NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS BY

 

THE HONOURABLE LLOYD AXWORTHY

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

 

TO THE 55th SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

 

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 14, 2000

 

 

 

            Allow me to congratulate you on your election as President of the General Assembly. Your experience and wisdom will doubtless guide us in carrying out the important work ahead.

 

That work is to immediately and resolutely transform the high hopes of the Millennium Summit into a better reality for the peoples for whom the United Nations was founded.

 

This means assuming responsibility for our actions and our inaction. It's about governments assuming responsibility for their people.

 

Last week, our leaders stood in this room and delivered a message of hope and determination. Their words clearly showed that we all need the United Nations. It is the only organization that embodies universal values; that offers a global forum to address common problems; that is on the front line around the world fighting for people.

 

However, there was another message from the Summit: about whether the United Nations is keeping up with the times; about whether we, the Member States - custodians of the organization and guardians of the Charter - have the political will to support renewal and modernization.

 

When the lights turned off last Friday night here in New York, did other lights go on around the world -in our Chancery offices, Parliamentary assemblies and Cabinet meeting rooms - to illuminate the way forward? Are we all, each in our own way, asking how we can change our ways to better help the UN manage our new global agenda?

 

Clearly, globalization has brought unprecedented benefits and possibilities. But it also brings new risks to people in all our countries. Many of those new risks cross state lines, while most violent conflict now occurs within states' borders. In both cases, the impact is felt directly by ordinary people.

 

Yet debate within the United Nations remains driven - and too often circumscribed - by rigid notions of national sovereignty and narrow conceptions of national interest. And action by the UN remains hampered by inflexible institutional structures that have become increasingly inward-looking, driven by their own interests rather than by those of the ones they were designed to serve.

 

The Secretary-General has, with a courage rarely seen in public life, given us a vision of a way forward. It is a vision that serves the world's people, and one that resonates with them - even though it may aggravate some of their governments. He has challenged us to follow his lead - to adopt a people- centred approach to international relations, in order to move this organization from the sidelines to the forefront of change.

                                                                            

This is not a new agenda for Canada. Indeed, over the past five years, promoting human security has been the focus of our own approach to our changing world. And it has been encouraging to see the shift in attitude toward a more realistic sense of what it means to be secure in this world.

 

Our leaders endorsed this new vision in their Summit declaration. But if we have truly come to the understanding that security means more than protecting borders, we must act now to turn last week's good intentions into effective action. This means taking responsibility to adapt our institutions, broaden participation in their functioning, and increase transparency and accountability - to make a tangible difference for people.

 

It also means responsible, accountable global behaviour - sharing and protecting the common space that sustains life.

 

Mr. President,

 

Aggressive pursuit of the global arms control and disarmament agenda is the ultimate responsible act. Our generation built the nuclear arsenals that are outmoded and rotting; we produced the chemical weapons that poison people; and today we still make and distribute the small arms that are found everywhere - in the hands of children, the arsenals of drug dealers and the garrisons of guerilla fighters.

 

But we have also had the foresight to build a system of international obligations and principles to constrain our own behaviour. We have to validate and implement these instruments. Above all, we must do nothing to damage them.

 

Certainly, governments must prepare for the defence of their people. Responsible defence is an element of responsible government. But surely, our responsibility to defend our citizens begins not with the development of new weapons systems, but by dismantling old ones: by ratifying the CTBT (Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty); by joining the 104 states parties to the Ottawa Treaty; by implementing the international non-proliferation norms and disarmament obligations embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); by developing comprehensive action plans to stop the proliferation of small arms and missile technology.

 

Mr. President,

 

The collective action of states working for the long-term security of their people is clearly the preferable path. But where states are unable, or unwilling, to protect their citizens, the UN - and in particular the Security Council - has a special responsibility to act.

 

Today, most wars are fought within failed states. In these wars, it is the victimization of civilians that is motive, means and manifestation of conflict.

                                                                           

If the Council is to acquit itself of its responsibility to these people, their protection must be at the core of its work, not at the periphery.

