Malaysia, 1996

I am happy to

acknowledge a Malaysian as the President of the General

Assembly, a first for Malaysia. We are thankful to all

Member States for their support, especially the members of

the Asian Group, which endorsed Malaysia’s candidature

early.

I would like to think that the selection has to do

with Malaysia’s efforts and involvement, with the United

Nations and globally. Within three years of Malaysia’s

independence, we were involved in United Nations

peacekeeping operations in the Congo. Today in Bosnia

and Herzegovina, Malaysia is perhaps the only developing

country participating in the peacekeeping forces led by

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), paying

in full the cost of our involvement. Malaysia will continue

to participate in international activities, United Nations-

sponsored or otherwise, combining altruism with

enlightened self-interest.

This time last year, there was much celebration as

the United Nations attained its fiftieth year. Amid the

celebrations extolling the achievements of the United

Nations, there were serious concerns expressed about the

relevance and effectiveness of this Organization and the

need for democratic reforms so that the United Nations

could better fulfil the purposes and principles of the

Charter. The fiftieth anniversary came and went and,

despite the extravaganza, very little has been achieved.

The Organization itself remains far removed from

the aspirations of the peoples of the United Nations,

which it is supposed to promote and protect. Hopefully,

the tragedy of Bosnia and Herzegovina will, with

international help, be on the mend, but Palestine’s hopes

and aspirations have been undermined by the new Israeli

Government, which is backed, unfortunately, by some

Western Powers, and is backtracking on painfully

negotiated agreements. At this moment, a rash decision by

Israel not only imperils further the peace process, with

lives being lost, but can inflame and outrage Muslim

States and Muslim society if the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa

Mosque is defiled. In Africa, Somalia, Rwanda and

Liberia remain on the razor’s edge of survival, and

Burundi awaits United Nations and regional initiatives to

avoid a catastrophe. And there are countries such as

Afghanistan, victims of the cold war, abandoned by the

major Powers, needing help to reconstruct and overcome

the destruction wrought by war. And what will be the fate

of tiny Chechnya and its valiant people, facing the full

onslaught of mighty Russia?

While some developing countries become

fragmented and marginalized, the process of accruing

power and benefits continues with the major countries,

aided by their control of the Security Council, their

monopoly on nuclear power and their economic high

ground. One sees various twists and turns, double

standards and selectivity, as the dictates of domestic

6

politics overrule justice and humanitarianism in

international affairs. Commitment to multilateralism is so

qualified and investment in the United Nations so tentative

that common needs have often been sacrificed.

Now, as the General Assembly begins its fifty-first

session, we urge again that the international community

work collectively for substantial change, reflecting a more

equitable sharing of political and economic power. This call

for reform is made even more urgent when we consider that

the premises by which international relations are conducted

today continue to perpetuate a grossly unjust system.

The systematic abuse of power by the major countries

has continued. They apply selective sanctions and double

standards on the developing world to promote their narrow

national interests. Clearly disregarding multilateralism, with

its inherent qualities of mutual respect and shared interests,

the North continues its vice-like grip on all spheres of

international activity, including politics, international trade,

development, the environment and the media to name a

few.

Elitism exercised by the major countries is frequently

cloaked in the guise of globalism or of serving the common

interests of nations. However even a cursory examination

of this brand of globalism reveals it to be sanctimonious, if

not hypocritical. For example, under the pretext of

safeguarding international peace and security, the nuclear-

weapon States maintain their right to destroy, or threaten to

destroy, all life on this planet. Yet these countries deny

others even the right to use conventional weapons for self-

defence.

Malaysia deeply regrets the lack of a consensus on the

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty but welcomes its

subsequent adoption at the fiftieth session of the General

Assembly. We worry about nuclear aspirations in our

region and in Israel. To a large extent, the refusal of the

nuclear-weapon States to adopt a timetable for nuclear

disarmament is responsible for this situation and seriously

flaws the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

Malaysia is encouraged by the recent International Court of

Justice Advisory Opinion on the legality of the threat or use

of nuclear weapons. To render the Court’s finding

meaningful, there should be serious efforts made towards

accelerating the process of nuclear disarmament, including

the early convening of a special session of the General

Assembly devoted to disarmament.

While these major Powers advocate peace and

condemn arms races by others, their industries aggressively

develop and promote the sales of defence technologies

and weapons of death. Like a drug dealer supplying his

helplessly addicted victims, the northern-based arms

industries keep poor countries mired in a cycle of poverty

and insecurity, laying waste vital human skills and

resources.

