Mongolia, 2001

At the outset, I wish

to pay tribute to the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi

Annan, upon his unanimous re-election. The Nobel

Peace Prize conferred upon the United Nations and its

Secretary-General testifies to the broad recognition of

the increasing role played by the world Organization in

promoting peace, security and development and vests

in it, at the same time, greater responsibility and trust

in meeting both the existing and evolving global

challenges.

This session of the General Assembly is taking

place at a time when the international community is

drawn together more closely in the face of the

unprecedented task of developing an effective response

to the challenge of terrorism. The people and

Government of Mongolia have resolutely condemned

the barbaric attacks of 11 September as a deliberate act

of terrorism against freedom and democracy — an

attack against all humanity and expressed its full

support for the collective efforts of the anti-terrorist

coalition. From this high rostrum, I wish to reaffirm

Mongolia’s strong commitment to our common

7

struggle against the scourge of terrorism. I wish, on

behalf of the Government of Mongolia, to reiterate our

profound sympathy to the people and Government of

the United States of America and to all the families that

have been affected by this tragic event. I also express

my condolences to New Yorkers and to the

Governments of the United States of America and the

Dominican Republic over the tragic accident that took

place yesterday here in New York.

The response of the international community to

the terrorist attacks has clearly demonstrated its firm

resolve to collectively fight this global scourge. In this

respect, Security Council resolution 1373 (2001) of 28

September is a timely measure, unprecedented both in

its scope and nature. It has laid the groundwork for

practical measures to be taken by all Member States in

the fight against terrorism and established an effective

mechanism to monitor its implementation. My

Government is taking every necessary measure to

implement the provisions of the resolution and the

relevant report to that effect was submitted to the

counter-terrorism Committee of the Security Council

on 10 November.

I wish also to inform the Assembly that Mongolia

signed yesterday the 1999 International Convention for

the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. With its

ratification in the near future, Mongolia will be party to

all the United Nations anti-terrorism conventions

applicable to it. We also believe that, in light of recent

events, the existing international legal framework on

terrorism ought to be further strengthened through the

speedy conclusion of a comprehensive convention

against international terrorism and a convention against

nuclear terrorism, preferably at this session of the

General Assembly. In the same vein, the pace of setting

up the International Criminal Court must be

accelerated.

In order to put the anti-terrorist strategy in the

right perspective, it would seem important to us to see

the problem in a wider setting, that is, to address issues

that provide a fertile soil for terrorism, such as

transnational organized crime, illicit drugs, money

laundering, illegal arms trafficking and others. The

United Nations, in our view, is uniquely positioned to

meet such a challenge and to develop a comprehensive

strategy to uproot international terrorism through

global and concerted action.

The events of 11 September have drastically

changed the world as we see it. It has revealed the

heightened vulnerability of the human family. It has

also revealed, in no uncertain terms, the need for

change in our approach to the way we perceive our

own security. In this regard, the concept of human

security, which places the safety, security and well-

being of a human being at the heart of the matter,

deserves our utmost attention. We see the prime merit

of the human security concept to be that it addresses in

a comprehensive manner the three-tiered freedom

outlined in the Millennium Declaration: freedom from

want, freedom from fear and freedom to live in a

healthier and cleaner environment.

In the emerging era of globalization, it is

becoming increasingly evident that no country can

ensure its security on its own. This indivisibility of

global human security requires a genuine display of

solidarity and collective responsibility on the part of

every country of the international community so that it

can effectively address the formidable challenges at the

turn of the new millennium.

After several decades of development efforts, the

number of the world’s poor remains at an

embarrassingly high level. Exclusion, marginalization

and inequality among and within countries are being

further exacerbated by both existing and evolving

transboundary threats.

Looking back, one could describe the decade of

the 1990s as a decade of commitments for

development, with a series of international conferences

and summits resulting in important declarations and

plans of action. Yet today, the world finds itself in

many respects in no better shape. The legitimate

question arises: Why? Does the international

community, increasingly seen as a single human family

living in a shared global village, have the capacity to

redress this situation? Technically, the right answer

seems to be yes. There are resources — financial,

human and technological — to ensure a better life. On

the other hand, one has to admit also that the

underlying reasons could be manifold, as the changes

undergone and challenges faced by the world over the

last decade are indeed complex both in nature and in

scope.

