[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON OF IRELAND ON THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD COMMUNITY

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, during her visit to Boston earlier this 
month, Ireland's President, Mary Robinson, delivered a major address at 
Harvard on the future of the world community and the need for more 
effective international cooperation to deal with the challenges we 
face.
  In her address on March 11, she emphasized the opening words of the 
preamble of the U.N. Charter--``We the peoples of the United Nations, 
determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.'' 
She urged the western industrial nations of the world to renew and 
update that commitment today, by dealing more effectively with the 
opportunities and responsibilities of being part of the larger global 
community. She reminded us all of the importance of this aspect of our 
leadership. As she stated,

       We need a vision of the whole * * * that does not protect 
     some of us from an acceptance of crisis simply because we are 
     fortunate enough to be exempt from its immediate 
     consequences.

  She urged nations to learn to respect one another's diversity, so 
that we can draw strength and not weakness from our differences. She 
urged us to explore and share new approaches to economic development, 
alleviation of poverty, and protection of the environment.
  I believe that President Robinson's thoughtful and stimulating 
address will be of interest to all of us concerned with these issues 
and with the future of relations among nations, and I ask unanimous 
consent that it may be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[Irish Times/Harvard Colloquium, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 
                         Boston, Mar. 11, 1994]

           Address by the President of Ireland Mary Robinson


we the peoples of the united nations * * *--renewing that determination

       The preamble to the United Nations Charter, written in 
     1945, is an eloquent statement of its fundamental aims. It 
     begins with these words: ``We the peoples of the United 
     Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the 
     scourage of war.'' And it then sets out those aims. I want to 
     reflect on that preamble today, but with an emphasis on its 
     opening words. Even as I prepare to do so, I am fully aware 
     that I cannot claim a specialist wisdom on the United 
     Nations. On the other hand, I am also aware that I have the 
     true privilege of holding an elected office which is removed 
     from day-to-day policy issues. This in turn has allowed me 
     the advantage and responsibility of a different time-scale, 
     with all the opportunities for reflection that brings.
       The phrase ``We the peoples'' was so powerful in its time 
     because it made an assertion about common human purpose 
     following on an episode of terrible human suffering. It 
     looked boldly to the future. Now that future is our past. As 
     we look back to it today, we can see more clearly the 
     exceptional dangers of that past. We can also see clearly 
     those times in this century when the sense of crisis--widely 
     felt and widely shared--was sufficient to generate analysis 
     and institutions to avert further danger. I want to ask 
     today--in the light of those exceptional and powerful words--
     whether we can find our way again, as a community who share a 
     planet, to a sense of crisis which is sufficient to the 
     present danger.
       Fifty years ago today the world was at war. Millions had 
     died; millions had yet to die. As well as the tragegy of 
     death and suffering, there was an additional and terrible 
     spectacle: Some of the most creative aspects of human 
     intelligence--including its outcome in technology--had been 
     mobilized for the purposes of human destruction. Against that 
     background, and even while the outcome was still uncertain, 
     plans were already under way for a better world. The US, 
     British, Soviet and Chinese governments had agreed that they 
     would seek to establish ``a general international 
     organization, based on the principle of the sovereign 
     equality of peace-loving states.'' So began the process of 
     discussion which culminated with the signature of the Charter 
     of the United Nations, by fifty-one nations, at San Francisco 
     in June 1945.
       Now, half a century later, the United Nations has grown and 
     developed. Its membership has more than trebled. We are 
     preparing to celebrate its 50th anniversary. I know 
     that Governments are already at work, in New York and 
     elsewhere, debating possible change and reform in the 
     institutions and structures of the United Nations so that 
     it can better achieve its stated aim--the maintenance of 
     international peace and security. I do not propose here to 
     enter that debate, but I wish it every success. In fact I 
     do not intend to put forward proposals here as such, but 
     to evoke possibilities. Our world has changed; our 
     institutions have changed. In fifty years we have come a 
     long way and brought those institutions with us. And yet 
     as Dag Hammarskjold says in Markings: ``The longest 
     journey is the journey inwards.'' It is that inward 
     journey, of reflection and questioning and re-evaluation, 
     which concerns me this evening.
