Malaysia

I should like to congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly at its forty-ninth session. May I also express our appreciation to Ambassador Samuel Insanally of Guyana for having successfully guided the work of the General Assembly at its forty-eighth session and further enhanced its centrality. The cold war has ended, and totalitarianism has met its nemesis. At this very critical stage in history, we must seize the opportunity to redesign the international order so as to realize the aspirations of the global community. We must meet this challenge and collectively reconstruct a truly just order for our time and for the generations to come. Indeed, the global community has reached many significant milestones. More nations have agreed to resolve their disputes by peaceful means. South Africa has emerged from its political catharsis as a nation free of apartheid and with majority rule; Cambodia experienced free and democratic elections; and lasting peace in West Asia came closer to realization with the Israeli-Palestinian accords. However, the initial euphoria will be somewhat short-lived. The path ahead is strewn with uncertainties and pitfalls. The end of the cold war has yet to reward us fully with its promise of global peace and security. It has instead unleashed the demons of parochial nationalism, tribalism, religious fanaticism — as witnessed in the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia — tribal warfare in Rwanda and religious dissension in some countries. The North-South divide in wealth, power and control over resources is still too pronounced to be ignored, and the redistribution of global prosperity is far from being realized. The paramount challenge facing the global community today is to fulfil the promises made in recent years of systemic change in the global environment. This is to be achieved through sustained efforts in regard to economic development and through the strengthening of civil society and multilateral institutions. Development is the only secure foundation for global peace and security, for the origins of conflicts are often very deeply rooted in socio-economic deprivation and disparities. As for civil society, its growth into maturity requires the establishment of institutions for a stable and responsive social order, a democratic participatory arrangement as a means to channel political energy, and an environment in which culture can flourish. In all these areas, it is the people that matter — their freedom, security and development. All great traditions of mankind, East and West, concur in the sanctity of the human person, the family as a fundamental unit of society, and the primacy of moral and ethical values as a foundation of civilizations. The sanctity of the human person warrants the State’s protection of the inalienable rights of all to freedom, to participate in social, political and cultural processes and to optimize the potential of the human person through development. The rights of the individual must be safeguarded inasmuch as the stability of society cannot be compromised. It is within this framework that we conceive the restoration of human rights in any society, industrial or developing, as a continuing endeavour which we must never abandon. The promise made at the 1992 Rio Summit remains unfulfilled. If no increased official development assistance is forthcoming and the international target of 12 0.7 per cent is not met, this will represent a serious reneging on the Rio commitments, notwithstanding the Global Environment Facility. This will raise questions as to the commitment of the North to pledges made at major conferences. The World Summit for Social Development will take place next year, and what will be the value of assiduously negotiated documents when, as with the Rio Agenda 21, no real means are provided for their implementation? The recent International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting at Madrid highlighted the preoccupation of the major developed countries, often at a tangent from the needs and requirements of developing countries. At the Rio Summit, the developed countries declared that the tropical forests belonged to the whole world. It was maintained that these forests must always remain in order to maintain biological diversity and sustain ecological balance. Today, South-East Asia is covered in thick haze, adversely affecting the health of the people. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of virgin forest are burning, and valuable species are being lost. If indeed the tropical forest is the heritage of mankind, the responsibility for its protection must necessarily be collective. While the South-East Asian countries will take the necessary measures, we appeal to the global community, especially the richer members, to help us put out this fire on an urgent and priority basis. We regard the issue of global population as inseparable from the overall concern of development. Reductions in fertility mainly come about from investment in education and health care for women. While we share the fundamental objectives of the Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, we deplore the attempt to impose views without regard for the values of others. The peace dividend that we aspire to reap will not be realized without sustained growth in the global economy. However, growth prospects are often hampered by short- sighted policies and structural crises within the industrial economies. Viewed in this light, the popular call for macroeconomic stabilization should not be confined to the developing countries alone but instead should encompass both the developing and the industrial economies. The United Nations will soon commemorate its fiftieth year of existence. It would be uncharitable to ignore altogether the outstanding contributions made to humanity by this world body and its agencies. It has provided a platform for international cooperation in the fields of education, law, health, culture, economics, refugee relief and so on. But more significantly, it has, by its very existence, prepared the groundwork for a global order that would be truly democratic and multicultural. However, as we draw up the balance sheet of that era and contemplate the challenges of the twenty-first century, we must take into serious account our many limitations. Clearly, the United Nations as it exists today is unable effectively to deal with critical global issues. In the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina the Security Council remains paralysed in the implementation of its own resolutions. Should we also ask then: if the Council was ready to plunge into the Gulf crisis a few years ago, how can that be reconciled with the political timidity and clear absence of resolve to take effective action