Lesotho

I should like, Mr. President, to extend to you our very warm congratulations on your election to lead the business of the General Assembly at its fifty-third session. Your election bears testimony to the very high esteem in which we hold you and your country. You can count on our unstinting support and cooperation during the year that lies ahead. Through you, Sir, permit me also to salute your very worthy predecessor, Mr. Hennadiy Udovenko, the former Foreign Minister of Ukraine, for the illustrious manner in which he led the General Assembly at its fifty-second session. In your address at the opening of this session, Mr. President, you challenged us to focus our attention on the major issues of our time. The list of issues that you provided was comprehensive, but I wish here to highlight only some of them — without passing judgment on their relative worth. The Secretary-General has submitted a report on causes of conflict in Africa at the request, last year, of the Security Council. It is an excellent report, for which the Secretary-General should be commended. The recent events in Lesotho, to a large measure, fit in with the Secretary-General?s diagnosis. Nothing could be closer to the truth than the Secretary-General?s observation that “Where there is insufficient accountability of leaders, lack of transparency in regimes, inadequate checks and balances, non-adherence to the rule of law, absence of peaceful means to change or replace leadership, or lack of respect for human rights, political control becomes excessively important, and the stakes become dangerously high”. (A/52/871, para. 12) Our recent experience in Lesotho is that instability is likely to arise even when Governments are deeply conscious of the need to abide by those prescriptions, if other political players are not similarly committed to them. On 23 May 1998, a general election was held in Lesotho under the management of an Independent Electoral Commission established with the full cooperation of all political parties. The Commission, a new institution in the history of Lesotho, was without previous experience. The elections were observed by 400 local and 150 international observers, including observers from the United Nations, all of whom declared them free and fair. Soon afterwards, however, three of the 12 opposition parties alleged that the Lesotho Congress for Democracy had won through fraud. Vice-President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa attempted to mediate in this dispute, and all the parties agreed to an audit of the 9 election results, conducted by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), in order to determine the existence or otherwise of fraud. The Commission of Investigation, which came to be known as the Langa Commission after its Chairman, Justice Pius Langa of South Africa, found that, while there had been administrative irregularities, there had been no fraud and the elections could not be said not to represent the will of the electorate. But even in the absence of fraud, the opposition parties still insisted on the resignation of the Government, the dissolution of Parliament and the establishment by the King of a government of national unity in which all the major parties would be equally represented. In an attempt to achieve this, the opposition parties perpetrated lawlessness, which resulted in an army mutiny, the forced and illegal dismissal of the command structure by junior officers, and open support by those junior officers for the opposition-led civil unrest in preparation for an illegal takeover of the Government. It was in this state of virtual coup d?état that the Lesotho Prime Minister appealed to the Presidents of Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe for military assistance to restore law and order and to enforce discipline in the Lesotho army. The responsibility was shouldered by the SADC member States Botswana and South Africa on behalf of the entire SADC. While these SADC troops were busy neutralizing the army mutiny and the virtual coup, the supporters of opposition parties embarked on a campaign of arson and looting in the central business district of the capital, Maseru, which later spread to other towns of the country. Although the full extent of the damage to business infrastructure is not yet known with certainty, preliminary estimates put it at above $200 million. For a small least developed country like Lesotho, such an amount is a heavy burden on an already fragile economy. The Government of Lesotho therefore appeals to the international community for assistance in rebuilding the infrastructure that has been so wantonly destroyed. We have already made contacts with the World Bank for a more precise assessment of our needs in this regard, and once these are known we shall be making a more focused appeal. Above and beyond the assistance with physical reconstruction, it is quite clear that the type of assistance which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and some bilateral donors were giving to reorient the minds of our army has not yet had a lasting impact. Lesotho has had a sad history of an army that was deliberately filled with supporters of one political party when that party was in power for over 20 years. As a consequence, our army has had great difficulty in submitting to the authority of a new master. Recent events have underscored the urgent need to overhaul the Lesotho army, as was done under international supervision in Haiti. Furthermore, all political parties need to submit themselves to the discipline and responsibilities that are demanded of them as actors in the democratic system. This includes the acceptance of defeat in general elections. Otherwise, those politicians who deliberately undermine the democratic culture should be exposed and officially branded by the international community as criminals, as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has done with Savimbi in Angola. Since 1993, Lesotho has been embarked on a programme of entrenching democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. The current crisis has amply demonstrated how difficult it is to make people whose only preoccupation is the achievement of personal political power participate in this process. The Government of Lesotho is grateful for the support of the countries of SADC in once again reversing a coup in Lesotho. SADC has given practical expression to what has become an all-Africa commitment to the abhorrence of military overthrow of legitimate Governments, such as occurred recently in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The extent of recent lawlessness in Lesotho has underscored the need to control the illicit possession of small arms and light weapons. In Lesotho recently, young people, many of them in their teens, were able to intimidate law-abiding citizens with guns and to force them to surrender Government property and to evacuate Government offices and private industrial enterprises. Small arms and light weapons have become so commonplace that they have encouraged habitual recourse to violence, thus threatening the cohesion and well-being of many societies. These low-tech, inexpensive and easy to use weapons — numbering hundreds of millions — cause as much as 90 per cent of the deaths in contemporary conflicts. Their proliferation contributes to violence, loss of life and property, social instability, the disruption of economic development and the threat to democratic governance. 