       But even an inward journey is affected by outward events. 
     There are three such events which seem to me to have shaped 
     our century and our world. The first was the cataclysm of the 
     First World War.
       The shift of consciousness wrought by that war was 
     enormous. You only have to look at a poet like Francis 
     Ledwidge, who came from County Meath in my own country to see 
     an instance of its sheer waste. In one of his summer poems he 
     writes ``soon the swallows will be flying south''. He had 
     hardly finished that poem before he died in France, at the 
     front, still in his twenties.
       Ledwidge is just one example. The loss of a whole 
     generation of young Europeans in that war had a huge effect. 
     The effect to restructure the world after that war--an effort 
     led by Woodrow Wilson--saw two ideas begin to find general 
     acceptance in international life. One was a concept noted in 
     the American Declaration of Independence--that peoples 
     everywhere should be free to determine their own future, to 
     form independent States if they so wished--in the general 
     recognition of the principle of self-determination. This in 
     turn brought to an end the world of Empire and colony, and 
     led to the emergence everywhere of the independent, 
     sovereign, territorial state as the unit of social and 
     political organization. We now live in a world of such 
     states, and it seems humanity is likely to organize itself 
     that way for some time to come.
       But the second idea which followed on that first one is 
     also important: the idea that a new order of independent 
     states needed to generate an institutional structure, so as 
     to avoid conflict and promote cooperation. For this purpose, 
     the League of Nations was set up. It was open to all States 
     and was based on a covenant, which for the first time in 
     history, set out a written constitution or code for relations 
     between States. But its flawed and weak structures were 
     finally swept away in the Second World War.
       The ferocity and scope of this war exceeded any other. Much 
     of the land surface of the planet, of its industrial power, 
     and of its technology was mobilized for the purposes 
     of destruction. Nazism, which had grown like a malignity 
     out of Western civilization, created a system more 
     uniquely and objectively evil than any seen before.
       The extent of human cruelty and degradation involved in the 
     concentration camps, and the process of revelation followed 
     by a horrified international realisation of what had 
     happened, marks the second defining event of our century. 
     When Immanuel Kant described the imperative of treating each 
     human being as an end and not a means, he proposed a standard 
     of humanity which was reversed in the terrible logic of the 
     death camps, which reduced each victim of the system to the 
     status and powerlessness of an object and a means.
       The camps forced new understandings on the world. Above 
     all, they showed the need for an accepted and internationally 
     validated code of human rights which all States subscribed 
     to, and which would set limits on what any State may do 
     internally.
       There was some symmetry to what happened after the First 
     and Second World Wars. Once again international society was 
     reconstituted, once again the family of more specialised 
     international organizations was grouped around it. The new 
     system, like the League of Nations, was based on the 
     sovereignty and equality of States--though the Charter did 
     accord a special role and responsibility to the five 
     permanent members of the Security Council. Indeed the Charter 
     contained an explicit provision precluding the organisation 
     from intervening in matters which were essentially within the 
     domestic jurisdiction of a State. It was a document with 
     careful provisions towards a balance between independence and 
     responsibility.
       I have put before you so far two of the major developments 
     which have affected the organisation of international life in 
     this century. One is the adoption world wide of the sovereign 
     territorial State, based on the principle of self-
     determination of peoples. The other is the growing 
     acceptance, following the horror of genocide, that State 
     sovereignty cannot be an absolute.
       These shifts of consciousness are hard to pinpoint, yet 
     deeply formative. I now come to another one which I can best 
     summarise in two conflicting pictures which most of us hold 
     in our minds and our memory. One of these pictures is of the 
     mushroom cloud--that terrible potential image of human 
     destruction which so many of us grew up with. The other is of 
     the marvellous and poignant picture of the planet earth, 
     photographed by the astronauts who landed on the moon--an 
     image saying as much about human creativity as the other said 
     about the human capacity for self-destruction.