Yet, we cannot but agree with the Secretary-

General that

8

“The widening gap between goals and

achievements implies that the international

community has failed to deliver on crucial

commitments it made during the 1990s”.

(A/56/326, para. 81)

The real, hard question is then: Do we have the

sufficient political will and sense of solidarity to forge

the genuine partnership needed to erase the staggering

discrepancy between commitments and action? In the

final analysis, the answer to this question has to be

affirmative and has to be supported by practical,

meaningful action. We cannot afford to fail to honour

for yet another decade our commitments if we are

serious about ensuring human security. We cannot

afford to fail to implement the far-reaching yet

achievable targets set by the Millennium Summit last

year. Our failure could be used as a justification for

deadly acts by those who pose a threat to humanity. Let

us therefore make the first decade of this new century

one of implementation and cooperation for a safer,

healthier and better world. Additional efforts are

urgently required, and affluent countries could exhibit

their solidarity and shared responsibility by further

opening their markets, providing broader and faster

debt relief and giving more and better-focused

development assistance and incentives for foreign

direct investment flows to their less fortunate partners.

We must mobilize the political will necessary to

make the upcoming conferences on financing for

development, sustainable development and food

security a success. The lead-up to these important

events and the conferences themselves are to take into

consideration the special needs of small, vulnerable

and structurally disadvantaged economies so as to

enable them to integrate into the multilateral trading

system and take advantage of the opportunities offered

by the advance of globalization. We also believe that

the international ministerial meeting on transit

transport cooperation, to be held in 2003, is of crucial

importance in enhancing international cooperation to

ease the inherent development handicaps of the

landlocked developing countries, as recognized in the

Millennium Declaration.

My delegation shares the view that a commitment

to human security demands enhanced international

cooperation in conflict prevention and strengthened

capacities to assist countries in restoring, building and

keeping the peace. In this respect, Mongolia fully

supports the Secretary-General in his efforts to move

the United Nations from a culture of reaction to a

culture of prevention. We believe that mutual

understanding and dialogue among different peoples

and civilizations are acutely needed to break the pattern

of mistrust, suspicion and recrimination that either lead

to a conflict or serve as a pretext for it. We know that

mutual understanding and dialogue are possible when

there is cooperation between nations.

This session of the General Assembly is of

special significance to my country and its people, as we

celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Mongolia’s

admission to the United Nations. On 27 October 1961

Mongolia became a full-fledged member of the world

Organization, an event of historic importance to my

people. Over the years our cooperation with the

organizations of the United Nations family has been

expanding both in scope and in substance. Today

Mongolia is party to some 140 international treaties

and conventions, and is a member of 33 inter-

governmental and 20 regional and other organizations.

The United Nations assistance and cooperation has

been instrumental in developing human resources,

capacity-building, education, health and information

technology, reducing poverty, protecting the

environment and developing an adequate response to

natural disasters.

Within the framework of the fortieth anniversary,

we have been undertaking a host of activities to take

stock of our past cooperation with the organizations of

the United Nations system and identify priority areas

for future cooperation. This culminated in the joint

conference organized by the Government of Mongolia

and the United Nations on 3 September, in Ulaanbaatar,

under the theme “Forty Years of Mongolia-United

Nations Cooperation: Implementation of the

Millennium Declaration”. The main thrust of the

discussions and conclusions of that conference has

been incorporated into the memorandum of the

Government of Mongolia on the implementation of the

Millennium Declaration, which has been circulated as

an official document of this session of the General

Assembly.

Over the last four decades of our cooperation,

Mongolia has been endeavouring to contribute, where

it could, to the common efforts of the international

community to promote peace, cooperation and

development. My delegation is proud to recall that on

the initiative of Mongolia the General Assembly

adopted the Declaration on the Right of Peoples to

9

Peace, the principles and guidelines for international

negotiations, resolutions to observe annually a

Disarmament Week and relevant resolutions on the

importance of human resources, cooperatives, rural

women and the special needs of the landlocked

developing countries. Furthermore, as a strong

advocate of nuclear-weapon-free zones in various parts

of the world, in 1992 Mongolia declared its own

territory a nuclear-weapon-free zone, and has been

working to further institutionalize this.

