We are starting this sixty-third
session of the General Assembly under the wise and
inspiring leadership of our President,
Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. We rely on your
experience and your political acumen, Sir, and I wish
you every success in your work. At the same time, I
wish to express our sincere gratitude to your
predecessor, Mr. Srgjan Kerim, President of the
General Assembly at its sixty-second session, who
guided the Assembly with great sensitivity and
determination. I also wish to pay tribute to the
Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, whose tireless
efforts are guiding the United Nations at this turbulent
time.
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Indeed, we live in a turbulent world at a turbulent
time. We need real answers to the accumulated global
problems. The era of optimism generated by
globalization has come to an end. The eruption of the
financial crisis in recent weeks has removed the last
shred of doubt about that. The world needs real
answers to big questions.
If you asked me to identify the key policy
requirement for the United Nations today with a single
concept — and in one word — my answer would be
this: we live at a time requiring transformation.
Transformation should be the key idea of policymaking
to guide United Nations action. The United Nations
should look to policies with a transformational
potential and capable of producing transformational
effects in the not-too-distant future. Obviously, that
ambitious and general proposition begs further
questions. Is the United Nations capable of generating
social, political and economic transformation? Does
the United Nations of today know what is the main
area for the necessary strategic transformation? What
needs to be done, by way of transformation, in the
most sensitive area of the United Nations mandate, in
the area of the maintenance of international peace and
security? Allow me to address those questions one by
one.
First, is the United Nations capable of generating
social and political transformation worldwide? The
United Nations has demonstrated such an ability in
various areas of its work in the past. United Nations
action in the field of human rights offers an excellent
example. Later this year we will celebrate the sixtieth
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and it does not take much effort to realize how
much the change that has occurred in those 60 years
owes to the transformational energy of human rights.
Consider this: at the time of the adoption of the
Universal Declaration in 1948, the world had
experienced one of its most traumatic moments. The
Second World War was barely over, its aftershocks
were still strongly felt, and much of the world was
physically destroyed. Stalinist oppression was the
dominant feature of the Soviet Union and of a large
part of Europe. In Asia and Africa, large populations
suffered under the yoke of colonialism. The system of
apartheid was being introduced in South Africa. Yet,
that was the time when the authors of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights outlined an optimistic
vision of a just society and a better world. Human
rights were the genuinely transformational idea of the
time and that idea has guided social change and
development ever since.
The world of today, while still far from ideal, is
substantially better than the world of 1948. Human
rights have triumphed in many parts of the world and
are making steady progress in others. Many of the
oppressive systems have ended in the dustbin of
history. The remaining ones are likely to follow.
Democracy has progressed globally and is today the
way of life of more people than ever before.
Obviously, violations of human rights still persist,
as reported by the United Nations experts and by non-
governmental organizations. Some of the causes of
violations, such as racial discrimination, are persistent
and take place in new forms. New issues of human
rights have also arisen. Concerns related to security
and counter-terrorism seem to have contributed to a
diminished care for human rights in some societies.
The abhorrent practice of torture has gained a degree of
acceptance, which should be a cause for serious
concern for all those who take human rights seriously.
Armed conflicts continue to produce atrocities and
massive violations of human rights.
Those phenomena must be met with resolute
counteraction. Human rights institutions need to be
strengthened and supported. Human rights education
deserves higher priority. The principle of the
responsibility to protect must be given real meaning
and real teeth through diplomatic and other action. The
International Criminal Court has to be accepted and
made effective as the key institution for punishing
perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity
and genocide. Violations of human rights have to be
combated wherever they occur.
But in addition, there is an even more
fundamental reality that affects the actual enjoyment of
human rights by all. The Universal Declaration
proclaimed, in its article 28, that everyone is entitled to
a social and international order in which their human
rights can be fully realized. The authors of the
Declaration realistically envisaged the long-term nature
of the effort for human rights. Guided by that spirit, the
General Assembly adopted, in 1986, its Declaration on
the Right to Development, a right which became
recognized as universal at the World Conference on
Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993. That was a
significant and realistic recognition of the intrinsic link
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between two fundamental human aspirations: the one
for human freedom and the other for human
development. In subsequent years, the United Nations
also developed a comprehensive understanding of what
development is and what it means in our era. That
understanding was elaborated at a series of global
conferences in the 1990s and summarized in the year
2000 in the form of the agreement on global
development goals.
The vision exists and practical progress, while
still uneven, is visible. The high-level meeting on
Africa last Monday strengthened the existing global
consensus about the immediate priorities for Africa,
including more effective financing for development.
