YouSaid · the spoken record

EVANS

lines on the record: 273
first: 1988-09-24
most recent: 1995-09-24
sittings or episodes: 7
sources: un-general-debate

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“The fourth priority is to give special attention to the machinery of preventive diplomacy, again both at Headquarters and in the field. These efforts have been largely ad hoc in the past, although the Department of Political Affairs is gradually building a core of appropriate expertise. Quite apart from anything else, there is an overwhelming cost advantage in doing more to stop disputes becoming armed conflicts. We estimate the cost of keeping 100 well-qualified, experienced practitioners of preventive diplomacy in the field for a year to be $21 million; compare that with this year’s peace operations budget of $3.7 billion - and compare it, moreover, with the $70 billion that it is estimated to have cost the United Nations coalition to fight the six-week Gulf war.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“If the bulk of current arrears were to be paid by the end of this year, the United Nations finances would be in a quite healthy position, with the Working Capital Fund, the Peace- keeping Reserve Fund and the Special Account all replenished and the Organization in a position to meet all outstanding troop-contribution costs. The third priority is to improve the management of peace operations, both at Headquarters and in the field. Some very significant and useful steps have already been taken in this regard in the context of the creation of the new Department of Peace-keeping Operations, but more remains to be done, including in particular the development over time of a properly constituted General Staff to plan and manage the military dimensions of such operations.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“But overwhelmingly, of course, the problem is one that has been created by Member States, including the richest of our number, and it is entirely within our ability to resolve by meeting our assessed contributions for regular budgets and peace operations in full and on time. It is an abuse of good management principles and of basic common sense to be forcing the Secretary-General to spend so much of his time pleading for debts to be honoured. In that respect I echo the sentiments expressed a few minutes ago by Mrs. Brundtland.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“This would be a big change, and it is not the first time it has been proposed, but it is the one that, more than anything else, would create the conditions for more orderly and effective management throughout the United Nations system. The second priority need is to resolve once and for all the United Nations critical funding problem. Various adventurous ideas have been canvassed for external funding - money coming from sources other than Member States - and we suggest that at least one of those ideas, namely, a small levy on international airline travel, be further explored.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“The first is to restructure the Secretariat to ensure that the Secretary-General has an effective chain of command exercising authority over major United Nations operations and to consolidate and coordinate in a more orderly and manageable way the present sprawl of departments and agencies. We support the proposal that the Secretary-General create a new senior structure at United Nations Headquarters under which he would have four Deputy Secretaries-General responsible, respectively, for peace and security, economic and social operations, humanitarian operations and administration and management. Each such Deputy Secretary-General would have full executive responsibility for the operational issues falling within his or her portfolio, subject only to direction by the Secretary-General.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“If the United Nations is to play with maximum effectiveness the central role it needs to play in maintaining international peace and security, then further change, further reform in the United Nations system, really is necessary. Some of that change is bound to be painful for some people, but that is the way of change. Putting it simply and starkly: Unless the United Nations develops a comprehensive capacity to address today’s and tomorrow’s problems - not yesterday’s - there is a very real risk of the United Nations gradually losing, with Governments and peoples around the world, the credibility it needs to survive. In the study we identify a number of priority areas for change.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“When it comes to peace-enforcement operations, our suggested criteria for determining involvement are quite complex and vary according to whether one is talking about an operation in response to cross-border aggression, as with Iraq and Kuwait; about one in support of peace-keeping operations, the basic rationale for United Nations involvement in Bosnia-Herzegovina; or about peace enforcement in support of humanitarian objectives, as in Somalia. Without going into all the necessary detail now, I think the basic considerations always come down to the following: widespread international support; clear and achievable goals; adequate total resources to meet those goals; and clearly defined termination or review points.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“In the case of peace-keeping we suggest in Cooperating for Peace that there are seven basic conditions for ensuring an effective operation: clear and achievable goals; adequate resources; close coordination of peace-keeping with any ongoing peacemaking activity; a capacity to be and to be seen to be absolutely impartial as between the parties who have been in conflict; a significant degree of local support for the peace-keepers; evident support for the operation from external Powers that may have been involved previously in supporting one side or the other; and a "signposted exit", that is, a clearly designated termination point, or set of termination criteria.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“In defining criteria for embarking on peace operations - whether peace-keeping or peace enforcement - the most crucial consideration is that there be a clearminded focus on the objectives of the exercise and the likely effectiveness of the operation in achieving those objectives. No operations of this kind should ever be embarked upon for the sake of being seen to be doing something. Although it is not always possible to analyse or predict with certainty, it should always be possible to avoid embarking on operations which are manifestly likely to be ineffective and which, as such, put at risk the most crucial United Nations resource of all, its credibility.