Sri Lanka, 2000

I convey to the

President the warmest felicitations of Sri Lanka on his

election to the high office of President of the fifty-fifth

session of the General Assembly, and I pledge to him

Sri Lanka's fullest cooperation and support in his work.

To the Foreign Minister of Namibia, Mr. Theo-

Ben Gurirab, I convey Sri Lanka's appreciation and

admiration for the masterly manner in which he served

as President of the fifty-fourth session of the General

Assembly.

I would also like to take this opportunity to

welcome Tuvalu to the membership of the United

Nations.

The Millennium Summit is over. I fervently hope

that its dreams and hopes for a better world will never

fade from the hearts and minds of all mankind. The

President of Sri Lanka, Chandrika Bandaranaike

Kumaratunga, unable to attend the Summit, conveyed,

24

through a message I had the honour to read out to the

Summit, her hopes and her vision for the future of

humanity. Her words were these:

“Peace among all States and peace among

all peoples within States so that all, and not only

some, may in safety, without fear, in dignity,

without humiliation, in good health, and in

material and spiritual well-being enjoy the

wonders of life on this miracle we call the planet

Earth.” (A/55/PV.7)

Therefore, the President of Sri Lanka spoke, with

emphasis, of the necessity of protecting and preserving,

for the future, those minimal and most fundamental

certainties that the Member States of the United

Nations have been able to establish — in particular, to

preserve what was and continues to be the

Organization's very foundation: the entity we know as

the State. She pointed out that it was in the General

Assembly that representatives of Governments, of

peoples and of States gather together under a Charter

that assures States of their sovereign equality, their

political independence and their territorial integrity.

These are the fundamentals of the United Nations

system.

And this is as it should be. States are the principal

organizational entities into which the peoples of this

planet have gathered. The principal, overall

organizational edifice of the international community is

the inter-States system.

For the entity we know as the State, there is no

substitute. If States weaken, so will this Organization.

If States are diminished, so will this Organization be

diminished.

Thus, it was the plea of the President of Sri Lanka

that everything possible be done to protect and

preserve, and not to decry or endeavour to erode, the

stability and the well-being of the entity we know as

the State, for whose sovereignty, territorial integrity

and political independence the Charter gave us its

assurance.

Before proceeding any further I should make it

clear — in view of recent statements on the part of

speakers of obvious goodwill and intentions, but with

whose fundamental premises I fundamentally differ —

that those who assert the necessity of continued

reaffirmation of the sovereignty of the State in terms of

the Charter must not be regarded — I repeat, must not

be regarded — as having in any way diminished their

commitment to the importance of universal adherence

to human rights and all that is required for the dignity

of the individual. Sri Lanka is deeply committed to the

promotion and protection of the human rights of its

own people and of all peoples everywhere.

There is, however, a substantial body of opinion,

within which Sri Lanka includes itself, which is of the

view that the way to proceed in the matter of human

rights and the dignity of the individual is properly

through continued and close cooperation between all

States, while respecting the sovereignty of each. The

way of multilateralism or globalization, which appear

expressly or by implication to overlook or diminish the

sovereignty of States, is not, to many of us in this Hall,

a commendable course. It is not a course whose

worthiness in practice has as yet been established.

Indeed, most endeavours to overlook or diminish the

sovereignty of States have often had disastrous

consequences. With that initial clarification and a

reminder that human rights are for the observance not

only of States, but non-State entities as well, I shall

proceed with the remainder of my address.

We must bear in mind that the entities we know

as States are national and international corporate

entities of enormous complexity, differing in so many

respects from corporate entities of the private sector

and, of course, differing as well from those

innumerable entities, in their thousands now, to which

we refer, broadly and benignly, but somewhat

simplistically, as civil society.

If the management of a developed State with

more than adequate resources at its command is a

complex undertaking, how much more complex would

be the management of a developing State without such

resources and such infrastructures? Then there are

those developing States such as Sri Lanka, with their

multi-ethnic, multireligious societies where the

legacies of centuries of a colonial past take more than

one generation to erase.

Aside from the pressures inherent in the very

nature and history of a State, let us not forget the

additional external pressures a State is subject to —

economic, social and political, legitimate and

illegitimate, civil and uncivil, and often criminal —

that the age of information and its consequences have

brought in their wake. These are external pressures that

raise troubling uncertainties for many States and for

25

developing States in particular, that are without the

blessings of abundant resources and advanced

infrastructures. These are uncertainties that strain the

structures of States and could come close to threatening

their very existence.

