Slovenia, 2008

We are starting this sixty-third

session of the General Assembly under the wise and

inspiring leadership of our President,

Mr. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. We rely on your

experience and your political acumen, Sir, and I wish

you every success in your work. At the same time, I

wish to express our sincere gratitude to your

predecessor, Mr. Srgjan Kerim, President of the

General Assembly at its sixty-second session, who

guided the Assembly with great sensitivity and

determination. I also wish to pay tribute to the

Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, whose tireless

efforts are guiding the United Nations at this turbulent

time.

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Indeed, we live in a turbulent world at a turbulent

time. We need real answers to the accumulated global

problems. The era of optimism generated by

globalization has come to an end. The eruption of the

financial crisis in recent weeks has removed the last

shred of doubt about that. The world needs real

answers to big questions.

If you asked me to identify the key policy

requirement for the United Nations today with a single

concept — and in one word — my answer would be

this: we live at a time requiring transformation.

Transformation should be the key idea of policymaking

to guide United Nations action. The United Nations

should look to policies with a transformational

potential and capable of producing transformational

effects in the not-too-distant future. Obviously, that

ambitious and general proposition begs further

questions. Is the United Nations capable of generating

social, political and economic transformation? Does

the United Nations of today know what is the main

area for the necessary strategic transformation? What

needs to be done, by way of transformation, in the

most sensitive area of the United Nations mandate, in

the area of the maintenance of international peace and

security? Allow me to address those questions one by

one.

First, is the United Nations capable of generating

social and political transformation worldwide? The

United Nations has demonstrated such an ability in

various areas of its work in the past. United Nations

action in the field of human rights offers an excellent

example. Later this year we will celebrate the sixtieth

anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, and it does not take much effort to realize how

much the change that has occurred in those 60 years

owes to the transformational energy of human rights.

Consider this: at the time of the adoption of the

Universal Declaration in 1948, the world had

experienced one of its most traumatic moments. The

Second World War was barely over, its aftershocks

were still strongly felt, and much of the world was

physically destroyed. Stalinist oppression was the

dominant feature of the Soviet Union and of a large

part of Europe. In Asia and Africa, large populations

suffered under the yoke of colonialism. The system of

apartheid was being introduced in South Africa. Yet,

that was the time when the authors of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights outlined an optimistic

vision of a just society and a better world. Human

rights were the genuinely transformational idea of the

time and that idea has guided social change and

development ever since.

The world of today, while still far from ideal, is

substantially better than the world of 1948. Human

rights have triumphed in many parts of the world and

are making steady progress in others. Many of the

oppressive systems have ended in the dustbin of

history. The remaining ones are likely to follow.

Democracy has progressed globally and is today the

way of life of more people than ever before.

Obviously, violations of human rights still persist,

as reported by the United Nations experts and by non-

governmental organizations. Some of the causes of

violations, such as racial discrimination, are persistent

and take place in new forms. New issues of human

rights have also arisen. Concerns related to security

and counter-terrorism seem to have contributed to a

diminished care for human rights in some societies.

The abhorrent practice of torture has gained a degree of

acceptance, which should be a cause for serious

concern for all those who take human rights seriously.

Armed conflicts continue to produce atrocities and

massive violations of human rights.

Those phenomena must be met with resolute

counteraction. Human rights institutions need to be

strengthened and supported. Human rights education

deserves higher priority. The principle of the

responsibility to protect must be given real meaning

and real teeth through diplomatic and other action. The

International Criminal Court has to be accepted and

made effective as the key institution for punishing

perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity

and genocide. Violations of human rights have to be

combated wherever they occur.

But in addition, there is an even more

fundamental reality that affects the actual enjoyment of

human rights by all. The Universal Declaration

proclaimed, in its article 28, that everyone is entitled to

a social and international order in which their human

rights can be fully realized. The authors of the

Declaration realistically envisaged the long-term nature

of the effort for human rights. Guided by that spirit, the

General Assembly adopted, in 1986, its Declaration on

the Right to Development, a right which became

recognized as universal at the World Conference on

Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993. That was a

significant and realistic recognition of the intrinsic link

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between two fundamental human aspirations: the one

for human freedom and the other for human

development. In subsequent years, the United Nations

also developed a comprehensive understanding of what

development is and what it means in our era. That

understanding was elaborated at a series of global

conferences in the 1990s and summarized in the year

2000 in the form of the agreement on global

development goals.

The vision exists and practical progress, while

still uneven, is visible. The high-level meeting on

Africa last Monday strengthened the existing global

consensus about the immediate priorities for Africa,

including more effective financing for development.