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Equally, we define possible responses to security problems, again in escalating order of severity, in terms of "peace- building," "preventive diplomacy," "preventive deployment," "peace- making," "peace-keeping," "sanctions" and "peace enforcement." We are at pains to emphasize that it is only as a last resort that security solutions should be seen as coming out of the barrel of a gun. We give much more emphasis than has been common elsewhere to the concept of "peace-building," which we define in the study as extending not just to post-conflict economic development and institution-building strategies, but to a whole variety of preventive strategies, both within particular countries and in the form of international treaty-type régimes addressing both military and non-military threats to security.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“In the study we define security problems, in more or less escalating order of seriousness, as "emerging threats", "disputes", "armed conflicts" and "other major security crises." We make the point that security is not strictly or solely a military concept and that threats to security, as many speakers in the general debate have already said, can these days come very much from factors such as exploding population pressures, environmental degradation, mass involuntary movements of people and the illicit narcotics trade, among other things.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“To give just one example: If we use, as many people still do, the expression "peace-making" to describe military enforcement action, then, simply because this is such an innocuous and constructive sounding expression, there is a danger that we may over time become a little more relaxed than we should be about taking such action. It is much better, I suggest, to confine the expression "peace-making" to diplomatic-type activity to resolve conflict and to reserve the expression "peace enforcement" to describe the always dangerous, always messy, and what should always be the last-resort, activity of applying military force.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“In the short time that remains to me I shall try to give a quick, outline sketch of what we are trying to say in each of these respects. First of all, on the issue of concepts and terminology, it is perhaps worth making the point at the outset that this is not just something for academics to wrangle about. It matters in practice. If decision-makers do not share the same basic way of looking at issues and the same basic vocabulary in defining them, there is a very real risk that they will talk past each other - or, at the very least, find it very much harder to produce responses which are timely, properly graduated, effective in practice, affordable and broadly consistent from one case to the next. Just as importantly, the choice of words can sometimes significantly influence the way in which we think about matters of substance.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“It is simply an Australian contribution to the debate which was so thoughtfully and constructively initiated by the Secretary-General last year. The study seeks to do three things in particular. First, it suggests ways of bringing a little more clarity - to the extent this is presently lacking - into the concepts and vocabulary that we use in defining security problems, defining possible responses and matching responses to problems. Secondly, it suggests specific criteria that might be applied by decision-makers in deciding what, if any, response is appropriate to a particular new security problem. And, thirdly, it suggests a priority list of areas in which further United Nations reform might usefully be pursued.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Identifying problems is always easier than defining acceptable solutions. But I believe that we all have a responsibility to each other and the international community to try to answer these questions and to keep on working away at the answers until we find common ground. So it is in that spirit that I put before the Assembly today a detailed study of these questions, which tries to answer them in a way which might help us find a little more of that common ground. The study, in the form of a book entitled Cooperating for Peace, has been distributed, I hope, to delegations as I speak. I do not pretend for a moment that this says the last word on any of the enormously complex and sensitive issues with which it deals.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“When it comes to thinking about how the United Nations - and others in the international community, including regional organizations - might best be structured, organized, managed and funded to most effectively address the international peace and security agenda, it is not clear to me that we have yet heard the last word in that debate. An extraordinary amount has been achieved in the tumultuous period since 1989 in responding to the new demands and challenges that have been unceasingly hurled at the United Nations, but a good deal more remains to be done if the United Nations in particular, the only fully empowered body with global membership that we have, is to be as effective as we would all want it to be. It is much easier, of course, to ask all these questions than to answer them.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“When does an economic or social problem become the kind of security problem which justifies the mobilization of the response strategies spelt out in Chapters VI and VII of the United Nations Charter? Even when it comes to applying a very familiar response to a new problem - for example, establishing a peace-keeping operation like the 30 which have now been initiated since 1946 - there does not yet seem to have been developed a commonly accepted check list of criteria to guide decision-makers in determining when precisely the operation should be set in train, how it should be structured, managed and resourced, or how long it should continue. Every situation, of course, has its own characteristics, but is it really necessary for decisions on these matters by the Security Council or others to be made on so evidently ad hoc a basis?”