Recognizing the crucial role of education in

ensuring sustainable human development and human

security, my delegation is pleased to note that this

session of the General Assembly is about to proclaim,

on Mongolia’s initiative, the 10-year period beginning

1 January 2003 the United Nations decade for literacy.

Mongolia supports peacekeeping operations as

one of the important means of maintaining

international peace and security. Since the mid-1990s,

Mongolia has taken deliberate steps and made

measurable progress in developing its peacekeeping

capability. Showing its willingness to contribute to the

United Nations peacekeeping missions through direct

participation, in 1999 Mongolia signed a memorandum

of understanding with the United Nations on standby

arrangements regarding the provision of staff officers,

military observers and medical officers. Mongolia

stands ready to actively cooperate with the United

Nations and to make a practical contribution to its

peacekeeping operations.

As a member of the Conference on Disarmament,

Mongolia cannot but fully agree with the Secretary-

General, in paragraph 77 of his report on the work of

the Organization (A/56/1), that the “level of

international cooperation in disarmament remains

disappointingly low.” In order to bring the Conference

on Disarmament out of its ongoing stalemate it may

seem advisable to give political impetus to the

disarmament agenda by convening a Security Council

meeting at the highest level or holding one of the future

sessions of the Conference on Disarmament at the level

of Foreign Ministers.

In recent years Mongolia has been an active

participant in international activities aimed at

strengthening institutions and processes of democratic

governance, protecting human rights and promoting

democratic consolidation. The 1992 Constitution of

Mongolia guarantees the Mongolian people

fundamental freedoms and human rights. Mongolia is

party to all major international human rights

instruments. Earlier this year Mongolia set up an

independent National Human Rights Commission.

Yesterday Mongolia signed the two Optional Protocols

to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Willing

to share its fresh experience of peaceful and

simultaneous transition to democracy and a market-

oriented economy over the last decade and to learn

more from the valuable experiences of other countries,

Mongolia has offered to host the Fifth International

Conference of New or Restored Democracies in 2003

in Ulaanbaatar.

The task of ensuring human security and

promoting human-centred development is high on the

agenda of my Government, as envisaged in its

programme of action. Recognizing the importance of

the quality of governance in achieving development

goals, my Government approved a national programme

on good governance for human security to facilitate the

policy focus, coherence and sustainability of its

programme of action. Mongolia has thus become the

first country aspiring to ensure human security through

building good governance. As we move along this

trailblazing path, we are aware of the need for the

knowledge, expertise, experience and assistance of the

organizations of the United Nations system and our

fellow members of the international community.

The Government is resolved to ensure sustained

economic growth through reinvigorating and

encouraging the development of domestic industry,

rehabilitating the banking sector, upgrading the living

standards of the people, reducing poverty and

unemployment, and ensuring equitable social and

educational opportunities. We will intensify structural

reforms and encourage an export-oriented, private-

sector-led economy. Mining, processing of raw

materials of animal origin, tourism and other export-

oriented sectors are the top priority areas of

development. Privatization of State assets, including

the most valuable State enterprises, will continue. The

creation of a favourable environment for the attraction

of foreign investment is also a priority objective.

In its endeavours to carry out simultaneous

economic and political reforms Mongolia faces many

challenges. On behalf of the Government of Mongolia,

I wish to express our sincere gratitude and high

appreciation to our bilateral and multilateral partners

for their generous support and cooperation pledged at

10

the eighth meeting of the Mongolia Assistance Group,

held last May in Paris, demonstrating thus their support

of my Government’s policy and action.

Mongolia will continue its active participation in

multilateral processes and international organizations

such as the United Nations and will spare no effort to

ensure that the world Organization remains a focal

point for coordination of the effort of the community of

nations toward peace and development in the years to

come.