SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES EXPANDED SENSE OF `NATIONAL INTEREST' IN ADDRESS TO AUSTRALIA'S NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
Press Release
SG/SM/7312
SECRETARY-GENERAL URGES EXPANDED SENSE OF `NATIONAL INTEREST' IN ADDRESS TO AUSTRALIA'S NATIONAL PRESS CLUB
20000223Following is the address of Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra on 22 February:
Let me first tell you how pleased I am to be visiting Australia at this time. For Australia has been a good friend of the United Nations for more than half a century -- indeed since the very drafting and the founding of the Organization, in which Australia played a very important role. Australia may be known to many as the country "down under", but at the United Nations you are usually front and centre. As we begin our work in the new millennium, the United Nations will need the people and the Government of Australia. We hope we can be able to count on your strong support and I think what we did together in East Timor is some indication of what we can do together, if we do cooperate.
I had a chance in a very brief period to see a bit of your country. I was in Sydney before I came here, saw your beautiful Opera House, went for walks along the waterfront and everyone was very friendly and surprisingly I ran into a colleague who worked in Geneva for about 30 years and had just retired, and moved to Australia to settle and he gave me his address and I think you would be surprised to know what it is. Let's say his name is John, 1 Paradise Road, Paradise Beach, Avalon. Most of us go through life searching for paradise, here I have met someone who has found it.
I would also like to share with you today some of the sights and sounds of the trip I have been making through the South-East Asian region. In two short weeks, I have come into direct contact with the main trends and challenges that will shape our world -- our work -- for many years to come.
Let me start with Bangkok, where developed and developing nations gathered for the tenth meeting of UNCTAD, that is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. High on their agenda was the need to pick up the pieces after last December's trade talks in Seattle exposed some of the stresses and strains of globalization.
Many of us had hoped that in Seattle we would have launched what we have come to call the "development round". The development round of trade talks which would have led to a truly free and open trading system. A trading system that would also be fair to the poor. Instead, the meeting broke up, not because of the protestors in the streets, but largely because the world's leading
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economic Powers could not agree on their priorities, and could not bridge their differences.
I do not mean to dismiss the protests in Seattle. They were important. They were significant in that they were giving voice to some very widely felt fears about effects of globalization; they were worried about effects on their jobs, the environment, public health and human rights. And they are right to be concerned about the desperate poverty in which many, many people in the developing world still live. These issues must be tackled, they must be dealt with, they cannot be brushed aside. But the trading system should not be shackled with them. This would aggravate poverty and obstruct development, and curtail international trade. There are other ways. And I believe the most effective way is for national governments and policy makers, and in some situations international organizations, to face these issues directly and tackle them directly.
And it was for this reason that in January 1999, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I proposed to the business community that they enter into a global contract with the United Nations and begin to implement in their own activities and spheres of influence the core labour standards, environmental standards and human rights standards, arguing that they do not need governments, they need not wait for governments to pass national laws before they begin to do what is right, before they pay decent wages, before they refuse to employ children, before they become environmentally sensitive, and offered assistance through United Nations agencies like the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi and, of course, the International Labour Organization.
I am pleased to say that the response has been very encouraging and several companies are working with us, seeking to apply these global standards in their operations and I think they can set a standard and they can encourage others to apply these standards. Of course I do not mean to suggest that the trading system itself cannot be improved. Trade must be open, free and fair and as I have said, must work for the poor. The poor would much rather trade themselves out of poverty, rather than live perpetually on handouts and assistance. And, of course, globalization has its casualties, but the main losers today are not those who are exposed to too much globalization, the main losers are those who have been left out completely, who are on the margins.
It is commonly said that knowledge-based society is taking hold around the world today. That is true, but it is also true that half the world's population have never made or received a phone call, much less logged on to a computer. Our great challenge for the immediate future is to deal with the exclusion and inequity that confronts our world and enable all the peoples of the world to participate in the new global economy. I hope UNCTAD X may have helped. Of course, the conference in Bangkok could not give us all the answers, but a least it allowed us to get some questions put on the agenda.
And Bangkok was a fitting place to examine the world's development agenda. Thailand was where the Asian financial crisis began, and Thailand is helping
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lead the way out of it. In the same way, the democratic transition now under way in Indonesia has regional and global implications, and I was pleased to get a first-hand look at the progress being made there. Indonesia now has a government with a broad popular mandate. Civil society is becoming more active and effective. Parliament has grown more assertive and if the crush of journalists that greeted me after every meeting is an indication, your fellow journalists there are working in an increasingly free and vibrant atmosphere and I hope that will be sustained.
