Finland, 1996

Let me offer Ambassador

Razali my sincerest congratulation on his election as

President of the General Assembly. This session will

address many difficult and important questions. I am

confident that under his experienced and wise leadership

we shall achieve good and constructive results. I should

also like to express the thanks and appreciation of my

Government to the Secretary-General and to the many

dedicated women and men in the Secretariat.

Let me refer to the statement made by the Deputy

Prime Minister of Ireland on behalf of the European

Union. My Government fully endorses that statement.

As the United Nations enters its fifty-first year, one

conclusion is self-evident: questions of peace,

development and human rights can no longer be neatly

separated. They interact, and nowhere more so than at the

United Nations.

Let me begin with human rights. There can be no

sustainable peace in societies where the human rights of

individuals are not respected or where their democratic

aspirations are denied. Widespread violations of human

rights, including the rights of minorities, breed instability

and conflict. The United Nations is then, often too late,

called upon to deal with them. There can be no

sustainable development in societies where economic and

social rights, as well as political rights, are flouted.

Authoritarian rule is no answer to poverty or

environmental degradation. The universality of human

rights cannot be questioned. True, civilizations differ;

societies differ. But that does not mean that cultural,

religious, ideological or any other factors can be invoked

as legitimate justifications for human rights violations. To

do so is to deny the inherent equality of human beings.

But adherence to general principles is not enough.

The litmus test is, of course, practice. Here at the United

Nations we must ask ourselves what we can do together

to promote respect for human rights. I see at least three

areas where the General Assembly can and should act.

First, we must see to it that the United Nations

mechanisms that have been created to promote and

monitor respect for human rights are not impaired through

lack of funds. The High Commissioner for Human Rights,

his special rapporteurs and the human rights treaty bodies

within the United Nations system are entitled to our

support. The General Assembly should insist on the

necessary funding.

Secondly, we must help establish, in accordance with

the conclusions of the Preparatory Committee, a

permanent international criminal court to deal with

flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and

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human rights. I do not have to belabour the reasons why.

One look at Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia is enough.

Thirdly, we must ensure sustained and integrated

follow-up of the United Nations conferences from Vienna

to Istanbul, so as to implement fully the agreed programmes

of action. Nationally, Governments must commit the

resources necessary to make the agreed actions a reality. In

the case of the Vienna and Beijing Conferences in

particular, full and equal enjoyment of human rights by all

women everywhere must be the first goal towards which

the United Nations and all Governments must aspire.

In Finland, women gained full political rights — the

right to vote and, just as important, the right to be eligible

for Parliament — as early as 1906; that is, 90 years ago.

Finland thus became the very first country in the world

where this was made possible. We have come a long way

since then, but we still need to do better until, finally,

women are just as equally empowered in Finnish society as

men. I know that the same is true to varying degrees in

other countries too.

Children, whether girls or boys, are full-fledged

subjects of human rights. Almost universal ratification of

the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

has been achieved. States Parties must now ensure universal

implementation too. The message from the recent

Stockholm World Congress against Commercial Sexual

Exploitation of Children was clear: full implementation of

children’s rights is also the best guarantee against sexual

exploitation. The United Nations must now, along with

Governments, follow up the commitments of Stockholm,

and with vigour.

Even the most democratic societies are vulnerable to

conflicts, even to armed ones. We should therefore do our

utmost to prevent them and, to this end, make full use of

all means available to the international community.

Finland believes in United Nations peacekeeping. We

have participated for 40 years and stand ready to continue.

The sheer complexity of modern-day conflicts has turned

United Nations thinking towards comprehensive peace

operations. Peacekeeping must be seen as a part of a

comprehensive peace process. We welcome this approach.

The civilian and military elements of a peace operation

should operate in close cooperation. Artificial barriers

separating the two should be eliminated right at the outset

in devising the mandate for an operation. It is also

important that peace operations be linked with longer-term

peace-building efforts to promote stability and sustainable

human development.

Lessons have been learned the hard way in the past

few years. United Nations peacekeepers are not suited for

peace enforcement. That job should and can be entrusted

by the Security Council to others — whether regional

organizations or other outside ad hoc coalitions — if

necessary. But these are exceptional cases. For the vast

majority of conflicts, the United Nations will be the one

called upon for peacekeeping. Even if the United Nations

must be able to say no on occasions, the world

Organization cannot shirk its responsibility. Moreover,

when the United Nations acts, it should act on time and

with the support of its members, including funding.

Time is of the essence in responding to crises.

Further development of the existing standby arrangements

with Member States is the most practical way to enhance

the rapid-reaction capability of the Organization.

Therefore, Finland strongly supports the establishment of

a rapidly deployable headquarters unit at the United

Nations as soon as possible.

Prevention, naturally, is better than cure. In

peacekeeping as well, preventive deployment is an

innovation that is working right now in The former

Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Finland is convinced

that the United Nations Preventive Deployment Force

(UNPREDEP) operation is making a crucial contribution

to stability in the whole region. It is a full-fledged

operation in preventive diplomacy encompassing good

offices, monitoring and human and institutional

development, as well as troop deployment. That

contribution, based on the present mandate, should

continue until peace and stability in the whole region are

better assured.

