Malaysia, 1994

I should like to congratulate

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

Nations General Assembly at its forty-ninth session. May

I also express our appreciation to Ambassador Samuel

Insanally of Guyana for having successfully guided the

work of the General Assembly at its forty-eighth session

and further enhanced its centrality.

The cold war has ended, and totalitarianism has met

its nemesis. At this very critical stage in history, we must

seize the opportunity to redesign the international order so

as to realize the aspirations of the global community. We

must meet this challenge and collectively reconstruct a truly

just order for our time and for the generations to come.

Indeed, the global community has reached many

significant milestones. More nations have agreed to resolve

their disputes by peaceful means. South Africa has

emerged from its political catharsis as a nation free of

apartheid and with majority rule; Cambodia experienced

free and democratic elections; and lasting peace in West

Asia came closer to realization with the Israeli-Palestinian

accords.

However, the initial euphoria will be somewhat

short-lived. The path ahead is strewn with uncertainties

and pitfalls. The end of the cold war has yet to reward

us fully with its promise of global peace and security. It

has instead unleashed the demons of parochial

nationalism, tribalism, religious fanaticism — as

witnessed in the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia — tribal

warfare in Rwanda and religious dissension in some

countries. The North-South divide in wealth, power and

control over resources is still too pronounced to be

ignored, and the redistribution of global prosperity is far

from being realized.

The paramount challenge facing the global

community today is to fulfil the promises made in recent

years of systemic change in the global environment. This

is to be achieved through sustained efforts in regard to

economic development and through the strengthening of

civil society and multilateral institutions.

Development is the only secure foundation for global

peace and security, for the origins of conflicts are often

very deeply rooted in socio-economic deprivation and

disparities. As for civil society, its growth into maturity

requires the establishment of institutions for a stable and

responsive social order, a democratic participatory

arrangement as a means to channel political energy, and

an environment in which culture can flourish.

In all these areas, it is the people that matter — their

freedom, security and development. All great traditions

of mankind, East and West, concur in the sanctity of the

human person, the family as a fundamental unit of

society, and the primacy of moral and ethical values as a

foundation of civilizations. The sanctity of the human

person warrants the State’s protection of the inalienable

rights of all to freedom, to participate in social, political

and cultural processes and to optimize the potential of the

human person through development. The rights of the

individual must be safeguarded inasmuch as the stability

of society cannot be compromised. It is within this

framework that we conceive the restoration of human

rights in any society, industrial or developing, as a

continuing endeavour which we must never abandon.

The promise made at the 1992 Rio Summit remains

unfulfilled. If no increased official development

assistance is forthcoming and the international target of

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0.7 per cent is not met, this will represent a serious

reneging on the Rio commitments, notwithstanding the

Global Environment Facility.

This will raise questions as to the commitment of the

North to pledges made at major conferences. The World

Summit for Social Development will take place next year,

and what will be the value of assiduously negotiated

documents when, as with the Rio Agenda 21, no real means

are provided for their implementation? The recent

International Monetary Fund/World Bank meeting at

Madrid highlighted the preoccupation of the major

developed countries, often at a tangent from the needs and

requirements of developing countries.

At the Rio Summit, the developed countries declared

that the tropical forests belonged to the whole world. It

was maintained that these forests must always remain in

order to maintain biological diversity and sustain ecological

balance. Today, South-East Asia is covered in thick haze,

adversely affecting the health of the people. Hundreds of

thousands of hectares of virgin forest are burning, and

valuable species are being lost.

If indeed the tropical forest is the heritage of mankind,

the responsibility for its protection must necessarily be

collective. While the South-East Asian countries will take

the necessary measures, we appeal to the global

community, especially the richer members, to help us put

out this fire on an urgent and priority basis.

We regard the issue of global population as

inseparable from the overall concern of development.

Reductions in fertility mainly come about from investment

in education and health care for women. While we share

the fundamental objectives of the Conference on Population

and Development in Cairo, we deplore the attempt to

impose views without regard for the values of others.

The peace dividend that we aspire to reap will not be

realized without sustained growth in the global economy.

However, growth prospects are often hampered by short-

sighted policies and structural crises within the industrial

economies. Viewed in this light, the popular call for

macroeconomic stabilization should not be confined to the

developing countries alone but instead should encompass

both the developing and the industrial economies.

The United Nations will soon commemorate its fiftieth

year of existence. It would be uncharitable to ignore

altogether the outstanding contributions made to humanity

by this world body and its agencies. It has provided a

platform for international cooperation in the fields of

education, law, health, culture, economics, refugee relief

and so on. But more significantly, it has, by its very

existence, prepared the groundwork for a global order that

would be truly democratic and multicultural.

However, as we draw up the balance sheet of that

era and contemplate the challenges of the twenty-first

century, we must take into serious account our many

limitations. Clearly, the United Nations as it exists today

is unable effectively to deal with critical global issues. In

the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina the Security Council

remains paralysed in the implementation of its own

resolutions. Should we also ask then: if the Council was

ready to plunge into the Gulf crisis a few years ago, how

can that be reconciled with the political timidity and clear

absence of resolve to take effective action in the case of

Bosnia and Herzegovina, even after the rejection of the

so-called peace plan by the Serbs?

