YouSaid · the spoken record

Pal

lines on the record: 74
first: 1998-04-24
most recent: 2001-08-02
sittings or episodes: 7
sources: un-security-council

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

“However, as with narcotic drugs, with which illicit small arms and terrorism have a nexus, countries or regions into which these are smuggled can only do so much to stop the influx. In the case of narcotic drugs, the onus is placed on producing regions to control the problem at the source. The cooperation of the countries and regions that are the principal manufacturers and exporters of arms is just as essential to the control of this other illicit trade. Some of them have taken steps regionally to stop the illicit trade in weapons; we welcome that. We trust that the Security Council will take effective practical steps carrying forward, or in support of, the Programme of Action adopted at the Conference last month that will curb the availability and use of small arms to foment and sustain conflict and terrorism.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“These are the weapons that soldiers from developing countries will have to face in the hands of terrorists or insurgents at home or, when they go out as Blue Helmets, abroad. It is more than ever necessary, therefore, to have the strictest controls put in place on the manufacture and export of small arms. International instruments need to be negotiated quickly, and a system or mechanism needs to be put in place to trace and mark small arms and to ensure that they are not diverted from legal channels into the illicit trade. The Council should give its encouragement to that process. Both the Conference on the illicit trade in small arms and the paper prepared by Colombia (S/2001/732, annex) recognize the usefulness of regional cooperation.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Much less training is needed with weapons that simply spray bullets over a wide range, and the cost of small arms has plummeted from the 19805, as some armies have laid off stocks. All this explains why small arms in the hands of ever-younger combatants have been able to sustain conflicts hugely expensive in terms of lives lost, and why terrorists have been able to take such a heavy toll of innocent lives. Now, however, small arms are about to make another jump in technology. Some armies are receiving for field trials small arms that integrate integrated- circuit and other cutting-edge technologies into an assault rifle, making them infinitely more destructive. If the past is a guide, these weapons will turn up in the hands of non-State actors well before most third-world armies get them.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Unless the United Nations offers them security and they have other means of livelihood, most do not give up their arms or give up only a few of them. This means that the United Nations must send its peacekeepers so well-armed and equipped that they can truly offer security to all sections of the local population and face down those who refuse to give up their arms. It also means that the international community must be generous with its support for the economic programmes of rehabilitation. Without this, combatants could be driven, by the fear of destitution if nothing else, to keep their arms. Over the past 50 years, small arms have become enormously more lethal, the average assault rifle now laying down the volume of fire of early machine guns. They have also become lighter, which means that children can use them much more easily.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“If the arms embargo is still flouted, we expect the Council, as it has in West Africa, to tackle the problem at its roots and to take measures against those responsible. Elsewhere, as the United Nations tries to help build peace after a conflict, disarmament is often the first and knottiest challenge its peacekeepers face. Your working paper, Mr. President, asks what happens to the small arms collected in a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration campaign. They must be destroyed, but that is often the problem easiest to resolve. Many of those who fight in these internecine conflicts have grown up with arms; in the world they know, a gun is the only means, they think, of staying alive. It protects them and they use it to force others to give them food and shelter.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Over the last decade, the Council has established embargoes to cut off the supply of arms to such violent non-state actors as UNITA, the Revolutionary United Front and the Taliban. When the Council found that these were easily bypassed, investigations it authorized showed how international criminal networks were being used to sell diamonds and supply arms in Angola and Sierra Leone. In Afghanistan, the principal exports of the Taliban are drugs and terrorism, and the arms embargo is as riddled with holes as the latticework for which one of its neighbours is famous. We hope that the monitoring mechanism that the Council set up for Afghanistan a few days ago will do its work well.