       That first picture, of a cloud of death, became a symbol of 
     the Cold War. That time of competition--with its policy of 
     mutually assured destruction--is now over. But the risks 
     are still there and may be greater than before. The big 
     powers who held those weapons and were ready to destroy 
     each other were at least disciplined in the holding of 
     their arsenals. Now as they dismantle those arsenals other 
     dangers present themselves, the more ominous for being 
     more diffuse. If this century tells us anything it is that 
     knowledge once acquired cannot be suppressed. More and 
     more nations have laid their hands on the secrets of 
     death. And a world where small and medium-sized nuclear 
     powers multiply will be exceptionally dangerous.
       And dangerous, it must be said, not just to us, but to that 
     other image: of a globe, enamelled with blue oceans and 
     suspended in a black sky above its moon, a globe which is 
     hostage to our vision and our greed. While the photograph 
     itself may be an image of beauty and fragility, it is also a 
     warning to us of the limitations of our own environment, and 
     the vulnerability of our planet Earth. But emotive reactions 
     are not enough. We need a careful and painstaking 
     consciousness to suit the intense need this planet has for 
     our care and caution.
       Almost everything I have been speaking about so far reaches 
     back into the events of the past and yet is relevant too, to 
     the resources of the present--whether those resources are the 
     physical ones of the planet, or the attitudes with which we 
     meet the moment we find ourselves in. We look back through 
     the century, whether through the photographs of the 
     astronauts, or the pages of a history book, and we recognize 
     our world. The millennium lies ahead. What world will our 
     children look back on, and their children? Some patterns have 
     already been established, but it is our response to them and 
     the agenda we set which will determine our children's 
     prospects.
       To start with, there is a world population at present of 
     5\1/2\ billion. It took thousands of years, until the 19th 
     century, for there to be one billion. Then the process 
     accelerated. Even at the lowest projections it will have 
     increased to 7\1/2\ billion by about the year 2025. The world 
     will then have five times as many people as at the beginning 
     of this century.
       When you consider that 95 percent of that growth in the 
     next thirty years will take place in developing countries, 
     and that it will increasingly be an urban population, you can 
     see the effect of this on one of the other shaping factors of 
     our world which is its economy.
       It has become possible now to talk about a global economy 
     because the world's individual economies are increasingly 
     linked. The linkages are not just economic. With the growth 
     of information technology has come the phenomenon of 
     financial and stock markets operating in a unified fashion 
     around the world on a 24-hour basis. When New York closes, 
     Tokyo is already opening with all of the complex and delicate 
     reactions of one market to another. And with this 
     extraordinary theatre of action and information has come the 
     sobering fact that governments can no longer withstand--even 
     in concert--the collective force of individual investors.
       This increase in information is mirrored in the revolution 
     in communications. We live in a world where perceptions are 
     powerfully affected by television images and sometimes 
     disturbingly distanced by them. Satellite has made us all 
     one: it is a pitiless light showing us both our disasters and 
     our self-protection from them at one and the same time. But 
     the truth is that to make a complex present visible requires 
     an increase, not a decrease in our attention, however 
     difficult this is: I may say that in Ireland one of the ways 
     we pay attention is by our own strong and loyal memories of 
     images from our past: whether of our own Frederick Boland at 
     the UN breaking his gavel, or Frank Aiken urging the non-
     proliferation of nuclear weapons, long before that was an 
     easy argument to make, or by the sight of the difficult and 
     courageous contribution that Irish soldiers make to 
     peacekeeping.
       These factors--of population and economy and the images 
     which bring them to us--lead directly to a point which I 
     think is central: of how the world's resources--greater now 
     than ever before--are to be shared. As President of Ireland, 
     a country with rich agricultural land, and at the same time 
     an historic memory of famine, I stood in the camps in Somalia 
     and saw the real effect of poverty. And yet Somalia is a 
     local crisis which focuses an even more dreadful truth: that 
     1\1/2\ billion people--the same population which inhabited 
     the planet at the turn of the century--now live in that 
     absolute poverty. If there is one emphasis more than any 
     other I want to place in this speech it is this: that if we, 
     as human beings, accept--whether by non-engagement or 
     indifference or an evasion of information--the situation of 
     those people, then in my view we fail in our responsibility 
     to our humanity in a way which cannot be justified or 
     redeemed by any other action.