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“We still do not have even a completely clear and consistent shared vocabulary to define the ways in which it is possible for the United Nations and other organs of the international community to respond to security problems: "peacemaking", for example, means different things still to different people; so do "preventive diplomacy" and "peace building"; the conceptual boundary between "peace-keeping" on the one hand and "peace enforcement" on the other is not drawn in the same way by everyone who uses these terms. Nor do we seem yet to have clear and universal agreement even as to the kind of problems which justify a security response by the international community. Should we recognize, for example, a humanitarian right of intervention and, if so, in what circumstances and to what extent?”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Since that time, a worldwide debate has taken place on the issues described in "An Agenda for Peace", which has involved not only Governments and officials, but has reached out to embrace Forty-eighth session - 27 September l993 25 universities, foundations, non-governmental organizations and many organs of the public media as well. This debate generated resolutions at the last session of the General Assembly, several worthwhile changes to some procedures and structures within the Secretariat, and the prospect of further changes to come. It cannot be said, however, that the issues raised by "An Agenda for Peace" are now all settled, either in theory or in practice.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“There is much more that we can and should be doing to reinforce and strengthen the international community’s capacity to govern itself better, and in particular to better guarantee the maintenance of peace and security in the post-cold-war world. It is on this subject - the role of the United Nations and the international community generally in securing peace in the world of the 1990s and beyond that I want specifically to focus my remarks today. A little over a year ago, following a unique meeting of the Security Council, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali published "An Agenda for Peace". It was and remains a remarkable document, one which poses most of the questions we need to address if we are to have a fair chance of maintaining international peace and security in the world of today and the foreseeable future.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Many problems remain to be solved in the former Soviet Union, but Governments that can credibly claim to reflect the will of their peoples are in place throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The military regime in Myanmar, or Burma, continues to resist the obvious mood of its people for liberty and democracy, but elsewhere in the region traditionally monolithic government structures - driven in many cases by economic imperatives - are beginning to show signs of flexibility and responsiveness. But while I do not believe that we should be unduly pessimistic or fatalistic about the condition of the world around us, nor can we afford to be complacent.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“And to match against the continuing chaos and uncertainty in Somalia, and the at best very limited success of the United Nations operation there, we have now the unquestioned success of the United Nations operation in Cambodia - and the end at last to more than 20 years of what has been a real twentieth-century tragedy involving bloody war, civil war, genocide, invasion and civil war again. A terrible conflict continues in Angola, but peace is at hand at last in Mozambique; and in South Africa the final death of apartheid is imminent, as testified last week in this place by Nelson Mandela. Military regimes have given way to democratic ones throughout Latin America.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Again, the proliferating availability of weaponry of every degree of sophistication has given a sharp new edge to these concerns. Looking out upon a world with all these characteristics, it is easy to be pessimistic and fatalistic. But I do not think we should retreat into that habit of mind. For everything that has gone wrong over the last few years, there is something else that has gone right. To match against the awful continuing tragedy in the former Yugoslavia, we have, for example, this month’s peace agreement in the Middle East - of course, only the first step in what remains a long journey, but an enormously encouraging one notwithstanding.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“The release of cold-war pressures has been associated with another major new development of security concern with which we are all now disturbingly familiar: the resurgence of ethno-nationalism, often taking a violent form. Some ethnic groups are being prepared to pursue their claims for self-determination within the framework of existing States, arguing essentially for minority human rights protection - claims of right which, on first principles, we should all be prepared to acknowledge and support. But many other such groups have made clear that they will be satisfied by nothing less than their nations becoming States, causing the fragmentation of existing States in the process, and creating some very real dilemmas for the international community as a result.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“If anything, the removal of the cold-war gridlock - the discipline imposed by the super-Powers on each other and their respective supporters - has created more room than ever for States to manoeuvre. Some are beginning to do so, and some are bound to seek to do so in the future. Some of the emerging economic Powers have yet to acquire political or military profiles commensurate with their new wealth, and the process of adjustment certainly has ample potential to generate regional tensions. Should those tensions escalate into conflict, the unhappy reality is that proliferation of more sophisticated conventional weapons and proliferation of the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction make any prospect of major regional conflict an alarming one for the world as a whole.