 

This is the agenda that Canada has brought to the Security Council. It has not been an easy task, but I would like to acknowledge that the Security Council is rising to meet the new challenges. In recent months, the Council's work has increasingly focussed on the protection of civilians, with action in the areas of AIDS, physical protection, war-affected children and sanctions reform. The Council has recognized that dealing with these issues is critical to building effective peace-support operations, and has embodied this recognition in recent resolutions. Today, we are providing them to you again in the form of a checklist - a checklist for responsible action.

 

The Brahimi report also provides a blueprint for action. It is a comprehensive strategy for strengthening the UN's capacity to help people. Canada supports the panel's findings. We will be its strongest advocate - and can be counted upon to work tirelessly to build the political support required to implement both the spirit and the letter of its recommendations.

 

Mr. President,

 

By far the most difficult challenge in protecting civilians in armed conflict is in situations where abuse is most severe: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, massive and systematic violations of human rights and humanitarian law causing widespread suffering and loss of life.

 

We need a new form of deterrence against such forms of behaviour. The establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC), which makes impunity illegal and which holds individuals directly accountable for their actions, is that deterrent. And if its power to deter the abuse of people fails, the Statute provides both a basis and a structure to take concrete legal action to redress injustice.

 

The ICC Statute provides us with a unique opportunity to fix one of the worst failings of the international system. I appeal to every government here that has not done so, to sign the Rome Statute by December and to ratify it on an urgent basis, so that the world's people can finally have the justice they deserve.

 

Mr. President,

 

You can see that Canada is seeking to systematically put in place the building blocks for a new type of international system - one that is inspired and guided by the UN Charter, but that is also prepared to deal with the underside and underworld of globalization.

                                                                            

Prevention is the best sort of intervention. But when preventive measures fail -when the quiet diplomatic efforts; the targeted sanctions don't work; when the fact-finders find facts too horrendous to imagine, then there must be recourse to more robust action.

 

The question of intervention by the Security Council in these instances - including as a last resort the use of military force - is fraught with difficulty and controversy. Many would sweep it under the rug entirely as too divisive, too difficult, too damaging to the status quo. Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica, Kosovo - it would be easy to pretend that the humanitarian tragedies associated with these places are a thing of the past.

 

Easy, but wrong. There is no certainty that similar atrocities will not happen again. Indeed, the opposite is more likely. The spiral into extremes of human suffering cannot always be constrained.

 

Reading Tuesday's New York Times editorial page, some would have us believe that the United Nations Charter was written only to protect states and state interests - that "intervening in civil conflicts takes the UN a step too far." I say, that in the face of egregious human suffering, it is a step in the right direction.

 

Nothing so threatens the UN's very future as this apparent contradiction between principle and power, between people's security and governments' interests, between, in short, humanitarian intervention and state sovereignty.

 

Mr. President,

 

Last fall I stood before this body and argued that the UN Charter was written for people. Our collective agenda here is not the nation states' agenda, or the ministers' agenda, or the diplomats' agenda. It is the people's agenda. Indeed, "we the peoples" are the opening words of the Charter. Those who would seek to hide behind this document to justify inaction need only read its preamble to reacquaint themselves with its original intent.

 

Secretary-General Annan has challenged us to rethink what it means to be responsible, sovereign states. Canada has responded by creating an independent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Its purpose is to contribute to building a broader understanding of the issue, and to foster a global political consensus on how to move forward.

 

The Commission will be led by two co-chairs - one from the developing and one from the developed world - with the participation of a wide range of representatives of government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions, under the overall guidance of an advisory board composed of ministers, former ministers, and distinguished practitioners from the academic, humanitarian and legal fields.

                                                                            

It will undertake its work during this Millennial Assembly year, and will present its recommendations in 12 months' time.

 

I ask you to join in this enterprise, difficult as it may seem to reconcile these concepts.

 

Difficult, but not impossible. We have done it before. Ten years ago, the Brundtland Commission's report, Our Common Future, took two seemingly contradictory ideas - economic development and the protection of the environment - and out of this contradiction forged a synthesis: sustainable development. This new concept fundamentally changed the way the world thinks about these issues, and its work informs our thinking to this day.

