General Assembly Session 52 meeting 5

The President

This morning, the General Assembly, in accordance with the decision taken at its 4th plenary meeting on 19 September 1997, will first take up agenda item 10, entitled "Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization", to hear a brief presentation by the Secretary-General of his annual report.

I give the floor to the Secretary-General.

The Secretary-General

Congratulations, Mr. President, on your election to this important post, made all the more so by the weighty deliberations through which you will be guiding this Assembly.

I am grateful for the opportunity to address the General Assembly just before the general debate begins. This is the first time in the 52-year history of the Organization that the Secretary-General has been so honoured.

My presence here today reflects the importance that you attach to the proposals for United Nations reform I presented to Member States on 16 July 1997. Indeed, let this be the Reform General Assembly. Let it be remembered as a time when all of us joined forces and seized the opportunities created by the new era to revitalize our United Nations -- this unique and universal instrument for concerted action in pursuit of the betterment of humankind.

Before I turn to the issue of reform, permit me to say a few words about the ongoing work and challenges of the Organization and to raise several matters of serious international concern that require urgent attention.

In my recently released annual report, I described myself as prudently optimistic about the overall state of the United Nations today.

The past year's progress includes the adoption of the Agenda for Development, expressing a new consensus to guide our activities in this critically important field. It includes major achievements in disarmament, particularly the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Ottawa process to ban anti-personnel landmines, which I have vigorously supported.

In the area of peacekeeping, significant movement is taking place among a group of countries towards forming a standby high-readiness brigade within the framework of United Nations standby agreements. Such a brigade would enable the Organization to act in crises before they unravel into escalating spirals of violence.

Responding to ever more frequent requests from Member States, we have expanded our programmes in support of good governance, democratization and strengthening national capacity to promote human rights.

My annual report also acknowledges disappointments. The benefits of economic globalization remain too concentrated to benefit the vast majority of developing countries, even as official development assistance continues to decline.

New paradigms of cooperation are needed in which major increases in assistance are combined with selective debt relief, access to markets and investment strategies. All societies, including those currently marginalized by the forces of globalization, must have the opportunity to become active participants in the new international economy.

The achievements of disarmament do not yet encompass the remaining nuclear stockpiles, nor have they contained the proliferation of light weapons and small arms, including in conflicts that the United Nations is mandated to resolve. The department for disarmament and arms regulation that I have proposed is intended to bolster the capacity of the Organization to pursue such aims.

What is more, in a growing number of conflicts, civilian populations have become the explicit targets of factional combatants and humanitarian missions have been impeded, denied access and subjected to attacks.

Violence against women has become the most pervasive human rights violation, respecting no distinction of geography, culture or wealth.

We will have to erase these ugly stains from the canvas of contemporary life.

The nineteenth special session of the General Assembly -- Rio +5 -- made it clear that little progress has been made in achieving or implementing the agreements reached at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. We must do better at Kyoto in December and secure legally binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which we know to cause global warming.

I also draw your attention to several areas of ongoing concern that you may wish to address during this debate.

Since assuming office in January, I have taken initiatives to begin or revive peace processes in several conflict situations, some of which have long defied resolution. To that end, I have appointed special representatives for Western Sahara, Cyprus, East Timor, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, Somalia and Afghanistan. A breakthrough may be at hand in Western Sahara and signs of hope glimmer elsewhere.

In Afghanistan, however, despite our best efforts, the parties continue to wage a brutal and futile civil war, with heavy civilian casualties. A renewed commitment on the part of regional and international actors is required to prevent further bloodshed and a humanitarian crisis of dreadful proportions.

In the Great Lakes region, despite the combined efforts of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity, bitter legacies persist, as do intolerance and violence. I urge the countries of the region to pursue the path of peace, democracy, reconciliation and reconstruction -- with full respect for human rights -- and to work with the international community to assist and sustain their efforts.

In Bosnia, the international community must be prepared to consolidate the gains achieved and to prevent a relapse into the horrors that triggered its involvement. We must ensure that our collective investments -- military, political and financial -- have not been in vain. Doing so will require patience and persistence by all concerned.

Finally, the international community cannot but view with grave concern the mounting threats to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. We call on all sides to take the courageous decisions required to re-establish mutual confidence and rededicate themselves to achieving a lasting peace.

