Statement by the New Zealand permanent representative (Mr Michael Powles) on
Item 10: Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organisation
Mr President,
I would like to place on record my delegation's gratitude to the Secretary-General for his comprehensive and thoughtful report on the work of the Organisation in document A/54/1. At this late hour I would like to comment briefly on just two aspects. As our President suggested in his summing up of the General Debate last Saturday, the subject of humanitarian intervention which is addressed in the report and which the Secretary-General made the major theme of his statement at the beginning of the General Debate has provoked a good deal of discussion.
Many participants in the General Debate, including New Zealand's Foreign Minister the Rt Hon Don McKinnon, commented upon the Secretary-General's argument concerning the need to reconcile universal legitimacy and effectiveness in defence of human rights. It was my Minister's clear view that the Security Council had a duty to take appropriate action when confronted by humanitarian disasters, including genocide and the most serious crimes against humanity, and that such action should never be held hostage to the veto.
Massive abuses of human rights, whether in Rwanda in 1994, or in Kosovo earlier this year, or in the terror unleashed on the population of East Timor after they had exercised their free choice in the UN ballot at the end of August, have the potential to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security and are the proper business of the Council.
Notwithstanding this, a good deal has been said over the last two weeks about "national sovereignty" versus the "right of humanitarian intervention" and vice-versa. To my delegation this is a sterile debate and one that unfortunately has taken on much of the baggage of the North-South stand-off which bedevils so much of our work here. No useful conclusion is likely to come of it.
Mr President,
The way ahead is rarely illuminated by antagonism and particularly not by disputation of one highly abstract concept against another. We would rather put our faith in the common-sense and compassion of the people who are ultimately responsible for sending us here - our respective publics.
In this age of rapidly increasing inter-connectedness, there is a much wider awareness of events around the globe. Publics demand that their governments act through the Security Council, if necessary, to try to put a stop to outrageous, wide-scale abuses of human rights, wherever they may occur. And if the Security Council fails to act, it does indeed risk losing its reason for being in the eyes of our publics. It becomes irrelevant. This is the political reality.
The challenge for us at the United Nations is to ensure that the Charter is implemented in such a way as to meet the realistic (I would underline realistic) expectations of "We the Peoples", in whose name the Charter is written.
Mr President,
Finally and on quite a different aspect of the Secretary-General's report I would like to compliment him on his account of the management of change in the Organisation over the past year (in section VI of the document). We are fully supportive of the Secretary-General's efforts which have already delivered tangible improvements in the overall management of the United Nations. And we look forward to continued development of the results-based budgeting approach including the prototype budget to be submitted shortly.
Thank you Mr President.
