Italy, 1999

I congratulate you, Sir, on your

election as President of the General Assembly; it is a sure

guarantee of success for the fifty-fourth session. I also wish

to thank your predecessor, Didier Opertti, the Foreign

Minister of Uruguay, for his exemplary management of the

Assembly's work during the past year.

On the many issues facing the General Assembly in

the year to come, Italy shares and supports the statement

made yesterday by the Foreign Minister of Finland

speaking on behalf of the European Union.

The last few years of this century have disproved the

notion that people and human freedoms take second place

to State sovereignty. In Kosovo and East Timor a

coalition of States resorted to the use of force, but not for

self-seeking national interests, not to defend their borders,

not to impose new hegemonies.

The end of the nuclear nightmare has coincided with

a rampant proliferation of local conflicts, terrorist acts and

traumatic economic and financial crises. Can the end of

communism have given peace to former cold-war enemies

and conflict to the rest of the world? The cold war

brought a precarious, imperfect peace. Was that preferable

to the tragic series of conflicts that have embroiled

humanity over the past 10 years? The division of Europe

helped neutralize tensions throughout the planet. Does this

mean that nuclear weapons brought about a period of

unprecedented stability, and — as some have suggested,

paradoxically — that we should award the Nobel Peace

Prize to the bomb? The breakdown of the former

international order has created a plethora of new States.

Does this mean that dividing the world in two was the

only way to grant common citizenship to peoples and

religious groups that have never learned the art of

peaceful coexistence? The international community now

takes military action to deal with tragedies that only a few

years ago would have left us indifferent, and yet we are

still influenced by military assessments, strategic interests,

regional solidarity, public opinion and the magnitude of

any human rights violations. How can we act according

to more precise rules, based primarily on the duty of

States to protect the rights of individuals?

The crises that have broken out in recent years have

raised agonizing dilemmas and difficult questions that

demand answers. It would be wrong to use the

imperfections of the international system as an excuse for

inaction. But it would also be wrong to ignore the new

demands for certainty and the rule of law: the greatest

challenge is how to relate authority to law and lay down

codes of conduct and political discipline that reconcile

power with legitimacy.

Allow me to articulate a set of principles that could

guide our action in the new century. First, we should

enhance crisis prevention rather than conflict suppression.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has rightly observed that

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we must eradicate the cultural and economic causes of

conflicts and that a culture of conflict prevention must

prevail over the culture of conflict suppression. We know

what these causes of conflict are: the huge gap between the

living standards and incomes of different classes and

nations; the exponential increase in mass migration from

poor to rich countries; cultural difference and the conflicts

and fanaticism it triggers; criminal acts for the sake of

glorifying or even creating a nation. These are the four

horsemen of the contemporary Apocalypse.

Secondly, we should use force only as a last resort.

Arms should be used to stop criminal behaviour only when

economic and political instruments are inapplicable or have

failed. Ten years ago, these same instruments brought down

totalitarian communism, which was a more formidable

enemy than today's tyrants. In the Balkans and in East

Timor, peacekeeping operations were launched to address

serious, massive and systematic violations of human rights.

The decisions to intervene were made after repeated

demands that the culprits end a state of illegality; after an

exhaustive and fruitless search for a diplomatic solution;

and by a group of States rather than by a single Power.

We are living in an age of unfinished wars. In Iraq as

in Serbia, authoritarian rulers have been seriously

weakened, but they are still in power. How and how much

can sanctions be used to replace or complement the use of

force? Perhaps we need clearer international strategies and

rules that pay heed to the most vulnerable members of

society, to the political opposition and to the risk of

strengthening despots through sanctions. Our focus should

be more on incentives than on sanctions.

Thirdly, we need to define rules. No one knows the

size or shape of the next challenge. But our response must

be dictated by respect for universal principles rather than by

a balance of power. We must beware of conjuring up the

spectre of international law as the law of the strongest. We

must beware of making some countries more equal than

others. To do so would run counter to our best political and

cultural traditions, in which the law is meant to protect the

weak.

The Western world and the Euro-Atlantic institutions

are no threat to anyone's integrity, prosperity and freedom.

But we must perfect the instruments that uphold the

international rule of law. We must spell out the duties of

States. We must create a fully fledged corpus of case law

on universal human rights. We must work out rules and

procedures that will justify the erosion of sovereignty in the

name of global responsibility. This is why every country

must make it a priority to ratify the international

instruments for safeguarding human rights. I am thinking

in particular of the International Criminal Court, which

was instituted in Rome in June of last year. These

instruments should be reflected in our national legislation

and practice. Finally, we should encourage the

involvement of our own institutions. It is in this spirit that

we have invited the United Nations High Commissioner

for Human Rights, Mrs. Mary Robinson, to address the

Italian Parliament.

