SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN ADDRESS TO WOMEN"S INTERNATIONAL FORUM, SAYS SHAPING UN"S FUTURE IN NEW CENTURY "VITAL EXERCISE"

Press Release
SG/SM/7277

SECRETARY-GENERAL, IN ADDRESS TO WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL FORUM, SAYS SHAPING UN’S FUTURE IN NEW CENTURY ‘VITAL EXERCISE’

Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s address to the Women’s International Forum, at Headquarters, on 14 January:

I am very pleased to be able to join you today and to have this opportunity, so early in the new year, to share some thoughts about what might be in store for the United Nations as we move into the twenty-first century. But I really do not want to make this a lecture, I would want us to have a conversation this morning. So I will make some preliminary remarks, and then listen to your ideas and answer your questions.

I think the future is not just out there waiting for us, like tomorrow's weather or, if we are lucky, old age. Some things may be inevitable, but the future is ours for the shaping. That power means, however, that we can get things wrong and even do grave damage. Designing the future is not just an idle pursuit for daydreamers or fans of science fiction. It is a vital exercise. We cannot have a vision without a sense of history. We can't look ahead without looking back, at least as a first step.

I think that if we look back in the last year alone, we saw the conflict in Kosovo spark a global debate about sovereignty, human rights and humanitarian intervention. We saw East Timor's destiny at last become clear, but not without terrible violence. We saw peaceful gains in some parts of Africa, while in others conflict grew even more entrenched. The World Trade Organization talks in Seattle made us all aware of the strains and stresses of globalization. Each of these major developments will strongly influence the work of the United Nations in the years ahead.

It is also useful to look back over the United Nations first half-century. During that time, awareness of human rights has spread dramatically. A framework of international law has been built. The decolonization movement added dozens of Member States to our ranks, and we put environment on the global agenda. The United Nations peacekeeping showed itself to be a useful instrument for peace -- where there is peace to keep. Such accomplishments give a solid foundation to build on.

But we have also had what might be called "reality therapy". Genocide has reoccurred, even though we said "never again". Conflicts have proven intractable. And too often, the international response to major challenges has been inadequate or simply absent. It is no exaggeration to say that these setbacks have rattled our foundations sometimes. So we arrive at a new century with a mixed record of progress amid chaos, of simultaneous hope and fear. Now we need to project ourselves forward, and cast our minds into the future. Otherwise, we may find ourselves like the proverbial generals who are always fighting the last war. Certain key trends are already visible.

For example, you don't need a crystal ball to see poverty all around us, at a time of unprecedented wealth in some parts of the world. The world, as a whole, is more prosperous today than it was in 1945, but that progress has not been equally shared. The gap between the developed and the developing countries is widening and other gaps are being developed. And here I am referring to the gap between the technology rich and the technology poor. The information gap has widened at a time when we are entering a knowledge based and information economy. It may surprise you to hear that half the world's population, 3 billion people, have never made or received a telephone call, much less used computers. That is the size of the gap we are talking about, and we need to find ways of getting the technology to them at a reasonable cost. And I have challenged some of the multinational corporations and the International Telecommunication Union to see what they can do to handle this problem. Hundreds of millions of people are completely excluded from globalization's benefits. Attacking these inequities -- within and among nations -- and bringing these people in from the margins is certainly one of the biggest projects for the twenty-first century.

We have made progress towards the reduction of poverty, but there is still a long way to go. We need to do more to promote growth and employment. We need more debt relief and more effective aid. We need to make trade work for the poor. I believe the poor would much rather trade themselves out of poverty rather than live on a handout. We need to provide opportunities for the poor to help themselves. And we need greater investments in the education and overall advancement of women and girls.

AIDS is a prominent part of the poverty picture, and the Security Council, in the historic meeting on Monday, did discuss this issue. Twenty years ago, the global community had not even heard of AIDS. Today, it is a global pandemic that is killing parents and breadwinners and destroying entire societies. Last year, AIDS killed 10 times as many people in Africa as all the continent's conflicts put together. AIDS sufferers also face discrimination, prejudice and violations of their human rights. AIDS is not just a health issue; it is a political issue and social issue. And poverty, in general, is very much a matter of peace and security, for here you can often find the root causes of conflict and instability.

You also don't need a crystal ball to see how globalization, interdependence and growing awareness of human rights are altering our understanding of State sovereignty.

Nowhere is this more true -- and I think our President referred to this -- nowhere is this more true than when the international community is called on to face internal armed conflicts and massive violations of human rights. Where once these humanitarian crises might have been considered internal matters, today the balance seems to be shifting -- shifting towards an international community willing to uphold human rights for all. Finding ways to do so on a consistent basis is a core challenge for the future. And I think, as the President said, I put it before the General Assembly.