This is the year of the nuclear-test ban. That is what

the General Assembly demanded a year ago, and that is

what the vast majority of the world’s nations has now

agreed. I was proud to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-

Test-Ban Treaty for my country. That Treaty will

strengthen the security of all of us, without exception.

Banning nuclear-test explosions is a goal to which the

international community has been committed for decades.

The Treaty accomplishes that goal. At the same time, the

Treaty is a step towards the ultimate elimination of

nuclear weapons.

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However, focusing on nuclear weapons is not enough.

We also need to focus on weapons that maim and kill

people today. Those weapons are conventional weapons,

particularly landmines, other small arms and light weapons.

The excessive accumulation and proliferation of small

arms threaten to destabilize communities, countries and

entire regions. A United Nations expert panel, on which my

country is represented, is looking into the problem right

now. Finland, for one, expects concrete recommendations

on how to deal with this clear and present danger

nationally, regionally and through the United Nations.

The indiscriminate use of anti-personnel landmines is

the most visible manifestation of the small-arms emergency.

When they finally achieve peace, societies already ravaged

by years of war are severely hampered in their

reconstruction efforts by landmines that have been

indiscriminately sown by the millions. A concerted

international effort, led by the United Nations, is needed to

assist in mine clearance. Demining should also be made an

integral part of peacekeeping mandates, as was recently

suggested by Germany and endorsed by the Security

Council.

It is increasingly clear, however, that in the end only

a prohibition of inhumane and indiscriminate landmine use

can bring a real solution. To be effective, such a solution

must be legally binding, global and verifiable. As the first

step, all States should adhere to and abide by the

significantly strengthened landmine Protocol to the

Convention on conventional weapons. I find it very hard to

understand why two out of three United Nations Member

States continue to remain outside that Convention.

As a concurrent step Finland proposes the initiation of

global negotiations on a treaty banning anti-personnel

landmines altogether. A natural forum for such negotiations

would be the single negotiating body for disarmament that

the international community has at its disposal, namely, the

Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

Finland will work actively for the inclusion of a ban

on anti-personnel landmines in the negotiating agenda of

the Conference on Disarmament when the Conference

reconvenes in January.

In assisting in the creation of conditions of stability

and well-being, the United Nations has effective economic

and social tools at its disposal. A review of how the United

Nations does its business in this field is under way. The

approval in May of the resolution on restructuring and

revitalization of some areas in the Economic and Social

Council sector was an encouraging sign.

The yardstick in measuring United Nations impact

on development should be how the Organization has been

able to alleviate poverty and contribute to the

improvement of the quality of life. The first priority now,

as we see it, should be to assess the impact of the

development activities of the United Nations system at the

country level. We were pleased to note that last year the

General Assembly initiated a process to that effect.

I have two remarks in this regard. First, it is

necessary to concentrate United Nations development

activities on the poorest countries and the most vulnerable

groups of society. Secondly, better integration of the

United Nations at the country level would enhance

efficiency. It would promote closer coordination between

development activities, on the one hand, and humanitarian

and peacekeeping activities on the other.

The commitments made at recent United Nations

conferences provide a comprehensive agenda for

follow-up. One of the conferences, the United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development, will be

prominently present at this fifty-first session of the

General Assembly. That Conference is a promising

example of the capabilities of the United Nations. It has

made global environmental concerns an everyday reality

for all of us. The follow-up session next year will afford

a unique opportunity to assess progress and review

priorities.

In my view, one of the emerging priorities would be

a political commitment at the global level for sustainable

forest management. Finland attaches great importance to

the Intergovernmental Panel on Forests, which has been

established and which expects to submit concrete action-

oriented recommendations to the special session.

Before concluding my statement, I wish to refer to

the statement issued by the Presidency of the European

Union yesterday regarding the killings and violent

incidents in the West Bank and Gaza. I want to state that

my Government fully endorses that statement. On behalf

of the Government of Finland, I appeal to the parties

concerned to take every measure to restore calm and

refrain from acts of violence and provocation. We also

urge the parties to re-engage the peace process, which had

already achieved such promising results.

5

In view of the Security Council’s primary role in the

maintenance of international peace and security, the reform

of the Council is of particular urgency. The discussions on

this subject during the fiftieth session were thorough and

useful. Convergence of views emerged on many important

issues, yet on others, differences still remain. I believe that

the time is now ripe to take a step forward and engage in

real negotiations on a comprehensive reform of the Council.

Meanwhile, in a few weeks we shall elect new non-

permanent members to the present Security Council. As is

well known, the five Nordic Countries give their full

support to Sweden. I am confident that the other Member

States will also recognize the merits of our neighbouring

country.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mr. Dick

Spring, when speaking on behalf of the European Union,

underlined the obligation of all Member States to pay their

arrears and their assessed contributions to the United

Nations. Finland having been the first Member State to pay

in full, on time and without conditions its assessed

contribution to the regular budget of the United Nations in

1996, I feel it both my right and my duty to reiterate that

appeal.

The United Nations, we agree, needs renewed focus

and streamlining. Let us now find the determination and

will to proceed with the necessary reform.