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“A very great deal, of course, depends on the current moratorium on all nuclear testing being maintained. We in Australia very strongly support what President Clinton said in that respect this morning. This year we signed at last, after 20 years of negotiation, the chemical weapons Convention. But much remains to be done to bring this and other instruments into effective operation. And there are still too many countries unwilling to submit themselves to the disciplines, more important and more necessary now than ever, of the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty. The threat of conflicts between States has certainly not diminished with the end of the cold war.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Some States have simply been unable to cope with exploding internal economic, political and social problems, and for all practical purposes have collapsed, leaving the international community to respond, somehow, to the humanitarian crises that have followed so often. In security terms, the end of the cold war has seen the end of the super-Power nuclear-arms race and has relieved us of the immediate threat of nuclear devastation. We have seen major achievements in nuclear-arms reduction; and for the first time in the history of the nuclear age a comprehensive test-ban treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests in all environments for all time, seems within our reach. We could help to make it even more so by adopting by consensus a resolution in this Assembly supporting the negotiation of that treaty.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“Economic and social deprivation continues to be a harsh daily reality for many of our countries and our peoples. Not even the most advanced countries are immune. The developed Western economies are limping, with low growth rates, historically high unemployment rates, increasing disparities as a result between rich and poor, and a continuing inability so far to reach agreement - either between themselves or with the rest of the world’s trading nations - about the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade liberalization measures so necessary to give a new kick-start to world trade and economic growth. In the non-Western world, rates of growth have been extraordinarily uneven. The spectacular advance in some regions, in particular East Asia, has been in stark contrast to the continuing terrible deprivation and poverty in others.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“I warmly congratulate Ambassador Insanally, on his election as President of the forty-eighth session of the General Assembly. As a fellow Commonwealth member with Guyana, Australia is very pleased to serve in the Assembly under his presidency. This session of the General Assembly will deal with a particularly heavy and important agenda. It will do so at a time when hopes for, and expectations of, the United Nations have never been greater - but when, at the same time, many doubts have been raised about the capacity of the United Nations system to cope. We will be relying very much, Mr. President, on your wisdom and your experience as you preside over our deliberations. The world is a rather less happy place than we all hoped it would be after the end of the cold war.”
1993-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 48 (1993)
“We must draw strength from the success achieved in the last 12 months, and from the progress we have made in improving global co-operation. But our success has not been uniform: we were not able to respond adequately to some key challenges. We must not ever lose sight of the goal ahead of us: a more stable and secure world, devoid of abject poverty, with all peoples able to enjoy basic rights and freedoms. And we must never avoid the responsibility we all have to achieve those goals.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“As President Soeharto said last week, speaking in this respect on behalf of the whole non-aligned Movement, the post-cold war world is not the world as it was after the Second World War. Our guiding light should by all means continue to be the present terms of the Charter, but it should be within our collective capacity to work out the changes in the composition and methods of decision of the Security Council that will ensure that it can both fulfil its duty and command overwhelming consensus for its decisions in the years ahead. In many respects the task ahead of us, and ahead of the United Nations, is daunting. It is clear that we are part of an evolutionary process, with both the world and the United Nations adjusting to new demands.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“The United Nations is now organizing itself in Somalia to deliver these elements in an integrated way, although it has been a difficult and Protracted process to get to this point. The task for the United Nations in the future is to learn from this experience and to devote the necessary resources to achieving the kind of cooperation between humanitarian and political strategies that is going to be increasingly necessary in the future if durable solutions are to be found to many real world problems. More and more attention is going to focus, as indeed it has already focused in this general debate, on the role and representativeness of the Security Council itself.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“What is needed, however, in virtually every case, is the lubrication of adequate financing and restructuring within the United Nations system to meet the increasing demands being made on it. One of the really fundamental tasks we need to move forward at this session is continuation of the process, accordingly, of United Nations reform. There is no single, or simple, enemy to peace in the contemporary world. The appalling situation in Somalia, and the looming crises in Mozambique and the Sudan, are demonstrations if any are still needed - that problems do not come in neatly defined packages. The Somalian situation involves, simultaneously, humanitarian assistance, peace-keeping and political negotiation, with no one of these elements being capable of delivery in isolation.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“The building of such a capacity for quiet diplomacy in the way I have been describing would be a major step forward, and help over time to increase the confidence of Members in other more formal United Nations processes. I have today sought to give some substance, not just rhetorical support, to the proposition that the changed conditions of the post-cold-war world call for new responses from the United Nations. The Secretary- General has shown us some new directions in his "Agenda for Peace". What is needed now is action. In nearly all cases, no major new international machinery is called for or necessary, because the machinery is already there in the Charter rusty, in some cases, but still serviceable.