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Since terrorists and non-state actors exploit this loophole, buying arms on the international market when they are not covertly or illegally supplied by States that promote terrorism, the international community must agree - as it was unable to do at the Conference last month - that the trade in arms must, as the rest of international trade does, flow only through channels authorized by both exporting and importing Governments. Members of this Council, given its role in the maintenance of international peace and security, obviously have a special responsibility, and none more so than the permanent members, both because they are the largest arms exporters in the world and because, if they break the law, they can use the veto to protect themselves.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Conflict diamonds constitute a similar tiny fraction of the global trade in roughs, but the international community is trying to put in place a stringent, verifiable system of controls to make illicit trade much more difficult. The Council has given that process its support; indeed, the international effort to identify and ban conflict diamonds started here, and proscribing the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons must have at least as high a priority. Like any other commodity, the trade in small arms is licit only if both exports and imports go through official, legal channels. Arms exports by a Government that violate none of its laws are nevertheless illicit if the weapons are sent to non-state actors in another country, bypassing or subverting laws there.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“We thank Colombia for calling this open meeting on small arms and we are honoured that you, Sir, are presiding over it. As Ambassador Valdivieso's paper makes clear, the focus of this meeting is wider than that of the Conference last month on the illicit trade in small arms, but the larger problems the Council will consider grow from the same roots. As the Council said in its presidential statement in September 1999, "the prevention of illicit trafficking is of immediate concern in the global search for ways and means to curb the wrongful use of small arms, including their use by terrorists". (S/PRST /1 999/28) Perhaps 1 per cent of the global stock of small arms is illicitly held, but that comes to 5 million weapons.”
2001-08-02 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4355Resumption1 (2001) · source
“We have therefore supported every initiative to defuse the crisis over Iraq and believe it would help promote the security and stability of the region if Iraq were brought back into the mainstream of regional and international affairs. We hope diplomatic efforts will be resumed under the auspices of the United Nations. We see the need to develop fresh ideas and new mechanisms to serve the purpose of the United Nations. We hope the Council will act urgently to end the long nightmare of the people of Iraq.”
2001-06-28 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4336Resumption1 (2001) · source
“We have always disapproved of unilateral armed action against Iraq, and we believe attempts to undermine Iraq's territorial integrity - attempts which we reject - could have unforeseen and destructive geopolitical implications for the region. The sanctions on Iraq have also caused acute economic and financial hardship to other countries, India among them. Unfortunately, our request for relief under Article 50 is still pending with the sanctions Committee. To ease the serious strain imposed on our economy by these sanctions, we have also informed the Council about a counter-trade arrangement with Iraq which will let it import food from India against the export of crude oil and oil products. India has a vital interest in the peace and prosperity of the Gulf, which is part of our neighbourhood.”
2001-06-28 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4336Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Mr. President, we thank you for calling this meeting. Let me also put on record our appreciation for your contribution to the Council's work and for the cooperation you and your indefatigable team have extended to all delegations. India has always opposed sanctions that have a humanitarian impact, and, as External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said in Parliament, "the sanctions imposed on Iraq are unjust, unwise and detrimental to large numbers of innocent Iraqi men, women and children". We have repeatedly called for these sanctions to be lifted in tandem with Iraq's compliance with the relevant Security Council resolutions. We believe that the no-fly zones are not sanctioned by any aspect of the Council's resolutions.”
