ITALY

Mr. President,

Distinguished Ministers,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish to congratulate the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Namibia, Theo-Ben Gurirab, on his wise leadership of the 54th General Assembly and able preparation of the Millennium Summit. I would also like to offer the incoming President, Harri Hockeri, my best wishes upon his assumption of this high office. His commitment and experience will be invaluable to ensuring the success of the 55th session of the General Assembly.

Italy fully supports the statement made on behalf of the European Union by its current President, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, and will make a convinced contribution to the objectives he has indicated. Allow me to add that it is also to step up our commitment to achieving common goals that Italy is presenting its candidature for the Security Council in the 2001-2002 biennium.

2001 will be the United Nations Year for Dialogue among Civilizations. By unanimously adopting the relevant Resolution in its 53^rd Session, the General Assembly demonstrated its great sensitivity and attention to the profound structural changes underway in our national societies. It thereby sent a strong signal on a number of themes that the Secretary-General has put forth in his report on the role of the Organization in the 21^st century. These themes cannot fail to include the new face of international migration, whose gravest aspects include illegal immigration and the trampling of human dignity.

Dialogue among civilizations should not be addressed in the abstract, academically. It demands real contact, a bond between individuals and peoples. To ensure that these contacts, this bond, do not mutate into tensions and strife, the community of states must try to understand and manage migratory phenomena. We must work together to prevent migration flows from plunging into chaos, a chaos for which the human person ultimately has to pay the highest price.

Migration needs to be governed by fixed transparent rules. The source, the rationale of these rules is the United Nations, to which the San Francisco Charter entrusts the fundamental role, "To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character." I submit to you that today migration between or within continents has become an international problem with an economic, social, cultural and humanitarian character.

Any solution to the problems connected with migration must come to terms with the globalization process. Globalization has reduced distance and time. To an unprecedented degree it has linked countries at opposite ends of the Earth. There are even those who speak, perhaps not wrongly, of "the end of geography."

The paradox facing us stems from the real difficulties of globalization extending not only to the economy, finance and information but also to the movements of peoples. Most of these difficulties can be ascribed to the complex transition of many advanced countries to multi-ethnic and multicultural societies.

Human beings are not commodities. When individuals move, they preserve their roots, their specificity and their experience, even when they come into permanent contact with societies different from their own. Hence the need for mutual tolerance, to safeguard our respective customs and traditions.

The growing dimensions of migration have widened the gap between individual government's management capabilities and the individual person's ability to move, which is heavily influenced by progress in communications. All too often this gap is filled by organized crime, by ruthless criminals who in some cases traffic in human beings, in what amounts to a modem form of slavery.

We need to ask how we can safeguard freedom while impeding slavery; how we can prevent global economic development from sparking social tensions; how we can ensure that the growing contact between different civilizations will produce dialogue rather than intolerance. It will take a strong, determined commitment from all of us to draft rules that, if applied, can have a positive impact on international migration flows, to the benefit of both home and host countries.

Improving millions of human lives is the fundamental challenge of development: We need a clear, explicit and effective commitment to eradicate poverty. We must realize that in a globalized world, migration can gradually impoverish areas that are already economically and socially disadvantaged.

Development assistance initiatives from industrialized countries and nongovernmental organizations alike cannot defeat misery and poverty unless they are accompanied by an awareness that foreign debt is a huge burden for governments, families and individuals. Generous remission of the poorest countries' debt is not just an option: it is a must. This is why Italy recently approved a law to reduce foreign debt by a total of 6 billion dollars over the next three years.

Italy will also play a pro‑active role in urging the leading actors in the field of development assistance to show determination in preparing the Conference on Less Developed Countries scheduled to take place in Brussels next May. Moreover, my country confirms its support for the needs and aspirations of the small island states and the landlocked countries, as it has emphasized in ECOSOC and other fora.

But debt reduction is not enough. It should be coupled with good government policies in the beneficiary countries, as part of an integrated strategy at the basis of a new international social contract. In other words, we must promote a package that combines responsible political, economic and social reforms with an opening-up of international markets. The 2001 high-level intergovernmental meeting on development funding would provide us with a close opportunity to finalize a strategy.

The fears that immigration sometimes generates should not lead industrialized countries to build new walls and fences. Such fears reject contact with diversity and make some feel as if they were strangers in their own country. A Europe built on fear, for example, would ultimately cast immigrants as the imaginary enemy, as a race apart. Any effort to overcome such negative stereotyping should be applauded, such as the Conference on Racism, scheduled for 2001 in Pretoria.