Within the United Nations itself, the peace-keeping

operations decided on by the Security Council provide no

clear institutional structure for consultation, especially

between non-Security-Council member troop-contributing

countries and Security Council members. Yet the major

Powers are resisting the urgent need for regular

consultations between the Security Council and troop-

contributing countries.

While the situation in Somalia clearly reflected the

need for some form of United Nations involvement, if not

intervention, there have been other operations where even

countries in the region have been totally opposed to

United Nations involvement. My delegation, which has

been deeply involved in United Nations peace-keeping

operations, is concerned about operations which serve

questionable interest groups.

In the Security Council, while agreement between

the Permanent Five has removed obstacles and facilitated

settlements of disputes, the momentum behind the push to

solve issues, if not properly checked and balanced by a

process of accountability and non-selectivity of issues,

may prove to be the undoing of the Council itself and of

its moral authority. The role of major Powers, at least

those that still deserve that status, is explicitly recognized

in the Charter of the United Nations. However, many of

us will not be willing to agree that these Powers should

continue to be Charter-privileged to intervene wherever

they wish and only when their own interpretations of

peace and security warrant intervention.

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Reform of the Security Council is necessary to reflect

a more equitable geographical representation and towards

making the Council more accountable to the general

membership. Resistance from a few, whose own claims to

being major Powers are becoming increasingly

unpersuasive, should not be allowed to stand in the way of

change. The issue is not one merely of enlarging the

permanent membership but is one of enhanced participation.

As the Council is unrepresentative, the first step towards

reform must be to increase the numbers of non-permanent

members. The veto, a creation of the power politics of the

past, must be part of the total reform of the Council.

The United Nations still represents the best recourse

for developing countries to advance their interests in global

affairs. Hence, we cannot allow the present uncertainties

about the structure and role of the United Nations to remain

unresolved. The United Nations, despite financial

problems, cannot be allowed to become a mendicant of the

power brokers at the expense of the principles of the

Charter.

The United Nations is the only institution capable of

providing the vehicle for a comprehensive and integrated

approach to peace and development. A revitalized

Economic and Social Council has the potential to

coordinate and, it is hoped, harmonize policies emanating

from separate bodies such as the G-7 and the Bretton

Woods institutions. In this regard priority must be

accorded to an Agenda for Development which would

provide the new framework for international development

cooperation, the basis for a truly global partnership.

The United Nations must also spearhead the struggle

towards total and complete nuclear disarmament. The

major Powers must not slacken the momentum towards

effective non-proliferation and comprehensive test-ban

treaties, critical to our collective resolve to halt the arms

race and eliminate the utilization of weapons of mass

destruction.

Malaysia is prepared to make an early commitment to

the goals of true globalism and, with a genuine mechanism

reposing in the United Nations, to a new world system for

international peace, security and development. We will

continue to participate actively in the work of the

multilateral system.

International society has grown fourfold since 1945.

The world is heterogeneous and multicultural. Meaningful

discourse cannot be limited by the narrowness of

parameters or an overbearing sense of cultural supremacy.

We must strive to overcome and transcend

unproductive polarizations. We all need to purge

ourselves of the arrogance and myopia embedded in the

old mind-set. We must learn to honour diversity of

opinion and the multiplicity of world views and

perspectives on life and society. None the less, they must

not impede efforts to seek and implement genuine

solutions for our common good and shared problems.

We must accept the new realities, particularly the

far-reaching systemic transformations in the global

economy. The growing economic strength of East Asia

and the newly industrializing countries will invariably

bring about a new equation of power and responsibility in

global affairs.

We are fully aware of the many shortcomings

inherent within East Asia; its remarkable economic

performance is far from miraculous. Nevertheless, its

experience portrays the path of change towards the

qualitative search for excellence. Political stability was

appropriated to garner efforts for economic growth which

ultimately became the means to empower the people. Its

strength, as in the case of Malaysia and other South-East

Asian countries, is to accept and to experience the

proposition that development and democracy are not

mutually exclusive; and the exercise in responsible liberty

by the ordinary people and their participation in public

life does not necessarily result in social indiscipline and

political instability. Development is enriched by

multiculturalism where the practice of tolerance and

moderation has turned religious and ethnic diversity from

being a source of conflict into an ingredient for success.

In a world torn by ethnic and religious passions and

cultural prejudices, the experience of South-East Asia in

multiculturalism may provide some clues for devising the

means for peaceful coexistence and productive partnership

among citizens of the global village.

Dag Hammarskjöld, when reflecting on the state of

the world almost 40 years ago, was perhaps less

exuberant than we are at the prospects of globalism.

With the memory of war still fresh, he said:

“We must serve our apprenticeship and at every

stage try to develop forms of international

coexistence as far as is possible at the moment.”

That apprenticeship has now been served. The

United Nations must innovate and renew itself to address

the challenges of the twenty-first century. It must

progress and transform itself from being a theatre for the

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concert of a few powerful nations into an effective and

representative vehicle for global governance. And, beyond

that, it must be animated by the spirit of justice and a bias

towards compassion. In short, the very legitimacy of this

international body hinges upon its realizing the ideal of

becoming the conscience of the global community.