Liechtenstein, 1994

At the outset, let me

congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of

the General Assembly at its forty-ninth session. I wish you

every success and pledge you the full support of my

delegation. I also wish to commend your predecessor, His

Excellency Ambassador Samuel Insanally of Guyana, for

the excellent and able manner in which he conducted the

work of the forty-eighth session.

Under his wise guidance, the Member States of the

United Nations, during the forty-eighth session of the

General Assembly, engaged in a creative and constructive

dialogue on a question likely to have a great impact on the

future work and credibility of the United Nations, that of

equitable representation on and increase in the membership

of the Security Council. The report of the Working Group,

which was adopted on 14 September by the General

Assembly, makes it clear that these discussions have had a

positive beginning and that much more work in a

constructive and open-minded spirit remains to be done in

order to find a solution acceptable to all Member States.

Even though detailed discussion of this sensitive issue must

be continued by the Working Group, I should like to

reiterate at this juncture that the Government of

Liechtenstein attaches the utmost importance to maintaining

the efficiency and effectiveness of the work of the Security

Council, and that at the same time it holds the view that the

discussions of the Working Group should cover not only

the enlargement of the Council, but also, and to no less an

extent, its working methods.

The second session of the Preparatory Committee for

the World Summit for Social Development, which will take

place in Copenhagen in March 1995, concluded its work

just three weeks ago. The Liechtenstein Government is

encouraged by the results of this session, which prove that

the preparatory process is on the right track, and we are

confident that the consultations to be held by Ambassador

Somavía during the last week of October will lay a solid

basis for the work of the third session and bring Member

States closer to achieving the important goal of a final

document which can be adopted by consensus. The

World Summit for Social Development can be a crucial

event for the future of mankind, and we must not miss

this opportunity to promote social progress and better

standards of living in greater freedom, which is one of the

most noble goals of this Organization. This gathering, as

the draft final document acknowledges, is closely

interlinked with other important conferences, notably the

International Conference on Population and Development,

which was successfully concluded on 13 September in

Cairo, and the Fourth World Conference on Women, to

be held in Beijing in September 1995.

Among other subjects under consideration by the

General Assembly, the draft final document also mentions

the International Year of the Family, which we are still

celebrating. I wish to underline that, in the view of the

Liechtenstein Government, a concise summary and

analysis of the activities undertaken within the framework

of the International Year of the Family, at both the

national and the regional levels, can make a substantive

contribution to the successful outcome of the two United

Nations world conferences in 1995, and at the same time

can help achieve the goal of making the International

Year of the Family not an isolated event, but, rather, one

which will have a continuing and long-term impact on

national policies as well as on regional and international

cooperation. Liechtenstein has undertaken manifold

activities in order to celebrate the International Year;

amongst other things, it dedicated the commemorative

activities for its National Day on 15 August to the

objectives of the International Year. The Government of

Liechtenstein therefore wholeheartedly welcomes the

decision of the General Assembly, taken in its resolution

47/237 of September 1993, to hold an international

conference on the family, which will take place here in

New York on 18 October, and hopes to be in a position

to contribute to giving the International Year a lasting

impact.

In our view, preventive diplomacy, as outlined in

"An Agenda for Peace", could and should be used more

often and more efficiently. We commend the activities of

the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

(CSCE). Especially since the 1990 Summit meeting in

Paris, when the leaders of 36 States signed and committed

themselves to the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the

CSCE has shown that it can play a most useful role in

8

monitoring specific situations and in initiating negotiation

processes. We are of the opinion that improved

coordination of the activities of the Conference and those

of the United Nations can achieve very fruitful results.

The international political environment has changed.

Having been accorded its rightful place in the promotion

and maintenance of international peace and security, the

United Nations now has as one of its central tasks that of

playing a more active role than ever before in conflict

resolution. Unfortunately it must be stated again this year

that the sheer number and magnitude of the conflicts

surpass the abilities of this Organization. There is no

region in the world without a conflict of some sort; regional

conflicts have become a major threat to international peace

and security. We are aware that peace-keeping must be and

will remain one of the Organization’s most important

instruments for maintaining peace and security in the world,

but peace-keeping operations have to be provided with clear

mandates and be set within a reasonable and realistic time-

frame. Since Liechtenstein became a member of the United

Nations in 1990 the expenses for peace-keeping operations

have increased dramatically. We are aware that the

changing global situation has made an increase of

peace-keeping activities unavoidable, but it should also be

noted that these costs increasingly constitute a heavy burden

for national budgets.

