PERMANENT MISSION OF SINGAPORE
BUILDING ON THE MILLENNIUM SUMMIT
STATEMENT
BY
PROFESSOR JAYAKUMAR
MINISTER
FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE
REPUBLIC
OF SINGAPORE
55th
SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL
ASSEMBLY
BUILDING ON THE MILLENNIUM SUMMIT
Mr
President,
First let me warmly
congratulate you on your election. Your appointment is doubly significant. Few
Prime Ministers have held this post of President of the General Assembly. Your
unique practical experience in both domestic and international affairs will
stand us in good stead as we try to reform the UN. Let me also thank your
distinguished predecessor, His Excellency, Dr Theo-Ben Gurirab, for the
excellent work he has done and for ushering the UN successfully into the new
Millennium.
As a fellow small state,
Singapore is also delighted to extend a warm welcome to Tuvalu, the UN's newest
member. We hope that Tuvalu will also join the Forum of Small States (FOSS).
The recently concluded
Millennium Summit confirmed that the UN, whatever its imperfections, remains an
indispensable organisation. The overriding theme of the plenary speeches was
the need for the UN to be revitalised and better equipped to deal with the
global challenges of the 21st Century. Our immediate challenge is to respond with concrete
follow-up. Or as the Secretary-General said, to "roll up our sleeves and start putting action to the bold
pledges that our Heads of State and Government have made". This may be
stating the obvious. But doing it will not be easy nor is it assured. The UN's
record of implementation, it must be conceded, has not always inspired confidence.
In his report to the
Millennium Summit, the Secretary-General drew attention to a 1999 Gallup poll
of some 57,000 individuals in 60 countries. One conclusion was that globally,
less than half of those interviewed judged the performance of the UN to be
satisfactory. We should reflect on this. But it is also an unfortunate fact
that the UN has not usually got credit for what it has done successfully, while
continuing to attract criticism for what it has not yet done. Thus, a critical
political factor - hitherto inadequately addressed - is how to manage
expectations.
Managing expectations is a key to
success. The window of opportunity opened for the UN by the end of the Cold War
was perhaps squandered by an over ambitious agenda leading
almost inevitably to disillusionment. We should not repeat this mistake after
the Millennium Summit. To resolutely implement the Summit's results, we must
not only accurately identify them but engage in a realistic assessment of what
is and is not possible. Otherwise, we risk undermining the political will and support
needed for
the UN to be effective.
The UN has suffered
throughout its history from the inflated rhetoric of its supporters and
critics. Both make the mistake of professing to believe that the UN was
intended to or is capable of effecting a fundamental change in the nature of
international relations. But the UN did not in 1945 or now signify such a
change. Then and now, the UN provides an additional but important instrument
for national and international diplomacy.
The UN serves two essential
functions for the community of nations. It provides all of us with a common
instrument to advance our common interests including setting of norms for
relations between nations and on human rights. It also provides each of us with
an important avenue to advance or
defend our national interests. There is no necessary contradiction between these
two functions. That which is in the interest of humanity ought to be in our individual
national interests. The practical problem is in identifying what is common and
reconciling different national interests.
This problem will remain so
long as the solution depends on the cooperative interactions of nation states.
Of course, some very profound changes are underway, both in the nature of states
and in the interactions of their people. With IT and the Internet, so many
individuals from all over the world are directly connected to each other that
the critical role of the State to act as an intermediary between its citizens
and the rest of the world may never be the same again.
The
21st Century has seen a
creative tension between two apparently contradictory sets of ideals: the
sovereignty of nation states and the progressive elaboration of international
law and organisation. Sovereignty implies the right of each state to determine
for itself its own rules. Yet today, states interact within a web of complex
relationships, international institutions and regimes, covering an ever-widening
range of matters, which implies a serious limitation of sovereignty. We live
with this apparent contradiction everyday. The paradoxical experience of the
20t" Century was that neither absolute sovereignty nor absolute
international law and organisation could triumph over the other, but that each
needed the other to remedy its own inherent limitations. We do not have to
choose between the two ideals. The real question is how to strike an
appropriate balance to move forward.