Where the processes of globalization are

exploited to their advantage by the irresponsible or the

illegitimate or the criminal, one is reminded of the

report from the Secretariat received by this Assembly

three years ago which drew attention to the threat to

Government authority and civil society, to law and

order and to legitimate economic and political

institutions posed by transnational networks of crime,

narcotics, money laundering and terrorism having

access to sophisticated information technologies and

weaponry.

Of course, where there is the use of internal

armed force against a State, as in my country, the

complexities within a State compound themselves

many times over; and we know that the use of armed

force against a State is the greatest threat of all to its

preservation and well-being. This is particularly so in

democracies, whose very openness makes them most

vulnerable; and Sri Lanka is a democracy of long-

standing and unwavering commitment to democratic

fundamentals.

Peace among States, the primary purpose of the

Charter, has to a large extent been achieved, if not in

fact in every case, at least in general, and in terms of

generally observed rules of international law, under and

pursuant to Charter provisions that proscribe the use of

armed force by one State against another State, except

in self-defence or as authorized by the Security

Council.

Yet when we turn to peace within States, and the

use of armed force against a State internally, we see an

entirely different, and an often confusing and

frustrating, picture. Each armed conflict is unique; each

a creature of its own history; the nature of each

determined by its own surroundings. There is no

simplicity of circumstance, no uniformity in scenario,

no easy solution. Internal armed conflicts come in

many different forms.

The relatively clear-cut format of a United

Nations response to inter-State armed conflicts —

monitoring a truce and keeping the peace after an

agreed cessation of hostilities — seems, for internal

armed conflicts, inadequate or inapplicable.

The Charter does not prescribe how this

Organization should proceed in cases of internal armed

conflicts, except for the wise admonition in Article 2,

paragraph 7, which says,

“Nothing contained in the present Charter

shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in

matters which are essentially within the domestic

jurisdiction of any State.”

In view of the varieties, complexities and

intricacies of internal armed conflicts, this

Organization appears to be without the necessary

structure, the knowledge, expertise, experience and

resources — and often, it would seem — without the

necessary collective will.

To suggest that the United Nations should

intervene in internal armed conflicts across the

board — a suggestion made, on occasion, by persons of

obvious goodwill but with little knowledge of local

circumstances — is wishful thinking of the most

simplistic kind, and incorrect in the extreme.

A proposition of such a nature ignores the

fundamental premise, indeed the truism, articulated so

impressively to the Millennium Summit by the head of

State of Algeria, President Bouteflika, in his

summation of the deliberations of round table four: that

a democracy, offering to all its peoples the fundamental

necessities of peaceful, all-inclusive political

processes, simply cannot tolerate armed defiance of the

democratically expressed will of the populace of a

State, which an armed terroristic attack on a

democratic State so obviously constitutes.

At a more practical level, where would this

Organization — woefully under-financed for the

fulfilment of its development objectives, which billions

around this world expectantly await — obtain the

further resources for such far-flung interventions in

internal domestic crises.

Charter provisions and United Nations practice

affirm that a State may act in individual or collective

self-defence should there be an armed attack across its

frontiers. Yet, against massive internal armed attack,

the abilities of most States — or at least the abilities of

most developing States — to react with equivalent

armed force in self-defence, or in enforcement of the

law of the land, or in the maintenance of law and order,

are very limited. Traditional police services are

inadequate in design, in training, in equipment and in

26

experience. Few States have ready and affordable

access to the necessary information or intelligence.

Few States are able to maintain military infrastructures

effective against heavily armed guerrilla-type

onslaughts and the horrors of terror.

Such has been the experience of my country. Sri

Lanka has for many years had within its territory an

armed conflict that has complicated the lives of the

entire population of the country. It is a conflict of an

extraordinary nature. A very small group of armed

fighters and supporters — numbering less than 15,000

persons in total; schooled in and totally devoted to

violence; rejecting the processes of peaceful society

and participatory governance; achieving, through the

practice of systematic terror, national and international

notoriety; rebuffing all overtures for settlement of such

problems as they may have through dialogue —

continues, in defiance of law and order, in rebellion

against the State to fight for the establishment of a

separate, monolingual, mono-ethnic State in our

territory.

