| Date | 7 September 2006 |
|---|---|
| Started | 15:00 |
| Ended | 18:15 |
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Agenda item 12
Prevention of armed conflict
Report of the Secretary-General (A/60/891)
Draft resolution (A/60/L.61)
The President
Prevention of armed conflict is a moral imperative. It is a human necessity to save lives and protect civilian populations. It is a political necessity for the credibility of international cooperation, in particular the United Nations. It is also an economic necessity, both for the countries involved and for the international community, because of the enormous costs of war and post-conflict recovery and reconstruction. Early action should be the natural reaction to early warning. Prevention must thus be a moral, political and economic priority for the United Nations and its Member States.
With that in mind, I am particularly grateful for the progress report of the Secretary-General on the prevention of armed conflict. His personal commitment to early action and to preventive diplomacy has been pivotal in creating a culture of prevention in all activities of the Organization. His first comprehensive report on the subject in 2001 is a cornerstone for the Organization's agenda in the field of prevention.
Based on the Secretary-General's 2001 report, the members of the General Assembly, in resolution 57/337, adopted a comprehensive plan of action for the preventive work of the United Nations. The Security Council also adopted resolution 1366 (2001) on its role in the prevention of armed conflict. Those documents form a solid basis for our continued work.
The United Nations has an essential role to play in preventing armed conflict by virtue of its mandate, its legitimacy, its universal membership and its broad-ranging activities and competence. One of its principal tasks under the Charter is the maintenance of international peace and security -- in other words, the prevention of war.
Preventive diplomacy must engage all parts of the system, including the specialized agencies, funds, programmes, regional and field offices, and the international financial community. We need also to be in contact with civil society and non-governmental organizations on those issues.
From the review annex to the report of the Secretary-General, it is evident that many of the activities of the United Nations have, directly or indirectly, a conflict prevention dimension. That is most welcome. As pointed out by the Secretary-General, Article 33 of the Charter obligates Member States to seek peaceful settlements of any dispute that may endanger peace and security. Any Member State can, according to Article 35, bring disputes and situations to the attention of the Security Council or the General Assembly. I could not agree more with the Secretary-General when he encourages Member States to make more effective use of such tools for pacific settlement of disputes negotiation, mediation, conciliation and judicial settlement.
On a personal note, I may say that, to me, Article 33 of the United Nations Charter constitutes diplomatic poetry. In it, we have eight methods of preventive diplomacy, which, I regret to say, are rarely used.
Such preventive action should be proportional to the intensity of conflict. If measures such as fact-finding missions and the range of tools under Chapter VI of the Charter do not suffice, further steps -- such as deploying peacekeeping missions and actions under Chapters VI and VII -- must be considered.
The gist of the Secretary-General's report is the importance of using the full capacity of the United Nations. With the Department of Political Affairs as the focal point, along with the Secretary-General's good offices, effective system-wide coherence is vital, bringing in actors in human rights and political, economic, environmental and social development. Promoting democracy, respect for human rights, protection of refugees and sustainable development worldwide must be part of a comprehensive preventive strategy. We need to work both with the more short-term measures, described as operational prevention, and with long-term, so-called structural prevention, addressing sources of tension and the root causes of the conflict. The Secretary-General points to some crucial issues that we, the international community, need to address, such as natural resources, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation and migration.
I would like to make the linkage here to the reform agenda of the United Nations and the importance of a strengthened United Nations. The United Nations is in a unique position to address those challenges in a comprehensive way. Many of the reforms that Members decided on in the world summit outcome last year, and that the General Assembly implemented during this session, will in fact be important tools in preventing armed conflict. The Peacebuilding Commission has the potential to make a difference to countries emerging from conflict in choosing the way of sustainable development instead of relapsing into conflict, helped also by the international community.
The Human Rights Council is to strengthen the standing of human rights within the United Nations system. The United Nations Charter itself recognizes the importance of universal respect for human rights and for the creation of conditions of stability and well-being that are necessary for peaceful relations among nations. The new Human Rights Council will contribute, through dialogue and cooperation, towards the prevention of human rights violations and respond promptly to human rights emergencies, as stated in the resolution that the General Assembly adopted on 15 March.
