Georgia, 2011

It is of course a great

honour and a profound responsibility to address the

sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly on behalf

of my people.

The United Nations is the international

community’s great legacy of the past century, an

institution resulting both from history’s most

outrageous crimes and from humankind’s capacity to

confront, reckon with and overcome the consequences

of such crimes. Such human contradictions — “the

highest heaven and the deepest abyss”, to quote

Friedrich Schelling — are symbolized by the two

remarkable anniversaries we commemorate this year. I

am surprised that no one in the Hall has mentioned that

this year marks the twentieth anniversary of the

collapse of the Soviet Union, which freed captive

nations and emancipated oppressed peoples, unleashed

the dreams of millions, put an end to decades of cold

war and an apocalyptic nuclear race and heralded a

new era of international relations. It was clearly not, as

one nostalgic leader put it, the biggest geopolitical

catastrophe of the twentieth century. Nor was it, as

some analysts and diplomats dreamed, the end of

history.

Ten years later, in this very city, another major

event took place, this time a real catastrophe. It

reminded us in the most horrific way that history was

not over and that it remained tragic. On that terrible

day, even those who had failed to pay heed to a decade

of grim wars in the Balkans and the Caucasus, in

Africa and in Afghanistan, had to abandon their

illusions that a new world order free of conflicts had

emerged for good.

The attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.,

were not aimed at a single country, but instead targeted

a set of values and a way of life — freedom and

democracy. That day, 11 September 2001, reminded us

that the world remained a true battlefield — a

battlefield not among religions, as many people claim,

or of nations, but a battlefield within every religion,

every nation and every culture; a battlefield between

those who try to build and those who seek to destroy,

between those who choose freedom and those who

pledge to eradicate it; a battlefield between nihilism

and the very idea of civilization.

Ten years later, the remarkable upheavals in the

Arab world have offered us yet more proof that there is

no end to history, nor is there a clash of civilizations.

Instead, a universal call to freedom is rising even in

places where some doubted it could ever rise. It is

being met by a monstrous effort to quell it. As we

speak, the highest heaven and the deepest abyss are

once again in conflict. It is our duty as leaders to weigh

in and speak out, to decide and to act.

The first anniversary I evoked earlier — the fall

of Soviet tyranny — continues to reverberate today in

important ways. When the moment came 20 years ago

for us, the former subjects of the Soviet bureaucracy —

students, artists, dissidents, workers, men and women,

old and young — it was hardly the end of history; on

the contrary, it was a new beginning of history.

Communism had frozen our will in a cold and closed

museum. When it collapsed, the doors of history swung

open again. We found ourselves confronted at once by

both the best and the worst. The best transpired for

those nations quickly integrated into the European

Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The

others — like the people of my country, Georgia —

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were left to the mercy of failed States, civil unrest,

wars, ethnic cleansing and foreign occupation.

Two years ago, from this very podium, I

suggested that there were two ways to leave

communism behind and to re-enter history — the way

of Vaclav Havel and the way of Slobodan Miloševic,

the way of liberal democracy and tolerance, on one

side, and the way of authoritarianism and ethnic

nationalism, on the other. There are, in other words,

men who embrace freedom and men who erect mental

and physical walls against it.

To the latter, who still see the extension of the

European Union and NATO as a threat, I would like to

say that the Cold War ended in December 1991 and

that they should not be afraid of having democratic

neighbours who wish to join wider democratic clubs.

There is no hidden agenda or secret plot in any of those

capitals to undermine the sovereignty of big nations.

The Cold War ended 20 years ago and, slowly — too

slowly — new rules are emerging. And even those

rules are still too rarely applied.

Little by little, tyrants are beginning to fear that

they could one day be held accountable for their

crimes. I am convinced that there will be less and less

tolerance for the ethnic cleansing and other war crimes

that have stained my country and so many others. That

is the very reason for the existence as the United

Nations, is it not? The United Nations exists to make

the world a little better, to finally enforce the rules,

charters, laws and principles upon which we have all

come to agree.

It is time to understand that the world has

changed and that an army, as powerful as it might

seem, cannot ultimately deny the will of the people;

that a Government, as strong as it might look, cannot

unilaterally and freely dismember sovereign nations;

and that we are not in 1938 or in 1968, but in 2011.

As I speak, the Russian Federation militarily

occupies 20 per cent of sovereign Georgian territory, in

violation of international law and the 12 August 2008

ceasefire agreement. As I speak, almost 500,000

internally displaced persons and refugees in a country

of less than 5 million people continue to suffer because

they are denied their right, a right reaffirmed over a

dozen times by this very body, to return to their homes

and villages. They cannot go back because, in Moscow,

a foreign leader has decided that their home is no

longer their home.

