Jamaica, 2001

I am delighted to join

in the chorus of warm congratulations already

expressed before this Assembly to the Secretary-

General of our Organization, His Excellency Mr. Kofi

Annan, and to the United Nations itself, on the joint

award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

We also include in this proud salute those who

have fallen in the line of duty, while recognizing those

who continue to serve in areas of danger, all for the

cause of peace. It is a fitting tribute that that Prize,

dedicated to the cause of peace and so richly earned by

our Secretary-General in his own right and by the

United Nations Organization collectively, has been

conferred on them this year. No one doubts that the

accolades are truly deserved. They are most fitting at a

time when the entire world is in upheaval.

The catastrophic attacks, cynically perpetrated on

the International Day of Peace in the city that is host to

the United Nations, as well as elsewhere, have, in their

wanton slaughter of innocents and awesome

destructiveness, sent shock waves around the world.

The messiahs of terror have, by the sheer magnitude

and horror of their unprecedented crime against

humanity, unified nations and people in the

determination to remove the spectre of terrorism in all

its many forms, wherever it is manifested.

Jamaica stands firmly with the international

community on Security Council resolution 1373 (2001)

against terrorism. As a member of the Council, we

assert, with particular emphasis and deliberation, our

unwavering commitment to the cause of ending this

pernicious evil.

To defeat the forces of terror, our collective

action must be firm, decisive and broad-based.

International law must become a binding framework

for the total defeat of terrorism. Jamaica welcomes the

ongoing efforts to elaborate a draft comprehensive

convention against terrorism. We hope that during this

session of the General Assembly the momentum will

be seized to achieve measurable progress in this critical

area. At the same time, the international community

needs to take action aimed at achieving the universality

of the existing conventions and other instruments

against terrorism.

Jamaica is accelerating its domestic action to

achieve those objectives, and this morning I was

pleased to sign the International Convention for the

Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

For the past two years, Jamaica has worked with

other members of the Council to make peacekeeping

operations more efficient; to create strategies for

sustained peace-building; to bring warring factions to

the peace table and, beyond that, to promote

compliance with resulting accords; and to put in place

mechanisms for protecting those most affected by

situations of conflict, especially the women and

children.

We are pleased with the work already undertaken

in respect of the Brahimi report on peacekeeping

operations. Through a number of tribunals, we have

demonstrated that the United Nations will act to end

impunity. Despite sustained international efforts,

however, several flashpoints still remain.

Jamaica is deeply concerned about the continuing

cycle of violence and reprisal in the Middle East.

Efforts to achieve a durable ceasefire have been

thwarted at every turn. Numerous resolutions of the

Security Council have been ignored. We recognize the

positive efforts of some permanent members to

influence a return to the peace process, but the Security

Council should not be marginalized in these initiatives.

Jamaica again urges the Government of Israel and the

Palestinian Authority to spare no effort in complying

with agreements already reached. We call on both

parties to remain engaged in the quest for a durable

peace.

We dare not neglect the millions of children

worldwide who suffer from hunger, disease and

ignorance. In situations of conflict, children are the

most vulnerable victims. We have all been horrified by

their exploitation as child soldiers and by the

trafficking and sexual abuse that numerous children

have suffered. We have to remember that they

constitute the generation of tomorrow, in whose hands

will rest the future of international peace and security.

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Nor must we forget the importance of

humanitarian assistance to the innocent people in

conflict-torn areas of the world and to refugees and

displaced persons, as well as to those who are victims

of natural and man-made disasters. For them, the

United Nations must become a beacon of hope for the

peace and stability that will enable them to lead normal

and productive lives.

Military strikes cannot by themselves eradicate

terrorism. In our response, we need to be mindful that

the time has come for us to inaugurate a new era of

peace — not simply through preventing war, but by

eliminating the causes that give rise to strife and

violence. And so I stand at this rostrum today to call

for a United Nations renaissance, for a rebirth of this

Organization, which will not just permit it to be the

harbinger of peace, but which will empower it to foster

a climate that will usher in a new age of global

development and a dynamic partnership for human

prosperity.

We are living in a time of fear, not just in this

country or here in this city, but worldwide: fear for the

lives of people; fear for the state of economies,

national and global; fear that our propensity for wanton

destruction may impair the capacity of the planet itself

to sustain life. These fears are compounded by other

blights — the blights of disease, ignorance and bigotry

towards people on the basis of ethnicity, religion and

gender; the blight of cruel and autocratic governance in

some places; and, most pervasive of all, the blight of

poverty.

The expansion of the global economy in the last

four decades has not eliminated gross poverty or even

reduced its prevalence. A sophisticated, globalized,

increasingly affluent world currently co-exists, globally

and within countries, with a marginalized underclass.

The hungry, the homeless and the destitute are

less impassioned about the physical insecurities of

terrorist repression or the damaging consequences of

military warfare. The unemployed, those who are ill

but have no health care, those who are cold but have no

proper heating, those who are old but have no social

support — for these victims, “security” means a meal,

a roof, a job, medicine, warmth and relief from poverty

in general. But those needs are just as real and

insistent, and they represent for them the most

immediate denial of their rights as human beings.

During the last decade, the process of

globalization, deregulation and privatization has swept

the world. It is incontrovertible that it has not been a

golden age for a large proportion of the world’s people:

not just for the 1.3 billion absolute poor in developing

countries whom the benefits of globalization seem to

have bypassed, but for many millions in industrial

countries also. We delude ourselves if we believe that

all those engaged in street protests, whether in Seattle,

Washington, Prague, Quebec city or Rome, are simply

anarchists.

