Sri Lanka, 1997

May I begin, Sir, by

extending to you our warm felicitations on your election

to the presidency of the General Assembly. Your long

association with the United Nations as Ukraine’s

Permanent Representative and your diplomatic skills and

accomplishments as your country’s Foreign Minister

undoubtedly, if I may say so, make you eminently suited

for the task of guiding our deliberations this year.

We would like to place on record our deep

appreciation for the achievements of your predecessor,

Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia. As President of

the General Assembly last year he left an indelible mark

in the annals of this institution by giving it bold and

vigorous leadership at a time when far-reaching changes

in the United Nations system are being undertaken.

I also wish to convey our warm greetings, and

indeed a very special welcome, to the Secretary-General

as he participates in this, his first General Assembly

debate since he became the chief executive of our

Organization. He has, in a very short time, developed and

launched a far-reaching programme of reforms, which is

undoubtedly the most comprehensive undertaken in the

52-year history of the Organization. We pledge our fullest

cooperation to him in his arduous work. We pledge to

make a positive response to his initiative for reform.

This year the General Assembly is preoccupied —

and very rightly so — with the question of reform. It is

no doubt an important question, a question on which all

delegations have a view. Indeed, there are many

conflicting views on the subject. My Government also has

a view, one that it shares with a large number of

delegations, especially those of the countries of the Non-

Aligned Movement. I will in a moment make my brief

observations on the question of reform.

But this year I wish to devote my address to the

General Assembly, in the main, to a different theme. I

wish to place before the delegations here assembled,

fairly and squarely, and to plead fervently, a cause to

which my Government is deeply committed and for which

it has deep concern. It is a cause that deserves the strong

support of all Governments and all the peoples of the

world. It is a cause that challenges the conscience of

mankind. It is a cause that cries out for redress, for

immediate, concerted, vigorous action. It is the cause of

the innocent, helpless victims of war. More specifically,

my theme is the impact of armed conflict on children: a

subject that in the experience of Sri Lanka is drenched in

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blood and tears. I will return to my theme in a moment.

But first, the question of reform.

Although 1997 is often referred to as the year of

reform, we would prefer it to be remembered as the year of

renewal and reform. Reform by itself is no substitute for

empowering the United Nations. Renewal of the spirit of

multilateralism enshrined in the Charter is an essential

corollary to the reform exercise launched by the Secretary-

General. If reform is to be conceptually sound and capable

of effective implementation, it must command in the fullest

sense consensus in the General Assembly.

Sri Lanka certainly shares the vision of the Secretary-

General to make the United Nations a dynamic and cost-

effective institution responsive to the challenges of our day

and age. We recognize the necessity for reorganizing the

Secretariat, the consolidation of United Nations activities

into core areas, the creation of a senior management group,

and the coordination of United Nations field activities as a

manifestation of sound principles of good management. The

creation of a United Nations Development Group that

would consolidate and coordinate the activities of a variety

of bodies is another proposal that merits close attention. We

endorse the measures to strengthen the United Nations

operational capacity to combat drugs, crime and terrorism

by bringing together disparate international efforts under a

single dedicated organization.

Sri Lanka shares with many other delegations the

disappointment that consensus has so far eluded our efforts

to expand the Security Council. The General Assembly’s

Open-ended Working Group on this issue has been

deliberating since 1994 with very little progress

accomplished, which is itself evidence of the contentious

nature of the question. Sri Lanka was one of the 10

countries that brought the question of equitable

representation and increase in the membership of the

Security Council to the General Assembly agenda in 1979.

Many Member States have consistently demanded that the

composition of the Security Council should be broadened

and that its working methods should be rendered

transparent. The Council cannot remain structurally

fossilized and anachronistic in a world of dynamic change.

We are pleased to note that the need for change is

now being widely recognized. In order to be credible,

viable and successful, reform of the Security Council

should prudently take into account the interests clearly set

forth by the non-aligned nations. We are pleased to note

that the United States of America has now agreed that an

expanded Security Council should contain three

representatives of the developing countries as permanent

members.

We agree with the Secretary-General’s proposal that

there should be a dedicated locus for the United Nations

operational activities against crime and terrorism. United

Nations action against terrorism can no longer be

confined to rhetorical statements and exhortations. We

therefore endorse the Secretary- General’s timely proposal

to place United Nations action to combat crime and

terrorism in an operational mode.