Perhaps such political elitism comes naturally to

these powerful countries, many of which were imperial

Powers before. A clue as to their priorities for the global

agenda is to be found in the recent communiqué of the

economic summit of the Group of Seven. Reform of the

United Nations, in particular the Security Council, as an

urgent issue, gave way to the pre-eminence of the

globalization of the world economy. And so, the Security

Council remains a blunt instrument of the foreign policies

of the permanent members.

In the context of a globalized world, much is made

of the terms “interdependence” and “mutual interests”.

Multilateralism has been elbowed aside. Yet

multilateralism is the foundation of the international

relations and cooperation which the United Nations

symbolizes. From now on, globalization will take over

and nations will lose their sovereignty.

Consider the current financial crisis that faces this

Organization. The United Nations is on the verge of

bankruptcy, being held to ransom by its major donor

country, the wealthiest nation in the world. That country

refuses to meet its assessed and legally due contributions,

yet insists on maintaining its hegemony on global

management.

The major Powers’ solution to the United Nations

stalemate is to speak of revitalizing the United Nations as

if they were conducting a corporate downsizing exercise.

While it is important to end bureaucratic inefficiencies

and the wasteful use of resources, we should be mindful

that the United Nations is not a business.

Overconcentration on internal-management issues can

deflect the attention of the United Nations from its major

global responsibilities. While Malaysia is critical of the

United Nations and its leadership, we cannot but regret

the tendency of major Powers to assign the United

Nations complex tasks, missions impossible, without clear

mandates and authority or adequate resources. How does

the United Nations undertake peacekeeping operations

without the authority or the means to keep the peace?

We find the inequities of power-sharing in the

United Nations to be intolerable and view with alarm

7

prevailing trends towards weakening this Organization

further. Already, the centre of gravity for all principal

economic decisions that affect developing countries lies in

the undemocratic Bretton Woods institutions, the World

Trade Organization (WTO) and of course the self-appointed

Group of Seven.

Strengthening multilateralism requires a reform of the

Bretton Woods institutions, which dominate the

development scene. These institutions are operating against

their general mandate. Decision-making is undemocratic

and untransparent. Despite their specific mandates to

facilitate development and regulate the international

monetary system, these institutions are used to discipline

third-world countries and to act as debt collectors for the

rich North. It is salutary to note that the World Bank

collected a net amount of $7.2 billion in 1995 in debt

repayment over and above what it disbursed in aid to the

poor indebted countries and raked in a profit of almost $1.5

billion. The International Monetary Fund has now become

an enforcer of the dictates of market lenders and is

assuming the role of a global rating agency.

The majority of poor developing countries are saddled

with unsustainable levels of debt that preclude them from

a share of world prosperity and growth. Debt servicing on

current scales is untenable and debtor countries, as a

consequence, can do little to alleviate their poverty and

misery. The chilling numbers speak for themselves - more

is spent on servicing debt than on financing basic

programmes for health care, education and humanitarian

relief.

The reductions in the commitments for concessional

assistance by almost all the industrial countries mark a

turning point in international development cooperation.

Bluntly put, the rich have reneged on solemn commitments

and pledges. The cut-backs in pledges for the replenishment

of international development assistance and the

unwillingness to clear earlier arrears, triggered by a

unilateral decision of the major contributor to scale back its

contributions, have led other donors to scale back their

contributions as well.

Now that the concept of globalism is so intimately

linked with international trade, it is important critically to

examine the realities of this so called “free trade”. The

painfully long history of the Uruguay Round negotiations

should have forewarned us that the WTO, although

established as a rules-based multilateral organization to

regulate international trade, will become answerable only to

the world’s wealthiest economic Powers. Like the Bretton

Woods institutions, the WTO remains outside any

relationship of accountability to the far more democratic

United Nations General Assembly.

During the Uruguay Round, the developing countries

discovered that, instead of negotiating international rules

on trade in manufactured goods, the rich countries of the

North had widened the agenda and pushed for

liberalization in economic areas where they clearly have

an advantage, in particular, financial services and

investments.

Even though some countries of the South have

benefited from the liberalization of trade — and Malaysia

is one of them — the General Agreement on Tariffs and

Trade (GATT) nevertheless harbours new threats to

developing and newly emerging economies. Not only

have the poor countries of the South to struggle uphill

merely to meet the basic needs of their peoples, but they

are now bullied into adjusting their economic policies to

meet their new obligations under GATT so that northern-

based corporations can penetrate and capture their

markets. The poor may not reserve their markets for

themselves even when they have no capacity to penetrate

the markets of the rich.