International institutions must not only be

accountable; they must be subject to democratic

governance as well. It is becoming more widely

recognized that a new global institutional architecture

is needed to establish representative superintendence of

the global economy, directed towards enlargement of

social and economic justice worldwide and targeted to

a sharp redirection of the numbers mired in gross

poverty and deprivation.

Some of the desired progress may be possible

through existing institutions, but more radical reform

may also be required. Democratic superintendence of

the global economy has to be a central feature of the

fresh global architecture we seek to fashion during this

decade. That new global architecture must incorporate

appropriate arrangements for a start to be made in

raising global resources for global purposes in ways

that do not generate alarm. The persistence of gross

poverty, the long list of environmental abuses, the

disturbing reduction in development aid and the

vagaries of foreign private investment make a

compelling case for global revenues.

The world faces crucial choices. We have to

identify and follow a guiding principle if humanity is

to make an enlightened response to the challenges we

face. We can hardly return to the principles of a feudal

world in which military and economic strength are

concentrated in the hands of a few, while we indulge in

an illusion of order through the marginalization of the

many. In our interdependent, interconnected world, that

is no longer a credible option.

Our only way forward lies here in the United

Nations. If this institution did not exist before 11

September, we would have to create it now. We have to

be inspired by the vision that propelled the generation

of 1945 to pursue the path of collective responsibility

for peace and human progress through a regime of

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multilateral action anchored by the United Nations. It

was coterie of Governments, in a rare moment of

collective wisdom and creativity, that settled the United

Nations Charter. It was not without flaws in its

inception, and some flaws have remained to hobble its

capacity to initiate the renaissance of which I speak.

It is within that context that the demand for the

reform of the Security Council becomes even more

urgent, since the Council’s present design and

functioning weaken its capacity to fulfil its mandate.

We must remove all existing constraints on the capacity

of the United Nations. Even as we work to improve it

and to reform it, we must proclaim the United Nations

to be the temple in which we can all worship. “We, the

people” must be made a reality to fulfil the

commitment made in their name by the Charter of

1945.

Today, our greatest hope lies in people: in people

of all races, of all genders, of all faiths; people of all

continents and oceans; people of all ages; the

“ordinary” people of the world and those who hold

themselves to be of higher station. All the world’s

people are affected by the calamities that loom; all

must be involved in turning humanity away from

gloom and in finding the light.

The Charter does not set out the principal organs

of the United Nations in a hierarchical order, but the

General Assembly is the only principal organ under the

Charter that embraces all the Members on a one

member, one vote basis. It is the symbol of the United

Nations as a universal organization in the best

democratic tradition. And so, I believe that it is within

the General Assembly that the true renaissance of the

United Nations must begin. The special value of the

General Assembly is its universality, its capacity to be

a forum in which the voice of every Member State can

be raised. It provides the opportunity for countries to

ventilate issues, to bring complaints to the floor in the

general debate and to suggest new ideas in committees.

But the assumption surely must be valid that

deliberation should inform action.

High among the changes that should mark the

renaissance of the United Nations is the revitalization

of the General Assembly as a universal forum of the

world’s States. Even with a reformed and somewhat

enlarged Security Council, many Member States with a

capacity to contribute significantly to the policies and

programmes of the United Nations and to global

governance will have to remain on the sidelines. A

General Assembly that occupies more of the stage and

reorders its work to make it more focused and more

result-oriented, will allow each of us a meaningful role

in world governance through our work in the

Assembly. It is in the interest of the world community

to have a more vigorous and effective General

Assembly which can and should play a vital

legitimating role in the United Nations, consonant with

the universality of its membership.

Here in the General Assembly, we are the

practitioners of international affairs. At the heart of the

conduct of those affairs must lie a sense of realism. I

too am conscious that the accumulated baggage of

decades cannot be shed in a single heave. That is why I

do not call for reform but advocate instead a

renaissance: a rebirth which offers the chance of facing

the twenty-first century with sound values no longer

predicated on a world of adversarial States but on an

interactive world of people that has espoused

neighbourhood values of respect for life and liberty, for

justice and equity, for tolerance and caring; values that

balance rights with responsibilities, that elevate the

democratic ethic at both the national and the global

levels.

We are a long way from that consummation,

however devoutly we may wish it. But we are

sufficiently frightened by the prospects that confront us

to recognize the need for humanity to take “the path

less travelled by”. There are enough good people in all

our societies — who together are the silent majority of

the world’s people — to ensure that by choosing this

new path we can indeed make a real difference. We

have to find a better way than the one a divided world

has been pursuing. That way has to lie through the

United Nations as an organization — but a United

Nations revitalized, its agencies repaired, reformed and

responsive to a culture of new values appropriate to our

time.

This new era of global relations demands bolder

and more ingenious approaches to confidence-building

and to development as a prerequisite for international

peace and security. An equitable framework to finance

national and global development, to fuel expansion of

international trade and to foster sustainable

development must be placed on the front burner,

whether we gather in Qatar, in Mexico or in South

Africa.

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If the global conferences to be held in those three

places are to succeed, Member States must be guided

by full recognition that this new era of global relations

demands, as I said, more ingenious approaches to

confidence-building and to development as a

precondition for international peace and security.

In closing, I wish to take this opportunity to

congratulate Mr. Han on his assumption of the

presidency of this session of the General Assembly and

to commit Jamaica’s total support for the attainment of

our common goals in the service of all humankind.

Whatever may be our colour, culture or creed, we

belong to a single race — that is, the human race. We

occupy a single planet, which has more than enough to

enable each person and every nation to enjoy the

abundance which Mother Earth has to offer and for all

its people to dwell together in harmony.

Now more than at any time in its history, the

United Nations is the best vehicle to procure global

peace and to foster international cooperation. Let this,

the fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly, loudly

and clearly proclaim that the renaissance of the United

Nations has indeed begun.