There is convincing evidence that civil society and

the rule of law are increasingly threatened by

transnational networking in illicit arms, terrorism,

narcotics, money-laundering and crime. The former

Secretary-General rightly described this phenomenon as

a “supra-national subversive threat” to peace and stability.

The present Secretary-General has correctly focused on

the fact that underworld groups and terrorists have

mastered the abuse of technology and the globalized

information network to propagate their sinister designs.

Their misuse and abuse of modern technology have vastly

increased the power and influence of these criminal

groups, which pose a massive threat to law and order,

democratic political institutions and economic activities

within and between nations.

It should be a priority on the international agenda

that effective measures be taken to control, if not

eliminate, these pernicious elements. We agree with the

recommendation that a redoubling of efforts involving

new partnerships among national and international

agencies will be needed to achieve this objective. It is to

be emphasized that there should be coordination between

the merged focal points on crime, drugs and terrorism and

the United Nations department handling the flow of small

arms and the illicit arms trade.

We also hope that the United Nations Ad Hoc

Committee on an International Convention for the

Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, of which Sri Lanka

is a Vice-Chairman, will conclude its negotiations and

submit a text for adoption at this session. Thereafter, we

urge the international community, especially the large and

powerful nations, to update their domestic legislation so

as to arm themselves with adequate legislative authority

to eradicate the fund-raising and other activities which

take place on their soil in support of terrorist activities

that take place on the soil of other States. Today terrorism

is a phenomenon with international ramifications. Only

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well-organized, well-coordinated international action can

combat international terrorism effectively.

I turn now to the question of human rights. The

delicate and complex process of protecting and promoting

human rights, good governance and accountability in an

environment of underdevelopment, violence and terrorism

is one that should be carefully developed and resolutely

moved forward. The Declaration of Human Rights is

universal and unalterable. Sri Lanka does not believe that

the Declaration should be diluted, modified or ignored.

What we believe, and strongly advocate, is that

international action to enforce human rights should be fair

and even-handed. Human rights should never be used by

powerful States to bludgeon and bully weaker States for

spurious political reasons. The essence of peace and

development is that each human being should be enabled to

enjoy “better standards of life in larger freedom”.

Undeterred by the extraordinary security problems

posed by terrorism and the threats levelled against the

democratic traditions and institutions of Sri Lanka, we have

been able to make much headway in the promotion and

protection of human rights in our country. Sri Lanka is now

a party to 13 international human rights instruments. At the

risk of exposing itself to tendentious propaganda by terrorist

groups, the Government has taken a number of national and

international measures on a broad front, to pursue an open

policy on human rights in accordance with international

norms. We have established a national Human Rights

Commission, which is an independent organization with

investigative, monitoring and advisory powers. The

Commission is now functional and is in touch with regional

and international institutions including the United Nations

Centre for Human Rights.

I am also pleased to mention that I have today, just a

short while ago, deposited with the Secretary-General Sri

Lanka’s instrument of accession to the Optional Protocol to

the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This important decision to permit international scrutiny of

governmental actions affecting the human rights of our

citizens is consistent with our policy of openness on human

rights.

Sri Lanka warmly welcomes the appointment of Mary

Robinson as the new High Commissioner for Human

Rights. I had the pleasure of discussing human rights issues

with her a few days ago. I am confident that she will bring

to her task an open mind and a fair approach; that she will

seek and promote informed dialogue, not confrontation; that

she will strive to win the trust of developing countries; and

that she will not apply double standards nor wield human

rights concerns as a weapon against them. We wish her

every success as she assumes her important duties. She

may rest assured that she will receive from Sri Lanka the

fullest cooperation.

I have now reached the central theme of my address:

the impact of armed conflict on children. Every year the

United Nations builds a mountain of paper: according to

the British Foreign Secretary, 2,500 tons of paper are

produced annually at a cost of $150 million. At this time

of year, every year, the General Assembly is engulfed by

a flood of words that rises to new heights as the

membership of our Organization grows in number. There

is much waste, much repetition, much verbiage in our

methods of work. But we must always remember that

within this pile of papers there are some documents which

deserve — which require — the closest attention of the

international community.

One such document, outstanding for its sweep, its

depth and the careful research that went into its

preparation is the study on the impact of armed conflict

on children compiled by Ms. Graça Machel and her

collaborators and submitted to the General Assembly last

year under the symbols A/51/306 and A/51/306/Add.1. It

is a document so profound in its impact, so searing in the

revelations it makes of matters that the world little

understands that to ignore it would be a permanent rebuke

to the collective conscience of mankind.

