YouSaid · the spoken record

Lakshman Kadirgamar

lines on the record: 165
first: 1996-09-24
most recent: 2001-09-24
sittings or episodes: 5
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“a peace based exclusively upon the political and economic arrangements of governments would not be a peace which could secure the unanimous, lasting and sincere support of the peoples of the world, and...the peace must therefore be founded, if it is not to fail, upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind.” These are noble words of timeless quality. But words, however noble, which remain untranslated into deeds become shallow, tawdry, degraded. All nations, all the peoples of the world, must realize that we are slipping into a crisis of a kind we have never encountered before. The spectres of fear, doubt, uncertainty, mistrust and suspicion stalk the world. The hour is late. The hour is grave.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed; “... ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war; “... the great and terrible war which has now ended was a war made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races; “...”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“And I would think that undoubtedly the developed world too will, after the events of 11 September, look to the future with a frame of mind different from its frame of mind before that fateful date. Development, stability and contentment for all 26 people are no longer charitable objectives. They are in the self-interest of all. Most certainly, neither we in the developing world nor those in the developed world can allow abject, desperate poverty, without any hope of a better future, to become a fertile field for those who wish to fan the flames of discord and hate and make it their business to wreak death, destruction, terror and mayhem. Fifty-six years ago almost to this day, the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was proclaimed in words that have a prophetic resonance today: “...”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“It should send a long awaited signal that we are serious about our commitments to developing countries.” I wish to place on record the high appreciation of my Government to the Governments of Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden for those frank and refreshing observations. We in the developing world will certainly look with much expectation to the International Conference on Financing for Development that will convene in March next year. We cannot but hope that, notwithstanding the continuing difference in positions, a secure foundation for a partnership for the future will be formed there, within which both the strong interests of the developing world and the strong concerns of the developed world can be adequately accommodated.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Obviously there is a lack of political commitment in setting budget priorities. These countries need to change their political priorities in order to comply with their international commitments. “EU Declarations like the one made in Göteborg do call for that much needed compliance — that is to say, they call on us to keep the promises we have already made — but they do so only in general terms. We now need to pick up the pace. “We call on EU members to make a firm commitment at the International Conference on Finance for Development in Monterrey in 2002 and to formulate individual plans and timetables in order to make concrete progress in reaching the goal of 0.7 per cent of GNP to ODA. “Today’s EU Development Council in Brussels is a good opportunity to further strengthen the relations in our global world.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Luxembourg, the newest member of this group, has proved that it is possible to raise ODA to 0.7 per cent of GNP in a short period of time. Together we make up the G-0.7. “The G-7 is full of promises. If all the rich countries would just implement what they have committed themselves to, as the G-0.7 have done, we would not encounter these financial constraints. Having said that, we do realize that ODA is not the only way forward. We also must take into account fair distribution of resources, debt relief, open markets, good governance and the role of the private sector. A reform of the Common Agricultural Policy is a great challenge to the EU. “We welcome new and innovative financing options, but the main problem is that some countries are not providing adequate ODA resources.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“All United Nations members, with the exception of the United States, have accepted a long established standard volume of ODA for donor countries: 0.7 percent of GNP. But the international community is still a long way from making this standard a reality. “Although the EU has stressed the importance of the 0.7 percent target in the conclusions of the European Council in Göteborg, the EU’s record is no exception: in 2000, member States gave an average of only 0.33 per cent of GNP in ODA. This is better than the OECD average of 0.24 per cent, but it is still a long way from the target.” “In fact, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg are the only EU member States that meet the ODA standard. Norway, a non-EU member, is also part of this exclusive club.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Kofi Annan, at the Conference on 25 the Least Developed Countries in May 2001, remarked that only a few countries have lived up to the goals of devoting 0.7 percent of their gross national product (GNP) to official development assistance (ODA), and that the least developed countries suffer disproportionately as a result of that. “We need better and more effective development assistance: policy coherence, lower transaction costs by harmonization of procedures. We need sharper focus on the importance of strong institutions and sound economic and social policy. But we cannot expect to reach our common goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 without increasing aid volume.” I continue to quote from the common statement: “There is no need for a new set of standards.