10 During the cold war, arms control and disarmament efforts focused exclusively on major weapons systems, such as tanks, jet fighters and nuclear weapons. Although this has begun to change in recent years, there are still no international standards regarding small arms. Their production, trade and possession remain essentially unmonitored and unregulated. Lesotho therefore strongly supports current efforts to find an international solution to these problems posed by the unregulated proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons. The Government of Lesotho is understandably disappointed that its efforts to build and consolidate a culture of democratic governance seem to have suffered a setback, especially this year, when we are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, Lesotho will not be deflected from the path it has chosen of moving forward to truly democratic governance in which all citizens enjoy their right to political freedom and personal happiness. Fifty years ago, the peoples of the world set down standards for their security, happiness and well-being in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the intervening period, the international community and the United Nations have made great strides in the area of human rights. Of great significance are the major human rights treaties which have been adopted and which include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The battle to make human rights truly universal has regrettably not been won decisively, although there is no doubt that we are on the way to achieving that goal. We therefore need to redouble our efforts to pursue it. In the post-cold-war era, attention has unfortunately been focused almost exclusively on civil and political rights, with less attention being paid to economic, social and cultural rights. That development is a human right is often forgotten. Such a narrow approach misses the important link that exists between the enjoyment of civil and political rights and development. The Declaration on the Right to Development was intended to emphasize such a link but, regrettably, this latest of recognized rights has yet to be factored into our human rights programmes. As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no topic is of greater significance than the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court. Over 50 years ago, this idea was conceived out of the realization that domestic courts are often inadequate to deter crimes under international law, resulting in impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses. The adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court less than three months ago was the culmination of a long battle fought by courageous men and women for justice. The Statute is therefore our proud bequest to future generations. Over the years of negotiation on the Rome Statute, Lesotho always affirmed the need for a court in which we could have faith: an effective, independent and impartial Court that enjoyed universal acceptance. In order to achieve this, a number of thorny and sensitive issues had to be resolved over the five-week period of the Rome Conference. While not everything that we had hoped for has been included in the Statute, we believe that the positive aspects of the Statute far outweigh its negative elements. If, in the years ahead, there is to be greater respect for international law and international humanitarian law, all States will have to take the International Criminal Court seriously and adopt measures to ensure the coming into operation of the court without delay. We thus urge the Secretary-General to convene the Preparatory Commission in early 1999 to begin work on the rules of procedure and evidence, guidelines for the court on the elements of crimes, the headquarters agreement and other instruments. We also call upon the Assembly to endorse the Rome Statute and urge States to ratify it in sufficient numbers so that the court can start its work. Lesotho remains ready to work towards the accomplishment of these tasks. During the current session of the General Assembly and the twelfth summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, recently held in Durban, South Africa, the concern of the international community has focused on the phenomenon of globalization, an issue of particular importance for the least developed countries. The liberalization of trade regimes and the promotion of an open and secure multilateral trading system are central requirements for the promotion of economic development. While the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations has resulted in significant improvements in market access conditions for the majority of countries of the world, the expected gains for the least developed countries from the stimulus to world trade arising from the Uruguay Round are less clear. These countries continue to face significant obstacles to market access for their exports. There are still tariff peaks and tariff escalations against their major export items. Furthermore, 11 some standards are too difficult to meet due to the differences in technological advancement. The problems enumerated above attest to the importance of the United Nations in shaping a world of peace, prosperity and development. A question that has plagued the United Nations since its founding has been that of disarmament, and in particular nuclear disarmament. Nuclear weapons pose a serious threat to all humanity and its habitat, yet they remain in the arsenals built up during the height of the cold war. Their time has passed, yet assertions of their utility continue. Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of States which insist that these weapons provide security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory, unstable and untenable. The possession of nuclear weapons by any State is a constant stimulus to other States to acquire them. For these reasons, it is a central reality that nuclear weapons diminish the security of all States. The recent testing of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As much as we deplore the measures taken by these two countries, we must not lose sight of the fact that they have been led down that path by the resistance of nuclear-weapons States to fulfil their obligations towards negotiating in good faith for a total ban of all nuclear weapons. We call upon all nuclear- weapons States to respond to the wishes of all humanity to ban nuclear weapons from human experience by negotiating a binding treaty for such a ban. Lesotho supports the efforts of the Secretary-General towards reforming the United Nations Organization. There is general agreement that the Security Council must be made more democratic and its working methods more transparent. For the great majority of States, the United Nations is an indispensable tool for the realization of our dream for collective security and development. We are therefore troubled that the efforts to reform the Organization are bogged down in the most crucial area, namely, the reform of the Security Council. The Charter has conferred on that organ the most important responsibility for international peace and security. The Working Group on Security Council reform has been working for almost five years without reaching a conclusion. The time has now come for a negotiating text to be prepared and for negotiations to commence. Otherwise, the whole exercise will turn into a charade in which all will lose interest. The scourge of conflicts in Africa continues to undermine efforts towards economic and social development in that continent. Lesotho is deeply concerned by the failure of UNITA to comply with the agreed timetable for the resolution of the conflict in Angola, in accordance with the provisions of the Lusaka Protocol and the relevant Security Council resolutions. We thus call on the international community, and the Security Council in particular, to assume its responsibility to apply firmly and resolutely the measures decreed by the Council, especially within the context of resolutions 1135 (1997) and 1173 (1998). Lesotho, as a member of SADC, supports the resolution of the recent SADC summit in Mauritius, which held Mr. Savimbi accountable for the resumption of hostilities in that country and thus declared him a political criminal. The situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is another source of concern to the Government of Lesotho. This situation has seriously jeopardized efforts at consolidating peace, security and stability in the Great Lakes region. Lesotho supports all efforts aimed at promoting a climate of peace and security in that region, including the SADC initiative as carried out by Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. Finally, we remain disappointed by the slow pace of efforts at finding a lasting solution to the long-running problem of Western Sahara. We therefore appeal to all parties concerned to respect and commit themselves to the letter and spirit of the United Nations settlement plan, within the context of the Houston accord, so that the people of Western Sahara can at last join the rest of the international community as a peaceful, democratic and stable society as we move across the threshold of the next millennium.