Srgjan Kerim, President of the Sixty-second Session of the General Assembly Photo/ Horst Rutsch Srgjan Kerim of The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was elected President of the sixty-second session of the General Assembly on 24 May 2007. He assumes the presidency when the Assembly opens on 18 September 2007. Dr. Kerim, born in 1948 in Skopje, is a seasoned diplomat who has served as Minister for Foreign Economic Relations, Minister for Foreign Affairs as well as Permanent Representative of The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to the United Nations in New York. During his rich diplomatic career, he was his country’s Ambassador to Germany from 1994 to 2000, and to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, from 1995 to 2000. From 1999 to 2000, he was Special Envoy of the Coordinator of the Stability Pact for South-eastern Europe. In the field of academia, Dr. Kerim has been a professor of international economic affairs with the Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and New York University. Dr. Kerim has published nine books and over a hundred scientific articles relating to international politics, international economy, and youth issues in Europe. Dr. Kerim is fluent in English, French and German, as well as Serbian, Croatian and Bulgarian. Since 2006, Dr. Kerim has been serving as General Manager for South-eastern Europe of the WAZ Media Group, based in Vienna. As a diplomat, economist, scholar and businessman, Dr. Kerim brings his vast experience in international political and economic affairs and extensive knowledge of the UN system to leading the work of the General Assembly. The President spoke with Yuwei Zhang and Horst Rutsch of the UN Chronicle on 6 September 2007.

On the priorities for the sixty-second Assembly session

For all these recent years, we have been debating in the United Nations how to revitalize the General Assembly. Some resolutions have already been adopted on that subject, but they mostly focused on procedural improvements and strengthening the office of the President of the General Assembly. To revitalize the General Assembly, it is necessary to do much more in this regard and deal with substantial issues. If the Assembly wants to be a relevant body, with all 192 countries equally participating, it has to deal with the most relevant challenges of today’s world. I think the sixty-second session has to be an example in this regard. During the consultations among Member States which I have carried out in these nine months—starting in January even before I was formally elected in May—we were discussing what these issues could be. We have identified five items which are very important for the United Nations and its activities, and which will be the pillars of the sixty-second session:

1. Responding to climate change
2. Financing for development
3. Implementing the global Counter-Terrorism Strategy
4. Management reform
5. Follow-up measures on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

On the challenges for the sixty-second session

All in all, I think the sixty-second session will fulfill the expectations for the General Assembly. I think that we have to be realistic in our expectations exactly because of the fact that the United Nations is a coalition of 192 nations with different histories and different values. Sometimes these are very much opposed and controversial, which means that the Organization has to work together and function on a constructive principle, step by step. We have to measure decisions in terms of their efficiency because we cannot expect the Organization to function in an analytic way. Therefore, one has to be patient and also persistent in trying to have resolution-oriented decisions. I know it is not easy, but I will, of course, count on the assistance and the support of the General Committee, the Vice Presidents and the six Chairmen of the Committees. We should create a workable ambience so that we can adopt some sound resolutions and decisions on the topics I mentioned.

On responding to climate change

It is very important to see that Member States have understood that climate change is a very serious and complex issue. It is an environmental issue, but its implications go far beyond that. They encompass people’s health and the economy, including economic growth and sustainable development. I think the technological competition of the 21st century will be exactly in that area—finding innovations and developing technologies which will provide for clean energy, and for sound economic results with this new energy. We also have to bear in mind that climate change is connected to security. People have to think seriously about what kind of patterns of life they will pursue from now on and in the future. At the United Nations, we have a group of more than 40 Small Island Developing States whose existence is threatened by global warming and its consequences. International relations and international cooperation will have to shift towards these issues. It requires solidarity from the whole world because the effects of climate change do not respect borders. There will be new waves of immigration between regions and nations, and so on. The concept of “borders” will definitely have a different meaning than it had in the past. This, again, is a security issue. That is why the concept of security has to be discussed and revised. This is a very important issue. We have to be prepared.

On the Secretary-General’s high-level event

The Secretary-General made climate change one of his top priorities, with good reason, for it is a difficult, long-term problem. It is definitely the issue of the 21st century. And it has to be dealt with systematically. It is not enough to have a campaign with just a few resolutions and conclusions. Business as usual will not do. Climate change is a global issue which requires a global engagement. This is why we have to give this issue top priority. I have suggested to the Heads of State and Government to attach special importance and attention to this issue during the General Assembly’s general debate. The Secretary-General’s high-level event on 24 September 2007, entitled “The Future in our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change”, scheduled just before the general debate, will be an excellent introduction for the sixty-second session of the General Assembly.