To such cynicism and brutality we respond with

calls for justice and commitments to peace. Last year,

on 23 November, I addressed the European Parliament

and solemnly pledged that Georgia would never use

force to liberate those of its regions currently occupied

by the Russian Federation. Even though the United

Nations Charter gives us the authority to do so, as we

well know, we definitively renounced military means

to restore our territorial integrity. The commitment I

made before the European Parliament is legally

binding; I have sent relevant letters to the Secretary-

General of the United Nations and to other

international organizations.

It will soon be one year since Georgia renounced

the use of force. One year has passed, and we are still

waiting for Russia’s leadership to reciprocate this

gesture of peace. Unfortunately, instead of dialogue,

the response we have received has come in the form of

a dozen terrorist acts targeting Georgia, attacks directly

organized and supervised by confirmed officers of the

Russian secret services, which has been authenticated

by different international actors.

The Cold War is over, but some leaders have yet

to realize that fact and stop reasoning in terms of

spheres of influence, near-abroad domination and zero-

sum games. The Cold War is over, but embargoes,

blackmail and brutal diktats are still used against

Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The Cold War is over,

but even the Baltic States have to deal with

manipulation of their democratic political landscape

and neo-colonial games with their minorities. The Cold

War is over, but the old Soviet habit of playing on

ethnic and religious hatreds is still alive. That is

especially true in the black hole that the North

Caucasus has become, with brutal violence,

displacement and the killing of hundreds of thousands

of inhabitants.

Georgia is responding to these brutal and

dangerous policies by opening its borders, inviting

people to come to engage in exchange, debate and

dialogue, by trying to overcome the information

blockades, by trying to rebuild bridges between

nations — those essential bridges that others are

systematically trying to destroy. Georgia is responding

to military build-up with programmes to lift children

out of poverty through access to modern technologies —

computers, the Internet — and with new hotels and

new boulevards and cycling paths. Georgia is

responding to methods of the past by embracing the

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promises of the future, and many others as well — new

health-care systems, hundreds of new hospitals,

advanced programmes to deal with communicable and

non-communicable diseases, and insurance for all.

The end of the Cold War launched an era of

opportunity and turbulence, liberating local dynamics

in ways both tragic and exultant, and leading to a

constant flux in the world order. It has unleashed

hatred, ethnic conflict, mass terror, genocide and many

other human calamities. But it has also generated

fantastic emancipations.

Think of the “coloured” revolutions in Eastern

Europe, the dazzling development of Asia, the progress

of democracy in Africa or, more recently, the Arab

Spring; none would have been possible if the Soviet

Union still existed as a global player and a global

threat to all the continents, including Africa, Asia and

Europe alike. Since 1991, history has become more and

more unpredictable, swinging violently between the

highest heaven and the deepest abyss that Schelling

referred to. Indeed, who could have anticipated the

global consequences of a desperate act by a 26-year-

old Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, in the remote town

of Sidi Bouzid?

One poor man, in an unknown place, was denied

his rights by an imperious police and, like a distant

echo of the Czech Jan Palach in front of the Russian

tanks in 1968, he immolated himself. This breathtaking

act of despair has literally turned the world upside

down.

Some dictators are jailed or on the run; regimes

considered untouchable have collapsed; new

constitutions and orders are being born. An entire

region and culture derogatorily labelled as unfit for

democracy by some people in more developed

countries has given the whole world, including the

developed world, a lesson in freedom.

Such historical eruptions always come as a

surprise. They require from us all the radical

astonishment that Aristotle considered as the very

beginning of philosophy, the first step towards true

wisdom and a radical emancipation from our prejudices

and dogmas.

Very few predicted the revolutions that swept

across Eastern and Central Europe in 1989, or the

“coloured” revolutions that followed 15 years later.

Even fewer predicted Tunis, Cairo, Benghazi and

Tripoli. The popular call for freedom that has shaken

the world in 2011 is the best and most definitive

answer to the hatred that motivated the attacks against

this very city 10 years ago.

When aspiring populations are free to live their

lives, practice their trades, raise their children, voice

their ideas and press their grievances, the space for

terrorists to recruit or demagogues to sow ethnic hatred

starts to evaporate.

International police, military and intelligence

cooperation in the war against Al-Qaida over the past

decade have been, and still are, essential in protecting

our freedoms. I am proud that Georgia has borne more

than its share in the international effort in Afghanistan.

I am proud of our thousands of soldiers who risk

everything in order to defeat the international

movement of hatred — and I want to pay tribute to

those who have died on the battlefield. I am proud of

our police who are engaged in the struggle against

nuclear trafficking. I am proud that Georgia has

become a provider, not just a consumer, of

international security.

I am proud of all of this, but I am also very aware

that extremism will not be defeated and terrorism will

not be eradicated by military and police means alone.

Terrorism and extremism can be defeated only if

freedom, democracy and prosperity extend their reach

in the world.

This is why we welcomed so genuinely the

efforts of President Obama and President Rousseff in

launching the Open Government Partnership. The

world has to respond to the universal call for freedom

and justice, and only a coordinated response to this call

can guarantee our common long-term security.

