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22 September 2004
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA, T MBEKI AT THE 59th SESSION
OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, New York
22 September 2004.
Your Excellency, the President of the General Assembly
Your Excellency, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Your Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen
There are some matters about which we all agree. One of these is that
later this year we will receive the important report that will be tabled
by the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which was
constituted by our Secretary General.
The other is that next year we will mark the 10th anniversaries of the
Copenhagen Social Summit and the Beijing Women's Summit, and discuss
their outcomes.
The third matter about which we all agree is that next year we will
observe the 5th anniversary of the adoption of the historic Millennium
Declaration.
We will also agree that we took all these initiatives, the convening of
the Social, Women's and Millennium Summits, and the constitution of the
High Level Panel, because we were of one mind that we had a number of
problems that needed to be solved.
In the Millennium Declaration, we used inspiring words to sum up our
response to these problems. We said:
"We have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human
dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a
duty therefore to all the world's people, especially the most vulnerable
and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future
belongs."
We went on to say, "We are determined to establish a just and lasting
peace all over the world in accordance with the purposes and principles
of the Charter."
We also said: "(Our efforts to make globalisation fully inclusive and
equitable) must include policies and measures, at the global level,
which correspond to the needs of developing countries and economies in
transition and are formulated and implemented with their effective
participation."
To this we added the commitment that, "We will spare no effort to free
our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising
conditions of extreme poverty. We are committed to making the right to
development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race
from want."
Naturally, we have no choice but to agree that we did say all these
things, and would undoubtedly agree that we meant what we said. I trust
that this would not mark the end of the range of issues over which we
would speak with one voice.
I say this because when I have asked myself the question - have we
achieved the goals we set ourselves? - I have found it impossible not to
answer that we have failed. There may very well be others among us who
will take a different view and say that a good beginning has been made,
and therefore that it is too early to say we have failed.
But I am certain that if we say to those affected by violence and war
that we have made a good beginning towards the establishment of a just
and lasting peace all over the world, they will not believe us. I am
equally certain that if we say to those who, everyday, go to bed hungry,
that we have made a good beginning towards freeing the entire human race
from want, they will also not believe us.
I would make bold to say that the vision of human dignity, equality and
equity at the global level we enunciated in this imposing forum four
years ago resonates among the ordinary people who are victims of hunger
and war as a beautiful dream that will inevitably be deferred.
Does this mean that when we made the promises we made, we deliberately
intended to tell the billions of ordinary people a lie? The answer to
that question is obviously no! Did we speak as we did simply because
talk is easy and cheap? Again the answer to that question is obviously
no!
The question must therefore arise as to why the grandeur of our words
and the vision they paint - of a world of peace, free of war, a world
characterised by shared prosperity, free of poverty - has not produced
the grand results we sincerely sought and seek!
It would seem to me that the answer to that question lies in the fact
that we have, as yet, not seriously confronted the difficult issues that
relate to the uses and perhaps the abuses of power.
Yesterday our Secretary General, the Honourable Kofi Annan, spoke
eloquently about the three thousand year old code of Hammurabi, and said
"That code was a landmark in humanity's struggle to build an order
where, instead of might making right, right would make might." We took
it that the Secretary General was, in his own elegant way, drawing our
attention to the central question of our day - of the uses and abuses of
power!
Contemporary human society is characterised by a gross and entrenched
imbalance in the distribution of power. That power is held and exercised
by human beings. As human beings, the powerful share many things with
the powerless. Together, the powerful and the disempowered share common
human needs to eat, to drink water, to be protected from the elements,
to dream, to love, to laugh, to play, to live.
But life itself tells us that all that and only that describes what
human beings share. The rest, the relations among us as social beings,
is defined by our varied access to power and its exercise.
Without fear of contradiction, I have said that we all agree that later
this year, we will receive the Report of the High Level Panel on
Threats, Challenges and Change.
I am equally convinced that, depending on where we stand relative to the
power equation, we will hold radically different views about what
constitutes humanity's most serious threats and challenges, and
therefore what must be changed to respond to that perceived reality.
Both the powerful and the disempowered will undoubtedly agree that
terrorism and war represent a serious threat to all humanity. They will
agree that we were right to make the commitment in the Millennium
Declaration to work for "a just and lasting peace all over the world in
accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter."
Many of those who have already addressed the Assembly have correctly
drawn our attention to many instances of terrorism and war to which we
are all opposed. They have spoken of the bombings of the US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania and the African and American lives these claimed, of
the heinous 9/11 outrage in this city, the acts of terrorism in
Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Spain, Israel, Gatumba in Burundi,
Beslan in the Russian Federation, and elsewhere.
They have correctly drawn our attention to the violent conflicts in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, the Sudan, Palestine, Israel,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and elsewhere, and
other unsolved problems such as self-determination for the people of
Western Sahara, that cry out for a solution.
Both the powerful and the disempowered agree and will agree that the
international community must act together, successfully to confront
these situations, and therefore the threat and challenge of terrorism
and war.
