United Kingdom, 1995

May I first

congratulate you, Sir, on your assumption of the presidency

in this most important year for the United Nations.

It is nearly half a century since the General Assembly

of the United Nations first met, in London. King George VI

told the visiting representatives of 50 countries that no more

important meeting had ever taken place there. The founders

of the United Nations had taken on themselves a heavy

responsibility and a noble work.

Today we must pay tribute to those founders and

their efforts. Earlier models of collective security had

soon crumbled. The League of Nations collapsed after

less than two decades. The United Nations has proved

more durable. Over 50 years it has helped spread peace

in place of war. It has worked to push back hunger and

disease and to advance democracy and human rights.

Without the United Nations we would have a bleaker

world.

I am delighted to add Britain’s voice to these

celebrations at the fiftieth session of the General

Assembly. After five decades it is timely to recall what

the United Nations has achieved. At the start of a new

half-century it is right to weigh the lessons of past

experience.

The United Nations is a means to an end. Its value

lies not simply in the shared principles and ambitions

enshrined in the Charter, but in practical results. Its

successes are real.

The United Nations has been a force for peace.

From Korea in the 1950s to Kuwait in the 1990s, it has

helped check and reverse the tides of aggression. In the

Near East and Cyprus, United Nations troops have

worked for decades to sustain a measure of stability. In

Cambodia the United Nations mounted its most complex

operation ever to rebuild a country shattered by 13 years

of war. In Mozambique United Nations peace-keepers

have helped demobilize 100,000 combatants, allowing

democratic elections and the creation of a unified army.

The United Nations has been a source of relief from

suffering. Since 1951 the Office of the United Nations

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has provided

food, shelter, medicine and education for over 30 million

refugees. United Nations programmes have immunized 80

per cent of the world’s children against disease. United

Nations sanitation and nutrition projects have halved child

mortality in developing countries.

The United Nations has been a motor for democracy

and sustainable development. It has given electoral help

to over 40 countries. Its charters and covenants set

international standards of human rights. It has brokered

agreements to conserve world forests and fish stocks.

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The United Nations has done good work for five

decades. My country, the United Kingdom, has been at its

heart from the start. From the drafting of the Charter, as the

first host, in London, of the General Assembly and of the

Security Council, we have been a staunch supporter of the

United Nations. From the first stirrings of environmental

concern in the 1960s, to the fight against AIDS since the

1980s, through to management innovation and financial

reform in the 1990s, Britain has been a driving force for the

changing agenda of the United Nations. In 1947 we were

a party to the first case to come before the International

Court of Justice. This year a British judge became the

Court’s first ever woman member.

Even before the end of the cold war, British forces

had served the United Nations cause for decades. For 30

years the United Nations operation in Cyprus has depended

on British troops and logistics. In the last five years British

forces have served in Kuwait, Cambodia, Rwanda, Angola,

Georgia and, of course, Bosnia. Today Britain commits

more troops to United Nations peace-keeping than any other

Member State — with 10,250 out of a total of 69,000.

Near the end of its first half-century, the end of the

cold war opened a new chapter for the United Nations.

After years of super-Power stalemate, it again became

possible to take effective action in the Security Council,

including by authorizing the use of force to reverse

aggression. Almost immediately a rash of ethnically based

regional disputes began to break out, from the former

Yugoslavia in the West to Central Asia in the East.

Early experience brought a sense of exhilaration.

When Saddam Hussein made his foolish miscalculation and

sought to wipe Kuwait off the map, the United Nations was

the means chosen to stop him, and it worked. Talk of a

new world order did not seem empty.

Five years on, the record looks more diffuse. The

international community could do little to halt disintegration

in Somalia or to avert bloody collapse in Rwanda. The wars

of secession in the former Yugoslavia have dragged on for

four years.

But those who speak of United Nations failure are

wrong. The pendulum that swung too far towards euphoria

after the Gulf War has swung too far towards despair. Look

at the facts.