Until human rights are firmly institutionalized,

doubts will remain over the relationship between

legitimacy and effectiveness. The gradual construction of

universal citizenship is a learning process to which we all

should contribute. Otherwise we shall be racing towards

fragmentation, seeking forms of independence that are not

economically viable and that are vulnerable to others'

desire for hegemony.

Fourthly, we must learn to appreciate the judgement

of others. I would like to quote, in this respect, one of the

founding fathers of American democracy, James Madison.

He said:

“An attention to the judgement of other nations

is important to every government for two reasons.

The first one is that, independently of the merits of

any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on

various accounts, that it should appear to other

nations as the offspring of a wise and honourable

policy. The second is that, in doubtful cases,

particularly where the national councils may be

warped by some strong passion or momentary

interests, the presumed or known opinion of the

impartial world may be the best guides that can be

followed.”

Today's world has acquired a new sensitivity. It will

no longer tolerate the oppression of the weak. This

implies a rethinking of the principles of national

sovereignty and non-interference that have governed the

community of nations for over three centuries, beginning

in Europe. But we must avoid double standards, applying

one yardstick to friendly countries and another to those

that are not. This is what makes the ultimate sanction of

the United Nations so indispensable, since an international

legal standard cannot — except in exceptional temporary

situations — be the prerogative of any single group of

States.

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When we defend the rights of others, we cannot

pretend that the lives of our own people are not also at risk.

By the same token, it would be inconsistent not to place the

same value on other human lives as we do on our own.

Every culture and tradition must be involved in the

defence of liberties and freedom. We cannot ignore the

regional dimension of human rights, whose inviolable

universal character can be enriched by the varieties of

historic experiences. But stalemates and the paralysis of

intersecting vetoes must be avoided by anchoring even the

strongest States to a system of rules and principles,

balancing their power against the effectiveness and strength

of the international institutions.

Fifthly, we should strengthen the institutions. The

aftermath of the cold war has proved that large political and

economic groupings can more easily guarantee ethnic

coexistence, religious tolerance and economic advancement.

This should be kept in mind whenever pressure builds to

release the genie of self-determination from the bottle of

State sovereignty.

Only the great institutions, whether regional — such

as the European Union and the Atlantic Alliance — or

universal — such as the United Nations — can close the

gap between democratic codification of laws and their

effective enforcement. Unless we have a strong institutional

network, every peacekeeping operation could end up

looking as if we were taking the law into our own hands.

Everyone would feel as if he should look out only for his

own security, leading to a proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction. Therefore, let us resume the disarmament talks,

as President Clinton proposed in his statement yesterday,

and place our common security on more solid foundations.

There is one lesson to be learned from these years of

turmoil: actions to prevent and repress the most serious

violations of human rights may take precedence over

respect for national sovereignty. No Government can hide

behind the shield of its own borders. Legitimacy demands

the redefinition of relations between States and the

international community. It demands the reformulation of

the principle of non-interference, which has sometimes

allowed States to neglect their duties towards their citizens.

Although the United Nations is an organization of States,

the rights and the ideals it protects are those of individuals.

I have listed some rules that will help redefine

coexistence among peoples through the work of the United

Nations. We live in a world in which threats against one

group immediately affect every other group and impel them

to take responsibility, a world in which the concept of

non-interference can no longer be invoked to obstruct

action in the face of serious violations of fundamental

rights. We must ask ourselves how to address all these

changes, for the sake of closer and more equitable

international cooperation.

Of course, States will continue to have different

perceptions of national interests, and there will be a

continued need to reconcile them peacefully. But for the

United Nations to meet the challenges of the new century,

our codes of conduct must be placed within a more solid

institutional framework. The United Nations Security

Council should be made more representative and

democratic in composition, in line with proposals of a

number of Member States. All the citizens of the world

should be able to identify themselves with the United

Nations and feel a part of its decision-making and law-

making processes; this for the sake of universal

sovereignty, which is not the prerogative of a few, but the

right of all.

The cold war represented an international order

dominated by two super-Powers and held in check by

nuclear weapons. Today’s world is economically more

united, but politically more divided. The watchword of

the economy is deregulation. But politics requires rules if

we do not want anarchy to prevail. Unlike the market, in

politics no invisible hand can generate peace and

prosperity. What we need is a visible hand that enacts

rules and regulations, and obliges States to respect them,

both beyond their borders and in the treatment of their

citizens. Let us make the United Nations the visible hand

of peace and prosperity. This may be the greatest

challenge awaiting us. We must face it together, here in

this forum, and place it at the centre of the upcoming

debate on the role of the United Nations in the twenty-

first century.