The panel discussions on the Millennium Development

Goals tomorrow will be an opportunity to discuss the

key issues of today, in particular those emerging from

the current food crisis. I also hope that the proposal of

the Secretary-General for a summit to consider

progress in the achievement of the Millennium

Development Goals in 2010 will gain wide support.

Those and other discussions also help in

answering my second question: does the United

Nations know the strategic direction in which the

transformational effort must be concentrated today?

Yes, the Millennium Development Goals are part of the

answer, but it is already clear that global

development — now and in the foreseeable future —

will vitally depend on the preservation of our natural

environment and, in particular, on how we address the

problems of energy and global warming. The battle for

our common, global future will be won — or lost — on

the environmental front, and that is where the main

transformational effort has to take place. There is no

time to lose.

Earlier this year, the European Union, under the

presidency of my country, Slovenia, adopted a plan of

activities to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Yesterday, President Sarkozy of France, the current

President of the European Council, reiterated the

European Union commitment to the success of the Bali

road map and the Copenhagen conference to be held

next year. In the meantime — and I wish to emphasize

this — progress must be made at the conference in

Poznan, Poland, and in the process leading to the

Copenhagen conference and to the final global

agreement.

But those efforts will succeed only if an adequate

partnership is established among the key economic and

political players. Partnership between the European

Union, the United States, Japan, China, India and the

Group of 77 countries is essential. The existing

environmental challenges call for a transformational

approach to the way the world consumes energy, the

way it develops technology and the way it pursues

development. Incremental change will not do. Global

cooperation is essential. Obviously — and I would

underline this — the responsibilities of the developed

and the developing countries are not the same. They

are differentiated. But the world as a whole has to

move ahead and the United Nations has to get the

direction right. Transformation is the order of the day.

My third question relates to the maintenance of

international peace and security and the necessary

transformation in that area. Allow me to state right at

the outset that there is a serious need for

transformation of the existing institutions in the field

of international security.

The international security landscape today offers

a mixed picture. After the end of the cold war, there

were moments of high hopes and moments of deep

disappointment. There were successes and failures,

including the failure to prevent genocide. But we also

have to point out that the overall number of armed

conflicts has been declining for more than a decade

now. That is an encouraging development indeed, and

it is in no small measure due to the contribution of the

United Nations, which has steadily increased its

experience and its capacity in peacekeeping, post-

conflict peacebuilding and, to some extent, preventive

diplomacy. The role of the Secretary-General has been

strengthened in all those areas.

The progress made so far has established a degree

of confidence in the capacity of the international

security structures and their key players to cooperate

and, even more, to work in partnership for the

maintenance of international peace and security.

However, it appears that the confidence developed thus

far is still fragile and that remnants of the cold war

mentality are still in existence. Further efforts are

therefore needed. Those efforts, in my opinion, involve

two basic sets of tasks.

The first set of tasks relates to the development of

partnerships to address the key security issues, in

particular those in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the

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Balkans and several regions of Africa. In all those

areas, there has been a degree of success in

establishing cooperation and partnership among the

key regional and global players working for peace.

Models of concerted diplomacy such as the one

established to deal with the issues of North Korea can

and should inspire preventive diplomacy and

peacemaking in other parts of the world.

The second set of tasks is equally urgent.

Immediate consideration has to be given to a

transformation of the existing security structures.

Reform of the Security Council is long overdue.

Incremental improvements of its working methods,

while welcome, are far from sufficient. The time is ripe

for changes in the Council’s structure. I believe that the

membership of the Security Council should be

expanded, and that that should be done in three

directions. First, there should be six additional

permanent members from every region of the world.

Secondly, there should be an additional category of

non-permanent members with a more frequent rotation,

six in any particular composition of the Security

Council, and they should be elected in accordance with

a formula to be determined by the General Assembly

and alternate every second two-year term. Thirdly, the

remaining eight non-permanent members would be

elected in accordance with the principle of equitable

geographic distribution. This three-point idea means

that the total size of the reformed Security Council

would not exceed 25 members; it would be a 25-

member Council. It would be a more representative

Council and, I believe, a more effective one.

I offer those ideas on reform of the Security

Council to you, Mr. President, to use in the coming

efforts for Council reform. It is widely accepted that

that work needs to progress towards a successful

conclusion. Success in Council reform would represent

a key contribution to the transformation of the

international security architecture. Together with other

major projects of the United Nations, it would

constitute a significant contribution to the

improvement of the world.

Allow me to conclude. Is all of this new? In a

certain sense, yes, because some of the specific tasks

and specific projects are new. But more deeply, the

answer is that all of this has to do with continuity. The

United Nations has, from its inception, represented the

hope for and the promise of an improved world. Let us

not betray that hope and let us live up to that promise.

Let us work for transformation wherever necessary. Let

us make this era the finest hour of the United Nations.