 

It is Canada's hope that this new Commission can diffuse the anxiety that surrounds the issues of intervention and sovereignty by building a similar bridge between our current notions of these concepts, and in so doing, help to define the way ahead for governments and the UN to tackle the most challenging international dilemma of the 21st  century.

 

However, the responsibility no longer stops with governments. The private sector must also take responsibility for the communities on which they depend for their business. Ethical business is good business. The many companies that have joined the Secretary-General's global compact recognize that profit made on the backs of exploited and abused children - by gun-running, drug dealing, or conflict diamonds - is no longer acceptable.

 

In the globalized economy, the world's people are the ultimate shareholders. If they don't profit, no one will.

 

We must work on all of these fronts and with all of these new players, to build a future where human security is universally respected and protected.

 

In the meantime, there are steps we can take to protect the most vulnerable.

 

Mr. President,

 

To build a world that values human security, we must start with concern and action for those who will inherit it. It is fitting, therefore, that in this year of fresh resolve, the future of our children is a key element of the agenda - particularly through the UN Special Session on Children next year.

 

Nowhere is the safety and well-being of children more at risk than in conflict situations. Children should have no part in war. Yet today, they are among its main victims.

 

Four years ago, Graça Machel brought the horrific plight of war-affected children to the attention of the world. Since then, action has been taken to reduce their suffering, most notably with the appointment of Olara Otunnu as the Secretary-General's Special Representative on Children and Conflict, and more recently, with the landmark agreement last January on the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict.

 

This week, with Graça Machel as Honourary Chair, Canada is hosting the International Conference on War-Affected Children in Winnipeg. This meeting, the first of its kind, is bringing together more than 130 governments, 60 NGOs and private-sector groups, international organizations, and young people from every region. I am pleased that so many ministers and senior officials will join us in Winnipeg, and encourage those not already represented to attend.

 

The aim of the conference is twofold: to formulate a comprehensive, global action plan, and to forge the necessary political will to implement it. Together, we hope it will help children traumatized by war, and ultimately eliminate their involvement and victimization in conflict.

 

Earlier this week in Winnipeg, a young Ugandan girl named Grace spoke to me about her experience as a child soldier. Her story was one of victimization and chilling brutality. Her belief that the international community could help her and others like her was inspiring. Her plea for us to do so is the essence of this organization's vocation, and indeed, one of our basic responsibilities.

 

For me, this young woman's simple appeal makes clear that we have no option but to be ready, to be willing, and to be able to forge a United Nations for the 21st  century.

 

In considering the daunting challenges ahead, any attempt to retreat, to shut out the world, to turn away from international engagement, would be to follow a dangerous path that is neither practical nor desirable.

 

The truth is that we share a common humanity. The reality is that we are linked by the forces of history into a common destiny. The fact is that the answers to our problems lie in strengthening - not diminishing - global co-operation and global solutions.

 

In today's world, the security of states and the security of people are indivisible. Providing for that security is a necessary precondition for success in other important endeavours, such as advancing economic, aid and trade development. In this new century, too many people like Grace are still subject to the worst of the past century - to the scourge of war, to human rights abuses, to too few prospects for social progress and a better standard of living.

 

Yet, the hopes contained in the UN Charter still have meaning for them and indeed, relevance for all of us. Fulfilling its aspirations is our enduring goal and fundamental responsibility. With human security as our guide, let us make it our focus as we renew our commitment to the purposes of the UN and to a better future for the peoples we represent.

 

This goal is a responsibility that I have been honoured to share with many of you over the past five years. It is a goal that we must all continue to strive toward - whatever our position or title - in order to ensure that this system we have built does not surrender to the cynics who offer no alternatives, or the game players who paralyze the UN's transcendent purposes for transitory diplomatic points.

 

Only in so doing will we truly live up to the promise contained in the Charter - to serve the majesty of the peoples, and to make this organization work for them.

 

Thank you.