The full realization of the Millennium Development Goals and a committed approach to poverty reduction and sustainable development are prerequisites for the maintenance of peace and security. The world summit outcome reaffirmed the interlinkage between development, peace and security, and human rights. Our leaders made substantial commitments at the world summit in the field of development -- commitments that were followed up through a resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 30 June.
The world summit outcome welcomed the establishment of the United Nations Democracy Fund. I am encouraged that the Fund has now decided on the financing of the first projects.
I would not end without referring to the importance of the commitments made in the world summit outcome on the responsibility to protect. That was a major achievement on which we must all build. The most important part of that concept is the responsibility to prevent ethnic cleansing, mass killing and genocide, and to supply States with the capacity to protect their own populations. That is a crucial task for the United Nations and for all of us as Member States.
I sincerely hope that the General Assembly will continue to play an active role in preventing armed conflict, in accordance with its role under the Charter. The General Assembly is not only the engine for normative work, but also the highest forum for expressing the common concern and the political will of the international community. I look forward to an active and constructive debate. Since only a few days remain of the sixtieth session, we will, I hope, at the end of this meeting decide to revert to the Secretary-General's report and the recommendations contained therein during the sixty-first session. I have already discussed the importance of that matter with my successor.
I now give the floor to Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who will introduce the report of the Secretary-General entitled "Progress report on the prevention of armed conflict".
The Deputy Secretary-General
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| <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> | Python 2.6.6: /usr/bin/python Wed May 22 18:40:39 2013 |
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in |
| 194 if __name__ == "__main__": |
| 195 pathpart = os.getenv("PATH_INFO") |
| 196 maintrunk(pathpart) |
| 197 |
| 198 |
| maintrunk = <function maintrunk>, pathpart = '/generalassembly_60/meeting_98/highlight_A-60-L.60-Rev.1' |
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in maintrunk(pathpart='/generalassembly_60/meeting_98/highlight_A-60-L.60-Rev.1') |
| 131 elif pagefunc == "gameeting": |
| 132 LogIncomingDB(hmap["docid"], hmap["gadice"] or "0", referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| 133 WriteHTML(hmap["htmlfile"], hmap["pdfinfo"], hmap["gadice"], hmap["highlightdoclink"]) |
| 134 elif pagefunc == "agendanumexpanded": |
| 135 LogIncomingDB(pagefunc, hmap["agendanum"], referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| global WriteHTML = <function WriteHTML>, hmap = {'docid': 'A-60-PV.98', 'gadice': '', 'gameeting': 98, 'gasession': 60, 'highlightdoclink': 'A-60-L.60-Rev.1', 'htmlfile': '/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-60-PV.98.html', 'pagefunc': 'gameeting', 'pdfinfo': <pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>} |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteHTML(fhtml='/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-60-PV.98.html', pdfinfo=<pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>, gadice='', highlightth='A-60-L.60-Rev.1') |
| 322 if dclass == "spoken": |
| 323 if not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice: |
| 324 WriteSpoken(gid, dtextmu, councilpresidentnation) |
| 325 elif dclass == "subheading": |
| 326 if agendagidcurrent and (not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice): |
| global WriteSpoken = <function WriteSpoken>, gid = u'pg003-bk01', dtextmu = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">The Depu...e today and those we will hear from tomorrow.</p>', councilpresidentnation = None |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteSpoken(gid=u'pg003-bk01', dtext=u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">The Depu...e today and those we will hear from tomorrow.</p>', councilpresidentnation=None) |
| 69 print '</cite>' |
| 70 |
| 71 print dtext[mspek.end(0):] |
| 72 |
| 73 print '</div>' |
| dtext = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">The Depu...e today and those we will hear from tomorrow.</p>', mspek = <_sre.SRE_Match object>, mspek.end = <built-in method end of _sre.SRE_Match object> |
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args =
('ascii', u'\n\t<p id="pg003-bk01-pa01"> Let me first, if I ma...e today and those we will hear from tomorrow.</p>', 5556, 5557, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
encoding =
'ascii'
end =
5557
message =
''
object =
u'\n\t<p id="pg003-bk01-pa01"> Let me first, if I ma...e today and those we will hear from tomorrow.</p>'
reason =
'ordinal not in range(128)'
start =
5556