Sir Brian
Urquhart, the distinguished former UnderSecretary-General of the UN, is
credited with the wry observation: "The
sad truth seems to be that the only time that you have a chance of constructing
global organisations that might work in peace is during a war." This
certainly was the UN's own origins. But, thankfully, part of the problem of
contemporary UN reform is that the challenges the UN faces today are not of
such a brutally stark nature. In the long run, their cumulative pressures may
prove as or even more decisive or destructive as war. It was therefore timely
for the SecretaryGeneral to convene the Millennium Summit. We now have a broad
consensus on what to do to meet the challenges of the 21St Century.
The question then is how do we proceed from
here? Taking a narrower but more focussed approach may be the only practical
solution to many seemingly intractable issues. But I do not underestimate the
complexities of putting this into practice. Let me illustrate the complexities
with reference to two of the core functions of the UN: Development and
Security.
Development
Earlier calls for
a new international economic order fell on deaf ears. The stalemate in North-South
negotiations over the last three decades or so, was the direct consequence of
the resistance on the part of certain developed countries to admit the
necessity of changing the functioning of the world economy.
urgent remedial action that is
needed may be easier to take if there is a mindset shift by both developing and
developed countries. The candid debate the Leaders had at the recent
interactive Roundtable discussions saw a common acknowledgement that both the
North and South must find collective solutions to the problems of development.
There was agreement that developing countries must be given help to build up
capacity to benefit from the forces of globalisation. The developed economies
have also pointed out that they too face serious problems that can be
attributed to the pressures of globalisation. But there can be no doubt that
the problems of the South are of a far greater magnitude and deserve far more
attention. Domestic problems at home should not give the North any excuse to
ignore their important international obligations.
Today, it is commonly accepted that no
country, whatever its development status, can afford to opt out of the global
economy or go it alone. Whatever happens in one part of the globe washes up on
the shores of other parts of the world. We are all connected. Witness how
rising oil prices have recently affected both developed and developing
countries alike. The issue for all is to develop the national capacity to take
advantage of the benefits of globalisation while mitigating its downsides.
The UN is now in its fourth "Decade for
Development". A new discipline for both developed and developing countries
is needed if the results are to be less disappointing than the first three. The
issue for the UN is to help the developing countries acquire the capabilities
to deal with the pressures of globalisation and plug in.
In this process, difficult domestic structural changes will be necessary to ensure that policies and institutions meet international best practices. These standards are today largely western, but can and ought to be internationally negotiated. And it is imperative that the developed countries avoid a sterile "one-size-fits-all" prescription. As suggested by the Secretary-General, the UN can play a role in mediating the negotiations so that it wilt not be undertaken on the basis of categories biased towards zero-sum solutions. Instead, the UN could help develop "win-win" solutions for both developed and developing countries.
play to ensure that the international financial institutions like the
IMF, World Bank and WTO coordinate their efforts and work as a team. No other
institution is better placed to do this. The UN is the natural forum for
regular dialogues among the multilateral organisations to co-ordinate
programmes which could help developing nations build capacity. The UN could
also help make the decision-making process of these organisations more
transparent, consultative and inclusive.
The UN's
role is all the more urgent as the explosion in the international private
movement of goods, services and capital have not been matched by the
development of international norms or effective international institutions to
regulate the global market and check the adverse effects of globalisation, especially on the smaller and weaker economies. Various calls have
been made in different forums to reform the international financial
architecture. Only the UN has the global legitimacy to develop such an
international public policy response which takes into account the concerns of
all countries, large or small, weak or powerful.
Security
Let me
turn next to Security. The end of the Cold War has obviously not meant the end
to international conflict. In the eleven years since the end of 1989 when the
Berlin Wall fell, the Security Council has authorised some forty peacekeeping
operations. In the preceding forty-two years, it authorised only seventeen. It
has been estimated that the total cumulative amount of the UN peacekeeping
budget from 1948 to 1989 was US$3 billion. Since 1989, it has escalated to
about US$18 billion. Not only have the numbers and costs of peacekeeping
operations risen sharply, but their scope has also changed. Of the forty PKOs
authorised since 1989, only five were clearly in response to clear inter-State
conflicts.
Throughout history we have witnessed
oppressive internal conflicts and human rights atrocities perpetuated by a
State against its own people. The difference today is that with the advent of
technology, instant communication through the TV, Internet and NGOs, these are
made known to the whole world instantaneously. Very few are purely
"local" or "regional" situations. Most are
internationalised. This galvanising of public outrage leads to expectations
that the international community must act. Often this increases the pressures
on the UN and UNSC to take interventionist actions, severely testing the UN's
capacity and stretching its resources. The dilemma is how can the UN be
responsive to these pressures íf its members are unwilling to give it the
required resources. And if the UN tries to be selective, how can it prevent
itself from being accused of double standards?
