PARLIAMENTARIANS VITAL PARTNER FOR BUILDING PEACE IN BROADEST SENSE, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL TO INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION MEMBERS

Press Release
SG/SM/7194

PARLIAMENTARIANS VITAL PARTNER FOR BUILDING PEACE IN BROADEST SENSE, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL TO INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION MEMBERS

Following are the remarks of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to a meeting, organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), of Parliamentarians attending the fifty-fourth General Assembly, at Headquarters on 25 October:

I am honoured to welcome you to the United Nations today. Your visit is timely, and we have much to discuss. Let me also take this moment to congratulate you, Madame Heptullah, on your recent election.

The relationship between the IPU and the General Assembly is an ideal way to connect national parliaments to the United Nations, parliamentary dimension to the work of the United Nations. This year, I particularly value your input. As you know, this is the last General Assembly of the twentieth century. Only yesterday, we marked the last United Nations Day of this millennium. These accidents of the calendar give us an opportunity to take stock: to look back on what we have achieved, and where we have failed -- and then to look forward, and think how we can make the new era better than the old.

The hallmark of our new era is, to some extent, a paradox. Most people’s basic needs -- to be safe, secure and fed -- remain unfulfilled, while prosperity and technological progress have made life easier and more comfortable for a minority. In our increasingly complex and interdependent world, our ability to meet people’s needs depends increasingly on reconciling these two paradoxical trends.

Threats travel easily across borders. Drugs, weapons proliferation, environmental degradation and AIDS are but a few of the phenomena we have come to know as “problems without passports”. Globalization presents great opportunities, but hundreds of millions live in desperate poverty and have little prospect of realizing their potential. Globalization brings knowledge and connections to many, but also serious disruption to societies that are not prepared for it.

Our obligation is not to oppose the forces of globalization, but to propose creative and constructive ways of managing it and bringing it a more human face. For the United Nations, that means adapting -- in new ways, with new ideas, and with new partners such as non-governmental organizations, the private sector and the international financial institutions. And it means action on several fronts.

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Our role in the area of peace and security has evolved significantly over the last decade. Many of the new peacekeeping missions deployed over this period involved the United Nations in situations of internal conflict, to seek to put an end to senseless bloodshed and often massive violations of human rights. At the same time, as events relating to the Kosovo crisis showed us, a new consensus is needed within the international community regarding its rights and responsibilities in such circumstances.

There is often a tension between the cardinal principle of sovereignty and the equally fundamental value of human rights -- both enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Intervention is sometimes required in defence of the latter and in violation of the former, but in keeping with the Charter requirement to uphold the “common interest”. But what is the common interest?

At my speech to the General Assembly last month, I invited Member States to consider this vital question. Who defines it? Who acts to defend it, and under whose authority? Clearly, the Security Council is the only body with the international responsibility to take such action. But in the past, on Rwanda, it has been united in inaction; and on Kosovo, it was disunited to the point that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) took action outside the Council’s authority. We must do better than this. A new consensus must be developed so that the Council acts in defence of our common humanity. I welcome the debate that has begun among Member States on these issues and look forward to its outcome.

On the development front, our paramount goal is still to reduce poverty and provide decent standards of living for all human beings. But under the new global dynamics, that means new strategies to prevent further marginalization of entire countries and poorer segments of societies; it means equipping them to benefit from the advances of technology, open markets and private investments.

At the same time, the support of donor countries remains essential: an increase in the levels of official development assistance (ODA), which have declined steadily over the past several years, and vigorous action on the debt front would make a real difference for those countries that are unable at the moment to become players in the marketplace.

On all fronts, we are engaging non-State actors as our partners. In recent years, we have witnessed an entirely new phenomenon that is one of the happier consequences of globalization: an incipient sense of global citizenship and responsibility among all sectors of civil society. Individuals and groups, animated by shared concerns, united by the new developments in communications technology and supported by world public opinion, have given voice to a new global people-power.

They were a driving force behind the treaty banning anti-personnel mines two years ago, the Statute for the establishment of the International Criminal Court last year and the current movement for debt relief. I know that among them were many of you parliamentarians.

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Increasingly, economic actors, too, recognize that their responsibilities -- and their interests -- lie not only in how their actions affect their shareholders, but in the way they affect all life on this planet. The technological, financial and management capacity of the private sector can be a positive force for progress and development.

This gives them not only a vital role, but important responsibilities, as well. It was with this in mind that I proposed a “Global Compact” at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January. The compact challenges business leaders to embrace three sets of universal principles in the areas of human rights, core labour standards and the human environment.

On the eve of the millennium, the needs and aspirations of the great majority of human beings can still be expressed simply and starkly: clean water and enough food for the family; adequate shelter; good health; schooling for the children; protection from violence, whether inflicted by man or by nature; and a State which does not oppress its citizens, but rules lawfully, wisely and with their consent.

That is the minimum standard by which “governance” in every country should be judged. I do not suggest that any single political model be mechanically applied in all countries, or act as panacea for all the problems of globalization. But I do suggest that certain principles are common to all. And, above all, good governance is the greatest challenge we face.

Clearly, parliamentarians play a unique role in helping us meet these challenges. You are the institutional bridge between the State and civil society. You are the link between the local and the global. You are among the vital partners needed to build peace in the broadest sense of the word.

Next year, we will see a number of landmark events here at the United Nations. The first Conference of Presidential Officials of National Parliaments will meet here in August. Heads of State and government and civil society representatives from all over the world will come to New York for the Millennium Summit and the Millennium Forum.

I trust that in all these forums, your ideas and views -- and those of the people you represent -- will be heard loud and clear. Again, thank you all for being here.

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