PERMANENT
MISSION OF
GERMANY
by Joschka
Fischer,
Minister
for Foreign Affairs
of the Federal
Republic of Germany,
at the
Fifty‑fifth Session of the United Nations General Assembly
New York,
14 September 2000
Mr President,
Secretary-General,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
First of all I would like to
warmly congratulate you, Mr President, on your election to President of the
55th General Assembly, and wish you every success with your work. I would like
to thank Foreign Minister Gurirab for his dedication in chairing the 54th
General Assembly. I welcome Tuvalu as the 189th member of the United Nations
and congratulate it on its accession. I endorse the statement of my French
colleague, Hubert Védrine, on behalf of the European Union.
At this General Assembly, the
first in the new century, we are asked to determine the future tasks of the
United Nations and which reforms are necessary in order to master them. The
Millennium Declaration, which we all adopted on 8 September, shows us the way
forward. The implementation of this Declaration should be a main focus of the
consultations of this and future General Assemblies. I propose that the
Secretary-General make use of the possibility to draw up review reports at the
beginning of the next General Assembly.
There was one issue in particular
which dominated this debate, namely globalization. It will radically change the
economy and finances, politics and culture everywhere. The question is, will a
new order which guarantees peace, justice and an equal share in our common
progress be established or will a new divide evolve in the world? Will the
future of the globalized world manifest its pluralist character in a
multilateral order? Only the future can provide the answers to these questions.
Particularly for developing
countries, globalization offers great opportunities. If it nevertheless
provokes strong opposition, this lies in the imbalances of this historical
process. Indeed, just under a decade after the end of the Cold War, our world
is today at risk from a new divide, one between the winners and losers of the
economic globalization process. In his impressive Millennium Report, the
Secretary-General rightly highlights the growing inequalities in the distribution
of income, resources, investments and access to new technologies.
In
view of this situation, the international community must make every effort in
the coming decade to ensure that globalization benefits all peoples. If market forces
are not balanced by a political corrective mechanism, it is to be expected that
injustice in the world will increase further. Those who have been hitherto
excluded from the advantages of globalization must be included to a greater
extent, they must be given more say in the political decisions made about
steering global processes and they must be given an opportunity to gain a
fairer share in the development of the world economy.
In the 21st century, we
will, more than ever before, need a form of global governance if we are to
solve global challenges. The United Nations will play a key role here. It is
the only organization within which the injustice between rich and poor can be
overcome and a reconciliation can be achieved between peoples and regions,
global peace and sustainable development. Greatly strengthening its capacity to
act is therefore a crucial question for the whole of humanity in the 21st
century.
In addition to the crucial reform
of the Security Council, this will entail the United Nations entering into new,
creative partnerships with industry and civil society. Germany strongly
supports the Secretary-General's idea for a "Global Compact" with
major companies. The German initiative for a resolution in the General
Assembly, "For Global Partnerships", will take up this and other
issues relating to the globalization process.
Mr
President,
Global
poverty is the key problem in North-South relations. It lies at the root of
many global risks and threats to peace. The Secretary-General provided precise
and stimulating analyses of this in his report.
The
industrialized nations have a special obligation to support the poorest of the
poor. With the Köln Debt Initiative launched by Germany, we are combining debt
relief with a strategy to combat poverty. The twenty poorest developing
countries should be debt-free by the end of the year.
The least developed countries
should be granted access to world markets with the greatest possible exemption
from duties and quotas. We must, also by way of liberalization steps in the
WTO, prevent these countries from being socially excluded even further.
This applies in particular to the
new economy. The UN and its member states must intensify their efforts to make
it easier for these countries to use the information and communication
technologies. This is contingent upon initiatives in the field of education, as
well as the availability of the necessary resources.
However, how can poor countries
ever catch up economically if they are, at the same time, afflicted to a much
greater degree than the North by terrible diseases? The fight against the
disastrous spread of the Aids virus, particularly in Africa, must be priority
for us all. The focus must be on prevention. At the same time, access to
medicines must be improved and vaccine research must be intensified. The World
Bank's promising idea of establishing a future fund for the purchase of
vaccines deserves every support. Particularly in the fight against Aids, new
partnerships between governments and companies are crucial.
Mr President,
The second major issue of this
General Assembly is peacekeeping. The Secretary-General showed the way ahead
with the Brahimi Report. The recommendations it contains should be examined and
implemented as quickly as possible. Germany will play its part. Peace missions
need a more robust mandate, as well as more personnel and equipment. Member
states must do considerably more to ensure the rapid secondment of well-trained
troops, police officers and civilian experts. The further development of the
police concept is one of the most important tasks in this connection.
The German
Government will offer our training for civilian peace-mission personnel and
civilian capacities to the UN stand-by system. In addition, we are planning a
scheme to train civilian experts for peace missions, thus creating a pool of
qualified personnel who can be deployed at short notice.
The prevailing form of conflict
today is the conflict within states. Therefore the main task of peacekeeping
must be to treat the internal roots of conflicts. In addition to an improvement
in socio-economic conditions, our efforts must focus on promoting human rights,
democracy and the rule of law. Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, aptly said that the human rights violations of today are the wars
of tomorrow. Numerous concrete tasks are on the agenda:
- The
protocols relating to the involvement of children in armed conflict and to the
sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography must enter into
force as early as possible.