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“A significant challenge to an enhanced Secretariat role in preventive diplomacy will, of course, be the deep reluctance of many States to accept any suggestion that a contentious bilateral issue be internationalized. While there will no doubt continue to be caution about too early resort to Articles 35 and 99 which enable Member States and the Secretary-General, respectively, to bring disputes to the Security Council there should not be the same degree of reluctance to have regard to Article 33, which requires parties to a dispute to first seek a solution by negotiation, mediation or the like. What has been lacking hitherto is any real institutional capacity within the United Nations system to respond to such approaches on other than a wholly ad hoc basis.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“There is also scope, in encouraging greater use of preventive diplomacy, for more extensive training in the principles underpinning the concept. It is good to hear, in this context, that the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is planning to launch a new fellowship programme in preventive diplomacy in 1993. I think it will be important for relevant United Nations Secretariat staff and diplomats and officials from Member States to participate in this fellowship programme. I am pleased to announce today that Australia will contribute US$ 50,000 to UNITAR to assist with the costs of the first year of the fellowship. I would urge that other Member States also consider a contribution, and participation by their officials.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“Staff should have the capacity to develop in-depth knowledge of emerging disputes and to gain the confidence of all parties at an early stage. An evaluation mechanism should be developed to collect, analyse and retain experience from such activities that could prove useful in other similar situations. I therefore applaud the decisions Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali has so far taken to create geographically based divisions within the Department of Political Affairs, whose tasks will include the collection of information on various regions and the early identification and analysis of possible conflicts, and I do urge all Members to support the Secretary-General in further efforts to establish a professional and effective mechanism for preventive diplomacy.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“This requires a more systematic approach to information-gathering and analysis, for which a professionally dedicated support unit in the Secretariat is essential. This will need in turn a sophisticated level of expertise and skill in the form of a nucleus of foreign affairs specialists and policy analysts experienced and knowledgeable in conflict resolution, with the skills that are necessary to encourage parties to a dispute to improve communication, minimize inflammation, define issues and create innovative and imaginative ways of reconciling their conflicting interests. Regular and routine field visits should allow an improved capacity for fact-finding, early-warning information gathering and the opportunity quietly to provide good offices.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“In practice, the trigger for United Nations action, and the threshold for defining a situation as a threat to international peace and security, has tended to be the outbreak of armed hostilities. The earliest possible attention to potentially significant disputes is crucial if they are to be addressed before the parties have become committed and entrapped by their own rhetoric and actions. This in turn calls for the formation of a permanent unit within the Secretariat with an enhanced capacity to gather, receive and analyse not only basic facts, but also information about the concerns and interests of the parties to a dispute, in order better to prepare recommendations on possible action.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“Australia considers, therefore, that the challenge before the United Nations in the coming year will be to establish more effective processes for converting the promise of preventive diplomacy in all its aspects into reality. Effective preventive diplomacy cannot be ad hoc or peripheral to the other activities of the United Nations. What is required is a strengthened capacity within the United Nations to encourage and assist parties to disputes to resolve their differences peacefully. The crucial elements in making preventive diplomacy work are timing, adequate resources and the willingness of Member States to invest the United Nations with the authority to use all the means available for its effective implementation.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“But the tools with the cutting edges in specific situations of conflict prevention and avoidance of conflict escalation are preventive diplomacy and peace-making. In "An Agenda for Peace", the Secretary-General emphasized the importance of preventive diplomacy as a cost-effective means of avoiding the human and material costs of conflict and the burdens involved in using armed force to resolve conflicts. Indeed, if we examine the worst conflicts over the last 12 months in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan we could plausibly argue that, at least in the first two cases, more attention to preventive diplomacy may have avoided the catastrophes that befell those nations and peoples.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“At the recent summit of non-aligned countries in Jakarta, leaders expressed their deep concern over the negative impact of global military expenditure, and their support for the attainment of security at lower levels of armaments. We must all work to make good these pledges, thereby releasing sorely needed funds to help free the peoples of the world from want, as well as from the fear of war and destruction. Pursuing an effective arms control agenda and addressing a variety of non-military threats to security are all important ways of creating a general environment in which risks to security are minimized. So too are the peace-building strategies described in the Secretary-General's report, many of which are as much applicable to pre-conflict as to post-conflict situations.