in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, even after the rejection of the so-called peace plan by the Serbs? Within the United Nations itself, the peace-keeping operations decided on by the Security Council provide no clear institutional structure for consultation, especially between non-Security-Council member troop-contributing countries and Security Council members. Yet the major Powers are resisting the urgent need for regular consultations between the Security Council and troop- contributing countries. While the situation in Somalia clearly reflected the need for some form of United Nations involvement, if not intervention, there have been other operations where even countries in the region have been totally opposed to United Nations involvement. My delegation, which has been deeply involved in United Nations peace-keeping operations, is concerned about operations which serve questionable interest groups. In the Security Council, while agreement between the Permanent Five has removed obstacles and facilitated settlements of disputes, the momentum behind the push to solve issues, if not properly checked and balanced by a process of accountability and non-selectivity of issues, may prove to be the undoing of the Council itself and of its moral authority. The role of major Powers, at least those that still deserve that status, is explicitly recognized in the Charter of the United Nations. However, many of us will not be willing to agree that these Powers should continue to be Charter-privileged to intervene wherever they wish and only when their own interpretations of peace and security warrant intervention. 13 Reform of the Security Council is necessary to reflect a more equitable geographical representation and towards making the Council more accountable to the general membership. Resistance from a few, whose own claims to being major Powers are becoming increasingly unpersuasive, should not be allowed to stand in the way of change. The issue is not one merely of enlarging the permanent membership but is one of enhanced participation. As the Council is unrepresentative, the first step towards reform must be to increase the numbers of non-permanent members. The veto, a creation of the power politics of the past, must be part of the total reform of the Council. The United Nations still represents the best recourse for developing countries to advance their interests in global affairs. Hence, we cannot allow the present uncertainties about the structure and role of the United Nations to remain unresolved. The United Nations, despite financial problems, cannot be allowed to become a mendicant of the power brokers at the expense of the principles of the Charter. The United Nations is the only institution capable of providing the vehicle for a comprehensive and integrated approach to peace and development. A revitalized Economic and Social Council has the potential to coordinate and, it is hoped, harmonize policies emanating from separate bodies such as the G-7 and the Bretton Woods institutions. In this regard priority must be accorded to an Agenda for Development which would provide the new framework for international development cooperation, the basis for a truly global partnership. The United Nations must also spearhead the struggle towards total and complete nuclear disarmament. The major Powers must not slacken the momentum towards effective non-proliferation and comprehensive test-ban treaties, critical to our collective resolve to halt the arms race and eliminate the utilization of weapons of mass destruction. Malaysia is prepared to make an early commitment to the goals of true globalism and, with a genuine mechanism reposing in the United Nations, to a new world system for international peace, security and development. We will continue to participate actively in the work of the multilateral system. International society has grown fourfold since 1945. The world is heterogeneous and multicultural. Meaningful discourse cannot be limited by the narrowness of parameters or an overbearing sense of cultural supremacy. We must strive to overcome and transcend unproductive polarizations. We all need to purge ourselves of the arrogance and myopia embedded in the old mind-set. We must learn to honour diversity of opinion and the multiplicity of world views and perspectives on life and society. None the less, they must not impede efforts to seek and implement genuine solutions for our common good and shared problems. We must accept the new realities, particularly the far-reaching systemic transformations in the global economy. The growing economic strength of East Asia and the newly industrializing countries will invariably bring about a new equation of power and responsibility in global affairs. We are fully aware of the many shortcomings inherent within East Asia; its remarkable economic performance is far from miraculous. Nevertheless, its experience portrays the path of change towards the qualitative search for excellence. Political stability was appropriated to garner efforts for economic growth which ultimately became the means to empower the people. Its strength, as in the case of Malaysia and other South-East Asian countries, is to accept and to experience the proposition that development and democracy are not mutually exclusive; and the exercise in responsible liberty by the ordinary people and their participation in public life does not necessarily result in social indiscipline and political instability. Development is enriched by multiculturalism where the practice of tolerance and moderation has turned religious and ethnic diversity from being a source of conflict into an ingredient for success. In a world torn by ethnic and religious passions and cultural prejudices, the experience of South-East Asia in multiculturalism may provide some clues for devising the means for peaceful coexistence and productive partnership among citizens of the global village. Dag Hammarskjöld, when reflecting on the state of the world almost 40 years ago, was perhaps less exuberant than we are at the prospects of globalism. With the memory of war still fresh, he said: “We must serve our apprenticeship and at every stage try to develop forms of international coexistence as far as is possible at the moment.” That apprenticeship has now been served. The United Nations must innovate and renew itself to address the challenges of the twenty-first century. It must progress and transform itself from being a theatre for the 14 concert of a few powerful nations into an effective and representative vehicle for global governance. And, beyond that, it must be animated by the spirit of justice and a bias towards compassion. In short, the very legitimacy of this international body hinges upon its realizing the ideal of becoming the conscience of the global community.