       Finally all these questions--of population, of economy and 
     of distribution--lead to the question of the planet itself. 
     That beautiful image, seen from space, is a more flawed and 
     ambiguous one if you look closely. And we should look 
     closely. We are losing our forests, our topsoil, our animals, 
     our habitats. We have polluted our air, our oceans, our 
     rivers. We have run through an ecological fortune even in a 
     single generation, and like many profligate heirs we hardly 
     know what we have spent and what we have left. But we can be 
     sure that one of the things we are squandering is our 
     children's futures.
       All the factors I have put before you lead to a single 
     question. How are we to manage this new world? The question 
     may be urgent and fresh to this generation. But it is in 
     effect the same question which in 1945, as the Second World 
     War was ending, confronted the leaders of the victorious 
     countries. They understood the dangers which another conflict 
     between States would present. Their answer to that 
     question was a new and better international organization 
     of States--the United Nations--which has now become 
     universal, and which needs to be strengthened and 
     developed further.
       I am now right back to where I began tonight with those 
     opening words of the U.N. charter: ``We the peoples of the 
     United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations 
     from the scourge of war.'' The choice of words, with its 
     implication that it was peoples rather than governments which 
     drafted the charter, was hardly more than a rhetorical device 
     at the time. I think it is vital that we take that phrase now 
     and refresh its meaning and give it a new vitality if we are 
     to answer that question about managing our world.
       Those two ideas of self-determination and individual 
     responsibility which were highlighted in the aftermath of two 
     world conflicts are once again undergoing a process of 
     change. Humanity may continue to organize itself into 
     sovereign states, but the factors I mentioned--including 
     limited resources and ever growing population--mean that 
     sovereignty is being increasingly eroded by global 
     developments. The complex inter-relationship of the world 
     structure demands that people everywhere are brought 
     increasingly into participation in decision-making.
       I want to suggest four ideas which I see as fundamental to 
     the way we should now organize and structure our relations in 
     this changing world. I can summarise them as follows: 
     connectedness, listening, sharing and participation.
       First connectedness: I put it to you that we need to see 
     this world as a single whole. We need to understand the 
     connectedness of its fate and our actions. Can we find a way 
     to achieve what has come to be called ``sustainable 
     development'' so that the larger human population of the next 
     century may be able to achieve a decent human life in ways 
     that are in harmony with the Earth, and which respect and 
     rely on its marvelous capacity for renewal? If we are to do 
     that, we need a vision of the whole that does not divide the 
     science of ecology from the social consequences of famine; 
     that does not protect some of us from an acceptance of crisis 
     simply because we are fortunate enough to be exempt from its 
     immediate consequences. The development of a sense of 
     connectedness is an intellectual responsibility which 
     requires that we understand the relationship of political, 
     social and environmental factors.
       The second fundamental idea is the ability to listen, and 
     it is a more complex task than it sounds. A distinguished 
     political scientist, Samuel Huntington, wrote recently of the 
     possibility that ``a clash of civilizations'' could be a 
     basis for future wars. We cannot allow this to happen. We 
     need to listen to the narrative of each other's diversities, 
     so that we can draw strength and not weakness from our 
     differences.
       But respect for diversity should not make us abandon the 
     ideas that there are universal values which ought to be 
     upheld as part of what it is to be human. We must hold on 
     to what has been achieved in human rights over the last 
     fifty years. We must continue to insist that certain 
     rights, which are grounded in human nature, as it has 
     developed and grown through history, are of universal 
     validity.
       At the same time, only by listening to each other's 
     diversities, can we be sure that what we call universal is 
     not in fact culture-bound. Our listening to the different 
     stories which emphasize our diversity is the surest way to 
     inform and strengthen our view of what is universal.
       The third fundamental idea which I put to you is that of 
     sharing. Abraham Lincoln asked if the Government of the 
     American nation could survive ``half slave and half free''. 
     Our world cannot and will not survive without conflict if one 
     fifth is prosperous and four-fifths subsists in various 
     degrees of misery.