Fair competition and level playing fields are only for

the rich. For example, their attempts to link the

environment and labour standards to trade in

manufactured goods is a clear attempt to deny developing

countries their meagre competitive advantage. The

relationship between trade and labour standards emerged

not because of a concern for the well-being of workers in

poor countries, but as protectionist moves aimed against

growing and competitively-priced imports from the South.

To compound this unfair interpretation of the

multilateral trade rules, we find that, when it comes to the

transfer of technology, the northern countries take a

fiercely anti-liberal stand, insisting that all WTO member

States compulsorily introduce a set of national laws to

protect intellectual property rights. Since most patents are

owned by the North, this in effect means legal protection

of their technological monopoly and a drastic curtailment

of the right of developing countries to have access to new

technology.

It appears, therefore, that the northern interpretation

of “free trade” and “liberalization” are slogans that in

reality mean liberalization when it benefits the North but

protectionism if it can block the South. Thus, while goods

and capital are permitted and encouraged to move around

8

the globe, labour and technology may not. Even as we are

asked to submit to GATT rules and the WTO, we find one

country blatantly undermining the WTO by enacting

extraterritorial laws that must be submitted to by all nations

and their companies on pain of excommunication.

The GATT also fails to protect the genetic resources

of the South while allowing genetically modified materials

to be patented. We now have a situation where theft of

genetic resources by western biotech transnational

corporations enables them to make huge profits by

producing patented genetic mutations of these same

materials. To what depths have we sunk in the global

marketplace when nature’s gifts to the poor may not be

protected but their modification by the rich becomes

exclusive property?

There are of course many winners and losers in the

world of the WTO, but we are concerned that the major

losers will soon again be the poorest and most marginalized

countries. A small number of developing countries, like

Malaysia, have benefited. But let me point out that our

gains have been achieved through thrift, productivity and

the ingenuity of our people, hard-earned fruits of our

labour. Lest it be forgotten, our new-found prosperity has

also benefited those in the developed countries. Our

products are competitively priced, thus contributing to

lower inflation in the rich countries. Our prosperity has

provided vast and expanding markets for the goods of rich

countries, thus creating jobs and helping to lower their

unemployment rates.

The term “globalization” has become the buzzword of

our times. In the G-7 communiqué, globalization was touted

as

“a source of hope for the future ... responsible for the

expansion of wealth and prosperity in the world.”

(A/51/208, annex II, para. 2)

However, some would argue that globalization, with its

objectives of breaking down borders and sucking the

countries of the world into one single economic entity, has

eclipsed multilateralism or attempts to masquerade as the

same thing. Indeed, globalization has been described by the

rich as a

“new global partnership for development”. (ibid.,

annex II, IV)

If the current behaviour of the rich countries is

anything to go by, globalization simply means the breaking

down of the borders of countries so that those with the

capital and the goods will be free to dominate the

markets. Colonies in the former British Empire will

remember “Imperial Preference” when they were made

the exclusive markets of the metropolitan Power.

Globalization can mean just that, except that the world

market will belong to the rich nations. Linkages to

non-trade issues will prevent the poor from ever

challenging the rich, in the same way that the colonies

were not allowed to industrialize.

We do indeed live in a brutal and unjust world,

where the astonishing developments in science and

technology and our increasingly sophisticated knowledge

base are not matched by the ability of Governments to

marshal forces to overcome the social and economic

inequities of their countries. The facts and figures are

well documented and widely known, but they are worth

repeating just to jog our conscience — if we still have

one. What are the universal values of this globalized

world when increasing numbers of people in both the

North and South live in abject poverty? A fifth of the

human race — 1.3 billion people — lack access to the

most basic necessities, such as food and clean drinking

water, while preventable hunger and disease kill 35,000

children throughout the world every day. The 1996 United

Nations Development Programme’s Human Development

Report states that, in the past 40 years, the richest 20 per

cent of people have seen the differential between

themselves and the poorest 20 per cent double.

Are we expected to believe in the sincerity of the

rich countries when they talk about a new global

partnership and the achievement of sustainable

development, when the fact is that, today, we have over

20 million environmental refugees in addition to an equal

number of traditional refugees? Why should the

developing countries accept the twisted lexicon of

northern development-speak when “development

assistance” means that the net flow of wealth from poor

countries to rich has increased to at least $400 billion a

year when the terms of trade, transfer pricing, debt

servicing and the brain drain are taken into account.