In this connection, we should note that we welcome

the creation of the post of an Under-Secretary-General for

Internal Oversight Services and the appointment of Mr.

Karl Theodor Paschke to this post. We hope that this

important step will lead to improved financial management

of the United Nations and at the same time to timely and

full payment of assessed contributions by all Member

States, both into the regular budget and for peace-keeping

actions.

The Liechtenstein Government attaches the utmost

importance to the promotion and protection of human rights

and I wish to emphasize that the Declaration and

Programme of Action adopted by the World Conference on

Human Rights in Vienna in June 1993 can, if it is followed

by full implementation of its provisions, constitute a

milestone in the history of the United Nations. The

General Assembly at its forty-eighth session took a first and

very important step by adopting the mandate for the High

Commissioner for Human Rights, a post which had been

under discussion for a very long time. I wish to thank

Ambassador Ayala Lasso for all the efforts he has

undertaken so far in fulfilling his very difficult task and to

assure him of our full support. However, more and

determined action by the General Assembly is needed,

including the allocation of an increased percentage of the

overall budget of the United Nations to the Centre for

Human Rights in order to enable it to carry out its tasks

even more efficiently.

The United Nations is approaching its fiftieth

anniversary and preparing to commemorate that event in

a dignified manner. I should like to thank

Under-Secretary-General Gillian Sorensen for her untiring

efforts with regard to the commemorative activities of the

Organization. The jubilee is also a good opportunity to

bring the purposes and the work of the United Nations

closer to the individuals, the people, who are the central

subject of the Organization’s endeavours. Liechtenstein

wishes to contribute to achieving this goal and has

therefore scheduled several activities, information on

which will be provided in due course. I should like,

however, to avail myself of this opportunity to refer

briefly to a project which is of particular importance to us

and, we believe, of direct relevance for the United

Nations.

In one of Liechtenstein’s first contributions to these

general debates after becoming a Member of the United

Nations, His Serene Highness Prince Hans Adam II,

Ruling Prince and Head of State of Liechtenstein,

introduced at the forty-sixth session of the Assembly an

initiative on certain aspects of self-determination, and he

elaborated on it at later sessions, including the

forty-eighth. Self-determination has been of very great

importance in the history of the United Nations and is, of

course, enshrined as a principle in its Charter. As

representatives of Liechtenstein have outlined on several

occasions, our initiative seeks to open up for discussion

by the international community certain aspects of the right

of self-determination and to encourage a more flexible

and practical implementation of that right.

Last year, at the request of the delegation of

Liechtenstein, a new sub-item was included in the agenda

of the General Assembly, entitled "Effective realization of

the right to self-determination through autonomy" . We

had a very interesting debate in the Third Committee, at

the close of which Member States, while agreeing to

consider the matter further at a later stage, preferred not

to do so during this present, forty-ninth, session of the

General Assembly. Reactions and comments made during

and surrounding the debate by a large number of

countries, as well as developments on the international

scene, have confirmed our view that this initiative is

timely and potentially valuable for the international

9

community. We will therefore be pursuing it as

constructively as possible.

It seems to us that at this stage it would be most

appropriate, and most likely to lead to fruitful results, for

this subject to be developed further within an academic,

rather than a political, framework. His Serene Highness

Prince Hans Adam II has therefore, as one element of

Liechtenstein’s contribution to the commemoration of the

fiftieth anniversary, given a grant to Princeton University’s

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

to establish a research programme on self-determination to

be conducted under the auspices of the Woodrow Wilson

School’s Center of International Studies. Two conferences

are to be organized in March and June 1995 within the

framework of this research programme. They will be open

for participation to all Member States of the United

Nations, and I wish to extend an invitation to all States to

continue working together with us to make further progress

on this crucially important question.

International law is the best guarantee of respect for

human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as of

international peace and security. In the case of

Liechtenstein, it is also the only guarantee. I therefore wish

to reaffirm our commitment to cooperate with all States in

further strengthening international law in order to achieve

a secure, a peaceful and a prosperous future for the

generations to come.