       It may be that the idea of sharing is too simple. It 
     suggests an old model of development aid, given in 
     benevolence from one part of the world to the other, less 
     prosperous, part. It may not adequately reflect the fact that 
     there is a need for radical re-thinking leading to 
     fundamental structural change.
       In your part of the world and in mine--in Europe, North 
     America and parts of the Asia Pacific--we have developed 
     consumer societies which are more prosperous than any in 
     human history. And more wasteful. Are the developing 
     countries to take this is a model? It is estimated that by 
     the year 2000 half the growth in the world's gross product 
     will come from East Asia and half the world's population will 
     live there. As things stand, these countries cannot deny 
     their peoples a share in the consumption for which we have 
     been the chief role model. Why should they? But if they take 
     our way of life as exemplary, how is our planet to sustain 
     the consequences?
       The answer to this question can only come with a 
     fundamental and unswerving re-thinking of the society which 
     we have been creating, with its increasing transformation of 
     raw material into luxuries rather than necessities, its 
     heedless output of waste, its profligate use of resources.
       Another re-think may be imposed on developed societies such 
     as yours and mine in regard to the nature of work. Since the 
     industrial revolution work in our societies has been a basis 
     for income distribution and self-esteem. Now, however, it 
     seems societies such as ours face chronic unemployment--or at 
     the least a casualisation of work--as industry becomes more 
     automated and technology advances. At the same time there is 
     a growing tendency for industry to be highly mobile--to move 
     from West to East, North to South, in pursuit of lower wages.
       How do our societies handle these developments without 
     being disfigured by them? Must we resign ourselves to a 
     growing restlessness as social benefits in the West are 
     steadily cut and social protections are removed in an 
     ultimately futile effort to compete with lower wage rates 
     elsewhere? Or can we meet the challenge of re-thinking the 
     nature of work itself, and the role it plays in a developed 
     society where production is increasingly automated?
       In the world of the 21st century information, more than 
     ever, will be power. The setting up of information super-
     highways marks a new Industrial Revolution. I put it to you 
     strongly that the idea of sharing has a particular meaning in 
     this context. In the new information revolution education, 
     capital, technology and knowledge are powerful partners. 
     These resources, once linked together, will have an enormous 
     impact on how we live. But what of the developing world? Now 
     is the moment to make sure that the information highway does 
     not stretch laterally around the world from North America to 
     Europe and Japan but with no junction route to the South. 
     This is where the connectedness of our vision, as I suggested 
     earlier, comes into its own. This is where the idea of 
     listening becomes real. We must ensure that the developing 
     world does not watch at the window, envious of what it can 
     see, but unable to benefit from the communications 
     revolution.
       The fourth idea is fundamental to the way we live. It is 
     that of participation. The concept of doing things to and for 
     people is no longer a viable one.
       As you can appreciate, I have a particular interest in this 
     idea, because it opens the whole question of women in 
     society. I have just come from addressing a Woman's Forum and 
     speaking to the Commission on the Status of Women at the UN 
     in New York. I consider myself a witness to this matter, 
     because of President of Ireland I have seen the powerful 
     effect of women's groups and the dimension which women can 
     bring to the social and political life around them. In many 
     ways, these groups are the best text I know of the benefits 
     of developing a parity of participation by men and women
       The broader arena for participation is, of course, 
     democracy and political freedom. Over the past decade there 
     has been a remarkable growth in the process of 
     democratisation around the world. This process must continue 
     so that people are drawn more and more to participate in, and 
     make their voices heard, in the systems of government. The 
     model will not everywhere be the same.
       Indeed it would be wrong to think a certain kind of Western 
     democracy is always the most suitable model. But it is 
     important that the trend towards participation by people 
     everywhere in the system of government under which they live 
     should be encouraged.
       There is another way in which participation can thrive. 
     There has been a remarkable growth in recent years in non-
     governmental associations and groups, both within 
     countries and internationally. And even more remarkable 
     are the links and networking between such organizations. 