A democratic State, because of its openness, its

laws, traditions and practices and its commitment to

tolerance and dissent, is especially vulnerable to the

deployment of force against it by any group within its

boundaries. An internal armed challenge to any State

anywhere is a challenge to all States everywhere.

Unless all States, democratic States in particular, agree

to come to the aid of a State in such peril, democracy

itself will be imperilled everywhere. Democracy will

not survive.

When the security and integrity of one State is

threatened by an armed group within it, surely —

especially in these contemporary times, with the cold

war far behind us — it behoves all other States to deny

that armed group any encouragement, any succour, any

safe haven. Today, for the prosecution of terrorist

activities in one country, massive funds are raised with

impunity in other countries, often through knowing or

unknowing front organizations or other entities that

now proliferate in many forms and in many countries,

and often, sadly, in the guise of charitable groups or

groups ostensibly concerned with human rights or

ethnic, cultural or social matters.

The magnitude of the collection of funds abroad

for terrorist purposes, and the extensiveness of the

reach of the international networks developed for that

purpose, boggle the mind. Their receipts seem to

exceed the receipts of many transnational

conglomerates — all free of tax. Revenues come, of

course, from the customary illegal trade in drugs, arms

or other merchandise, including the smuggling of

humans.

But there also exists a far more abundant and

seemingly limitless reservoir of funds — namely,

expatriates of similar ethnicity settled abroad. As the

western media has reported over the past few years

from time to time, collections from expatriates abroad

for the armed group known as the Tamil Tigers, which

is battling the Government of Sri Lanka, are staggering

in their magnitude: for example, $400,000 a month

from one country; $600,000 a month from another;

$2.7 million a month from yet another; and large

additional funds from expatriates in still other

countries.

In 1988 an excellent study was published on

financial havens, banking secrecy and money

laundering, a study by experts in the field,

commissioned by the United Nations Office for Drug

Control and Crime Prevention. In order to implement

adequately the provisions of the recently adopted

International Convention for the Suppression of the

Financing of Terrorism, a study of a similar nature by

United Nations bodies on the collection of external

funds for massive, continuous internal armed rebellion

against a State, such as occurs in Sri Lanka, becomes

especially necessary when the armed group battling a

State is in blatant violation of the human rights and

humanitarian norms and standards — including those

relating to children and to children in armed conflict —

that this Organization so correctly and so diligently

espouses as the minimal contemporary requirements in

human society.

I proposed such a study at the fourth round table

of the Millennium Summit, and that proposal was

endorsed by our Chairman, President Bouteflika of

Algeria, in his summation to the General Assembly of

the proceedings of our round table. I urge that the

international community give favourable consideration

to that proposal.

As the years go by, and the armed conflict fuelled

by such massive funds from abroad continues within a

State, paradoxically, international perceptions seem to

blur, not only among those in civil society, who are

often uninformed, but even on the part of those in

positions of international authority, within and outside

27

this Organization, who should know better. The

existence of the internal armed conflict and the

resulting casualties are bemoaned, and a cessation of

hostilities is urged at any price, in seeming inattention

to the fundamental fact that it is the armed internal

group that is the aggressor and it is the State that is the

victim.

Such a blurring of international perceptions in

some quarters as to what the crucial facts are, is

distressing, and profoundly disappointing, to those,

such as we in Sri Lanka, who have struggled hard, and

continue to struggle hard, to preserve our democratic

way of life and the richness of our multi-ethnic,

multireligious culture in the pluralistic tolerance we

were once so blessed to enjoy.

I hope that the thoughts that I have expressed

today on the nature of the affairs of States, and of the

affairs of developing States in the main, will show in

some measure why a sympathetic, rather than an

inquisitorial, style is by far preferable in relation to the

affairs of States, as in all human relationships.

At a more general level, I would like, before I

move on from this part of my statement, to refer to two

other relevant questions: the role of the General

Assembly and the role of civil society in the affairs of

the United Nations. The General Assembly is the only

principal organ of the United Nations in which all

Member States are represented, and the only principal

organ whose terms of reference allow for consideration

of any matter within the scope of the Charter.

Yet there is the perception among some that the

centre of gravity in decision-making on questions of

major policy importance to the Organization appears to

have moved away from the General Assembly to an

extent unknown in earlier years. Sri Lanka greatly

welcomes, therefore, the reaffirmation in paragraph 30

of the Millennium Declaration of the central position of

the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-

making and representative organ of the United Nations,

and the commitment of all nations to enable the

General Assembly to play that role effectively. The

practical manner in which the General Assembly could

play that role will, of course, require very careful

thought.

