Finland

Let me offer Ambassador Razali my sincerest congratulation on his election as President of the General Assembly. This session will address many difficult and important questions. I am confident that under his experienced and wise leadership we shall achieve good and constructive results. I should also like to express the thanks and appreciation of my Government to the Secretary-General and to the many dedicated women and men in the Secretariat. Let me refer to the statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland on behalf of the European Union. My Government fully endorses that statement. As the United Nations enters its fifty-first year, one conclusion is self-evident: questions of peace, development and human rights can no longer be neatly separated. They interact, and nowhere more so than at the United Nations. Let me begin with human rights. There can be no sustainable peace in societies where the human rights of individuals are not respected or where their democratic aspirations are denied. Widespread violations of human rights, including the rights of minorities, breed instability and conflict. The United Nations is then, often too late, called upon to deal with them. There can be no sustainable development in societies where economic and social rights, as well as political rights, are flouted. Authoritarian rule is no answer to poverty or environmental degradation. The universality of human rights cannot be questioned. True, civilizations differ; societies differ. But that does not mean that cultural, religious, ideological or any other factors can be invoked as legitimate justifications for human rights violations. To do so is to deny the inherent equality of human beings. But adherence to general principles is not enough. The litmus test is, of course, practice. Here at the United Nations we must ask ourselves what we can do together to promote respect for human rights. I see at least three areas where the General Assembly can and should act. First, we must see to it that the United Nations mechanisms that have been created to promote and monitor respect for human rights are not impaired through lack of funds. The High Commissioner for Human Rights, his special rapporteurs and the human rights treaty bodies within the United Nations system are entitled to our support. The General Assembly should insist on the necessary funding. Secondly, we must help establish, in accordance with the conclusions of the Preparatory Committee, a permanent international criminal court to deal with flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and 3 human rights. I do not have to belabour the reasons why. One look at Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia is enough. Thirdly, we must ensure sustained and integrated follow-up of the United Nations conferences from Vienna to Istanbul, so as to implement fully the agreed programmes of action. Nationally, Governments must commit the resources necessary to make the agreed actions a reality. In the case of the Vienna and Beijing Conferences in particular, full and equal enjoyment of human rights by all women everywhere must be the first goal towards which the United Nations and all Governments must aspire. In Finland, women gained full political rights — the right to vote and, just as important, the right to be eligible for Parliament — as early as 1906; that is, 90 years ago. Finland thus became the very first country in the world where this was made possible. We have come a long way since then, but we still need to do better until, finally, women are just as equally empowered in Finnish society as men. I know that the same is true to varying degrees in other countries too. Children, whether girls or boys, are full-fledged subjects of human rights. Almost universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child has been achieved. States Parties must now ensure universal implementation too. The message from the recent Stockholm World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was clear: full implementation of children’s rights is also the best guarantee against sexual exploitation. The United Nations must now, along with Governments, follow up the commitments of Stockholm, and with vigour. Even the most democratic societies are vulnerable to conflicts, even to armed ones. We should therefore do our utmost to prevent them and, to this end, make full use of all means available to the international community. Finland believes in United Nations peacekeeping. We have participated for 40 years and stand ready to continue. The sheer complexity of modern-day conflicts has turned United Nations thinking towards comprehensive peace operations. Peacekeeping must be seen as a part of a comprehensive peace process. We welcome this approach. The civilian and military elements of a peace operation should operate in close cooperation. Artificial barriers separating the two should be eliminated right at the outset in devising the mandate for an operation. It is also important that peace operations be linked with longer-term peace-building efforts to promote stability and sustainable human development. Lessons have been learned the hard way in the past few years. United Nations peacekeepers are not suited for peace enforcement. That job should and can be entrusted by the Security Council to others — whether regional organizations or other outside ad hoc coalitions — if necessary. But these are exceptional cases. For the vast majority of conflicts, the United Nations will be the one called upon for peacekeeping. Even if the United Nations must be able to say no on occasions, the world Organization cannot shirk its responsibility. Moreover, when the United Nations acts, it should act on time and with the support of its members, including funding. Time is of the essence in responding to crises. Further development of the existing standby arrangements with Member States is the most practical way to enhance the rapid-reaction capability of the Organization. Therefore, Finland strongly supports the establishment of a rapidly deployable headquarters unit at the United Nations as soon as possible. Prevention, naturally, is better than cure. In peacekeeping as well, preventive deployment is an innovation that is working right now in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Finland is convinced that the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) operation is making a crucial contribution to stability in the whole region. It is a full-fledged operation in preventive diplomacy encompassing good offices, monitoring and human and institutional development, as well as troop deployment. That contribution, based on the present mandate, should continue until peace and stability in the whole region are better assured. This is the year of the nuclear-test ban. That is what the General Assembly demanded a year ago, and that is what the vast majority of the world’s nations has now agreed. I was proud to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear- Test-Ban Treaty for my country. That Treaty will strengthen the security of all of us, without exception. Banning nuclear-test explosions is a goal to which the international community has been committed for decades. The Treaty accomplishes that goal. At the same time, the Treaty is a step towards the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. 