Botswana, 1995

I wish to extend to the

President the sincere congratulations of my delegation on

his election to the presidency of this historic session of

the General Assembly. Botswana and Portugal have

enjoyed the best of relations over the years. It is therefore

with great pleasure that I assure him of Botswana’s

support and cooperation as he conducts the deliberations

of this body. Let me also take this opportunity to pay a

special tribute to his predecessor, my dear brother and

colleague the Foreign Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, His

Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, for the skilful manner in

which he guided the work of the forty-ninth session. His

was a most successful presidency, of which, as Africans,

we feel proud.

We salute our indefatigable Secretary-General, His

Excellency Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and his team of

dedicated staff for their selfless service to the

international community at the most difficult and trying

period in the history of our Organization. The Secretary-

General’s tenacity of purpose and his untiring efforts in

the search for peace are crystallized in his comprehensive

and thought-provoking report on the work of the

Organization.

Five decades ago no one could have predicted with

any degree of certainty the future course of events in the

aftermath of the most devastating war on the face of the

Earth. It was therefore a feat of wisdom and vision that

the founding fathers of our Organization accomplished

when they conceived and established, from the ravages of

that tragic war, a global Organization that has had such a

profound impact on the conduct of international relations

and diplomacy. That the Charter of the United Nations

has been amended only thrice in its 50 years of existence

bears testimony to their foresight and diplomatic skill.

The formation of the United Nations captured the

imagination of peoples across continents, not only because

its Charter promised to protect succeeding generations

from the scourge of war, but also because it championed

the right of the colonial countries and peoples to self-

determination and independence, at a time when that was

considered antagonistic to the national interests of the

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colonial Powers. In addition, the Organization made a

commitment

“to promote social progress and better standards of life

in larger freedom”.

This historic session of the General Assembly offers

us a unique opportunity to evaluate the achievements and

progress made in the fulfilment of the ideals so brilliantly

and boldly expressed by the founding fathers in the Charter.

It is time for introspection and reflection on the work of the

Organization and a time to institute reforms, as necessary,

to attune the Organization to a changed world and the

challenges ahead.

It is regrettable that the military and ideological rivalry

between East and West should have hamstrung the role of

the United Nations in the maintenance of international

peace and security during the first four and half decades of

its existence. Although the world was spared the possible

destruction that could have been visited upon it by a third

world war, the cold war led to the loss of many lives in

regional conflicts across continents — on the Korean

Peninsula and in Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique,

Vietnam and the Middle East, to mention only a few. In

colonial countries, and in Africa in particular, the struggle

for self-determination and national independence was

perceived through the prism of super-Power rivalry, which

perception resulted in bitter liberation wars.

The past five years have, however, seen the birth of a

new era, an era of hope for the United Nations,

characterized by general goodwill and cooperation in

international relations. In other words, we are celebrating

50 years of the existence of the United Nations in a new-

found atmosphere of relative peace and stability in the

world. We should therefore commit and rededicate

ourselves to the purposes and principles of the Charter as

we draw the road map for the Organization in the next 50

years.

The unity and resolve of the United Nations,

particularly as reflected in the facility with which, in the

post-cold-war era, the Security Council takes decisions

pertaining to the maintenance of international peace and

security, has dramatically enhanced the efficacy of the

United Nations, a United Nations which has been freed

from the shackles of ideological confrontation. The Security

Council has indeed scored remarkable successes in the

maintenance of international peace and security over the

past few years. We have witnessed successes in Cambodia,

Namibia, Mozambique, El Salvador and, more recently,

Haiti. And this very day an agreement of great import has

been signed in Washington, D.C., between Israel and the

Palestinians.

This new atmosphere of international cooperation

has, however, not been without problems and setbacks.

The tragedies of Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia

remain a thorn in the flesh and conscience of the

international community. The internecine tribal wars in

the former Yugoslavia and in the Abkhaz region of

Georgia have remained intractable, and the traumatic civil

wars in Afghanistan and Tajikistan continue with total

abandon. These problems attest to the fact that all is not

well in international affairs. The United Nations must

intensify current initiatives aimed at addressing these

conflicts. The international community can never be at

peace when part of its body politic is being ravaged by

conflict and war.

