General Assembly Session 55 meeting 15

The President

I now call on His Excellency Mr. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Canada.

Mr. Axworthy (Canada)

I would like to begin by congratulating you, Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly. Your experience and wisdom will doubtless guide us in carrying out the important work ahead.

As we all know, 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.

Mr. Axworthy (Canada)

This means assuming responsibility for our actions and our inaction. It also means that Governments must be ready to assume their responsibility for their citizens.

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

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 United Nations manage a new global agenda?

Clearly, globalization has brought unprecedented benefits and possibilities. But it also clearly 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 the debate within the United Nations remains driven -- and too often circumscribed -- by rigid notions of sovereignty and narrow conceptions of national interest. And action by the United Nations remains hampered by inflexible institutional structures that have become increasingly inward-looking, driven by their own interests rather than by those 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, 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 the world as an individual.

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 now act 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 the people we represent.

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

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 guerrilla fighters.

But we have also had a certain foresight to begin building a system of international obligations and principles to contain such behaviour. We now 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 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT); by joining the 104 States parties to the Ottawa Treaty on landmines; by implementing the international non-proliferation norms and disarmament obligations embodied in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); by developing comprehensive action plans to stop the proliferation of small arms and missile technology.

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 United Nations, 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 the motive, the means and the manifestation of a 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 its periphery.

This is the agenda that Canada has brought to the Security Council over the past two years. It has not been an easy task, but I would like to acknowledge that the Security Council is meeting the new challenges. In recent months, the Council's work has increasingly focused 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 members a checklist, a checklist of responsible action in the Security Council.

Mr. Axworthy (Canada)

The Brahimi report also proposes a plan of action. It is a comprehensive strategy for strengthening the United Nations 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. Axworthy (Canada)

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 which cause widespread suffering, loss of life and abuse.

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 Court's Statute provides us with a unique opportunity to fix one of the worst failings in the international system. Today 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.

Canada seeks to systematically put in place the building blocks for a new type of international system, one that is inspired and guided by the United Nations Charter, but that is also prepared to deal with the underside and underworld of globalization.

Of course, prevention is the best form of intervention. But when preventive measures fail; when the quiet diplomatic efforts and the targeted sanctions do not work; when the fact-finders find facts too horrendous to imagine; then there must be recourse to more robust action.

The question of intervention 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 as too divisive, too difficult, too damaging to the status quo. But Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica and Kosovo remind us that it is important to focus on this question. It would be easy to pretend that the humanitarian tragedies associated with these places are a thing of the past. It would be easy, but it would be 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 the editorial page of The New York Times on Tuesday, 12 September, we realize that some would have us believe that the United Nations Charter was written only to protect States and State interests:

"intervening in civil conflicts takes the United Nations a step too far".

I disagree. I say that in the face of egregious human suffering it is a step in the right direction. Nothing so threatens the United Nations 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.

Last fall I stood before this body and argued that the United Nations 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 that document to justify inaction need only to 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-chairpersons -- one from the developing and one from the developed world -- with the participation of a wide range of representatives of Governments and non-governmental organizations from all regions and under the overall guidance of an advisory board composed of ministers, former ministers and distinguished practitioners from the academic, humanitarian and legal fields.

The commission will undertake its work during this Millennium Assembly year, and will present its recommendations in 12 months' time. I ask those present here in the Assembly Hall to join in this enterprise, difficult as it may be, so that we can seek to reconcile these concepts to find the space that we can all share.

It is difficult, but it is not impossible. We have done it before. Thirteen 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 that contradiction forged a synthesis called sustainable development. That new concept fundamentally changed the way in which the world thinks about those issues, and its work informs our thinking to this very 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 United Nations to tackle the most challenging international dilemma of the twenty-first century.

However, the responsibility no longer stops just with Governments. The private sector must also take its responsibility for the communities on which it depends for its business. Ethical business is good business. The many companies that have joined the Secretary-General's Global Compact with Business 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 do not profit, no one will. We must therefore 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 that we can take to protect the most vulnerable.

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 special session on children that is to be held 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, counting in the millions.

Mr. Axworthy (Canada)

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