It is a great honour for
me to speak to the Assembly today, 20 years after the
admission of Liechtenstein to the United Nations.
Membership of the United Nations is one of the
cornerstones of our foreign policy and the central
platform for global diplomatic contacts. A strong
United Nations, with a strong General Assembly, is a
matter of self-interest to us.
It is therefore a special pleasure, Sir, to welcome
you in the presidency of the Assembly. We look
forward to working under your leadership. You have
already shown wise leadership by placing this general
debate under the broad theme of global governance, the
discussion most urgently needed in the General
Assembly, which is the main deliberative body of the
Organization.
The very purpose of the Charter was in fact to
establish a system of global governance, with the
United Nations at its centre. Today, we must ask
ourselves: Is the United Nations still at the centre of
global governance? How does it relate to a number of
other rising actors in the ever more crowded field of
international relations? How can we improve global
governance so that it better serves our peoples?
There can be no doubt, to our mind, that global
governance can only be effective if it is truly global.
That means global not only in reach, but also in
participation. A system where a few make decisions
that everyone else is expected to implement would be
not only be unjust, but also ineffective. Past experience
has shown time and again that multilateral action can
be very effective when it is based on a broad political
consensus, which is not the same as giving everyone a
right to veto.
A strong fundamental agreement among States is
the only way to ensure that decisions are effectively
put into practice. The place where such decisions are
possible, where genuine political consensus can be
forged, is and remains the United Nations. We
therefore have to invest in the United Nations to make
the improvements that are required, instead of looking
for solutions outside.
It is with this general philosophy in mind that we
view efforts by different groupings, most prominently
the Group of 20, to discuss questions of global reach.
We certainly welcome the fact that the largest
developed nations and the most powerful emerging
Powers gather to discuss matters that affect the global
economic and financial architecture.
The recent crisis has illustrated how important —
indeed, indispensable — common action by the Group
of 20 in such situations can be. And more is to be done
to address the systemic issues that led to the crisis in
the first place. We will continue to support those
activities. At the same time, inclusion and participation
should be placed higher on the Group’s agenda, and its
work should be better integrated with that of the United
Nations system. The quality of the discussions within
the Group of 20 and the effectiveness of their outcomes
would greatly benefit from an approach based on
“variable geometry” — bringing in the views of all
those who are directly affected by the subject matter
under consideration.
We are therefore an active member of the Global
Governance Group, coordinated by Singapore, which
seeks to promote the principles of inclusion and
participation. We are grateful to the hosts of the next
two Group of 20 summits, Korea and France, for their
constructive exchange with Global Governance Group
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Ministers yesterday here in New York. We look
forward to continuing this dialogue.
We welcome the work of the Group of 20 and
other groupings that seek to contribute to global
solutions. At the same time, they can only deal with a
limited number of issues. And, more importantly, they
can never be a substitute for genuine multilateralism,
which must continue to take place inside the United
Nations. But we can only safeguard this central place
of the United Nations if we can put it to use to find
effective solutions to problems such as climate change,
disarmament and other areas where results have been
insufficient. If we continue to underachieve in the
United Nations framework, we must not be surprised if
solutions are sought elsewhere.
The United Nations continues to be the centre of
global governance in the area of peace and security, the
domain of the Security Council. The Council has the
power to make decisions that are binding upon Member
States, including on the use of force. This is the
strongest tool available in international law. Yet its
effectiveness is increasingly undermined by the
perception that decisions of the Council lack the
required political legitimacy.
A central ingredient of that perception is the
Council’s composition. Everybody agrees that it no
longer reflects today’s geopolitical realities. And yet an
agreement to change it has been elusive for well over a
decade. We believe that there could be a middle ground
in the negotiations: the creation of a new category of
seats allowing States to serve permanently on the
Council, if the wider membership elects them to do so,
on a recurrent basis. It seems to us the only logical
approach towards a compromise, given the various
positions around the table.
But the principal question may well be one of
timing. If States increasingly believe that the Security
Council can only be reformed in a climate of serious
institutional crisis, a view with which we disagree, then
we must reconsider the wisdom of trying to find a
negotiated solution at this time.
Of no less importance for the legitimacy of the
Council’s work is the way in which it arrives at its
decisions. Addressing the way in which the Council
conducts its work is one of the biggest governance
challenges we face in the United Nations system. If the
Council is indeed to carry out its functions on behalf of
the entire membership, as mandated by the Charter, it
must be ready to listen to those it represents —
especially when they are directly affected by its work.
The group of small five countries, of which we
are a member, has over the last few years initiated a
process of reflection and gradual improvements that is
very much in the interests of the Council itself. We
look forward to continuing this process, with both the
permanent and the elected members of the Council.
The role of the United Nations in global
governance depends not only on the performance of its
intergovernmental organs, but to a great degree also on
the performance of the Secretariat. This is an enormous
responsibility on the shoulders of all our international
civil servants, especially the Secretary-General himself.
We saw a few years ago how much damage this
Organization can suffer from management failures and
system breakdowns in the areas of procurement and
accountability. A number of important reforms have
been undertaken since. Most notably, we have
strengthened internal oversight and accountability. But
can we be confident that we have now appropriately
managed the risk of another system breakdown in the
future? Clearly, more needs to be done in this area, in
particular to fully implement some of the management
reform measures already taken.
The strongest emerging tool in our system of
global governance is the dimension of justice. We have
made tremendous normative and institutional progress
in this area in the recent past. At the same time, we are
struggling with the challenge to reconcile peace and
justice in particular. How can we balance the dignity of
victims and the justice owed to them with the
likelihood of preventing further crimes? That is a
choice nobody will want to face.
But experience shows that there is no
contradiction between peace and justice over the long
run. And there is a broad international consensus that
there can be no impunity for the worst crimes under
international law, and therefore no amnesties.
Given the massive crimes committed against
civilian populations all over the world, this common
stance against impunity is more important than ever. It is
embodied by the International Criminal Court, whose
effects are felt across the globe. Most important, though,
it is also leading States to make greater efforts to fulfil
their obligations to investigate and prosecute domestically.
These are developments of truly historic dimensions.
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We are only at the beginning of our efforts to
integrate the justice dimension into our overall
governance structure. This integration will not be a
quick or easy process. But we must not shy away from
these discussions, and we have to approach them with
both an open mind and a determination to stand firmly
on the principle of fighting impunity.
The challenges in global governance are
numerous and interlinked. The governance architecture
reflected in the Charter gives us the possibility of
addressing them. It is up to us to make the necessary
political investments to make this system work for our
peoples.