Slovenia, 1999

Let me take this

opportunity to congratulate you, Sir, and your country,

Namibia, on your election as President of the fifty-fourth

session of the General Assembly. I am convinced that your

experience and diplomatic skills will help this General

Assembly to fulfil its important tasks. I would also like to

thank the outgoing President, Mr. Didier Opertti of

Uruguay, for the guidance he provided to the fifty-third

session of the General Assembly.

Let me also take this opportunity to warmly welcome

the Republic of Nauru, the Republic of Kiribati and the

Kingdom of Tonga, which have just joined the United

Nations family.

We are gathered here at the threshold not just of a

new century but of a new millennium. It is appropriate,

therefore, that we take advantage of this important occasion

to reflect upon our situation in the world today. I speak

here not of our situation as individuals or even as nations,

but as a race.

There are many signs of progress, and there are

reasons for hope. However, the ultimate goal of world

peace still seems elusive. The number of conflicts is

significantly increasing. All over the world, millions of

civilians are the victims of well-planned and systematic

policies of killing, displacement, property destruction and

intimidation. At the end of last year, the number of people

worldwide who had been evicted from their homes stood

at more than 21 million.

East Timor and Kosovo are just two tragic examples

of typical cases of contemporary armed conflicts. These

are conflicts frequently take place within what the outside

world recognizes as State borders, rather than between

previously established States. Today, these types of wars

amount to more than 90 per cent of those raging in the

world.

To make matters even worse, the number of civilians

killed in these nominally “internal” wars is sharply

increasing. A new kind of warfare is developing in which

civilians are a primary strategic target. “Ethnic cleansing”,

massacres and a horrifying variety of war crimes have

become weapons for achieving political, economic and

military goals. Ethnic, religious, national and social

inequalities are frequently used as a smokescreen to hide

the reality of massacre and conquest from the rest of the

world. Furthermore, these inequalities are exploited by

ruthless leaders, who use them as a tool to achieve very

concrete aims. We have seen this phenomenon in almost

all of the armed conflicts of recent times — in Bosnia

and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Afghanistan

and, most recently, in East Timor.

How should the international community react to

gross violations of human rights — violations that amount

to threats to international peace and security? When and

how can the international community seek to establish

that a sovereign Government cannot, or does not want to,

prevent a humanitarian catastrophe? When and by what

criteria does it decide to use its instruments of

enforcement?

All United Nations Member States must think hard

about these questions. We are grateful to the Secretary-

General, who made, at the beginning of this debate, a

significant contribution to such thinking.

This turn-of-the-century crime wave cries out for

new approaches and new ways of protecting vulnerable

civilian populations. Armed conflicts have in fact become

a problem for humankind, not just for the nation or

nations directly concerned.

The international community must innovate as it

seeks to solve these pressing humanitarian problems. Our

basic aim has to be human security, and here I mean

physical and not just legal security. Slovenia welcomes

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and participates in the initiatives of like-minded countries

which are determined to give full meaning and specific

practical expression to the concept of human security. In

addition, as one answer to these challenges, new and more

sophisticated concepts of peacekeeping operations are being

developed. New methods of conflict prevention should also

be explored. Preventive diplomacy, preventive deployment,

preventive disarmament and post-conflict peace-building are

the orders of the day.

We have to ensure respect for human rights. We are

firm in our belief that a determined commitment to promote

and protect human rights has to be an underlying principle

for the activities of the United Nations at the threshold of

the new millennium. We have to create conditions for good

governance, the rule of law, sustainable development and

social justice. All of these tasks and many others require

creative thinking and bold action. Solving these thorny

problems is a prerequisite for peace and prosperity. This is

also the way to prevent conditions which directly feed the

flames of the conflicts that I have described.

As an elected member of the Security Council, we are

contributing to the maintenance of world peace and

security. We are cooperating actively in the resolution of

crises in South-Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America

and the Middle East. We believe that special importance

should be attached to preventive action in situations posing

a potential threat to international peace but which have not

yet developed into armed conflict. Where situations have

already escalated into armed conflict, no effort should be

spared in finding a peaceful and timely resolution. We

recognize the recent Security Council mission to Jakarta

and Dili, in which Slovenia took part, as an innovative

approach by the United Nations in dealing with crisis

situations. Clearly, we welcome this.

Finally, in post-conflict situations, such as Kosovo,

continued coordinated action by the international

community is necessary. It is only by working in concert

that the United Nations, regional organizations and other

international players can be effective. Only in this way can

the difficult goals that have been set be achieved. These

goals include bringing political and economic stabilization,

democratization, the protection of human rights to the

territory in question and establishing a functional legal

system there.