4 However, focusing on nuclear weapons is not enough. We also need to focus on weapons that maim and kill people today. Those weapons are conventional weapons, particularly landmines, other small arms and light weapons. The excessive accumulation and proliferation of small arms threaten to destabilize communities, countries and entire regions. A United Nations expert panel, on which my country is represented, is looking into the problem right now. Finland, for one, expects concrete recommendations on how to deal with this clear and present danger nationally, regionally and through the United Nations. The indiscriminate use of anti-personnel landmines is the most visible manifestation of the small-arms emergency. When they finally achieve peace, societies already ravaged by years of war are severely hampered in their reconstruction efforts by landmines that have been indiscriminately sown by the millions. A concerted international effort, led by the United Nations, is needed to assist in mine clearance. Demining should also be made an integral part of peacekeeping mandates, as was recently suggested by Germany and endorsed by the Security Council. It is increasingly clear, however, that in the end only a prohibition of inhumane and indiscriminate landmine use can bring a real solution. To be effective, such a solution must be legally binding, global and verifiable. As the first step, all States should adhere to and abide by the significantly strengthened landmine Protocol to the Convention on conventional weapons. I find it very hard to understand why two out of three United Nations Member States continue to remain outside that Convention. As a concurrent step Finland proposes the initiation of global negotiations on a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines altogether. A natural forum for such negotiations would be the single negotiating body for disarmament that the international community has at its disposal, namely, the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Finland will work actively for the inclusion of a ban on anti-personnel landmines in the negotiating agenda of the Conference on Disarmament when the Conference reconvenes in January. In assisting in the creation of conditions of stability and well-being, the United Nations has effective economic and social tools at its disposal. A review of how the United Nations does its business in this field is under way. The approval in May of the resolution on restructuring and revitalization of some areas in the Economic and Social Council sector was an encouraging sign. The yardstick in measuring United Nations impact on development should be how the Organization has been able to alleviate poverty and contribute to the improvement of the quality of life. The first priority now, as we see it, should be to assess the impact of the development activities of the United Nations system at the country level. We were pleased to note that last year the General Assembly initiated a process to that effect. I have two remarks in this regard. First, it is necessary to concentrate United Nations development activities on the poorest countries and the most vulnerable groups of society. Secondly, better integration of the United Nations at the country level would enhance efficiency. It would promote closer coordination between development activities, on the one hand, and humanitarian and peacekeeping activities on the other. The commitments made at recent United Nations conferences provide a comprehensive agenda for follow-up. One of the conferences, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, will be prominently present at this fifty-first session of the General Assembly. That Conference is a promising example of the capabilities of the United Nations. It has made global environmental concerns an everyday reality for all of us. The follow-up session next year will afford a unique opportunity to assess progress and review priorities. In my view, one of the emerging priorities would be a political commitment at the global level for sustainable forest management. Finland attaches great importance to the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, which has been established and which expects to submit concrete action- oriented recommendations to the special session. Before concluding my statement, I wish to refer to the statement issued by the Presidency of the European Union yesterday regarding the killings and violent incidents in the West Bank and Gaza. I want to state that my Government fully endorses that statement. On behalf of the Government of Finland, I appeal to the parties concerned to take every measure to restore calm and refrain from acts of violence and provocation. We also urge the parties to re-engage the peace process, which had already achieved such promising results. 5 In view of the Security Council’s primary role in the maintenance of international peace and security, the reform of the Council is of particular urgency. The discussions on this subject during the fiftieth session were thorough and useful. Convergence of views emerged on many important issues, yet on others, differences still remain. I believe that the time is now ripe to take a step forward and engage in real negotiations on a comprehensive reform of the Council. Meanwhile, in a few weeks we shall elect new non- permanent members to the present Security Council. As is well known, the five Nordic Countries give their full support to Sweden. I am confident that the other Member States will also recognize the merits of our neighbouring country. The Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mr. Dick Spring, when speaking on behalf of the European Union, underlined the obligation of all Member States to pay their arrears and their assessed contributions to the United Nations. Finland having been the first Member State to pay in full, on time and without conditions its assessed contribution to the regular budget of the United Nations in 1996, I feel it both my right and my duty to reiterate that appeal. The United Nations, we agree, needs renewed focus and streamlining. Let us now find the determination and will to proceed with the necessary reform.