- The
equality of women must be advanced in all spheres. I call upon all states to
ratify the new Optional Protocol to the CEDAW Convention soon and to abolish
all laws which discriminate against women by 2005.
- The World
Conference against Racism to be held in 2001 must tackle all aspects of this
issue. Out of a sense of responsibility for our history, our state and our
society will stand up firmly against all forms of right-wing radicalism, racism
and anti-Semitism, both in our own country and in the world.
- I call
upon all states to respect the integrity of the Statute of the International
Criminal Court, to sign and to ratify it, so that the Court can commence work
soon. There can be no exceptions to the Rome Statute.
One of the greatest dangers facing
humanity remains the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The risk of
regional arms raises, particularly in South Asia, has increased. Further
developing the international arms control regime therefore continues to be one
of the UN's key tasks. This will require resolute implementation of the results
of the 6th NPT Review Conference. Against this background, President Clinton's
decision not to commit now to the development of a national missile defence
system is very welcome. The ABM Treaty must remain as a cornerstone of
strategic stability and the basis for further nuclear disarmament measures.
In poor countries the excessive
stockpiling of small arms must be stopped. We must therefore do everything we
can to achieve tangible progress at the UN Small Arms Conference to be held in
2001. This presupposes the inclusion of all aspects, including the legal
transfer, of production and stockpiles.
Regional cooperation has proved to
be an extremely effective means of preventing conflicts. The UN can do much to
help here. Allow me to mention two regions where progress is particularly
urgent:
The triangle between Central Asia,
the Caucasus and the Middle East is full of destabilizing factors - oil,
religious fundamentalism, terrorism, drugs, nuclear arms race - and is
threatening to become the crisis region of the century ahead. A new
comprehensive regional process, along the lines of the Helsinki model, which
fosters cooperation instead of confrontation could play an important
stabilizing role. Germany is prepared to take part in such a process.
In Africa, regional approaches
have gained in significance. In the main, however, it is too early to talk of
effective peacekeeping structures. Unfortunately, the efforts on the part of
the UN and of the OAU to resolve the conflicts in the Congo and Sierra Leone
have not achieved a breakthrough so far. In the conflict between Ethiopia and
Eritrea it is to be hoped that the ceasefire which has finally been concluded,
will be consolidated and that the UN peace mission will be lent the full
support of the parties to the conflict.
Mr President,
The third issue, protection of our
natural environment, will probably become the crucial issue affecting our
planet. In the course of the 20th century, the world's population quadrupled,
while consumption of energy and raw materials even increased tenfold. We
must end the squandering of natural resources and switch to renewable energy
sources as quickly as possible. This cannot only be a matter for industrialized
nations - we are witnessing at this very moment what a burden the high oil
prices place on poor countries in particular. It must be in the interest of all
states to bring about the transition from the oil to the hydrogen age as
quickly as possible. The most important thing now is to finally overcome the
deadlock in the climate protection negotiations and to ensure that the Kyoto
Protocol can be implemented by 2002, ten years after the Rio Summit .
Another key issue for humanity,
the future of genetic engineering, can only be mastered within the framework of
a global consensus. Genetic engineering has the potential to revolutionalize
medicine and agriculture. At the same time, it raises more ethical and human-rights
questions than any other technology. Do we not need clear, binding rules for
dealing with such a powerful new technology? Why don't we seriously consider
within the UN creating a convention under international law which meaningfully
promotes genetic engineering and safeguards the freedom to research and its
findings while, at the same time, defining an ethical basis and guaranteeing
protection against abuse?
Mr President,
The Millennium Declaration points
the way ahead. But what help will that be if an increasing number of members
allow the world's real problems to be dealt with and decided somewhere else? If
we do not succeed in adapting the United Nations to deal with the challenges of
the 21st century and in
modernizing it fully, it will be sidelined with fatal consequences for peace
and development, human rights, the environment and social progress. We will
all, rich and poor, lose out.
We must therefore muster up the
strength to resolutely implement the Millennium Declaration. We need a world
organization which is strong and uses its scarce resources more effectively. An
important prerequisite for this is that the UN is finally placed on a solid
financial footing. Together with its EU partners, Germany has put forward
proposals for a fairer, more balanced scale of assessment, which must continue
to be based on the performance of the member-states.
The Security Council no longer
reflects the political reality of our world at the dawn of the new millennium.
We share the Secretary‑General's view that this central steering organ of
the international community must become more representative, legitimate and
effective, also involving the developing countries. Last week Chancellor Schröder
reaffirmed Germany's willingness to take on more responsibility in this
connection.
The General Assembly must
structure its work, debate global problems in a more focused fashion than
hitherto and identify courses of action. The synergetic potential between UN
organizations, for example in the environmental field, must be better used and
resources pooled to a greater extent by merging organizations.
Reform of the United Nations will
play a decisive role in ensuring that the 21st century is safer and more just than the 20th
century. Allow me to conclude with a
quote from the Secretary-General's Millennium Report: "No shift in the way
we think or act can be more critical than this: we must put people at the
centre of everything we do . ... Only when that begins to happen will we know
that globalization is indeed becoming inclusive, allowing everyone to share its
opportunities."