2001-06-28 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4336Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Maybe this was what the Council did have in mind, because, after it adopted its resolution with much fanfare and an African State asked that peacekeepers sent to it by the United Nations be screened for HIV/AIDS, both Council and Secretariat, appalled that they should have been taken at their word, have been pressing it ever since not to insist. With that, I hope, salutary reminder, I thank members for their attention.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“What the Council should not do, either under its elastic definition of security, or because it is lost in the emptiness of this report, is rush into areas where it has no role to play. HIV/AIDS should be a horrible example for the Council, which last year decided that it was a security problem and Blue Helmets a risk factor. The Council never explained how spreading this canard either helped the fight against AIDS or kept the peace, unless it was telling Governments that if they went to war, it would send them pox-riddled Blue Helmets to keep the peace afterwards, and felt this would be such a terrible threat that no State would dare breach the peace.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Because these weapons are now both so lethal and so easily available, they have made terrorists and warlords immensely more powerful and deepened the vulnerability of Governments that have to counter them through means available to democracies. We were concerned, therefore, that the Firearms Protocol, recently negotiated in Vienna and adopted by the General Assembly, should have such wide exceptions to its scope. We will see what the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects next month comes up with, but Article 26 of the Charter also gives the Council a role in the regulation of armaments. Using it creatively, the Council could make it harder for terrorists and violent non-State actors to get access to weapons, and easier to take steps against their suppliers.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Nuclear war is clearly the conflict that must be prevented at all costs: de-alerting, no first use, and commitments not to use nuclear weapons against non- nuclear-weapon States are all practical steps that must be taken to reduce nuclear dangers. Nuclear disarmament must have the highest priority. Only a multilateral compact for the time-bound abolition of nuclear weapons will give the world true security. No theory or doctrine can justify the indefinite retention of nuclear weapons by the permanent members of the Council. If they cling to their weapons, others will follow, even if against their will. At the other end of the spectrum, small arms and light weapons are what most conflicts are now fought with.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“They might wish to consider whether these alliances prevent conflict, when, during the cold war, they were the cause of tensions that threatened constantly to brim over into conflict. Conflicts are provoked by States that have been encouraged into militarism. Conflicts are more likely if States believe they can profit from them. Conflicts have been encouraged by arms sold irresponsibly for profit, and conflicts have been both set off and sustained by arms races, often induced by military alliances pursuing policies of balance of power. We need a fundamental review of the security of States in order to find genuine collective security at progressively lower levels of arms; only this will truly prevent conflict.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“While those bodies should be supported, the Council might wish to consider if the ad hoc tribunals it has set up, without any authority under the Charter, and which now cost about 10 per cent of the regular budget of the United Nations, have really helped to prevent conflict. Conflicts are prevented if States are assured of their security and do not feel that they are under threat. Military alliances might give their members a sense of greater security, but history has shown that these alliances goad others into taking counter-measures, provoke tensions, and eventually lead to conflict. Most of the permanent members of the Council have, at one time or the other, belonged to powerful military alliances; some still do.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“States must commit themselves wholeheartedly to this. Trying to undermine those with whom they have tensions, using covert force or terrorism, is not only cowardly; it is self-defeating. The United Nations should reject the specious argument that the knife in the back is the only weapon of the weak. That is not a plea accepted in a court of domestic law, and it should not be accepted here. The International Court of Justice has a role in the peaceful settlement of disputes, defined by the Charter and the terms under which each Member of the United Nations has accepted its jurisdiction. But there are other judicial bodies, such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which quietly settle disputes affecting vital economic and other interests that, in other eras, would have boiled over into conflict.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Once States have accepted treaties designed to prevent conflict and to offer a route to the peaceful resolution of disputes, they must abide by their provisions. The League of Nations foundered when it looked the other way as bilateral treaties that had kept the peace were systematically subverted, and it was unable to prevent a global slide into conflict. Again, it was the experience of Europe in the inter-war years that totalitarian regimes brushed aside treaties negotiated by their democratic predecessors. States must also accept and act on the norms of international law and on the principles adopted by the United Nations to guide relations between States. The founding principle of the United Nations is that disputes will be settled peacefully and patiently at the negotiating table, not through armed conflict.