As we approach the next millennium, the

responsibility falls on the generations that have benefited

from 50 years of relative peace, 50 years of the United

Nations, to prepare the ground for an even better

Organization to serve future generations in the next 50

years and beyond. We should establish a new system of

collective security in which unilateralism and the

pursuance of narrow national interests for undue

advantage should give way to multilateralism and

collective responsibility in addressing international

problems. Complex peace-keeping operations can succeed

only where there is multilateral cooperation and the

pursuit of policies which can yield long-term results.

Concerted efforts must be made to adopt consistent

criteria for the resolution of global problems.

The question of equitable representation on and

increase in the membership of the Security Council has

gained currency in recent years, and for good reason. The

United Nations of 50 years ago was definitely different

from the United Nations of today. The number of

Member States has swelled over the years, bringing in

countries of divergent national character and historical

backgrounds; and membership in the Security Council

must reflect this reality. In other words, the Security

Council should be a concentrated reflection of the cultural

and philosophical diversity represented in the General

Assembly. After all, democracy is about numbers, and the

United Nations, including the Security Council, ought to

be the best school for the teaching and practice of

democratic principles.

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We should exercise great care, however, in addressing

the question of the expansion and restructuring of the

Security Council, lest we create new problems in our zeal

to solve old ones. We should guard against the Security

Council’s remaining or becoming an exclusive club for the

pursuance of the policies and strategic national interests of

the rich and powerful nations. At the same time, we should

avoid making the Security Council a big and unwieldy

enterprise which would crumble under its own weight. We

should strike the right balance between equitable

representation and efficiency and effectiveness.

The report of the Secretary-General clearly shows that

peace-keeping operations are very expensive. Over the past

five years the budget of United Nations peace-keeping

operations has grown from an annual figure of

approximately $600 million to a staggering projection of

$3.6 billion by the end of this year. The United Nations

cannot hope to sustain this kind of budgetary escalation.

Greater attention must be given to preventive action.

Here we agree entirely with the Secretary-General when he

states in the “Supplement to An Agenda for Peace” that

“It is evidently better to prevent conflicts through

early warning, quiet diplomacy and ... preventive

deployment”. (A/50/60/para. 26)

A multifaceted approach is required to develop a capability,

including substantial human and material resources, that

would enable regional organizations to detect potential

conflict situations and prevent them from breaking out.

In this context, the Organization of African Unity

(OAU) Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management

and Resolution was established in response to the many

challenges facing the African continent in the field of

peace-keeping. It is an expression of Africa’s readiness to

take effective measures aimed at solving conflicts within

the continent. We welcome the support of the Member

States, international organizations and individuals that have

generously made resources available to the OAU

Mechanism, and we urge the international community to

make similar contributions.

We also welcome the conclusions of a series of

conferences on conflict prevention and peace-keeping in

Africa sponsored by the British Government, the latest of

which was held in Gaborone, the capital of my country, on

7 and 8 August 1995. Botswana is convinced that training,

planning and preparation, an effective early-warning system

and logistic support are fundamental to the OAU’s capacity

to predict and defuse conflicts and, once they have

erupted, to undertake peace-keeping operations. The

financial support of the international community is crucial

if the peace-keeping capability of the African countries is

to be realized.

The United Nations, in general, should be placed on

a firm financial foundation if it is effectively to tackle the

mammoth tasks facing the world today, including

assistance to regional arrangements in conflict prevention

and peace-keeping. The question of the financial

emergency in which the United Nations so often finds

itself, because of failure by Member States to honour

their financial obligations to the Organization, should not

be allowed to fester into the next century. It seems

logical, at least to Botswana, that the decisions and

resolutions which we adopt as Member States, and which

have financial implications, should be accompanied by a

commitment to make prompt and regular contributions to

the various budgets, programmes and funds of the

Organization. Otherwise there is no sense in adopting

such decisions and resolutions. As stated earlier, the

resources needed for peace-keeping operations alone are

such that every Member State must make its contribution

if we seriously expect results from the Organization.

We cannot talk about the maintenance of

international peace and security without reference to

nuclear proliferation, because of all weapons of mass

destruction, nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to

international peace and security. In this regard, Botswana

is satisfied with the outcome of the Review and Extension

Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-

Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The States

Parties not only agreed to extend the Treaty indefinitely,

but also adopted the principles and objectives for nuclear

non-proliferation and disarmament and committed

themselves to strengthening the review process for the

Treaty. We were disappointed that some nuclear Powers

resumed testing immediately after the conclusion of the

Conference.

