SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES NEED FOR "STRONG, CONSISTENT, PREDICTABLE SUPPORT" TO ENABLE UNITED NATIONS TO PROSPER

Press Release
SG/SM/7185

SECRETARY-GENERAL STRESSES NEED FOR ‘STRONG, CONSISTENT, PREDICTABLE SUPPORT’ TO ENABLE UNITED NATIONS TO PROSPER

Following are the remarks of Secretary-General Kofi Annan upon receiving the 1999 Woodrow Wilson Statesmanship Award from the Woodrow Wilson House this evening in Washington, D.C.:

You do me a great honour tonight in giving me this award, and I thank you.

Of course, I know that through me, you are also honouring the United Nations and its global mission of peace, development and human rights.

On behalf of all my colleagues -- peacekeepers in Sierra Leone, economists in Bangkok, interpreters in Geneva -- I would like to thank you for this recognition. Every such gesture helps propel our struggle forward.

What struggle is that? It is the same one to which Woodrow Wilson, for whom this award is named, devoted much of his life. It is the struggle to end all wars. But as he well understood, that implies a broader struggle to create a more humane world, in which hatred and inequity will find no quarter.

As he himself said: “Only a peace between equals can last –- only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.”

That was Wilson’s dream. It remains mine. His legacy is clear, even if the form in which we pursue it today is different from what he imagined.

That is why one of my main objectives as Secretary-General is to give real meaning to the phrase “international community”.

If they are to fulfil the objectives of the United Nations, I believe the peoples of the world must go beyond mere international cooperation and form a real world community.

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At present, we are still some way from that. Despite all the talk of “globalization”, the bulk of the world remains largely untouched by it. It is estimated that half the world’s population has never even made, or received, a telephone call.

In other words, community is something most people still experience only at a local level.

Their “community” consists of the people they know personally, and whose destiny they share.

Even at that level, however, a community has to be bound together by some sort of framework of law, and to express itself through some institutions, even if it is only a village council. And these laws and institutions derive their authority from a set of values which all the members of the community have in common.

A nation has been defined as an “imagined community” -– not because it is imaginary, but because it requires a leap of imagination on the part of its members.

Connected by the mass media in various forms, they are able to identify with people they have never met, understanding that those people also share their values -– so that shared laws and institutions come to have legitimacy and authority at the national level, too.

Now that new technology and economic liberalization are bringing more and more of us into a single global economy, we need shared laws and institutions to govern that as well. But they too will lack legitimacy and authority unless they are based on shared values.

And in fact such values have been codified, notably in the Charter of the United Nations, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in later, more specialized agreements such as the International Labour Organization’s declaration on labour standards and the conclusions of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio.

The important task now is to get those values genuinely understood, accepted, and above all implemented throughout the world.

Only when we succeed in doing that, will we be able to say that there is a real international community, and only then will we be able to feel confident about our future in a new global economic and political order.

In 1945, it may have seemed sufficient for the peoples of the world, in whose name the Charter of the United Nations was issued, to be represented in the Organization by their governments. But since then the world has changed, and we have to change with it, working in direct partnership not only with governments but also directly with civil society in all our Member States.

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In 1945, the main task of the Organization was to prevent conflict between States. But today the vast majority of conflicts we have to deal with are going on within States. That is why, in my speech to the General Assembly last month, I raised the very sensitive issue of how, and when, the international community should intervene in such conflicts. I did so deliberately to start a debate among the Member States, and more broadly in international civil society. That debate will not be resolved quickly, but I hope that in due course we shall emerge with a new consensus that fits the realities of today.

The international community of tomorrow must be based firmly in the hearts and minds of the world's peoples. But its success will depend also on having a common framework of laws and institutions. As Jean Monnet once said, “nothing is possible without men, but nothing is lasting without institutions.”

He applied this insight to a Europe which had been devastated by world war, and he himself laid the foundations of a great institution, which has become the European Union.

I believe the same insight applies at the global level, and that institutions like the United Nations are no less essential if the achievements of our new global economy are to benefit the whole human race, and especially the generations to come.

But institutions are not self-sustaining, nor are their decisions self-enforcing.

They are useful only when they are used -- when their members take trouble to adapt and equip them for the tasks in hand.

The League of Nations -- which Woodrow Wilson did so much to bring into being -- failed because he did not succeed in persuading his fellow-countrymen to share his vision, and because its members did not give it the strong, consistent, predictable support which any institution needs if it is to prosper. Let us not make the same mistake with the United Nations.

This, I know, is not an audience I need to convince on that point. Indeed, I interpret this award as evidence that you understand what is needed, and are willing to do your part. You have my pledge that I will continue doing mine. Together, we are stronger. Thank you again.

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