorical fashion, with a ready-made answer: no.

In my view, two conditions must be met if we are to be able to give an affirmative answer: effective tools must be combined with the will to use them.

The United Nations Secretariat is partially responsible for ensuring that the first condition is met. It is for this purpose that the Secretary-General has launched a far-reaching reform programme aimed at streamlining the structures and functioning of the Organization and its related bodies. When I assumed my duties, the Secretary-General charged me with overseeing the implementation of the reform process.

I am, therefore, in a good position to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that significant progress has been accomplished. Both at Headquarters and in the field, we are now operating more as a cohesive whole and less as a number of separate and uncoordinated entities. Overlap and lack of cohesion are thus much easier to avoid, and the activities of the various parts of the system can reinforce one another. This makes a huge difference.

Without going into detail, I believe I can say that most of the reforms under the responsibility of the Secretariat have been or are being carried out. Some of the changes which we have introduced to give Member States "more for their money" include the establishment of a Senior Management Group, the modernization of human resources management, the strengthening of internal controls to track waste and professional misconduct, results- based budgeting, the establishment of "United Nations Houses", which bring together under one roof the organizations operating in a given country, the development of a common framework for assistance, and much closer collaboration with civil society.

Nevertheless -- and this brings me to the second condition - - Member States must still be willing to take advantage of what we have to offer them. This implies, first of all, a real financial commitment, even though our budget is quite modest in comparison to the budgets of organizations with less universal aims. For several years now, we have been working with a zero nominal growth budget, which means that our resources are actually shrinking. The streamlining efforts which this has forced us to make have doubtless been beneficial, but the time is coming when there will no longer be anything left to cut.

Next, this assumes that Member States will undertake the reforms necessary to adapt intergovernmental mechanisms to today's realities. Such reforms depend on Member States and on them alone. I have already mentioned the reform of the Security Council, for which they will have to find an acceptable formula.

Lastly, this assumes that Member States have faith in the United Nations and are committed to the triumph of the principles embodied in its Charter. In other words, that they are willing to sacrifice certain national interests for the sake of genuine multilateralism and that they are prepared to stand together and to join forces in order to guarantee to everyone the dignity to which all human beings are entitled.

The stakes are a match for the United Nations, but they are even more formidable for the "peoples of the United Nations" whom it represents.

Thank you for your attention. I will be delighted to answer your questions.

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