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“We will speak in broad terms on principles that, followed by Member States or by the Council, could stop conflicts from breaking out. Within societies, democracy is a must. Societies in which citizens can openly air their grievances; choose their governments in free, open elections; have a say, through elected local bodies, in aspects of governance that touch their daily lives the most; and get redress when they need it from an independent judiciary that upholds the rule of law, are far less likely to erupt into domestic conflict than those under totalitarian or military rule. The United Nations should continue to encourage democracy as a norm of governance that lessens the chances of conflict. Between States, treaties must be honoured.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Conflict management and peacekeeping are the curative phase, post-conflict peace-building the therapeutic. This discussion should be on prophylaxis: on ways and means to prevent armed conflict from breaking out within societies and between them. There are paragraphs in the report described as recommendations, some of them directed to the Council. But when the report was introduced last week, we were told that the Secretary-General was simply throwing up issues for discussion among Member States, not making recommendations. Today, of course, the Deputy Secretary-General has told us that these are indeed recommendations, but we would encourage the Council to see this meeting as a debate on the sections of the report that fall within its mandate, not as an exercise to accept or reject recommendations.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“It is a particular pleasure, Sir, to see you back in New York and to speak to the Council under your presidency. When the Secretary-General's report on conflict prevention was presented last week, and when a quick glance showed that much of it dealt with conflict management, the Secretariat said that this was because management prevented conflicts from escalating. In that sense, though, peacekeeping prevents conflicts from being resumed, and, as it shades over into post- conflict peace-building, prevents conflicts from recurring. Conflict prevention would therefore stretch from early warning to post-bellum peace and development. But if everything is conflict prevention, nothing is. It is much more sensible to see conflict as a disease of the body politic, and to follow the medical distinction among prophylaxis, cure and therapy.”
2001-06-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4334Resumption1 (2001) · source
“The Serbian Special Police are quite effective in what they do, but the United Nations has not deployed them as civilian police in East Timor, nor has it tried to legitimize the former East Timorese militias by offering them jobs in the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor. This is natural; the United Nations can promote democracy, respect for civilian authority, the peaceful resolution of disputes and national reconciliation only through peacekeeping forces who understand, from national experience, what all this means. It would be a travesty, for instance, and an insult to promote post- conflict peace-building in Sierra Leone through peacekeepers who overthrow democracies at home.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Effective arms embargoes are one way of reducing the risk of conflicts being resumed, but members of the Council have a larger role here. Some of them are the principal manufacturers and exporters of these weapons; they must ensure that arms are not exported from their territories to States, non-state actors, terrorists or rebel groups that use violence against legitimate Governments. Finally, the instrument the Council uses for post- conflict peace-building is the peacekeeping operation, but it is the Secretariat that chooses the troop contributors. Because the peacekeepers play so important a role, the Council needs to give some thought to this. Some standard and minimum requirements must be laid down, and these must be both professional and political.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“In disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, which peacekeeping operations are expected to supervise, experience has shown that armed gangs do not hand over the weapons without which they might be lynched by those they have terrorized or be unable to force others to give them food and shelter. For disarmament, demobilization and reintegration to succeed, the peacekeeping force must be so visibly strong on arrival that all parties to the conflict realize that it has the means of protecting them if they surrender their weapons and can overwhelm anyone foolhardy enough to try to take it on. Unfortunately, the Council almost never authorizes this, and its frugality has been shown to be a disastrous and false economy. Secondly, most conflicts are still fought with small arms and light weapons.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Blatantly unequal treatment, within countries as between them, does not build peace 7 it breeds conflict. The dark side of what the United Nations does in Kosovo and East Timor is Iraq. There too, though there is a Government in place, it is the United Nations that determines local needs and how they shall be met. The oil-for-food programme is post-conflict peace-building of sorts, but no one - neither the Secretariat, nor the Brahimi Panel, nor the vast literature on this subject - ever refers to the United Nations experiment in Iraq as a precedent to follow. But if Iraq is sui generis, so too are Kosovo and East Timor. It is not that the Council has no role at all. Members of the Council can help in some ways in post-conflict peace-building.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Clearly there are hard choices to be made, but the Security Council is not the place to make them. It does not have the mandate or the expertise to decide these issues, and if major extra financial provisions were built into the budgets of peacekeeping operations, these would be funded through assessed contributions. There are several regions where countries recovering from conflict border others teetering on the brink. It would be unjust and self-defeating for the post-conflict country to have its development paid for through assessed contributions because the Council had mandated it, while, for very much the same needs, its neighbours, in very much the same desperate circumstances, had to scramble for a share of a shrinking global official development assistance.