The study exposes the plight of children as the

victims of armed conflict. It covers the agonizing

situation of children as refugees, as objects of exploitation

and gender-based violence and above all as child soldiers.

The study recommends measures for the rehabilitation and

reconciliation of children affected by war, for promoting

their psychological recovery and social integration, for

their education and for dealing with a number of other

questions relevant to the problem of mitigating the impact

of war on children. The study points out that millions of

children are caught up in conflicts in which they are not

merely bystanders but targets. Some fall victim to a

general onslaught against civilians; others die as part of

a calculated genocide. Still other children suffer the

effects of sexual violence or the multiple deprivations of

armed conflict that expose them to hunger or disease. Just

as shocking, thousands of young children are cynically

exploited as combatants.

In 1995, according to the study, 30 major conflicts

raged in different locations around the world. All of them

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took place within States, between factions split along

ethnic, religious or cultural lines. The conflict destroyed

crops, places of worship and schools. Nothing was spared,

held sacred or protected: not children, not families, not

communities. In the past decade, an estimated two million

children have been killed in armed conflict. Three times as

many have been seriously injured or permanently disabled.

Countless others have been forced to witness or even take

part in horrifying acts of violence. These statistics are

shocking enough, but more chilling, says the study, is the

conclusion to be drawn from them: that more and more of

the world is being sucked into a desolate moral vacuum.

This is a space devoid of the most basic human values; a

space in which children are slaughtered, raped and maimed;

a space in which children are exploited as soldiers; a space

in which children are starved and exposed to extreme

brutality. Unregulated terror and violence speak of

deliberate victimization. There are few further depths to

which humanity could sink.

Ms. Machel pleads that whatever the causes of

modern-day brutalities towards children, the time has come

to call a halt. I make the same plea to the General

Assembly today. The study exposes the extent of the

problem and proposes many practical ways to pull back

from the brink. Its most fundamental demand is that

children simply have no part in warfare. The international

community must denounce this attack on children for what

it is: intolerable and unacceptable.

Violent conflict has always made victims of non-

combatants. The patterns and characteristics of

contemporary armed conflicts, however, have increased the

risks for children. The personalization of power and

leadership and the manipulation of ethnicity and religion to

serve personal or narrow group interests have had similarly

debilitating effects on countries in conflict. Armed conflicts

across and between communities result in massive levels of

destruction: physical, human, moral, cultural. Not only are

large numbers of children killed and injured, but countless

others grow up deprived of their material and emotional

needs, including the structures that give meaning to social

and cultural life. The entire fabric of their societies — their

homes, schools, health systems and religious institutions —

are torn to pieces.

The Machel study rightly points out that war violates

every right of a child: the right to life, the right to be with

family and community, the right to health, the right to the

development of the personality and the right to be nurtured

and protected. Many of today’s conflicts last the whole

length of a childhood, meaning that from birth to early

adulthood, many children will experience multiple and

cumulative assaults.

Against the background I have outlined, I wish to

focus sharply on the terrible plight of child soldiers. The

Machel study has pointed out that one of the most

alarming trends in armed conflict is the participation of

children as soldiers. Children serve armies in supporting

roles, as cooks, porters, messengers and spies.

Increasingly, however, adults are deliberately conscripting

children as soldiers. Some commanders have even noted

the desirability of using child soldiers in war because they

are

“ more obedient, do not question orders and are

easier to manipulate than adult soldiers'”. [A/51/306,

para. 34]

A series of 24 case studies on the use of children as

soldiers prepared for the Machel study, covering conflicts

over the past 30 years, indicates that Government or rebel

armies around the world have recruited tens of thousands

of children. Many child soldiers are 10 years of age or

younger. While the majority are boys, girls also are

recruited. The children most likely to become soldiers are

those from impoverished and marginalized backgrounds

and those who have become separated from their families.

In Sri Lanka we know exactly what the Machel

study is talking about. We have for almost two decades

been in the grip of a war being fought against the State

by a group of heavily armed terrorists known as the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and

internationally known as one of the deadliest terrorist

organizations the world has ever seen. It is fighting to

create a separate State in Sri Lanka by force of arms. Last

July the Senate of the United States unanimously

concluded that the LTTE is a terrorist organization and

requested the State Department to declare it to be so. Last

August a Canadian court declared the LTTE to be a

terrorist organization and ordered the deportation of its

chief fund-raiser in Canada.