On moving ahead from Bali to beyond Kyoto

Then we have the UN Climate Change Conference from 3 to 14 December, 2007 in Bali, Indonesia, and the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) to consider. For the Bali meeting, we will create a much better political ambience than existed a few months ago. This is a very important moment. The Bali meeting will focus on the environmental aspect of the problem—but we also have to deal with all the other aspects. After the Bali meeting, we should convene a Panel in the General Assembly through which we could invite business people, academics, scientists and NGOs to make use of the substantive proposals we will have as a result of the general debate and the high-level event preceding it. The Panel will elaborate them, searching for solutions or alternatives to many of the issues. In short, it would lay the groundwork for a roadmap which the Secretary-General could then present to the Organization and the UN system.

The Panel would thus help create a broad-based network to support a consolidated response to climate change—a strategic operation of the entire Organization, not only the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretariat, but the whole UN system. There will have to be a clear division of labour—namely, clarifying what roles the General Assembly, the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and other specialized UN agencies will play. Every specialized agency will have to prepare its own action programme. But we must avoid duplications and all the weaknesses that we know from this system in the past. This will be an excellent opportunity as an exercise in system-wide coherence. In this respect, after the Bali meeting and the convening of the Panel, I would like to write a letter to the Secretary-General, to suggest drawing up a roadmap for climate change that would lead us to a new climate change compact for the whole UN system—not only until the Kyoto Protocol expires, but also beyond 2012.

On financing for development

Another issue of crucial importance is financing for development. The General Assembly will hold a Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development in Doha, Qatar in the second half of 2008. For the summit in Qatar, we should use the sixty-second session to have a very wide-ranging and substantial debate among Member States and find out what should be done for this summit. In this respect, I think the General Assembly should work with the assistance of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the World Bank and all the other relevant institutions.

On implementing the Counter-Terrorism Strategy

Furthermore, it is very important for Member States to review the implementation of the Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which they adopted in September 2006, to see whether all the available instruments are used in a satisfactory manner. We need to see what has to be strengthened and how to enhance the cooperation and solidarity among Member States in fighting terrorism. We have to deal with the political and institutional aspects of the problem.

On management reform

The Organization has to reform itself in order to effectively adapt to today’s challenges. Management reform is a crucial issue for the legitimacy of this Organization—for its image and its credibility. It is high time we dealt seriously with it and started to produce tangible results, gradually but firmly. In this respect, I intend to call for a thematic debate on management reform, with a view to assess what we have accomplished since the 2005 World Summit and to discuss the actions we need to take in the future. I believe management reform is in the best interest of all, and Member States should take the lead on tackling this issue. I consider the Four Nations Initiative, for which Chile, South Africa, Sweden and Thailand have prepared proposals, a good example of how Member States can give a valuable contribution to the management reform debate in an innovative way.

On successfully implementing the MDGs

Last but not least, we have to follow up on the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs deserve our full attention because they have to do with the full moral and political credibility of the United Nations. I was impressed by the Millennium Summit held at the UN Headquarters in New York in 2000 when the world leaders ratified the Millennium Declaration. Now after seven years, the MDGs must be reviewed seriously—not only to express criticism, but also to make sure that Member States will reinforce all their efforts to make these development goals realistic—in terms of timing and their fulfillment—at least for the remaining time to 2015. In this respect, it will be appropriate to invite leaders—especially because we have quite a few new leaders since the time the goals were adopted—to make sure the navigation will not fail this time. It obviously failed for the first seven years of the implementation of the MDGs. In this context, I very much welcome the new initiative of global partnership for development involving Governments and business leaders, launched by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

On identifying the challenges of individual goals

One of the goals—the seventh—is about environmental sustainability. The environment, in this sense, coincides with climate change. This means we will have to deal with climate change also within the concept of the Millennium Development Goals and see what the differentiated responsibilities are. What will the developed countries do to help the developing countries to be prepared to tackle the problem on environmental protection and global warming? What will the developed countries do to help developing countries, particularly Africa, in dealing with health problems? These questions need to be addressed. We cannot just make it an overall review. Instead, we should also single out each of the eight goals and discuss them one by one so that we can give most attention to those targets that are lagging dramatically behind. By singling them out, we can see where we are, what has been accomplished and what needs to be done from now until 2015.

