PRESS CONFERENCE ON ‘ROLE OF UNITED NATIONS’ BY INTERNATIONAL COLLEGIUM

PRESS CONFERENCE ON ‘ROLE OF UNITED NATIONS’ BY INTERNATIONAL COLLEGIUM

At a Headquarters press conference this morning, the International Ethical, Political and Scientific Collegium called for development of an agenda that would improve global governance and focus the world’s energies and attention on solving the problems of an increasingly interdependent world.

Briefing correspondents were four members of the Collegium:  former President of Brazil,Fernando Henrique Cardoso; Michel Rocard, former French Prime Minister and Chairman of the Commission for Cultural Affairs at the European Parliament; William vanden Heuvel, a United States Ambassador, Co-chairperson of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute; and Stéphane Hessel, a French Ambassador.

Addressing correspondents before presenting its findings on “The Role of the United Nations” in today’s world by way of a memorandum to the Secretary-General, Mr. vanden Heuvel said the Collegium had done a noble service in laying out an agenda of concern in the message that would be delivered to the Secretary-General.  What was being proposed was an agenda deserving the attention of nations, individuals and institutions, so that all could move and work together to accomplish it.

According to literature provided to correspondents, the Collegium’s members and associate members are scientists, philosophers, present and former heads of State and government, recognized for their probity, expertise and dedication to ethical values.  It has two fundamental obligations:  to use the experience of its members to help crystallize an agenda that the world should focus on; and, second, to focus on some of those problems in the hope that timely action can be taken.

Partly because of the recent events in Iraq and partly because of past experiences in such places as East Timor, Cambodia, Liberia, and Namibia it should be recognized that the United Nations had a particular facility and capacity to help in nation-building, said Mr. vanden Heuvel.  The Secretary-General, thus, needed all possible support regarding the role of the United Nations in nation-building.  Also, given the difficulties encountered in attempts to reform the United Nations, the team agreed that reform was not possible without the consensus of the majority of its members.

It was the collegium’s belief that much more work remained to be done before reform could be achieved, in the absence of amending the United Nations Charter itself, he continued.  However, the team also believed that what it had laid out in its memorandum could be accomplished without amending the Charter.

The memorandum could not have come at a more crucial moment in history after the death of Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello and a few days before the second anniversary of the 11 September terrorism attacks on the United States, said Mr. Hessel.  Now, more than ever, the world needed a strong United Nations that was accepted not only by its members, but also by international public opinion as being the only real way of confronting today’s ever-increasing challenges.

In response to questions, Mr. Hessel said the Collegium was neither trying to create a new United Nations, nor attempting to further any utopian ideas on a new United Nations Charter, because it realized that to reform the Charter was much more difficult today, than to implement it.  Mr. Rocard explained further that the Collegium had only the common dream of a more peaceful and more civilized world.  It had “no dream” at all on the ways and means.

“But, if in 20 years we have contributed to the large extension of democracy around the Mediterranean or in Asia and in Africa, in consolidation of the democracy which began in Africa, we will already have done a good job and I don’t think this calls for an immediate modification of the Charter”, Mr. Rocard said.

Commenting on the role of the developing world in the context of the future of the United Nations in the proposed framework, Mr. vanden Heuvel said the Collegium recognized that the United Nations was one of the most effective instruments ever created and could, in fact, help the developing world realize its dreams and its possibilities.  One of the United Nations great successes had been the transition from the colonial era to an era of independent nations, accomplished in large measure without violence.  Anybody representing the world had to have a balance between power and the representation of the peoples of the world.

Those who created the United Nations understood that the nations that had “important” power -- industrial and military power -– had a special responsibility to the Charter of the United Nations and a special responsibility to help the developing nations.  He believed that the United Nations was the best instrument to carry that out.

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