Alongside the torment of Bosnia and Rwanda are the

democratic revolutions that have swept South Africa, South

America and Central and Eastern Europe. We live in a

post-apartheid world, with a Europe of free nations and

the Middle East peace process a reality rather than a

slogan. The United Nations has helped bring about peace

in Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique and at

last, perhaps, in Angola. Even in Bosnia, the real good

the United Nations has done has been obscured by unreal

expectations. The reality of the past five years is not one

of spreading world disorder, but of painstaking, steady

efforts to build peace.

Compare this record to the grim setting for the first

General Assembly meeting in 1946, when whole regions

lay in ruins after five years of world war. The truth is that

the history of serious attempts at international cooperation

is still quite young. The United Nations is by far its most

successful expression. There is today no one country or

group of countries ready and able to cope with new world

disorder all alone, and since regional instability and

economic dislocation affect all our interests, we need a

strong and effective United Nations.

This is not to deny the need for change. But it is no

good simply blaming the Organization. We, the United

Nations Members, must meet our obligations to help

improve the system. We have done much in recent years.

The United Nations is better able now to plan, mount and

conduct missions. Britain and others have seconded

military officers to New York to develop the planning and

operational capability and funded secondments by other

nations. Last year Britain helped launch a new initiative

on African peace-keeping. That is bearing fruit now, in

United Nations regional training, in closer cooperation

between African countries and the Organization of

African Unity (OAU) Conflict Resolution Mechanism and

in products like the Anglo-French Peace-keeping

Glossary, developed by the Ghanaian Staff College.

The process of reform must continue. The more

seriously the United Nations addresses issues like pre-

planning, logistic support and command and control, the

more confidence troop contributors will have, the more

forces will be put at the disposal of the United Nations

and the more effective the operations will be.

Changing procedures is not enough. We must learn

to be more realistic in what we ask of the United Nations.

That means not setting aspirations we cannot provide the

means to meet. Sometimes a declaratory statement is

useful to put the international community’s views on

record, to underpin a consensus. At other times it may be

better for the Security Council to remain silent than to

issue unrealistic pronouncements.

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Bosnia and Somalia have shown the limits of peace-

keeping. They offer a clear lesson. The United Nations is

not yet suited to fight wars. Peace enforcement is better

left, perhaps, to a coalition of the willing acting under

United Nations authority. We must not send in the United

Nations to keep a peace which does not exist and then

blame the United Nations for failure, nor send it in

mandated and equipped to keep the peace and then blame

it because it does not enforce the peace.

Whatever the blemishes of recent years, there is

greater scope today for effective international action than

ever before. The United Nations should be the centre-point

of such work. I suggest we should focus greater effort in

future on two areas.

First, preventive action is better than cure. Far better

than containing or extinguishing a fire is stopping it from

igniting. Bosnia is the most tragic example. Today the

prospects for peace look a little stronger. I commend the

efforts of Dick Holbrooke, supported by the Contact Group,

to mediate between the parties, and the agreement reached

in Geneva on 8 September. Many hard choices lie ahead for

all sides before a final settlement is achieved. But we have

made a start. It is vital that all parties seize this chance for

peace. Only political negotiations, not military force, can

secure that.

But the war has dragged on for three and a half years

now. Tens of thousands of people have been killed;

millions more have been made homeless. It will take years

for the wounds inflicted on that country to heal. Certainly

the suffering would have been many times worse without

a United Nations presence. When I was in Sarajevo last

week, the Bosnian Government told me how much it values

the work done by British and other forces to help the

people of Bosnia. But how much better for all these people

if war had been avoided from the start. Perhaps much of

the damage and destruction might have been prevented by

closer international attention to the problems and tensions

arising from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

We have started to learn that lesson. The early

deployment of a small United Nations force in The Former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has helped to stop

conflict from spreading there. Elsewhere the quiet

diplomacy of the Organization for Security and Cooperation

in Europe has helped defuse tension in Ukraine and

Albania; has nudged adversaries toward peace talks in

Georgia, Moldova and Chechnya. There are few headlines

for successes that avert fighting and save lives. But the

headlines of war carry a heavy price. Preventive action is

a wiser investment.