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Our troops are trained to take on projects in aid of civil authority and they respond to local needs, expressed to them by community leaders. It is another thing entirely for projects to be conceived and funded from New York, which might seem attractive, but be either unsuitable or unsustainable. In fact, in the debate on East Timor in the Council on 26 January, the representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made this very point. Donors were being generous because East Timor was a high- profile undertaking, but he warned, as others have before him, that when interest faded, what may be beneficial today may be too costly tomorrow. And on flexible funding, the Council will remember that what Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello called a "cruel budget", the IMF representative described as realistic.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Where a Government is in place, no matter how weak, the United Nations should do nothing to give the impression that the Government is a cipher and that authority resides in the peacekeeping operation. That will undermine, not build, peace. The Secretary-General also asked for more flexible financial arrangements for post-conflict situations, and he asked the Council to support the Brahimi recommendation that a percentage of a mission's initial budget be set aside to fund quick- impact projects. We understand what the Secretary- General has in mind. Indeed, wherever Indian troops have been deployed, they help the local communities with practical projects, digging wells and building schools and roads, as the Council's mission to Sierra Leone has seen.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“In Kosovo and East Timor, the United Nations runs transitional administrations, as it does not and should not in other post-conflict situations. Speaking here on November 29 last year on the lessons for post-conflict peace-building to be learnt from the United Nations experience in Guinea-Bissau, the Secretary-General said that, in devising mandates for peace-building missions or revising the mandates or exit strategies for existing ones, the Council should bear in mind that Governments in post-conflict situations might be weak and not able to take action which should normally be undertaken by a sovereign Government. This is what the United Nations does in Kosovo and East Timor, where it took over in a vacuum.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Even new operations within a single country, such as the one contemplated for the Congo, the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), would be deployed very selectively. MONUC would have little information about what was happening in the rest of that vast country, would find it very hard to discharge even the military mandate it has been given, and would be in no position to do anything else. The United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) are the three exceptions in recent years to this rule. Trying to draw general conclusions from these very exceptional cases is dangerous and was one of the more serious shortcomings of the Brahimi report.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Some points become clear: the majority are still groups of observers or formed contingents observing a truce, even if they are deployed within a single country; the operations in Georgia and Tajikistan are cases in point. Major operations such as United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) might have thousands of troops, but they are deployed in thin bands across a border to monitor a withdrawal and a ceasefire. They have no other mandate, and, being where they are, obviously cannot possibly take on economic, social or other tasks, or even advise on them, such local knowledge as they gather being limited to the borders they police.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“The countries in transition need, and have received, special attention from the entire United Nations system; the one body not engaged in post- conflict peace-building there is the Security Council, which has, prudently and correctly, kept its distance. Where the Council has helped settle conflicts, or where the United Nations is asked to monitor peace agreements negotiated by others, it has a role to play in setting up the peacekeeping operations which are part ofthe process of building peace. But it does not follow that these must take on the work of economic and social reconstruction, or that the Security Council should ask them to do so. Much has been said of the new peacekeeping and of how it is completely different from the old, but this ignores facts. Consider the operations now in place.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Those arguments remain valid, and I will not repeat them. We would be glad to send copies of our statement to Council members who want to refresh their memories. As the cold war showed, conflicts might end and peace-building begin without the Council's being involved. The huge challenges that the countries in transition in Central and Eastern Europe now face have their roots in that conflict, and they are identical to the priorities the United Nations lists for post-conflict societies: putting in place representative systems of governance, building an inclusive society, setting up a liberal economy, and coping with the difficulties of demobilization.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“It is not only a pleasure, but also very reassuring, to see you, the representative of a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement, presiding over the Security Council as it considers what its role might be in an area of the work of the United Nations where the clear view of the non-aligned is that most of what post-conflict peace-building involves lies outside the mandate of the Council, and properly within the purview of the General Assembly. May I also take this opportunity to congratulate Singapore very warmly on the outstanding work it did during its presidency; the credit for this goes to Ambassador Mahbubani and his dedicated staff. In a detailed statement when the Council discussed this matter in 1998, we set out the reasons why it would do more harm than good if the Security Council trespassed on the mandate of others.”