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“We should build on the moratorium on nuclear testing advanced by Russia and France. And I urge Member States to support once again the draft resolution that Australia will co-sponsor at this session on the comprehensive test-ban treaty. Increased transparency in military activities should continue to be a key objective for all Members of the General Assembly. I regard the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms Transfers, established by the forty-sixth session of the General Assembly, as an important step in this process. Australia welcomes the Secretary-General's report on the operation of the Register and supports its adoption.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“The benefits to mankind of the end of the cold war will be quickly lost unless progress, which is being made in bilateral arms control and disarmament negotiations between the United States and the former Soviet Union, is carried into the multilateral arms control process. We must redouble our efforts to achieve a world free from nuclear weapons, and the threat of nuclear war. We must work harder to obtain universal membership of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and ensure its indefinite extension unamended in 1995. We should also continue the progress that has been made since the Gulf War to strengthen the nuclear safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and tighten export controls on nuclear and nuclear-related dual-use items.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“After over 20 years, agreement has finally been reached on a chemical weapons Convention text. It is a historic achievement, and one for which Australia has worked particularly hard. Unanimous endorsement of this Convention, with a recommendation for its universal signature and ratification, would be one of the major outcomes of this forty-seventh session of the General Assembly. We should also build on the success we have had in concluding the chemical-weapons Convention to reinvigorate our efforts to reach agreement on other elements of the multilateral disarmament agenda.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“There is, for instance, a growing call by the international community for a mechanism to try individuals for breaches of international humanitarian law and other international crimes. Australia supports consideration being given to an international criminal jurisdiction to deal with such offences, and considers that the International Law Commission should continue its important work on this topic, specifically by drafting a statute for an international criminal court. The end of the cold war notwithstanding, a major preventive effort by the international community is still necessary in relation to the military threat to security posed by continuing arms build-ups. The climate for such an effort is certainly now encouraging. International endeavours in this field are finally producing results.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“These and too many other examples that could be mentioned show the dimensions of the problem still ahead of us. They confirm the importance of next year's World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, particularly for those Governments needing further encouragement to adopt human rights policies - founded, I emphasize, not on so-called Western values, but on internationally accepted, universal standards of practice. Discussion at this session should play an important role in developing a consensus approach to the Conference. At the very least, I hope it will resolve the outstanding question of the agenda, which was left undecided at the recent preparatory meeting in Geneva. The General Assembly at this session might also usefully consider some other steps to consolidate respect for human rights.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“The General Assembly will have before it at this session a draft declaration on the rights of minorities, endorsed earlier this year by the Commission on Human Rights. And the launch, later this session, of the International Year of the World's Indigenous People to which Australia is very strongly committed will be a further indication of our concern in this regard. Breaches of universal human rights standards remain, unhappily, all too common. In a country such as Burma or Myanmar - the security of the State is based on a denial of fundamental human rights and the application of democratic processes. In South Africa, the promise of a peaceful, negotiated transition to majority rule continues to be put at risk by recurring violence of appalling intensity, itself an all too obvious legacy of the apartheid system.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“It is understandable that, freed from the iron restraints of totalitarian regimes, some ethnic and linguistic groups have sought and no doubt will continue to seek - to establish their own political entities. As has been all too graphically demonstrated in the States of former Yugoslavia, Iraq and elsewhere, there is no easy answer to these aspirations, particularly when self-determination would in such cases be synonymous with fragmentation and itself be a source of threat to international peace and security. War, particularly civil war, also engenders many of the greatest abuses of human rights. The bulk of such aspirations to self-determination might, in fact, be met by stricter observance of human rights and guarantees of the rights of all minorities ethnic, religious, linguistic or social within democratic frameworks.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)
“Those problems have to be addressed as a matter of urgency, and one obvious way to do so is, again, to strengthen the capacity of the new Department of Humanitarian Affairs. There is at least one other non-military threat to peace and security that Australia hopes will get increased attention from this General Assembly, and that is the failure of Governments to observe the fundamental standards of human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration and the more detailed Covenants, to which so many of us have subscribed. The Secretary-General in his report "An Agenda for Peace" (A/47/277) very properly emphasizes in this context the question of the rights of minorities.”
1992-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 47 (1992)