The LTTE has killed thousands of unarmed civilians

and has destroyed public property worth millions of

dollars. In January last year it bombed and destroyed the

Central Bank of Sri Lanka, killing hundreds of civilians,

and in July last year it bombed a rush-hour commuter

train full of workers going home, again killing hundreds

of civilians. These are but a few of the atrocities the

LTTE has committed against civilians in the course of a

long campaign of terror. Only a few months ago it killed

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two of our Members of Parliament, adding to the large tally

of politicians and other leaders murdered by the LTTE over

the years, including a President of Sri Lanka and a Prime

Minister of India. Recently the LTTE attacked international

civilian shipping that provides essential services and

supplies to the Tamil community in the north of Sri Lanka,

the very community on whose behalf it claims to be

fighting.

The LTTE has conscripted thousands of teenage

children to fight its war. Involving children as soldiers has

been made easier by the proliferation of inexpensive light

weapons. But the LTTE is committing more dastardly and

more heinous crimes against Tamil children. It brazenly

kidnaps them or lures them to its cause by glorifying and

romanticizing war. They are brainwashed into believing in

the cult of martyrdom. They swear fanatical allegiance to

the leader. The Machel study identified Sri Lanka as one of

the countries where children are being lured into “cults of

martyrdom” [A/51/306, para. 43] by the “ideological

indoctrination” [ibid.] of the LTTE. A book entitled

Children, the Invisible Soldiers, released by the Save the

Children organization in Stockholm, has condemned the use

of children in suicide attacks by the LTTE. The

international news agency IPS reported last May that

“as adults are killed, up to half the fighters of the

LTTE are children, many among them girls”.

In another recent study, the United Nations Special

Rapporteur on Violence against Women has strongly

condemned the use of women in war by the LTTE.

Many of these children, boys and girls, are no more

than 10 years of age. Many of them are transformed into

suicide bombers. They wear cyanide capsules around their

necks. They are hurled into battle as human bombs. The

Machel study itself has observed, with specific reference to

Sri Lanka, that

“adults have used young people’s immaturity to their

own advantage, recruiting and training adolescents for

suicide bombings.” [ibid.]

A recent press report on fighting in the north of Sri Lanka

noted that

“young boys barely in their teens are blindfolded and

escorted by a woman Tiger cadre to the battlefield, in

groups of eight to 10, their blindfolds removed and

they are ordered to fire at troops”.

In December 1995 the former United Nations Children’s

Fund (UNICEF) representative in Sri Lanka said in a

press release

“The LTTE recruits boys and girls from the age of

10 upwards. Their dependence on child combatants

is increasing rapidly.”

The Machel study has referred to the role which

international organizations, non-governmental

organizations, religious groups and civil society in general

can play in preventing this diabolical practice. It is indeed

a matter of great regret that in my own country, despite

the notorious prevalence of the LTTE practice of

recruiting children as fighters, these organizations, which

are often quite vocal in their pleas for peace and swift to

castigate excesses on the part of the armed forces, have

remained strangely silent on this issue. By their failure to

condemn such acts, they are surely guilty of a grave

dereliction of the duty to uphold the moral and spiritual

values of a civilized society. By their silence it would

appear that they are oblivious to the immense tragedy of

a whole generation of young lives being sacrificed to

Moloch, while a misguided few applaud the helpless

victims as martyrs, and yet others seek to romanticize the

so-called liberation of girls who have hitherto been

brought up in a long-respected traditional mode, caring

nought for the dehumanization that is involved.

I strongly urge the international community to take

action on the lines suggested in paragraph 62 of the

Machel study. These recommendations envisage a global

campaign aimed at eradicating the use of children under

the age of 18 years in armed conflict and the public

exposure of such practices by the media, creating

international pressure against those who resort to them. I

also urge strict adherence to the Convention on the Rights

of the Child by all actors in armed conflicts, and I stress

the need for specific measures to demobilize and

reintegrate child soldiers into society and the need for

early action to conclude the drafting of the optional

protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in

regard to the involvement of children in armed conflicts

and the prohibition of recruitment of children under the

age of 18.

We reject the complacent assumption made by some

that the involvement of children in armed conflict is

inevitable and unavoidable. This is clearly not the case.

Their participation is the result of heartless, deliberate and

calculated decisions made by ruthless men, regardless of

the loss of innocent lives, relentlessly pursuing their

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megalomaniac ambitions. The leader of the LTTE, while

sending to their deaths thousands of young children — the

youngest of the young — brings up his own children in

comfort and safety, far from the battlefields, far away from

the country itself. This barbaric practice of conscripting or

luring children for war must be condemned by all civilized

States, without any room for equivocation or doubt, and

must be eliminated from our world if we are to preserve

our humanity.