Many routes exist. Britain and France have sketched

out one model: to use the skills of diplomats, of soldiers,

of academics and others to defuse tension and promote

dialogue. The presence of aid workers, human rights

monitors, or United Nations envoys can help contain a

brewing crisis; and all credit to the United Nations

representative doing that in Burundi. We strongly support

the efforts of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to

work with the United Nations in preventive diplomacy

and conflict resolution. The initiative on African peace-

keeping will help.

So many different actors can play a part. The crucial

point is not who acts but when. Early warning of a crisis

and prompt action by the international community are the

real key to avoiding further tragedy of the kind we have

seen in Bosnia.

My second proposal is for a new approach to peace-

building. To provide lasting security requires more than

diplomacy and military force. To build real peace we

must bridge the gap between our humanitarian work and

our long-term development work.

Aid workers have grown used to coping with the

debris of war. In the past five years the Office of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR) has given help to millions fleeing conflict:

Rwandans in Tanzania and Zaire, Afghans in Iran and

Pakistan, Liberians in Côte d’Ivoire and in Guinea. But

too often we treat short-term humanitarian needs in

isolation. Huge sums have been spent in humanitarian

efforts in Rwanda, for example. But Rwanda’s long-term

stability depends on rebuilding the structures of society

and on civil rights; helping local communities to help

themselves, in areas from health and housing through to

an effective judiciary.

I suggest that two elements are key to a new

approach.

First of all, we must adopt a longer-term perspective

in tackling immediate crises. Even when a cease-fire is

holding, or elections have taken place, if the framework

of society is shaky, a continued international presence can

offer it stability until a government can cope. An abrupt

end to a mission, by contrast, can be very destabilizing.

In El Salvador, for example, a small human rights team

stayed on after the United Nations troops had left, to

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provide further advice and monitoring. Peace-keepers

themselves can help begin the work of reconstruction. The

United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and the aid

agencies have been doing that for over a year in central

Bosnia, underpinning reconciliation between Muslim and

Croat communities by rebuilding roads and hospitals and

schools.

I strongly support the thesis of the Secretary-General’s

recent report: that we must go beyond electoral assistance,

to preparing the social and institutional ground in which

democracy and civil society can put down firm roots. The

task of rebuilding Bosnia could be a model for the future.

Secondly, we need far better coordination in what we

do. If funds are to be gathered and used quickly and

effectively, donors themselves must make a greater effort

to meet their promises of help. Before operations begin, as

planning gets under way, the international financial

institutions must be involved from the start, as they were in

Cambodia. All the actors in the United Nations system must

be working together, military and political, humanitarian

and development, crossing the traditional boundaries

between rival baronies. Such a coalition of interests could

plug the gap we see too often now, until the major

reconstruction programmes can begin.

My proposal is to build on these principles in United

Nations programmes for stabilization and transition. There

are many areas where international expertise can help

restore a society; creating judicial systems; training an

army; developing a finance ministry or a diplomatic service.

To fulfil these needs, we should be prepared to loan our

experts to countries emerging from conflict, as Britain’s

Know-How Fund does for countries in Central and Eastern

Europe emerging from communism. United Nations

programmes for stabilization and transition could be the

greatest contribution we could make to international

security.

The demands on the United Nations have grown

enormously. To meet them the United Nations needs

change at the centre too. I welcome work under way to cut

costs and reduce waste in New York. The whole United

Nations system must learn from that example. We need

better planning and budgeting, an end to fraud and

mismanagement. More subcontracting can help, using non-

governmental organizations, even private companies, for

tasks like mine clearance and logistics in Angola. And there

is still too much duplication between the United Nations

agencies. Rhetoric is not enough. Reform has to be real,

and it has to be soon.