The ways in which “civil society”, and the

innumerable entities that that expression encompasses,

could best contribute to the work of the United

Nations — in terms of data collection, research and

analysis and expertise — in a manner that does not

prejudice the role of States in the affairs of the United

Nations, will also require most careful examination.

Such contributions should be made in a manner that is

not partial or partisan, in favour of or against, but,

rather, in a manner that befits an objective and neutral

consultant.

Moreover, although civil society within a national

context could be, and is, well accommodated in

domestic political processes, the manner in which civil

society could be internationally accommodated within

United Nations processes still remains a puzzle.

As in all human relationships, so also amongst

States: the strong do better than the weak, the rich

better than the poor, the developed better than the

developing. This is the case most of all when times are

hard. The marked decline in official development

assistance, and the failure of most of the strong, the

rich and the developed to meet their official

development assistance pledges, show that for States,

there is no general safety net.

If there is one message from the Millennium

Summit, and one that is now coming from this

Millennium Assembly loud and clear, it is that

globalization may be a reality for all, but that it is that

no panacea for all — certainly not for the developing

world. The benefits of globalization have by-passed

much of the developing world. The poorest among us,

spanning the continents of Africa, Central America and

Asia, have experienced increasing marginalization.

There is little opportunity for developing countries to

be formative in the shaping of the world economy for

the future — in the deliberations that really matter.

Thus, although we are leaving the past century

and the past millennium behind us, and celebrate their

passing, more than half of humanity is still haunted by

the old, intractable economic and social tragedies that

have been with us since the dawn of time: poverty,

illiteracy, ill health, hunger, unemployment, the

problems of the young, uncontrolled urbanization and

the growth of mega-cities.

Among these, poverty alleviation and poverty

elimination remain for most of us in the developing

world the highest and, in fact, the only, meaningful

priority. Poverty degrades humanity and, in an era of

abundance and conspicuous consumption, visible in

real time across billions of television screens

throughout the world, undermines the very foundations

28

necessary for the growth of humane societies and

refined governance.

The developing world needs to be accorded an

adequate formative voice in the formulation of a new

development chapter for the twenty-first century. Thus

we turn to the United Nations and, in ultimate recourse,

as it were, to this General Assembly, under whose

active supervisory authority there must be a revival of

a comprehensive North-South development dialogue —

a dialogue that seems to be fading away.

To tell the countless starving and helpless

millions that a free global marketplace will show us the

way is, I am sorry to say, simply not enough.

Resource deprivation over many generations and

its debilitating consequences on adequate

infrastructural growth has severely damaged the

capacity of developing countries to cope with the

modern world.

A new development chapter must provide for the

catastrophic negative contingencies, be they “man-

made” or otherwise, including such occurrences as the

present surge in the price of oil to the highest levels in

a decade that now place crushing burdens on the

national economies of developing countries struggling

desperately to contend with economic realities. They,

like Sri Lanka, can only hope and pray that the oil-

producing countries, which are certainly not insensitive

to the plight of the developing world, will find it

possible in some way to relieve such pressures in the

very near future.

I should also wish at this juncture in my address

to say a word about the South Asian Association for

Regional Cooperation (SAARC) of the seven States of

South Asia — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives,

Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — a body which is

deeply committed to the advancement of the economic

and social well-being of our peoples, numbering now

in the region of 1.25 billion, not merely through

national endeavour, but through regional and

international cooperation. Sri Lanka, as the current

Chair of SAARC, is seeking to implement the

programme of activities laid down at the 1991

Colombo summit as best it can in difficult

circumstances. The people of our region are deeply

committed to the goals of SAARC. They continue to

interact vigorously on a wide range of professional,

cultural, educational and social activities,

notwithstanding the temporary setback to high-level

political involvement that SAARC has suffered at this

time. We in SAARC are confident that it will not be

long before our movement is again able to play its full

role in the welfare of our peoples.

I have just returned to New York from the

International Conference on War-Affected Children,

organized so successfully by the Government of

Canada and held at Winnipeg.