The changing nature of armed conflicts is also

changing the role of the Security Council as it discharges

its primary responsibility for the maintenance of

international peace and security. We note the increased

readiness and determination of regional organizations to

take on their share of responsibility for the maintenance

of regional peace and security. As many examples of

fruitful collaboration attest, relations between the Security

Council and these regional organizations are relations not

of competition but rather of cooperation. We therefore

commend the increased role of regional organizations

under Chapter VIII of the Charter.

Let me continue by presenting some elements that

we must consider in any international response to the

changing nature of armed conflicts. There is an

unacceptably wide — even a growing — gap between the

existing norms of international humanitarian and human

rights law and common situations on the ground: human

rights are frequently and openly violated. Determined and

united action by the international community is needed to

ensure that the existing norms of human rights are fully

observed.

Those who commit war crimes and crimes against

humanity must be brought to justice. This is primarily the

responsibility of States, which must act both individually

through their national systems of justice, and collectively

through an effective international justice system. Failure

to act is no more and no less than an invitation to those

capable of creating new, even more serious cycles of

human tragedy to do just that.

Whether there is to be human progress and

development depends on the result of this confrontation

between the rule of international law and those who stand

to benefit directly from lawlessness. International

indifference can only reward such people. In this regard,

Slovenia attaches particular importance to the need to

ensure more effective, comprehensive and efficient

delivery of international justice. We are supportive of the

two existing United Nations International Criminal

Tribunals and of the ongoing process designed to give

birth to a permanent International Criminal Court. To this

end we have begun the legislative procedures necessary

to ratify the Rome Statute. We are also contributing to

efforts to complete the mandate of the Preparatory

Commission for the International Criminal Court.

Peacekeeping operations have in recent years

become increasingly multidimensional: they encompass

not only demanding military tasks but also a variety of

other functions, such as civilian police activities, support

for humanitarian assistance, practical disarmament

measures, demobilization and integration of former

combatants, and enhancing and monitoring human rights.

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I should like to avail myself of this important occasion

to affirm that Slovenia considers peacekeeping to be one of

the key instruments available to the United Nations in

discharging its responsibility for the maintenance of

international peace and security. We have increased our

participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations —

and are committed to further increasing our participation in

the near future — not only in terms of military personnel

but also of civilian police and humanitarian aid workers.

Disarmament efforts are a vital ingredient in the

maintenance of international peace and security. The

achievements of past years have been considerable,

especially in such areas as chemical weapons and the

comprehensive ban on nuclear weapon testing. However,

there is a need to strengthen disarmament work, in the area

not only of weapons of mass destruction but also in

reducing flows of conventional arms. We hope that the

Conference on Disarmament will be strengthened as an

effective disarmament negotiation body. We also hope that

the forthcoming Review Conference of the Parties to the

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)

will represent a decisive step in the strengthening of the

non-proliferation regime, and that progress will be made

towards the objective of nuclear disarmament.

I strongly believe that States Members of the United

Nations and the international community as a whole must

continue efforts to strengthen the prohibition of land mines,

which is one specific front in protecting the physical

security to which I referred. Last year our Government

established an International Trust Fund for Demining and

Mine Victim Assistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our

aim is to help Bosnia and Herzegovina and other mine-

affected countries in the region get rid of those lethal,

hidden weapons, and to help those who have been wounded

by them. In only the first year of its existence, the

International Trust Fund has achieved many positive results

in Bosnia; it is now extending its activities to Kosovo.

There are many ways in which United Nations

Member States can contribute to the maintenance of

international peace and security. I would like to point out

that Slovenia has joined a number of other nations in

committing itself to tackling the security challenges of

South-Eastern Europe. In establishing the Stability Pact, the

international community has formed a framework intended

to enable the concerted and sustained action necessary to

stabilize the region. If it lives up to its early promise —

and we intend to work hard to make sure that it does — the

Stability Pact could be the key factor in bringing lasting

peace, economic recovery and development to a very

troubled neighbourhood. That such a wide range of States

and international organizations — not least the United

Nations — have committed themselves to helping in this

very ambitious task gives us grounds for hope.

In conclusion, I would like to return to the question

with which I started: at the end of the millennium, how

does the human race stand? Are there grounds for hope?

Do we have the institutions and strategies needed to deal

with our problems? If not, can we modify and redesign

them? Even in the face of tragic conflicts, I believe that

the answer to these questions must be “yes”.