The panel discussions on the Millennium Development
Goals tomorrow will be an opportunity to discuss the
key issues of today, in particular those emerging from
the current food crisis. I also hope that the proposal of
the Secretary-General for a summit to consider
progress in the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals in 2010 will gain wide support.
Those and other discussions also help in
answering my second question: does the United
Nations know the strategic direction in which the
transformational effort must be concentrated today?
Yes, the Millennium Development Goals are part of the
answer, but it is already clear that global
development — now and in the foreseeable future —
will vitally depend on the preservation of our natural
environment and, in particular, on how we address the
problems of energy and global warming. The battle for
our common, global future will be won — or lost — on
the environmental front, and that is where the main
transformational effort has to take place. There is no
time to lose.
Earlier this year, the European Union, under the
presidency of my country, Slovenia, adopted a plan of
activities to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
Yesterday, President Sarkozy of France, the current
President of the European Council, reiterated the
European Union commitment to the success of the Bali
road map and the Copenhagen conference to be held
next year. In the meantime — and I wish to emphasize
this — progress must be made at the conference in
Poznan, Poland, and in the process leading to the
Copenhagen conference and to the final global
agreement.
But those efforts will succeed only if an adequate
partnership is established among the key economic and
political players. Partnership between the European
Union, the United States, Japan, China, India and the
Group of 77 countries is essential. The existing
environmental challenges call for a transformational
approach to the way the world consumes energy, the
way it develops technology and the way it pursues
development. Incremental change will not do. Global
cooperation is essential. Obviously — and I would
underline this — the responsibilities of the developed
and the developing countries are not the same. They
are differentiated. But the world as a whole has to
move ahead and the United Nations has to get the
direction right. Transformation is the order of the day.
My third question relates to the maintenance of
international peace and security and the necessary
transformation in that area. Allow me to state right at
the outset that there is a serious need for
transformation of the existing institutions in the field
of international security.
The international security landscape today offers
a mixed picture. After the end of the cold war, there
were moments of high hopes and moments of deep
disappointment. There were successes and failures,
including the failure to prevent genocide. But we also
have to point out that the overall number of armed
conflicts has been declining for more than a decade
now. That is an encouraging development indeed, and
it is in no small measure due to the contribution of the
United Nations, which has steadily increased its
experience and its capacity in peacekeeping, post-
conflict peacebuilding and, to some extent, preventive
diplomacy. The role of the Secretary-General has been
strengthened in all those areas.
The progress made so far has established a degree
of confidence in the capacity of the international
security structures and their key players to cooperate
and, even more, to work in partnership for the
maintenance of international peace and security.
However, it appears that the confidence developed thus
far is still fragile and that remnants of the cold war
mentality are still in existence. Further efforts are
therefore needed. Those efforts, in my opinion, involve
two basic sets of tasks.
The first set of tasks relates to the development of
partnerships to address the key security issues, in
particular those in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the
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Balkans and several regions of Africa. In all those
areas, there has been a degree of success in
establishing cooperation and partnership among the
key regional and global players working for peace.
Models of concerted diplomacy such as the one
established to deal with the issues of North Korea can
and should inspire preventive diplomacy and
peacemaking in other parts of the world.
The second set of tasks is equally urgent.
Immediate consideration has to be given to a
transformation of the existing security structures.
Reform of the Security Council is long overdue.
Incremental improvements of its working methods,
while welcome, are far from sufficient. The time is ripe
for changes in the Council’s structure. I believe that the
membership of the Security Council should be
expanded, and that that should be done in three
directions. First, there should be six additional
permanent members from every region of the world.
Secondly, there should be an additional category of
non-permanent members with a more frequent rotation,
six in any particular composition of the Security
Council, and they should be elected in accordance with
a formula to be determined by the General Assembly
and alternate every second two-year term. Thirdly, the
remaining eight non-permanent members would be
elected in accordance with the principle of equitable
geographic distribution. This three-point idea means
that the total size of the reformed Security Council
would not exceed 25 members; it would be a 25-
member Council. It would be a more representative
Council and, I believe, a more effective one.
I offer those ideas on reform of the Security
Council to you, Mr. President, to use in the coming
efforts for Council reform. It is widely accepted that
that work needs to progress towards a successful
conclusion. Success in Council reform would represent
a key contribution to the transformation of the
international security architecture. Together with other
major projects of the United Nations, it would
constitute a significant contribution to the
improvement of the world.
Allow me to conclude. Is all of this new? In a
certain sense, yes, because some of the specific tasks
and specific projects are new. But more deeply, the
answer is that all of this has to do with continuity. The
United Nations has, from its inception, represented the
hope for and the promise of an improved world. Let us
not betray that hope and let us live up to that promise.
Let us work for transformation wherever necessary. Let
us make this era the finest hour of the United Nations.