Georgia is ready and willing once again to take

on more than its share in this international effort. Our

experience of radical post-revolutionary transformation

over the past eight years could very well be useful for

the newly liberated lands.

We were not always free. We were a totally failed

State, a dying economy, a country destroyed by

corruption and authoritarian structures. In 2003, a

peaceful, popular revolution brought to power a young

team of reformists. From one day to the next, we were

in charge of a fragile country in a hostile geopolitical

environment. We discovered quickly that the slogans,

roses, flags and other tools we used as opposition and

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civil society leaders would no longer suffice. We

discovered, in fact, that revolutions are not only, and

not even mainly, about the crowds gathered in the

streets, but that they consist essentially of the long and

difficult process of reform that follows the uprising.

This is the main challenge that Tunisia, Egypt and

Libya now face. The uplifting images of people

celebrating liberation in Tahrir Square, or Libyan

citizens dancing in Muammar Al-Qadhafi’s palaces, are

already in the past. The success of those revolutions

will depend on what happens after the legions of

reporters from CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera have left.

This is precisely the moment when our Georgian

experience — both successes and shortcomings —

could prove useful. Of course we hardly succeeded in

everything, and we made many mistakes. But we have

also had astonishing results.

In the aftermath of the Rose Revolution, we fired

100 per cent of our entire police force. Georgia lived

for three months without a single policeman.

Amazingly, during that period, crime rates went down

dramatically. Why? Not only because the police were

responsible for a large part of our crime rate, but also

because there was a shared feeling that our citizens

finally had a stake in their country and that they were

living actors in a very specific moment of our nation’s

history — a moment when everything seemed possible,

when values became the basis of politics and when one

had the feeling of inventing one’s own future. This

feeling is the true engine of history and our best ally

against extremists. But it is a fragile feeling that has to

be nurtured and sustained.

In Georgia, we have managed to keep this feeling

alive until now by a permanent process of reform with

clear benchmarks. Thanks to radical changes in our

police force, customs, tax service and bureaucratic

structures, and thanks to the widespread feeling among

people that they own these transformations, we have

made greater progress on Transparency International’s

Corruption Perceptions Index since 2003 than any

other State in the world. We are the second or third

least corrupt State in Europe, according to the

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

(EBRD) survey.

We have built a highly favourable investment

climate based on efficiency, transparency and the rule

of law. As a result, we are now ranked as one of the

easiest places in the world to do business. The World

Bank ranked Georgia, based on five years of records,

as the world’s number one economic reformer. No

other country has progressed in that five-year period as

we did. We are ranked first in Eastern and Central

Europe in terms of business, as I said, as one of the

easiest places in the world.

The 2011 EBRD survey on countries in transition

singles out Georgia as the most successful country in

our region in terms of institution-building, on par with

developed European countries.

There is still a lot to be done, obviously. We are

more committed than ever to pursuing our path of

reforms and to continuing to build our democracy, even

as the barrels of hostile tanks point at us just

40 kilometres away from our capital.

Of course, the path to efficient democratic

Government is difficult, but it is the only path. Of

course, people will be impatient and disappointed, but

there is no alternative to the success of this call for

freedom. This is why it is so important to support this

call and to deter those who want to suppress it.

This is why we supported the NATO-led

intervention in Libya at the initiative of the United

Kingdom, France and the United States. The very fact

that the National Transitional Council is now sitting

here, in the Hall, and that Al-Qadhafi can no longer

speak from this rostrum should give hope for the future

to all of us. The very fact that this effort was approved

by the Security Council has shown that that institution

can actually be the essential framework for the defence

of human rights.

The two anniversaries we are marking — the

anniversary of the fall of the Soviet empire and the

anniversary of 9/11 — continue to confront us with this

central question: how can we ensure that the new

spaces that have opened in our world in the past

20 years thanks to the fall of dictators and thanks to the

spread of new technologies are filled by peace rather

than violence, by tolerance rather than extremism and

by freedom rather than new forms of enslavement?

History will judge our generation by how actively

we help to answer this question, particularly in a series

of pivotal arenas, in what people call abusively frozen

conflicts in and near my own region, in the many

countries in the international community that remain

under tyranny’s yoke and in the places like those Arab

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States that have achieved a new spring of freedom and

are starting the difficult work of reforms.

Wael Ghonim, the young Egyptian Google

executive who helped connect and mobilize so many of

his country’s people to stand up for freedom, recently

said that the new revolutions, like the one his country

experienced, are a little like Wikipedia: they are grand,

open projects to which everyone can contribute.

The need for participation applies to us as well.

As national leaders and as key decision-makers, we can

contribute and we must contribute. Let us rise to that

historical imperative. Let us all make our contribution,

so that, together, we may avoid the deepest abyss and

strive instead for the highest heaven.