But sovereignty alone is not the only obstacle to effective action in human rights violations or humanitarian crises. No less significant are the ways in which Member States define their national interest in any given crisis. I hope we will find ways of defining these in much broader terms, and I am convinced we need a new, more broadly defined, more widely conceived definition of national interest. And this is happening in certain regions in the world, Europe, for example. In a growing number of challenges facing humanity, the collective interest is often the national interest. Slowly but surely, we are seeing this challenge come about.

The continuing crisis, if I may turn to the environment, the continuing crisis with the environment is a key test in this regard and may yet prove to be an even bigger challenge than the struggle against poverty. In the last 200 years, development has surged ahead with little thought for the consequences. In the past 20 years, our understanding of the environment has evolved dramatically. At one time we had a very narrow, piece-by-piece focus. Today, we are looking at the big picture, trying to unite environment and development, ecology and the economy. The Earth Summit gave us a conceptual framework of sustainable development. We must now translate that understanding into practice and action.

No doubt there are major political crises lurking whose outlines we can barely make out at the moment. And no doubt each of you could add other priorities to the list that I have given today from the environment to disarmament, discrimination, drug trafficking, terrorism and so forth. And you would be right in thinking that the United Nations should do something about all these issues, for they transcend borders. These are problems without borders.

That is why another all-encompassing challenge is to build and buttress the machinery of international cooperation itself. Local communities have their fire departments and town councils. Nations have their courts and legislatures. In today’s interdependent world, the peoples of the world must have the rules and institutions they need to manage their lives -- values that hold the international community. Each community has shared values that holds them together and I think, in a way, for the international community the United Nations, from its inception, has tried to offer these values either through its Charter or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other norms. Rules that are fair to all, and institutions that are open to all which would be the basis of international cooperation. That is precisely what the United Nations family is trying to do.

That is why I attach great importance to this year's series of millennium events to be held here in New York. These include the Millennium Forum for non- governmental organizations in June; the conference of presidents and speakers of parliaments to be convened here in New York by the Inter-Parliamentary Union in August; and, of course, the Millennium Summit of heads of State and government in September. The United Nations’ observance of the millennium must be more than a celebratory event. The world's peoples are demanding more and more of the United Nations. This special year gives us a chance to articulate a vision for the future and to improve our ability to meet their expectations.

I believe that it is sometimes said that the millennium is merely an accident of the calendar, of little importance to many of the world’s population. But it would also be easy to assume that this year’s meetings will simply result in more promises that will never be kept. But if that is how some people view the United Nations, I hope and believe they are only in the minority and that we will prove them wrong. In the past few weeks, I have read and heard a lot of commentary on the millennium. I was struck by how often the United Nations and United Nations issues figured prominently among peoples’ concerns. For all our faults, and for all the lessons we have learned the hard way, we remain the repository for the hopes and idealism of men and women around the world. Popular support is vital for our success, and it is an asset we squander at great peril. So I hope you will join us in making the most of this millennium year.

Not least among the major events of this year will be the special session of the General Assembly to assess progress five years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Some things have changed for women since then: women live longer and healthier lives; they have more equal access to education; and in most countries they are able to participate in the political process. And last year the General Assembly adopted the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which allows individual women and groups of women to submit claims of violations of rights protected under the Convention.

However, much remains to be done before we can claim we have achieved the vision set out in Beijing. Violence against women continues: in obvious ways, such as domestic violence, trafficking in women and girls, and rape, especially during armed conflict; and in more insidious forms, such as lack of access to reproductive health care. I urge you not to let your voices be drowned by the other millennium events. Your dreams matter too much to all of us for that to be acceptable.

But in a way the United Nations itself was something of a dream when it was founded. Many observers said the founders were indeed dreaming, if they thought it would be possible to usher in an era of peace and harmony among nations so soon after a devastating global conflict. But even then, at a time when national sovereignty as classically defined was secure and at its height, the world community saw the need for a global institution capable of responding when problems seemed too big for nations, or regions, to handle alone. Even then, the world community understood the need for global norms and yardsticks with which to guide human behaviour. Today, we can see that those dreamers were no dreamers at all; it is we who are waking up to find that the United Nations is needed even more today than we might have thought.

So let us use this year infuse the United Nations with a new momentum for the new millennium. Our history, and what we can divine of the future, give us grounds for cautious optimism about our prospects. Let us move ahead together to make this Organization what it ought to be. Thank you very much, and I would now be pleased to hear your views and take your questions.

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