Since we
gathered here a year ago, the world has experienced
many serious challenges. Natural disasters, climate
change, violent conflicts, terrorism, human rights
violations, rising food and energy prices and financial
turmoil have affected the lives of people worldwide.
Dealing with crisis after crisis is a daunting task.
Without the United Nations, it would in many respects
be a hopeless one.
Indeed, it is the United Nations that gives hope to
people around the world and it is the United Nations
that gives political leaders a unique tool to solve
problems and to settle conflicts. It was created more
than sixty years ago, under the still-fresh impression of
the horrors of the Second World War and with a strong
focus on matters of peace and security. Today, the
world is a different place, and yet we must keep
turning to the United Nations to solve our problems
together and to protect those most in need and danger.
We applaud the Secretary-General and the
dedicated United Nations personnel for their hard
work. Nevertheless, the Organization is sometimes
mired in bureaucracy, inefficiency and political
infighting. But the blame falls mainly on us, the
Member States. It is our responsibility to adapt the
United Nations to today’s challenges and to make it the
best possible organization to that end. We must equip
the Organization with the resources it needs and make
the necessary adjustments in its structure.
In recent years, the regular budget of the
Organization has grown in a completely lopsided way.
Core activities, such as conflict prevention, the
promotion of human rights and the rule of law,
humanitarian assistance and support for economic and
social development, are subject to an artificial policy
of zero budget growth and must be financed largely
through voluntary contributions. At the same time,
States have come to routinely accept massive increases
in peacekeeping bills. It is high time that we shift our
focus from fighting fires to preventing their outbreak.
We therefore fully support the efforts of the Secretary-
General to enhance the conflict prevention and
mediation capacities of the Secretariat.
The session just concluded brought about a
sobering realization that some of the reform processes
initiated at the 2005 World Summit have effectively
come to a halt. Others have yet to be the subject of
extremely difficult negotiations. We believe that quick
progress is necessary on a number of management
reform issues, from human resource management to
accountability and internal justice. We will also
continue our work to achieve a more legitimate and
more effective Security Council. To that end, we will
step up our efforts to enhance the involvement and
access of those who are not members of the Council.
Liechtenstein is a strong believer in
multilateralism and in a rule-based international
system. Our national sovereignty is grounded in
international law and its observance, and we are
therefore strongly committed to the rule of law. Those
principles were chief among our motivations for
joining the United Nations 18 years ago, and they have
been high among our priorities as a Member ever since.
The rule of law has gained much prominence in
the work of the United Nations over the past few years,
but it has yet to take the central place that is its due.
The most precious asset of this Organization remains
the legitimacy that it lends to decisions of the
international community. In fact, the United Nations
symbolizes the rule of law in international relations.
We must preserve that strength and therefore also
promote the rule of law within United Nations organs,
including the Security Council, and their decision-
making.
Together with other countries, we have expressed
long-standing concerns about the current practice of
the Security Council regarding sanctions listing and
delisting, in particular in the area of counter-terrorism.
There should be no doubt that we fully support the
sanctions regimes, which constitute powerful tools for
the maintenance of international peace and security,
but we also believe that the procedures applied must be
in accordance with basic international standards of due
process. Recent court decisions indicate that our
reservations are well founded, and we hope that our
proposals will contribute to the improvement of the
system. We must avoid the impression that decisions of
the Security Council might be in violation of human
rights standards.
All of our countries, and the Security Council in
particular, are also called to task in the fight against
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impunity. Since the 1990s, the Council has adopted a
number of landmark decisions to enforce international
criminal law, including the decision to establish
international and mixed tribunals. The Council also has
an important role to play in connection with the
International Criminal Court, which deals with the
most serious crimes under international law. The
Council did so in adopting resolution 1593 (2005), and
it is essential that it continue to exercise responsibly its
powers under the Rome Statute.
Mr. Stratan (Republic of Moldova), Vice-
President, took the Chair.
The International Criminal Court is the most
important achievement in decades in the area of
international law. Now we must make it work in
practice and give it the necessary political support. The
success of the Court will be the yardstick in the fight
against impunity. If we want to win that fight, we must
show resolve by supporting the Court.
Years ago, the General Assembly adopted the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide, and the International Criminal
Court was given jurisdiction over that crime 50 years
later. The Convention was born of the desire to prevent
the recurrence of genocide, yet it failed to achieve that
purpose on several occasions following its adoption.
The rallying cry “Never Again!” can be used only so
often before it loses credibility. In that spirit, all of us
agreed to the concept of the responsibility to protect
when we met at the summit level three years ago. For
us and for many others, that was one of the most
significant gains achieved in the 2005 World Summit
Outcome, which was otherwise a mixed bag. Still, we
are struggling with the challenge to make the concept
widely understood and to apply it in practice.
The responsibility to protect is a narrow concept
that is limited to clearly defined cases of genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
It is based on the sovereign responsibility of States to
protect their own populations as well as the United
Nations Charter. We must maintain that conceptual
clarity and provide for consistent implementation of
the Summit decision.
In spite of the lofty aspirations expressed at the
2005 World Summit, we are still far from taking a
common approach to the development agenda, and the
challenges are growing rapidly. Climate change, the
food crisis, the energy crisis and the faltering
international financial system are just a few examples.
All those challenges hit particularly hard those who
already live in poverty, and they also threaten to
undermine the effectiveness of our development
cooperation. We therefore need a consensus on
financing for development that builds on the Monterrey
Consensus. Such an agreement will require significant
sacrifices and compromises on all sides, and it is sorely
needed to strengthen the development pillar of
multilateral cooperation.
Let me say in conclusion that we have always
stood and fought for a strong General Assembly. By
that, we do not mean an Assembly that develops an
antagonistic relationship with other organs of the
United Nations. We want an Assembly that is a forum
for meaningful and focused discussions on topics of
high relevance, followed by clear decisions and their
implementation. We hope that this session will allow us
to take a step in that direction.