I appeal to the affluent countries in which the LTTE

has established offices and raises funds to prosecute its

infamous war in Sri Lanka not to tolerate its presence or

give it shelter when it engages in the commission of

dastardly crimes against children — indeed, the children of

its own community.

On behalf of the Government of Sri Lanka, I greatly

welcome the appointment of a distinguished Ugandan

diplomat, Mr. Olara Otunnu, as the Secretary-General’s

Special Representative to study the impact of armed

conflict on children. His appointment has also been

welcomed by Canada. The Canadian Foreign Minister also

referred to and condemned the recruitment of children as

soldiers. We must give our wholehearted support to

Mr. Otunnu. He intends to propose and initiate concrete

measures to tackle the problem. He will launch a campaign

of public advocacy to bring to the notice of the world the

terrible plight of children in war. I appeal to the

international community not to allow his work to suffer for

lack of funds.

As we look back at the half century that has elapsed

since the founding of the United Nations, we have, in truth,

to acknowledge a sense of satisfaction at what has been

achieved, however limited in scope, through our collective

decisions and actions during that period. There have been

undeniable gains in the spheres of economic and social

development, however modest they appear to be when

measured against our aspirations and objectives. Yet the

fundamental problems of the developing world remain

unresolved, while the developed countries have gone from

strength to strength.

In the sphere of collective security and the

maintenance of world peace, although major catastrophes

have been averted, the United Nations has not succeeded in

making real the dream of every human being to live in

peace in a world free from the pestilence of war and all the

attendant horrors of human carnage and the senseless

destruction of everything we hold dear. Even the end of the

cold war has made no great difference to countries such as

ours embroiled in internal civil conflicts, all too often

nourished by the giant armament manufacturers of the

world, while the United Nations endlessly debates

disarmament.

However deep our sense of disappointment and

disenchantment may be, have we any hope apart from the

United Nations? I do not think we have. If the United

Nations has fallen short of our expectations, it is because

we, the Member States, have failed to honour our

obligations and fulfil our responsibilities to the world

community, selfishly placing our national interests above

the common good.

If we continue in this fashion the United Nations

will cease to be relevant altogether, and history will

surely record it as yet another pious venture which we did

not have the courage and commitment to make real.

As the German Foreign Minister said from this

podium a few days ago,

“it is on our children, the weakest members of

any society ... that the world’s future and hopes

depend ... They are little people who need big rights.

How much worse off would they be if there were no

United Nations? What would become of the world’s

conscience? Who would demand consideration for

and solidarity with such children if we allowed this

Organization to decline?” [See Official Records of

the General Assembly, Fifty-Second Session, Plenary

Meetings, 9th Meeting]

In order to realize the ideals of the founders of this

world body, and the hopes and dreams of countless

millions of people who look to the United Nations for

their realization, we need to renew our faith and trust in

the United Nations — not in the old United Nations,

which is looked upon with cynicism, even suspicion, but

in a United Nations that will, in a sense, be a new

creation and a new being. But for the United Nations to

be born anew we need to bring about fundamental

structural changes in the international order, changes that

will give it new life and strength for the coming century.

These changes will entail sacrifice; they will be changes

which many States will hesitate to welcome and be

reluctant to accept lest they endanger their sovereignty

and their so-called vital interests. Nevertheless, such

change will be in the nature of an uncompromising

demand that will confront us all. Nothing worthwhile can

be achieved without sacrifice. That is indeed a universal

truth concerning human redemption, and the United

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Nations is, after all, like any other human institution. Its

weaknesses and strengths are those of humankind.

The obligation to act in the common interest cannot be

undertaken selectively; nor does the assumption of this

onerous duty admit of any double standard. All the nations

of the world, the powerful and the weak, the rich and the

poor, must jointly agree to curtail their independence and

their claims to act unilaterally. Each must agree to

subordinate its individual decision and discretion to a global

political will, manifested through truly democratic and

representative organs of the United Nations, reflecting the

authentic judgement of the world community of States.

Apart from, or bereft of, the collective decisions and

concerted acts of such a reformed and restructured United

Nations, carried into effect resolutely and with

determination, I doubt whether we can honestly expect a

better future for humankind in the new millennium. We

must not fail the United Nations, or else we shall assuredly

go down in history as “the hollow men” of the twentieth

century.