It is with great respect that
I stand at this rostrum for the first time as Austrian
Foreign Minister. Many eminent world leaders have
stood here before me and laid out their visions on
international challenges and crises. As many may be
able to tell, probably even from the last row, I look a bit
younger than most of the speakers before me. Indeed,
I believe I am the only person under the age of 30 who
has the privilege of speaking here this week. So while
I cannot speak from many years of experience, what I
can offer is the perspective of a young generation.
My generation is the post-Cold War generation.
The Iron Curtain collapsed 25 years ago, when I was 3
years old. For us in Europe, the years after the collapse
of the Iron Curtain were years filled with hope and new
opportunities. We could travel freely, study in foreign
countries and meet people from all over the world.
We grew up in a society where human rights were
respected, where the rule of law was a given, and where
religious freedom was practised. We communicate
without borders on Facebook and Twitter, we have our
entire lives stored on our smartphone, and we consume
the news online.
While the world after the Cold War offered
fascinating new opportunities, it also proved to be not
orderly at all, but quite messy and more uncertain than
many had predicted. Just two years after the Berlin Wall
came down, war returned to Europe in the Western
Balkan countries. Thankfully, the horrors came to an
end, and these countries now have a clear European
perspective. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, we
believed that the world would move forward and that
more and more people would benefit from the same
opportunities that my generation in Western Europe
enjoyed. But the world today seems to be shifting
into reverse. We are facing situations and horrors we
thought we had overcome many years ago. For young
people like myself, who learned about the Cold War
only through history books, it seems unbelievable that
the thinking in terms of confrontational blocs could
return to Europe.
The crisis in Ukraine is probably the most serious
challenge to peace and security Europe has had to face
in decades. In retrospect, it is easy to claim that this
development should have been predictable, and that we
should have foreseen it. But let us be honest. Who would
have predicted that, after three years of negotiations,
President Yanukovych would refuse to sign the
Association Agreement with the European Union? Who
would have predicted that the Maidan movement would
be strong enough to force him to leave the country?
And who would have predicted that Russia would react
by annexing Crimea and would even actively support
separatist movements?
We cannot accept that international law should
be violated and that recognized borders challenged in
Europe once again. At the same time, we need to find
a political solution that goes beyond a mere ceasefire.
We need a solution that offers the prospect of a free,
stable and united Ukraine, a Ukraine which enjoys
strong economic ties with both the European Union
and the Russian Federation. Let us not return to Cold
War thinking, where two blocs face each other. Our
political guideline must be to move from a policy of
“either Europe or Russia” to a logic of “both Europe
and Russia”.
Some people have claimed that Ukraine would
not be in this situation had it not given up its nuclear
weapons. This kind of thinking is dangerous. And we
have to ask ourselves, where would this lead us? As
long as nuclear weapons exist, the risk of their use, on
purpose or by accident, remains real. Let us be clear:
the use of nuclear weapons, more than any other human
action, has the potential to end life on this planet. And,
69 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let us not
forget that the humanitarian consequences of a single
nuclear explosion are terrifying and long-lasting. The
desire to prevent the humanitarian consequences of
nuclear weapons should unite us all. We therefore hope
that the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of
Nuclear Weapons in Vienna in December will mark a
real change of direction in international discussions on
nuclear weapons.
Looking beyond our region, we are currently
witnessing a further rise of extremism in the name of
religion, and a new development — foreign terrorist
fighters who come from Western countries and travel
to the Middle East in order to join the fight. There
is no time to lose; we must actively address what is
happening in northern Iraq, where the so-called Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant is attempting to wipe out
entire religious communities, where children are being
beheaded, mothers raped and fathers hanged because of
their beliefs.
In Europe, we estimate that there are thousands of
foreign fighters with European passports. In our case,
there are more than 140 people from Austria fighting
in the name of a so-called holy war. We all know that
the terrorist organizations operate worldwide. They
get their terrorist fighters by recruiting globally. They
finance themselves through global networks. They
buy arms and other resources on a global scale. And
they use, or rather abuse, the global communication
networks to their benefit.
How is it possible that terrorist organizations have
access to financial and economic resources that allow
them to operate so effectively? How is it possible that
we allow terrorist organizations to abuse the right to
freedom of expression by showing their barbaric acts
on social media? And how is it possible that they are
able to recruit new fighters within our societies?
We all, Governments and the private sector as well,
have a duty to develop preventive measures within our
societies to stop the flow of foreign terrorist fighters,
to cut off financial support to their organizations and
to put an end to the abuse of social media networks
by developing forms of voluntary self-restriction for
those networks. The adoption of Security Council
resolution 2178 (2014) this week was an important first
step, but now we must implement it. And we should
always remind ourselves that the battle lines in this
confrontation are not limited to Iraq or Syria. They run
through our own Western societies.
My generation in Austria was privileged to grow
up in freedom from fear and from want. There are, of
course, other stories to be told of young people growing
up in Afghanistan or the Central African Republic, for
example. Today half of the world’s population is under
25 years of age, and many of them lack adequate nutrition,
health care, education and jobs. All in all, those are not
great prospects for life. The work of the United Nations
on development is therefore crucial to lifting millions
of people out of poverty, helping the hungry and the
sick and educating new generations around the world.
The United Nations needs and deserves our support,
and I can assure the Assembly that Austria fully stands
behind the post-2015 development agenda.
But we must also ensure that respect for human
rights and the rule of law receive proper attention. Only
a society that respects the rights of its citizens can enable
each individual to develop his or her potential. We are
therefore very pleased to be organizing the Second
United Nations Conference on Landlocked Developing
Countries, to be held in Vienna in November. And we
are honoured that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has
agreed to attend the Conference.
I am aware that the list of challenges that the
international community and the United Nations are
facing is long: the situations in Iraq, Ukraine, Syria,
Gaza, the Central African Republic and Mali and the
outbreak of the Ebola disease, to name just a few. In
view of those challenges, the United Nations needs and
deserves our full support. I want to especially thank
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his tireless efforts
at the helm of the United Nations. I can assure him
that Austria remains committed to working actively
within the United Nations and its bodies to support his
work and to address our global challenges, whether as
peacekeepers, through our presidency of the Economic
and Social Council or as a member of the Human
Rights Council. We are particularly proud to host the
United Nations Office at Vienna, which has become
an Austrian landmark. Austria has a long tradition of
building bridges and serving as a place for international
dialogue. We will continue to do so in the future and to
offer our contribution to making the world a little bit
safer and better for the generations to come.