In 1995, Professor
Paul Kennedy of Yale University, who headed a team of scholars retained by the
UN Secretariat to study the future of the organisation, concluded that member
states faced an urgent decision: either to reduce their demands on the UN, thereby
giving it a "decent chance" to carry on at a lower
level of activity within existing resources; or to expand available resources
so that the UN could meet what Professor Kennedy saw as inexorably growing
demands from member states unable to cope with the technological pace,
population growth and environmental pressures of the 21St Century. Kennedy
concluded that "in the light of global
circumstances", opting for expanded resources would be the "wiser" choice.
There is a growing consensus now that it is
important to ensure that the UN has adequate resources for its current and
future peacekeeping activities. Discussions on how this can be best effected
are already underway. Singapore supports them. Nevertheless, let us not forget
that every prudent accounting must deal squarely with how decisions are made on
PKO operations. Let us be honest here. There is no level playing field. Most of
the time, most decisions are in reality made by the Permanent Members. And the
rest of us have to pay our dues but have a minimal say in the decisions.
Hence, when we review the current PKO scale
of assessment, we hope that the Security Council will also review its current
decision-making procedures.
Recent developments in Africa serve as a sobering reminder of the
need to undertake an urgent overhaul of UN peacekeeping. The Security Council
met at the level of Heads of State and Government during the Millennium Summit
to discuss the need to ensure an effective role for it in maintaining
international peace and security, particularly in Africa. Sadly, apart from a
general declaration, the Security Council Summit did not produce any new
concrete proposals or commitments to further action. The Council can and should
do better than this.
Fortunately,
the Brahimi Panel has come up with a set of concrete recommendations, which
when put in place will significantly revamp UN peacekeeping. In a nutshell, the
Panel advocated that should the UN decide to send a peacekeeping force to
uphold the peace, the peacekeepers must be rapidly deployed with a credible
deterrence, and be authorised with robust mandates to carry out their mission
and defend themselves, their fellow mission colleagues, and the very lives they
were sent to protect. Only then can the tragedies of past peacekeeping
operations be avoided. What this entails is that UN peacekeeping missions must
be given the necessary resources, including better-trained and better-equipped
peacekeepers, and receive better support from the UN Headquarters, in
particular an enlarged Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In turn, member
states must have the political will to support the UN politically, financially
and operationally.
The
Brahimi Report has received overwhelming support not only from the Secretary-General
and the Millennium Summit, but also from the Security Council Summit, and even
the Summit of the Permanent Members of the Security Council. Many who have
addressed the 55t" General Assembly before me have also lent their strong
support for the Report. While the Secretary-General has committed himself to
implementing those recommended changes for which he is responsible, the other
bodies have agreed to consider the recommendations which fall within their
respective areas of responsibility expeditiously. We hope that the Permanent
Members of the Security Council will fulfil their special responsibilities in
meeting their financial obligations to the United Nations, i.e. paying their
dues on time, in full and without conditions, and providing peacekeeping forces
to UN missions.
I think I have said enough to underscore the
point that a focussed approach is not necessarily an easier or less complex
one. But I believe that it is the only practical way forward.
The
Secretary-General's Report to the Millennium Summit was designed as a guide to
action. It should be actively used as such, and not simply praised and
forgotten. We have taken the first step at the Millennium Summit by endorsing
and adopting many of the proposals of the Report in the form of a Millennium
Declaration. The real challenge now is to fulfil the ambitious and wide-ranging
promises that we have made to the world.
Where are the material, financial and human
resources going to come from to fulfil our promises? The UN Secretariat and
agencies by themselves obviously do not have them. The UN cannot do everything
on its own. As the Millennium Report makes clear, the necessary long-term
effort to deliver the solution would have to be shared among national
governments, the UN, other international institutions, and other important
actors such as corporations and non-governmental organisations. Only then would
there be any chance of success.
The Millennium Summit has
provided a good basis on which to begin the process of practical negotiations
that will lead to real solutions, rather than political posturing which will
only complicate already complex issues. We must start somewhere. I suggest that
we start here and now.
Thank you.