However, the powerful will also make the additional determination that
terrorism and war constitute central and principal threat and challenge
that human civilisation faces. They will make the determination that
because, almost by definition, the terrorists target them simply because
they are powerful, they have no logical choice but to identify terrorism
as the central and principal threat and challenge they face, and to
which they must respond.
Because of the space they occupy relative to the power equation, what
they decide will necessarily constitute the global decision of what
constitutes the central, principal and most urgent threat and challenge
to human society, necessitating various changes in the global system of
governance. What they will decide will translate into a set of
obligatory injunctions, issued by this Organisation, which all member
nations will have to accept and implement.
Both the powerful and the disempowered will undoubtedly also agree that
poverty, want and underdevelopment constitute serious problems that all
humanity must confront. Many of those who have already addressed the
Assembly have correctly drawn our attention to the reality of poverty
that billions across the globe continue to experience.
Among other things, they have correctly reminded us of the fact that
some countries are poorer today than they were a decade ago. They have
pointed to the virtual certainty that we will fail to meet the
Millennium Development Goals we set ourselves four years ago.
Both the powerful and the disempowered agree and will agree that the
international community must act together, successfully to confront this
situation, and therefore the threat and challenge of poverty and
underdevelopment.
However, the disempowered, who are also the poor of the world, will also
make the additional determination that poverty and underdevelopment
constitute the central and principal threat and challenge that human
civilisation faces.
They will make the determination that because they are the daily victims
of deprivation and want, which claim lives of millions every year,
translating into cold statistics about shortened life expectancy,
deprivation and want are central and principal threat and challenge that
humanity faces, necessitating changes in the global system of governance
effectively to respond to this reality.
But because they are powerless, these billions, the overwhelming
majority of the same humanity that needs to eat, to drink water, to be
protected from the elements, to dream, to love, to laugh, to play, to
live, will have no possibility to persuade this Organisation, mockingly
described in the Millennium Declaration as "the most universal and most
representative organisation in the world", to translate what they have
concluded, into obligatory injunctions, issued by this Organisation,
which all member nations will have to accept and implement.
If, for a moment, we resist the temptation to speak in parables or in
tongues, for fear that we might be punished for telling the truth, we
must say that all this produces a stark and simple reality that reflects
the distribution of power and wealth in contemporary human society.
The wealthy and powerful feel mortally threatened by the fanatical rage
of the terrorists, correctly. And they have the power both to respond to
this present and immediate danger with all the might of which they
dispose, and, because they are mighty, the possibility to determine for
all humanity that what they decide is the principal threat they confront
is the principal threat that all humanity faces.
The poor and powerless feel threatened by a permanent hurricane of
poverty, which is devastating their communities as horrendously as
Hurricane Ivan destroyed the Caribbean island state of Grenada.
But, tragically, precisely because they are poor, they do not have the
means to respond to this present and immediate danger. Neither do they
have the power to determine for all humanity that what they decide is
the principal threat they confront, is also the principal threat that
all humanity faces, including the rich and powerful.
In the Millennium Declaration we spoke of the need to implement
"policies and measures, at the global level, which correspond to the
needs of developing countries and economies in transition and are
formulated and implemented with their effective participation."
Perhaps the mistake we made was to assume that the contemporary
distribution of power in human society would permit of this outcome,
such that regardless of this fundamental consideration, it would be
possible for the concerns of the poor to take precedence on the global
agenda and the global programme of action.
We comforted or perhaps deluded ourselves with the thought that this
Organisation is "the most universal and most representative organisation
in the world", afraid to ask the question - is it?
Every year many of us who have spoken and will speak from this rostrum
make an annual pilgrimage to this great and vibrant city to plead the
cause of the poor of the world, hopeful that this time our voices will
be heard. Every year, after a few days, we pick up our bags to return to
the reality of our societies, whose squalor stands out in sharp contrast
to the splendour of New York and this majestic precinct that constitutes
the headquarters of the United Nations Organisation.
In the aftermath, resolutions are passed. Again and again our Permanent
Representatives, the Excellencies with Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Powers, report that the resolutions oblige us to act to thwart the
deadly plans of murderous terrorist gangs. Again and again their
Excellencies report that yet another appeal has been made to the mighty
and the lowly alike, voluntarily to respond to the cries of the wretched
of the earth.
Your Excellency, President Jean Ping, we are truly proud and inspired by
the fact that you preside over the proceedings of this 59th General
Assembly, because we know that you will discharge your obligations as a
son of the poor of the world should. We are moved by the fact that you
had as your predecessor, President Julian Hunte, who also understood
intimately what has to be done to ensure that the United Nations
becomes, in reality, "the indispensable common house of the entire human
family."
As an Israeli said to us at our own headquarters in Pretoria a fortnight
ago, it is perhaps time that we the poor and powerless abandon our
wheelchairs and begin to walk unaided. Perhaps this will help to build
the social order of which Hammurabi and the Honourable Kofi Annan spoke,
in which right would make, might and not might, right.
I thank you for your attention.
Issued by: The Presidency
22 September 2004