On the moral dimension of the MDGs

It was pledged 35 years ago in a 1970 General Assembly Resolution that 0.7 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) of industrialized countries would be committed to official development assistance (ODA). It is really ironic that we still talk about it today when it should have been accomplished over 30 years ago. That is something that definitely has to be done. It has to do with solidarity and international cooperation; we have to help these people and offer them our assistance, to give them a chance for development. An old Chinese saying goes: “It would be better to teach them the method of fishing rather than offering them fish”. In this regard, education must be within that context because only good education—and education accessible to every single person in Africa or wherever in the underdeveloped world—will give everyone a fair chance to develop, to create, to produce and to organize his or her own life.

On the Alliance of Civilizations and other matters

Of course, we also have to deal with the other issues that have been on the agenda of the General Assembly for years. They are part of the confirmation of its continuity of work. These issues are also very important in terms of strengthening the Organization and its authority—particularly Security Council reform and system-wide coherence.
Then there is the Alliance of Civilizations. I fully support the mission of the High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations, former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio, in setting up a plan on how the Organization will deal with this very sensitive issue. As we know, unfortunately, this world is facing a lot of frictions, tensions and “misunderstandings” between religious groups of different faith. And that is definitely not a good platform for strengthening the mutual trust of Member States and different regions, which together comprise the United Nations. And finally, we also have the commemorative high-level plenary meeting devoted to the follow-up to the special session on children, scheduled for 11-12 December 2007.

On the role of his country within the United Nations

Thirty years ago, a distinguished diplomat of Macedonian origin, Lazar Mojsov, was President of the General Assembly (for the thirty-second session in 1977/78). During the Second World War, Macedonia participated in the liberation movement of the Balkan region. And this movement fought together against the evil of Nazism, which tried to conquer Europe and the world. As a result of that national movement, the State of Macedonia was created in 1944 with the name the People’s Republic of Macedonia. The identity of Macedonia was formed by the liberation movement, which was then part of the Allied Forces during the war. And this young Republic then decided to join the Yugoslav Federation, together with the Bosnians, Croats, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians to form the six Republics of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They were considered States in the Yugoslav Federation, and had all the rights of States, including the right to secession. None of them used that right for a long time—only after the Yugoslav conflict broke out in 1991. That changed the situation tremendously—nobody entered into that Federation in 1944 and 1945 with the idea that it would fight the other members. Once this war started, each member of the Federation had the right to decide its own destiny. Declaring independence was the alternative Macedonia chose in 1991. This is why I mentioned in my acceptance speech that Macedonia is, practically speaking, one of the founders of this Organization. It is formally a UN Member State since 1993, but, in historic terms, it was one of the founding members of the United Nations in 1945.

Since Macedonia declared independence in 1991, it has had a good record, in terms of its own contribution to peace and security in the South-eastern European region. It did not participate in the war between the Republics and left the Federation in a peaceful way, without conflict with any other member of the Federation. It established friendly relations with its neighbours. In the United Nations, it introduced and sponsored the resolution on maintenance of international security—good-neighbourliness, stability and development of South-eastern Europe. Therefore, I believe Macedonia deserves the support it received from Member States of the Eastern European regional group in the election for the presidency of the General Assembly.

On embracing the worlds of diplomacy and business

The United Nations, and the multilateral diplomacy which I have done for 25 years, is a large part of my life. This is, personally speaking, a great satisfaction and recognition for my work. I am very grateful to my Government and all Member States, which have given me such unique and unanimous support. I have many friends among my colleagues here in the Organization. That will also contribute to a constructive way in dealing with my work here. Also, New York is a city of opportunities, and provides an intellectual life which is very attractive and always challenging. This is my third time living in New York, and I have really fallen in love with the city. I like to work here and to be part of the city.

However, I don’t want to forget the fact that I came here from the business sector, as the General Manager of a very well known German publishing house WAZ, which has a reputation in Germany since the end of the Second World War. On the regional level, the company has a lot of influence; it has expanded into Austria and the whole region of South-eastern Europe. My work deals with Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungry, Romania, Serbia, and my own country.