I cannot conclude my address to the General

Assembly this year without making at least a brief

reference to the abominable crimes that are being

committed against young Tamil children in Sri Lanka

by the rebel group known as the Tamil Tigers. They

have been, and are, forcibly conscripting even 10-year-

old children, boys and girls, for battle against the Sri

Lankan Army. Some of these children have been

programmed into suicide bombers. They are forced to

wear cyanide capsules round their necks and to bite on

them to evade capture. This wretched practice

continues unabated.

In 1998, at the invitation of my Government, the

Secretary-General's Special Representative for

Children and Armed Conflict, Mr. Olara Otunnu,

visited Sri Lanka and met some of the Tamil Tiger

leaders. They assured him that they would not recruit

any person under the age of 17 and would not send into

battle any person below the age of 18. A few months

ago he stated that since his visit to Sri Lanka there have

been continuous reports of the recruitment and the use

of children by the Tamil Tigers. The assurance they

gave him has been totally dishonoured. In a poignant

answer to a question by an interviewer, the Special

Representative said this:

“Children who become soldiers lose their

innocence. Part of the reason why the fighting

groups will tend to reach out to children is

because, of course, the adults may become

disillusioned, they may be killed off, they may

run away, so they reach the children who are less

able to defend themselves. But there's a more

cynical reason than that: children, because they

are innocent, can be moulded into the most

unquestioning, ruthless tools of warfare, into

suicide commandos, into committing the worst

atrocities. In other situations, it is ideology —

come fight for the homeland, come fight for our

ethnic group, come fight for a new society — that

may appeal to families and to children. So there

29

are many reasons which facilitate the abuse of

children in this way.”

I thank the Special Representative for having had

the courage to speak out on this important issue. To

remain silent in the face of such criminality is to

encourage and condone it. It is the duty of all of us

who care about the children of the world to rally

against the cruelty, brutality and the grievous harm

cynically inflicted on them by groups such as the one

that abuses them in Sri Lanka. A few months ago, the

representative of the United Nations Children's Fund in

Sri Lanka told journalists — and I thank him for his

statement — that the situation of children in the areas

held by the Tamil Tigers had worsened since they gave

their assurance to the United Nations Special

Representative. Parents have reported that their

children have been recruited. It is a serious problem.

He observed that until they, the Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam (LTTE), announce to their own people

that they have taken measures to prevent children

below 17 years from being recruited, we cannot take

their promises seriously.

A respected and courageous human rights group

in Sri Lanka, consisting mostly of Tamil teachers who

used to teach at Jaffna University, have said in a recent

report that since last May a fresh child-recruitment

campaign has been launched by the Tamil Tigers.

According to their report, children as young as 10 years

are being forcibly conscripted, age being no

consideration as long as the child was able to carry a

gun. In recent days and months the international press

has focused sharply on the plight of child soldiers in

Sri Lanka.

A few days ago Sri Lanka deposited its

instrument of ratification of the Optional Protocol on

the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict to the

Convention on the Rights of the Child. This Protocol

has noted that the Statute of the International Criminal

Court makes conscripting, enlisting or using children in

combat a war crime in both international and non-

international armed conflicts. It holds non-State actors

also accountable for such crimes and it calls upon State

parties to cooperate in preventing and combating such

crimes.

Accordingly, today, in this General Assembly of

the United Nations Sri Lanka calls upon all States to

ratify this Protocol, and it calls upon the State parties

on whose territory the LTTE has offices and front

organizations to take strong punitive action against

such establishments, and to declare the LTTE a

criminal organization, as the LTTE sustains its criminal

activity in respect of the use of child soldiers through

funds generated on the territories of other State parties,

which are obliged to cooperate in terms of the

Convention and the Protocol.

The Winnipeg Conference ended yesterday with

an impassioned plea to the world to move urgently

from words to deeds, to save the hundreds of thousands

of children who are abused, maimed, displaced,

traumatized and killed by war. In our cruel world if

anything should stir the conscience of mankind it is

surely the plight of these children. Let it not be said

that yet again we have failed — failed to hear and heed

the anguished cry of children in distress, children on

whom adults have inflicted, and continue to inflict,

unspeakable cruelty. No, politics cannot divide us on

the issue of child soldiers. Massive funds are not

required to save them. What is required is the will and

the commitment to act of those States which are in a

position to act. The Winnipeg appeal is addressed to

them. Let us all wholeheartedly support that appeal

now so that when the special session of the General

Assembly for Follow-up to the World Summit for

Children is held here in New York next September, we

will be able to adopt practical measures that will finally

ensure that children will be forever protected from the

ravages of war.