2001-02-05 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4272Resumption1 (2001) · source
“Superior firepower, mandated by the Council, might check forced migration, unblock food aid or put an end to genocide by paramilitary gangs, but unless we secure the conditions from which a measure of stability and prosperity might emerge, these evils tend to return. This longer-term consequence of humanitarian actions undertaken by the Security Council would imply that the United Nations should stay the course until a divided society heals itself. But, as with peacekeeping in the early 1990s, the number, size, complexity and duration of sustained humanitarian action would soon exhaust the coffers of the United Nations, forcing a sudden withdrawal. As then, that would make matters worse for the populations affected and for the United Nations.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“The Foreign Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement were categorical in the communique issued after their meeting on 23 September 1999: there was, they said, no right of humanitarian intervention. This was the collective view of countries representing two thirds of the membership of the United Nations. The Security Council, whose mandate is to act on behalf of the wider membership, would do well to pay heed to their voice. But can we stand by and let people die, ask the proponents of humanitarian intervention, because international law does not permit it? Put like that, it places us on the horns of a sharp moral dilemma. But that is not the right question. When it addresses humanitarian crises, the international community naturally focuses on the immediate problem, not on the longer-term consequences.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“In 1998 natural disasters caused losses estimated at over $90 billion; preventable and curable diseases killed millions more that violence did. And yet it is on the macabre that the media fastens, often arbitrarily, sometimes with more political motives, driving decisions on which disasters the world and this Council should focus on and when. The media is not objective; it fixes the event, chooses the spotlight and relegates others to the shadows. It picks and chooses and creates "facts" and sweeps others away. It conjures up politically convenient realities. We have seen this in one theatre of conflict after another: the independent media as the handmaiden of power. The Secretary-General's report to the fifty-fourth session of the General Assembly last year kicked off a lively debate on humanitarian intervention.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“These fears can be allayed only if humanitarian assistance returns to its roots and humanitarian action is seen as apolitical, neutral and offered at request, in accordance with the guiding principles so clearly enunciated by the General Assembly in its resolution 46/182. The more the Security Council tries, perhaps with the best motives, to arrogate to itself the role to protect and promote humanitarian action, the more it is likely to work against the best interests of civilian populations at risk. The first of these humanitarian actions after the end of the cold war, in Somalia, ended disastrously, with repercussions which I do not need to remind the Council about. The Secretary-General has often said that the international community does not respond consistently to humanitarian emergencies.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“The Council was drawn in, after the bombing stopped, and set up the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Six months later, the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia reported that the only change was that the human rights of a different set of minorities were being massively violated. There is in fact a very troubling pattern usually ignored or not acknowledged. In several countries, because of the suspicion now engendered that humanitarian assistance is driven by political motives, and that those who take humanitarian action also take sides, parties to a conflict have either targeted humanitarian workers or those they work for, or have refused them access.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Will the Security Council decide, under Chapter VII, that TRIPS does not apply for medicines that treat AIDS? I do not have to belabour the point. This is a recipe for chaos and lawlessness in inter-State relations. It would destroy the edifice of international relations, built on respect for State sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of States. It would, in fact, return us to the freebooting practices which the United Nations was created to end. And in international relations, as within States, when the law is bent or stretched, it is the weak who bear the brunt. What then of the actions the Security Council has already taken or authorized, and which have been described as humanitarian? Kosovo is cited as a case in point, but last year the bombing of Kosovo was described as humanitarian action.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Will the Council demand, under Chapter VII, that the States that accepted this commitment honour it? A State where the crops have failed and faced with famine should be able to attack a neighbour and rob its granaries, claiming that it had the duty to take humanitarian action to protect the lives of its people. The Council believes AIDS is a security threat. Thirty- five million people are infected, and tens of thousands die each day. The pharmaceutical companies that have the monopoly on the treatment keep the price unaffordably high, using Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to protect their profits. Should a State ravaged by AIDS have the right to take these medicines by force, if it can, citing a humanitarian duty to protect its citizens?”