The European Union has a great capacity to take in people, and already has large immigrant communities. But only now is it developing a common approach to immigration. The EU's strategy relies on cooperation with other countries, since the issue cannot be addressed solely through border patrols and tougher repression of illegal immigration, regardless of the cost.

For many years Europe did not have to worry about the long-term consequences of immigration. But today, with a declining birth rate and an aging population, Europe needs a strategy that embraces the complex process of integrating people from different regions of the world.

Then there is the tragic, heinous trafficking in human beings. As U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated before this Assembly yesterday, we must put a stop to this trafficking, a stop to boats being cast into the sea, filled with sadness and desperation, driven by hopes in a promised land. The pictures of these illegal crossings have become unbearable. They epitomize a state of affairs governed by the black market, where there is an overabundance of illegal labor. This new form of piracy would be impossible if those involved knew that they could not count on collusion, safe havens, and all too often, impunity.

For example, the Mediterranean Sea, around which great civilizations have prospered, is being crossed by people who pay ruthless exploiters and sometimes become their victims. In many cases, illegal immigrants find it hard to gain access to the rule-of-law society, and end up being treated as commodities.

Immigration has various causes: poverty, ethnic and religious strife, the repression of totalitarian regimes, and the demands of more affluent economies. Today, as never before, immigration is driven by broadcast images that often distort honest hopes for a better life. Moreover, it has reached unprecedented proportions. In fact, since the early Eighties the number of countries that receive immigrants has risen from 39 to 67, while the number of countries of emigration has risen from 29 to 55. We would be fooling ourselves to think that a phenomenon of such proportions could be brought under control solely through bilateral agreements.

The European Union has made cooperation between national governments a priority since the European Council of October 1999. But recent experience points to the need for an approach on which only the United Nations can confer the indispensable character of universality.

Italy has much to share in this regard. Until a few decades ago, large sections of our population were forced to seek work in distant lands with different languages and traditions. Their lives were often marked by hardship, want and family separation. This chapter of social history had points of light and of darkness, but on the whole it was a source of great moral and spiritual wealth.

Starting in the early Seventies Italy became a land of immigration, although it could not yet provide full employment for all of its people. As a land of both emigration and immigration, Italy is well situated to address in a constructive manner global migration today. Italian domestic law is based on the principle of "soft integration," designed to provide permanent residents with an opportunity that does not force them to renounce the rich heritage of their native cultures.

It is on these grounds that, here before the General Assembly, I urge the United Nations to raise the awareness of the community of states and introduce appropriate instruments. Three instruments deserve to be coordinated and integrated.

First: Assistance to the developing countries. Assistance in preventing and quelling the tensions that, at least in part, give rise to migration flows, as well as assistance in easing the integration of their economies with those of the more advanced countries. As we all know, this is a priority that the United Nations is pursuing through various committees and an enhanced role of UNDP. We must strive to improve the instruments already available to us, responding to the visionary proposals of Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Second: As a deterrent to illegal entry, stricter and more consistent law enforcement. Success depends on effective cooperation between the countries of origin, the countries of transit, and the countries of arrival. Such efforts should also aim to prevent the spread of pockets of illegality and organized crime by promoting greater stability, moral authority and control in fledgling democracies. This would be invaluable to securing the support of public opinion in industrialized countries for cooperation policies.

Third: management of migration so that it is a source of stability and wealth, to the benefit of all. For this to happen, migration must take place legally. If everyone complies with the law, immigrants will be welcomed in their host countries and become fully integrated into society.

These three guidelines must be set within a global framework. There are plenty of organizations that deal with migration at the international level. Yet while they provide praiseworthy services, their sectorial nature means that they cannot have the kind of overall vision that only effective coordination can guarantee.

A solidarity pact is needed to find the best and most effective way of balancing the supply and demand of labor, while fully respecting the diversity of the people concerned. The greatest challenge in the age of globalization is to design new forms of cooperation between governments that will enable each to see that their interests are reflected in international policy decisions. The United Nations continues to be the most natural forum for adopting such decisions and ensuring their implementation.

I want to conclude my message by recalling the words of a great American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, almost 40 years ago: "Now the trumpet summons us again… to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle. ... against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can ensure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in this historic effort? "

This is the wish that I should like to make here: that the United Nations, through its indispensable role, may strengthen its contribution to creating a better and more just world with the unflagging support of its membership.