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Their words convey far more effectively, and with far greater authority, than my words could possibly do, the thoughts of developing countries on the question of development aid, and, therefore, I take the liberty of quoting that common statement in its entirety: “In the Millennium Declaration, the international community recognized the fight against poverty as the greatest challenge to our global governance system”. “The events of 11 September have made it even more crucial to deal with these problems. We not only need a global coalition against terrorism. We need a global coalition against poverty as well. “The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“We in the developing world have also been warning our colleagues for so long, when a developing country is unable to generate a sufficient amount of domestic capital, public or private, it is to international capital that we, in the developing world, have to turn; and, as international private capital is sensitive to the rate and continuance of profitable return, it is only official development assistance (ODA) that remains. On 8 November, only a few days ago, at the European Union’s (EU) Development Council in Brussels, a common statement was delivered by the five Ministers for Development Cooperation of Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Thus, inescapably we will have to revisit and re- address the old questions that have haunted the United Nations ever since it was born — that is, the questions of poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance and injustice. These questions have been with us for a long time. They have received answers which are, to a large extent, no more than faint-hearted attempts to forge solutions that look grand on paper but are incapable of implementation due to the lack of funds and the lack of political will. The formulation of policy has always been far easier than its implementation and, when we look to the future through the ultimate prism — namely, the funding available — we face once more the bitter truth of which our colleagues from the developed world have been warning us year after year: “the funding globally available is far from promising”.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“If the world has become a village, surely we must take care to ensure that the villagers living down one road in the village are not given cause to become resentful and angry at the opulence enjoyed by other villagers living down another road, only a stone’s throw away. Might I suggest, therefore, that this General Assembly consider the convening of an international group of eminent persons with the appropriate backgrounds in all relevant fields, representative of all regions of the world, appointed by the President of the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council and the Secretary-General, with the request that the group report to the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Secretary-General within an appropriate time frame on terrorism and its prevention.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“While terrorism must continue to be fought, relentlessly and by everyone everywhere, sooner rather than later the international community will have to focus its collective attention on the question of analysing and diagnosing the causes of terrorism, preventing and finally eliminating it before it becomes a problem of such deadly dimensions that it threatens the whole world. The causes of terrorism cannot be ignored. To examine the roots of terrorism and the culture in which it breeds in a systematic, objective, well-informed manner is not, by any means, to yield to terrorism. It is not a manifestation of weakness for the international community to examine the root causes of terrorism. It is axiomatic that a contented people do not rise up to destroy the society in which they live.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“There is a particularly abhorrent brand of terrorism that the world can never condone — that is, the forcible conscription of young children for battle, widely practiced by the terrorists of Sri Lanka and well documented by Amnesty International, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict. It would be a permanent blot on humankind’s conscience if these poor children were to be consigned, unnoticed and uncared for, to their miserable fate.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Two important United Nations conventions were adopted with admirable speed — the International Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings and the International Convention for the Suppression of the 24 Financing of Terrorism. Another important convention is being considered at this session by the Ad Hoc Committee on International Terrorism, which is chaired by Sri Lanka. Since we have been so severely affected by terrorism, it is only natural that we should play a leading role in designing the legislation that the international community should adopt and implement to combat terrorism.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“When half of the aircraft in our national airline were damaged or destroyed by those same terrorists on 24 July, we were advised by some Governments to negotiate. We were reminded that “violence begets violence”. That approach has changed dramatically in recent days, or so it seems, because terrorism has assailed the national interests of many countries. Terrorism is no longer the curse of the poor. Now, more than ever before, when a terrorist attack takes place somewhere in the world, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls”, as John Donne said nearly four centuries ago, for surely “it tolls for thee”. The United Nations has focused sharply on building consensus to fight terror.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Gone are the days when a country affected by terror, as my country has been for two decades, can be told by the international community, “We are sorry about what is happening in your land, but there is nothing we can do to help you because we have no laws to combat terror.” When our Central Bank was bombed and destroyed, when the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, one of the holiest shrines of Buddhism, was bombed and saved from destruction only by a miracle, when a commuter train carrying workers home was attacked with explosives, when thousands of people, including monks, women and children were slaughtered, when Muslims were massacred in a mosque while at prayer, when a President of Sri Lanka, Ministers and Members of Parliament and many other elected leaders were assassinated, let alone a Prime Minister of India, when a suicide bomber at an election rally attacked the incumbent President of Sri Lanka, killing and wounding scores of innocent bystanders and grievously wounding her in the right eye, the sight of which was lost — all this and much more has happened at the hands of a terrorist group in Sri Lanka — we received merely sympathies, condolences, expressions of shock and outrage, while the funding that fuels the terrorism in my country went on apace in the great, liberal democracies of the West.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“Every speaker from this podium during the special debate on terrorism, the debate on dialogue among civilizations and our current general debate has said, suggested or implied that 11 September has changed the world irrevocably. Indeed it has. A democracy is an open society. Movement is free. Speech is free. All the citizens of a democratic society are free to lead their lives in freedom, subject only to the rule of law. Fear and the spirit of democratic freedom are two totally opposite states of mind. Yet, today, fear stalks the United States of America, where democracy has flourished vigorously for so long, bringing prosperity to its people and taking human achievement to unimagined heights of excellence. There can be no argument that terror in all its manifestations must be fought relentlessly and globally.”
2001-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 56 (2001)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)
“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.”
2000-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 55 (2000)