Wading through the obstacles of this strife-torn

world is a critical dilemma that faces the international

community today. It is one of international leadership and

the failure to deal with these critical issues. Instead, we

witness a persistent abnegation by the major Powers of

the responsibilities that accompany the rights and

privileges of such authority. We must determine the type

9

of world and society we want to live in, and this should be

based on truly universal values.

As we approach the next millennium and as the

pre-eminence of transnational forces has blurred the

definition of national sovereignty, we must seriously

question why a powerful minority is still allowed to

bankrupt and coerce the majority to meet its narrow

economic and political needs. The poor are no longer

independent. They have already lost control over their own

currency. And now they have lost their borders too.

Freedom of the press is touted as a basic democratic

principle. But control of the media by a handful of western

corporations has made nonsense of this principle.

Proclaiming to be windows on the world, the western

media, manipulated and censored by those in control,

invariably manage to distort reports so as to put anything

happening in the South in the worst possible light.

Anything positive in the developing countries is ignored.

The growth and influence of electronic, satellite and

information technology is astounding. But its impact poses

one of the biggest political and ethical challenges of our

time, subverting and distorting our social consciousness.

The elites of the North and the South have become blind to

the enormities of reality. Events and people are stripped of

their context, so that we become less capable of recognizing

the common humanity and equal rights of all the people in

the world. Pictures of poverty and inequality are no longer

received with moral outrage, but have become simple facts

of life. Thus begins the process of dehumanization and

disengagement from the rest of human society.

Although without a doubt the information age will

bring cheap and easy access to knowledge and education

and facilitate worldwide business, its abuse is already

affecting the moral values of the world. Smut and violence

gratuitously distributed by criminals in the North are no less

polluting than carbon dioxide emissions nor less dangerous

than drug trafficking.

If one great Power can apply its laws to citizens of

another country it considers to be guilty of drug trafficking,

why cannot countries with different moral codes extradite

the traffickers of pornography for legal action under the

laws of the offended countries? Why cannot there be

international laws and international courts to punish those

who spread filth and incite racial hatred and racial

violence? Before the whole world sinks deeper into moral

decay, the international community should act. Abuse of the

ubiquitous Internet system must be stopped.

The monopoly of the electronic media by the North

should be broken. As it is, we are getting slanted news,

made worse by broadcasters interpreting in favour of their

own or their countries’ interests. As usual, the poor

countries with no role in operating the international media

have become the principal victims of world news

networks. Not only are distorted pictures of our countries

being broadcast, but our own capacity to understand what

is happening is being undermined. In the past, Western

missionaries spread the Gospel. Today the media has

taken over, and all our cherished values and diverse

cultures are being destroyed.

The United Nations has not always been a failure. In

its early years it helped to dismantle the empires of

Western European countries. Malaysia is grateful to it, for

it too won freedom because of the moral suasion of the

United Nations. But the United Nations now seems blind

to what is being done to Iraq and Chechnya. One great

Power continues its vendetta against Iraq, firing missiles

at distant targets to bring the Iraqi leadership to its knees,

oblivious to the sufferings of the besieged Iraqi people.

Another Power has shut the gates of mercy on the

Chechens, and with rockets and bombs has killed

indiscriminately and with appalling brutality in order that

Chechnya should remain part of an empire. How much

more should the Chechens suffer before the Security

Council takes notice? Where are the vaunted defenders of

human rights who claim that national borders will not

stop them?

It is a fact that every year many statements are made

at the United Nations that lament the crises of poverty,

third-world debt, human rights abuses, conflicts and wars,

social disintegration and environmental degradation. It is

almost boring. And yet nothing much has been done

which could bring about an amelioration of this sad state

of affairs.

Perhaps it is because the processes of

intergovernmental consensus decision-making of the

United Nations are tedious and frustrating. Perhaps it is

mismanagement by the Governments of so many poor

nations which afford many excuses for the rich not to

help.

It is of course easy to use the United Nations as a

forum to unmask the hypocrisies of both the North and

the South, but it is more difficult to work collectively to

implement change and solve problems. Still, Malaysia

believes that this repetitive criticism is valid and

necessary, that international injustice and oppression

10

should not be swept into the dustbins of history. I would

like to say again that Malaysia strongly believes in the

multilateralism of the United Nations and is prepared to

invest in this international Organization with all our

strength, beliefs and moral fibre.