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“There would be well-founded fears that the Council would act not for humanitarian, but for less lofty, reasons. We are told that it is all very well for us, in the comfort of New York, to debate the finer points of law, but when there is intolerable human suffering the international community cannot just sit back; it has the right to take humanitarian action to save lives and relieve suffering. Since all societies agree that rights and duties go hand in hand, then there must be a duty to take humanitarian action, and not just in the Council. Simply as examples: the target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product for official development assistance was accepted by developed countries because they agreed that this was essential to help alleviate the terrible human suffering that underdevelopment and poverty bring with it.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Even an action illegal under international law would be legitimized if the Council authorized it. The wider membership, on whose behalf it acts, might disagree, but would be powerless to undo the damage to law. Therefore the Council must not act in ways that would change, undermine or seek to develop international law; that is not its function, and it has been given no such power by the Charter. Secondly, if it decided to authorize or to take humanitarian action, the Council would claim to act on behalf of the international community. However, the Council's membership is unrepresentative, and in its methods of work it does not welcome or accept the views of the wider membership. These are problems that are the subject of ongoing debate elsewhere.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“In the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the participating States adopted a Declaration on Principles, in which they resolved to refrain in their bilateral and international relations from the threat or use of force, emphasizing that "No consideration may be invoked to serve to warrant resort to the threat or use of force in contravention of this principle." International law, like any other law, changes and evolves. As it presently stands, though, if the Security Council took humanitarian action, it would violate international law, not stretch it. In addition, there are two important reasons why the Council should be discouraged from going down this path. First, when the Council acts under Chapter VII, all Member States have to respect its decisions.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“The 1970 Declaration concerning Friendly Relations rules out any use of force between States not explicitly permitted in the United Nations Charter and prohibits intervention in the domestic jurisdiction of a State for any reason whatever. In the 1986 Nicaragua case, the International Court of Justice ruled that the Declaration reflects the prohibition on the use of force under customary international law and rejected what was in effect claimed as a right of humanitarian intervention.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Because there is no comparable legal framework for humanitarian relief, it might seem to be a greyer area, but it is the sovereign right of a State to determine whether it needs humanitarian assistance or not. If it chooses not to, it can hardly be forced by the Council, or any other body, to ask for or to accept it. Coercion or the use of force would be wrong in law, violating Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter. International law, as it stands today, is clear. There is no provision in it for humanitarian intervention, which is shorthand for a right to take humanitarian action. As examples I offer the following.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we moved on to the two International Covenants and to the many conventions and their protocols that now protect human rights and lay down the process through which lapses are dealt with. None of these instruments, which legally bind those who are party to them - which most States are - ask the Security Council to act even when there are major violations of their provisions. Human rights continue to evolve, but the most authoritative, recent and comprehensive statement of the collective view of the international community is the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993. In the preparatory process for the Conference, a linkage between human rights and peacekeeping was specifically discussed, and rejected.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source
“Humanitarian laws are codified in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Though adopted soon after the United Nations was set up, there is no mention in them of the United Nations or of a role for any of its organs. This was not by accident. We are signatories to the Conventions, we abide by them, and we believe that they must be universally respected. It is true that terrible violations have been committed, including in 1971, on the territory of your country, Mr. President, Bangladesh. You must have therefore listened with astonishment to the Permanent Representative of Pakistan's vapourings about human rights violations. But the Conventions have inbuilt provisions to deal with contraventions and abuses. None of them call for action by the Security Council. Human rights are also increasingly codified.”
2000-03-09 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4109Resumption1 (2000) · source