I now turn to the item on your agenda that surely is the most significant for the future role of our Organization: the challenge of reform.

I presented detailed proposals to you in this Hall more than two months ago, on 16 July 1997. It is my hope that when this session ends more than two months from now, we will have reached consensus and can begin the process of implementation. Permit me to recapitulate the main objectives and key features.

What are the objectives of the reforms? We aspire to a United Nations that can act with greater unity of purpose, coherence of efforts and responsiveness in pursuit of peace and progress; a United Nations that can focus on its priorities; a United Nations that empowers both Governments and people to realize goals through collaboration that might otherwise elude them; a United Nations that will express the highest moral aspirations of humankind even as it delivers practical benefits to men, women and children in cities and villages around the world.

We aspire to a United Nations that recognizes and joins in partnership with an ever more robust global civil society, while helping to eliminate uncivil elements like drug traffickers, criminals and terrorists; a United Nations that will view change as a friend -- not change for its own sake, but change that permits us to do more by doing what we do better.

For whom do we seek these objectives? We seek them for those who most need a renewed and revitalized United Nations because they lack the power and wealth to shape the international environment to their advantage. We seek them for the global public interest. We seek them in the interest of the future of the Organization itself.

And how do we propose to meet these objectives? By rationalizing and streamlining our operations at Headquarters and in the field. By creating new management structures that will permit us to act as one within and across our diverse areas of activities. By encouraging a new institutional culture that stresses excellence in promoting the collective good. By enhancing the accountability that Member States deserve and creating the flexibility that the Secretariat needs.

And we intend to meet these objectives by promoting at all times the particular needs of the most disadvantaged societies among us through the creation of the United Nations development group, a new office of development financing, a new system of multi-year pledges for development cooperation and a development dividend funded from administrative savings, as well as by strengthening the role of the Economic and Social Council, especially in the area of macroeconomic dialogue.

Momentum has been building since I announced the reform package on 16 July. Press reports from around the world have been encouraging. Individual Governments as well as groups of Governments have expressed support. Civil society organizations and the private sector are approaching us with ever greater frequency to work with us and to lend their assistance.

The extraordinarily generous and historically unprecedented $1 billion gift from Mr. Ted Turner for the United Nations work in the development, environment and humanitarian fields is the most visible expression of this new and promising relationship.

Lastly, I fully expect to have implemented those reform measures that are within my own jurisdiction before the end of this calendar year.

Now I ask you, the Member States, to act. Some of you I ask to do what your legal obligations require: to liquidate your arrears and to pay your future assessments in full, on time and without conditions.

All of you I ask to move expeditiously to consider the package of reforms that is before you, with the aim of reaching political consensus and providing budgetary authority before this session ends. We live in a new day, and it requires a new way. Therefore, let this be the Reform Assembly. This is the moment to re-imagine the role of the United Nations, giving it new life for the new century.

When I launched my reform plan, I pledged to narrow the gap between aspiration and achievement at the United Nations. I say to you today that we must move to close another gap -- the one between the rhetoric and the reality of the common world. To close that gap we need the most effective instrument possible for collective deliberation and concerted action. The United Nations can be that instrument, just as the Charter envisioned it, provided that we act and we act now. This is our chance. We must not let it pass.

The President

I thank the Secretary-General for his very important statement.

We have concluded this stage of our consideration of agenda item 10.

The President

Before giving the floor to the first speaker in the general debate, I should like to remind members of the decision taken by the General Assembly at its 4th plenary meeting, on 19 September, that congratulations should not be expressed inside the General Assembly Hall after a speech has been delivered.

In this connection, may I also remind members of another decision, taken by the Assembly at the same meeting, that speakers in the general debate, after delivering their statements, would leave the Assembly Hall through room GA-200, located behind the podium, before returning to their seats.

I should also like to remind representatives that, in accordance with the decision taken by the General Assembly at its 4th plenary meeting, the list of speakers will be closed on Wednesday, 24 September, at 6 p.m. May I request delegations to be good enough to provide estimated speaking times that are as accurate as possible. This will facilitate the work of the Secretariat.

I now give the floor to the first speaker in the general debate, the Minister of External Relations of Brazil, His Excellency Mr. Luiz Felipe Lampreia.

Mr. Lampreia (Brazil)

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