The States Parties further committed themselves to

complete negotiations, no later than 1996, on a universal,

legally binding and internationally and effectively

verifiable comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty. The onus

now rests on nuclear-weapon States to honour their end

of the deal. My delegation firmly believes that the only

way to protect the world from the scourge of nuclear

weapons is through their complete elimination.

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The contribution made by the United Nations and its

specialized agencies in the field of health, especially in the

developing countries, has been most impressive. Life-

threatening diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, smallpox,

malaria and river blindness, to name but a few, have largely

been eradicated in most parts of the world. The other

visible benefit of the work of the United Nations in

development has been the transfer of technology, especially

to the developing countries, resulting in improved

sanitation, education, human resource development and food

production and storage.

Currently, the United Nations is spending millions of

dollars on research and related expenditure on the AIDS

pandemic, which is threatening the very existence of

humankind and is posing a serious threat to the economic

development of many nations. It is our sincere hope that the

world will quickly find a cure to save humankind from the

scourge of this pandemic.

We are concerned that in recent years the resources

available to some specialized agencies of the United

Nations have been declining. This has negatively affected

their contribution to economic development in the

developing countries. It is clear from the report of the

Secretary-General that the core resources of the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have been

decreasing since 1992, and this has resulted in national

indicative planning figures in developing countries being

reduced by 30 per cent from their original levels. This is an

unfortunate trend indeed for developing countries,

considering that the UNDP is the agency of the United

Nations charged with responsibility for the financing and

coordination of technical and development assistance. And

the negative impact this trend has had in the execution of

development projects and programmes in the developing

countries cannot be overemphasized.

It is imperative that the ongoing dialogue on the

reform of the United Nations give due consideration to the

important role that these agencies and programmes play in

the improvement in the living standards of peoples in the

developing countries. The reduction of the administrative

costs and the rationalization of the operations of these

organizations should be carried out at the expense neither

of their capacity to deliver the goods and services nor of

the quality of their product. In this regard, I wish to

reaffirm the decision the African Ministers of Industry took

in Gaborone, Botswana, on 8 June 1995, in which they

appealed to the international community, particularly the

developed countries, to support the maintenance and

strengthening of the United Nations Industrial Development

Organization (UNIDO) to enable it to continue

participating actively in the industrialization of Africa.

The past five years have witnessed major

developments in the social and economic fields. The

international community has made great efforts in

addressing issues of international concern in these areas.

In this regard, the successful holding of the World

Summit for Children, the United Nations Conference on

Environment and Development, the World Conference on

Human Rights, the World Summit for Social

Development and, most recently, the Fourth World

Conference on Women are illustrative. While the holding

of these conferences in itself deserves commendation, the

international community should not be satisfied merely

with summitry. It should strive to adopt declarations and

plans of action which are realistic and implementable.

Above all, there should be a genuine commitment to

providing the necessary resources for the implementation

of these declarations and plans of action.

It is now four years since the General Assembly, in

recognition of the difficult social and economic situation

prevailing in Africa, adopted the United Nations New

Agenda for the Development of Africa. At its high-level-

segment meeting held in Geneva from 3 to 6 July this

year, the Economic and Social Council concluded that

progress in the implementation of the New Agenda had

been slow and insufficient, and reaffirmed that success

depended on the full support of the international

community. It is clear that while the primary

responsibility for economic development in Africa rests

with the African Governments and peoples themselves,

there is still an absolute need for the support of the

international community.

One of the priority areas of the United Nations New

Agenda for the Development of Africa is regional

cooperation and integration. In this connection, we in

southern Africa are engaged in efforts to ensure

development through regional cooperation. The Southern

African Development Community (SADC), after 10 years

of rehabilitating and developing infrastructure, has

embarked on closer cooperation and integration aimed at,

inter alia, free movement of goods, capital, services and

people.

One of the recent major developments in the

building of the community was the accession of the

Republic of Mauritius to SADC at the organization’s

summit in August 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa,

thereby bringing the membership of SADC to 12. We are

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aware that we have set ourselves a difficult task as a

region, but there is no alternative to this path of collective

self-reliance if our region is to survive in the current

competitive international economic environment. We

therefore call upon the international community to continue

its support for SADC and its programme of action.

To conclude, I wish to reiterate that this historic

session of the General Assembly offers us an opportunity

to evaluate the achievements, review the lessons of the past

and chart a course for the future of our Organization. An

important component of this introspection and reflection on

the work of the United Nations should be the improvement

of public awareness of the United Nations, building a wider

constituency and demonstrating that the Organization will

continue to be relevant in the years to come.