From the Secretary-General
‘Saving Millions of Lives, Giving Hope to Billions’
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We meet at the end of an historic week for the United Nations. Progress has been made across a broader front than on any other occasion in the 60-year history of the Organization.
We did not achieve everything—after all, we were ambitious, and set the bar very high. But by tackling a range of issues together, we clearly achieved a great deal.
The Summit made breakthroughs in adopting strategies to fight poverty and disease, creating new machinery to win the peace in war-torn countries and pledging collective action to prevent genocide. It made real progress on terrorism, human rights, democracy, management of the Secretariat, peacekeeping and humanitarian response.
Now, we turn to a new task: to implement what has been agreed and to keep working to bridge differences that remain. The Summit outcome imposes responsibility on each of us individually and on all of us collectively. Many items must be completed during the sixtieth session of the General Assembly.
Let me remind you of some of the important items on our checklist, and what each of us must do to make sure that we tick them off, on time.
First, management reform. The Summit document gives the go-ahead for extensive management reforms to make the Secretariat more efficient, more effective and more accountable. I will start to drive that process forward.
To promote accountability, after commissioning a full and independent review of our oversight and management system, I will present a blueprint for an independent oversight audit committee. I will also submit very soon the details of the independent ethics office that I intend to create, which will protect whistleblowers and ensure more extensive financial disclosure.
Second, we must strengthen our human rights machinery. The High Commissioner for Human Rights will move ahead in implementing her plan of action, and you have pledged to assist her in strengthening her Office and doubling its budget. You have also agreed to strengthen the human rights treaty bodies.
Most important, you have agreed to create a Human Rights Council. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson needs your full support in conducting negotiations to finalize agreement on important details in the coming months. Let’s have a Human Rights Council that commands respect and achieves results.
Third, we must move forward on terrorism. The Summit contains, for the first time, an unqualified condemnation by all Member States of terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations, committed by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes”. As you have agreed, you must build on that simple statement to complete a comprehensive convention against terrorism in the year ahead.
Fourth, we must get the Peacebuilding Commission up and running. Almost all the key details have now been agreed. Your task in the next few months is to finalize and operationalize the Commission. Mine is to set up a small support office and a standing fund to support the Commission.
Fifth, and particularly important, we must meet our commitments on development. After this week, any doubt that the Millennium Development Goals enjoyed universal support has been removed. We have an ambitious commitment to add $50 billion a year to the fight for development within five years.
Every developing country is now pledged to formulate and begin to implement, by next year, a national strategy bold enough to achieve the internationally agreed development objectives, including the MDGs by 2015. For their part, developed countries must now deliver on their pledges to boost financing for development and relieve debt.
Sixth, we must keep working on Security Council reform. World leaders agree that early Council reform is, in their words, “an essential element of our overall effort to reform the United Nations”. They have called for a review of progress by the end of this year.
Seventh, we must urgently begin to remedy our distressing failures on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. Twice this year—at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and now at the Summit—months of negotiation yielded silence.
Yet we face growing risks of proliferation and catastrophic terrorism, and the stakes are too high to continue down a dangerous path of diplomatic brinkmanship. Let’s instead work together to strengthen all three pillars of the regime—non-proliferation, disarmament and peaceful uses. I encourage Norway, Australia, Chile, Indonesia, Romania, South Africa and the United Kingdom to continue their efforts to find a way forward.
So let us get to work, confident and determined. If we do that, and we do what we have promised this week, we will help save millions of lives and give hope to billions of people. That would be a fitting achievement to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations, and a platform from which to do even more in the years ahead.
| | Excerpts of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s statement on 17 September to the sixtieth session of the General Assembly, following the 2005 World Summit. |
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