The challenge now is to build on the democratic institutions that have emerged. No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime and that need to be cultivated cautiously. This may be an old hat to a mature democracy such as Australia, but it is painfully new to the many nations trying to find or regain that essential path. We must all do our best to encourage and support such transitions. Australia is in a particularly good position to do so.
Indonesia's experience with minorities also resonates worldwide, from Europe to the Americas, to Africa and in this region. I believe we need to be extremely sensitive of the concerns of minorities. Minorities have to be convinced in every society that the State belongs to them too, that the State does not belong only to the majority. In situations where a whole group of people either for ethnic or religious reasons are discriminated against or excluded from the political process these situations can be exploited by elite and political leaders and could lead to explosion. What governments have to do is to ensure that each citizen, each group, is made to feel part of the society.
A recent study done by the United Nations University describes such a situation as horizontal inequities, where whole groups of people are discriminated against, and if we are going to avoid tensions in society we have to take care to ensure that we don't have those kinds of situations.
And when we talk of development, democracy, human rights, it leads naturally to my most recent stop -- a place where many Australians can be found working hand-in-hand with the United Nations and that is East Timor. As you know, the United Nations has been given far-reaching responsibilities to help the East Timorese recover from the long and painful national trauma, and to reconcile with itself and with its neighbours. And I believe the United Nations is trying to do the best it can in administering that territory. We are doing so in a place where almost everything -- institutions, infrastructure -- must be built or rebuilt virtually from scratch. We are working in a place where there is great privation and despair, and where the people are yearning for jobs, justice, control of their own destiny. And, of course, this is something that we cannot do alone. We need help, we need support and I hope we can count on our traditional partners, the donor community including Australia, the United Nations agencies, and the non-governmental organizations.
I was quite shocked -- it was an emotional visit to East Timor to see the destruction and the terror that was brought about following the ballot. But, I must say, if I was depressed, I was also impressed. I was both impressed and
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depressed. Impressed by the courage, the tenacity and the determination of the Timorese people and depressed by the destruction and the wanton violence that I saw all around me. But, I think together if we pool our efforts and we assist East Timor, they can make a go of it and I hope we will get that.
I am also pleased to say that Australia is already doing a lot to help us, in areas of development, democracy, human rights and nation-building. You have played a key role in each area in our work. You have been a generous donor for development and provider of humanitarian assistance. And it is also essential that you are moving to cement your good relations with Indonesia. And I know Indonesia wants to do the same. And I am sure the ambassador here will agree with me, because I did have discussions with them. You are neighbours and good relations would be essential.
I think your record is a solid one and I hope we can work with you in the future as we move on into the new millennium.
I know that when we talk about international engagement there are times when nations can feel overwhelmed by pressures emanating from beyond their borders. The global economy is extremely competitive and it is virtually impossible to erect barriers to such problems as pollution, crime, the spread of disease and deadly weapons. Problems I describe as problems without passports. And our world continues to be plagued by conflict and poverty, which we are still struggling to contain and must respond to out of our human solidarity and concern. But, I believe that just as we try to confront these international problems, we are caught with domestic issues. I often say that politics is stubbornly local, but all other issues are becoming globalized and international. We accept that trade is international; we accept that financial flows are international; we accept that pollution and environmental issues are international; and yet politics remains stubbornly local.
How do we bridge the two and get people to understand that one can no longer think in purely local terms, and that what happens outside our countries have an impact on us, and what we do may have impact on our neighbours. And that we should begin to develop a broader sense of interest, not of a narrower national interest, but broader sense of what concerns us. Besides, we are living in a world today where the collective interest is almost always invariably the national interest. We need to also match at the global level what we have at the local level. Each locality, each nation has its own laws, its own norms, it own fire stations. We need the same sort of them at the global level.
But, I am not proposing a global government. What I am suggesting here is that you do have the United Nations and its agencies; a forum where all the nations of the world can come together to discuss the issues of common concern. If each community has a language and norms to knit it together, the international community also needs the values and norms, not only to hold us together, but to regulate our relationship. Whether these norms need the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter, or the conventions that the United Nations has offered, in this inter-dependent world
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it is becoming more and more important for us to have these norms and to develop international law further. International law in my judgement is the language of this global community; without that you can imagine the nature of our relations with each other and the nature of our transactions.
And, my friends, that is why we have the United Nations. It is your United Nations. Support it, use it, criticize it if you may and we accept it, we can take it, but also work with us to strengthen the Organization and reposition it for the twenty-first century and make it the Organization it ought to be.
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