This is not a side issue. It is not a narrow interest.

If we are to do the United Nations work effectively —

peace-keeping, aid or humanitarian — we must use its

resources better. No one, G-7 or G-77, benefits from

waste. Recent experience has shown the United Nations

is in some ways ill-fitted for its tasks; under-powered in

some areas, like peace-keeping and preventive diplomacy;

but, however, still bloated in other parts of the system.

United Nations Members must pay their dues. But the

United Nations must justify those funds, and get the most

from them, by hard decisions on duplication and over-

staffing, and diverting resources to the top priorities.

Britain supports enlargement of the Security Council

to broaden its base without reducing its effectiveness.

Permanent membership is the key issue. Permanent

members of the Security Council must be both willing

and able to make a significant contribution through the

United Nations to international security. That is what the

Security Council is about. That is what it must remain if

it is to be effective. Germany and Japan are playing an

increasing part across the range of United Nations

business, and are among the top three financial

contributors. It is right that they should benefit from an

expansion of the permanent membership, with the wider

rights that entails, but also with the wider responsibilities

to contribute to security and peace-keeping. Broad

geographical balance in an enlarged Council also needs to

be maintained.

But the United Nations system will never work if we

do not fund it properly. The United Nations is on the

verge of financial collapse. It is owed over $3.7 billion in

unpaid contributions. Troop contributors are owed nearly

$1 billion. Last year 39 countries failed to pay at all. The

United Kingdom favours tightening of penalties for non-

payment, including the charging of interest on late

payments. We find unacceptable cross-funding of regular

budget deficits from the peace-keeping budget. Perhaps an

appropriate policy could best be entitled: No

Representation without Taxation!

The financing arrangements must change. Some

members pay too much. Others, like the new economic

giants of the developing world, now pay less than they

should. We need a scale that is simpler and reflects a

country’s real capacity to pay, and without the additional

anomalies and distortions of the present system. Britain

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and Sweden have put forward ideas. We need progress

soon.

But the problem is not solved by turning the tap off.

This year we have all reaffirmed our support for goals and

work of the United Nations. But empty words will not pay

bills.

The final lesson from the last 50 years may be the

most important: the case for a strong, effective United

Nations.

In conclusion, may I say that the United Nations today

faces a crisis of confidence. United States Congressmen

may be the most vocal sceptics. They are not alone. The air

of optimism, of a fresh start after the cold war, is overtaken

in some quarters by gloom at the instability and

fragmentation around us, and pessimism at our ability to

cope. This despair is dangerous.

Multilateral action is not an add-on to national policy.

It gives wider legitimacy to principles we value, such as

human rights and democracy. It spreads the cost of aims we

share, such as freeing Kuwait from invasion or restoring

democracy in Haiti. It lets us work with others to fight

common threats, such as greenhouse-gas emissions or the

international drug trade.

The price is not high. The bill for all United Nations

peace-keeping, all aid and development work last year, was

slightly over 3.5 per cent of the United States’ defence

budget, or less than the United Kingdom spends on police

and public administration. One day of Operation Desert

Storm cost as much as all that year’s United Nations peace-

keeping. The price of disengagement and disorder would be

greater. Public support is there. Even in the United States,

polls are clear: people support the United Nations, and they

support international peace-keeping. We have a duty to our

electorates to continue the United Nations work.

It is easy to forget the United Nations successes over

50 years. It is easy to turn away from disorder and chaos.

But the world is too small. Crises in distant countries affect

us too; our commerce, our citizens overseas, our

neighbour’s security — ultimately it is our own. It is in our

interest to play what part we can to build a more decent

world. If the United Nations were not here to help do that,

we would have to invent something else.

The experience of five decades offers lessons for the

future. I know the Secretary-General is committed to

change. Getting the United Nations we need for the twenty-

first century requires the support and participation of all

Member States. The United Kingdom has played a full

part in the United Nations for 50 years, and we will

continue to do so.