     This is a welcome development which has paralleled the 
     development of the UN itself. Forty-one NGOs participated 
     in the San Francisco Conference. Now there are nearly a 
     thousand with consultative status. The importance of these 
     organizations lies in their ability to speak for 
     individual concerns. I think we see this clearly in major 
     international conferences. What is so interesting--apart 
     from the main agenda of these conferences--is the vivid 
     and persuasive role played in them by these non-
     governmental organizations. Even where their advice may 
     not be accepted, their voices are heard. The Rio 
     Conference on the environment in 1992, the Vienna 
     Conference on Human Rights in 1993, and the Cairo 
     conference on population which will happen this Autumn and 
     the Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 offer a rare 
     theatre, with a world wide audience, for the exchange of 
     views. And the non-governmental organizations have made 
     full use of that stage.
       But we need to move from spectacle to action. So far our 
     main focus has been on the very fact that these conferences 
     have occurred and are occurring; that the arguments have been 
     made; that the coverage has happened. But neither the 
     conferences, nor the arguments, nor the coverage are enough 
     in themselves. They need to be taken into the very heart of 
     the decision-making processes of all those international 
     organisations which are part of the UN family. Once they are 
     and only then--can the consequences of so much discussion and 
     debate be felt. Finally this concept of participation in 
     decision-making has little meaning unless it can reach into 
     one of the most vital areas of all--where the resources of a 
     developing country can be almost crippled by the burden of 
     debt. And so there is a real need for the organisations of 
     financial governance such as the World Bank and the 
     International Monetary Fund to be true partners in these 
     processes of consultation and revision.
       I am aware--in everything I have said tonight--of how 
     fragile are the words we speak compared with the meanings we 
     want to convey. I particularly feel this in that gap which 
     opens up between information and urgency whenever the subject 
     is our future and the future of this planet. I want to convey 
     a sense of crisis; and yet to do that--and I am like many 
     others in this--I have to provide those statistics, those 
     arguments, those rational paragraphs which can actually defer 
     our sense of danger and immediacy. But there is a crisis. I 
     feel it. We need to feel it.
       Perhaps the real question is how are we to catch the 
     attention of this area of the world, which is still partly 
     sheltered from the crisis? When I had small children--and I 
     think many people in this room will have known the feeling--I 
     remember exactly how I felt if one of them strayed near 
     anything dangerous. I wanted to call out something 
     which would make them turn their heads, walk back and 
     avoid the danger. Thinking about this later it seems to me 
     that no parent, in that situation, ever finds exactly the 
     right words. But no parent ever fails to find the right 
     tone. It is the tone--the right and exact tone which 
     expresses danger--which we need now.
       In 1945 the framers of the UN Charter found that tone. The 
     world turned its head to those opening words. But at the that 
     time the sense of danger had been shared. The world had come 
     through a major disaster and was determined it must not be 
     allowed to happen again. Now we live in a time when so many 
     methods of expression--even the images of disaster which come 
     to us over television--encourage us not to pay attention. 
     They allow us that crucial distance from our own sense of 
     danger and engagement which may just be an inch too much for 
     what is happening to our planet and our future and the 
     futures of our children.
       In a way, a great deal of what I have been speaking about 
     today is language itself: its uses and its excuses, its 
     inadequacy, as we have come to use it, in conveying a true 
     picture of reality which will move us to action. We need a 
     new, exact and agreed language if we are to continue the 
     spirit of the 1945 charter, with its powerful address to 
     feeling and intent. We need to listen to warnings so as to 
     avoid the consequences of neglecting them. There is a 
     beautiful warning, written by the poet, Robert Lowell, in his 
     poem ``Waking Early Sunday Morning''--a poet who is so 
     associated with this city and this University. We need not 
     accept the darkness of his elegy, nor the depth of his 
     pessimism. But we must be deeply moved and stirred by the 
     vision which he evokes.

     Pity the planet, all joy gone
     From this sweet volcanic cone;
     Peace to our children when they fall
     In small war on the heels of small
     War--until the end of time
     To Police the earth, a ghost
     Orbiting forever lost
     In our monotonous sublime.

       With the tone of that warning in our ears, let us turn our 
     heads once again and re-dedicate ourselves:
       ``We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to take 
     responsibility for our world * * *''

                          ____________________