[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 126 (Tuesday, September 25, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1716-E1718]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SPEECH BY U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN M. SPRATT, JR.

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 25, 2001

  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, as the Congress continues to move forward 
following the horrific and tragic events of September 11, 2001, I would 
like to insert for the Record a recent and I think timely speech given 
by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
  Mr. Annan's speech is about the contributions and vision of former 
U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. While the speech was given on 
September 6th, five days before the attacks, I believe it provides for 
interesting reading as we examine our notions of international security 
and multi-lateral cooperation.

                 Dag Hammarskjold and the 21st Century

                            (By Kofi Annan)

       As Secretary-General of the United Nations, I have to give 
     many speeches, and even quite a few lectures. But I can think 
     of no invitation to speak that is a greater honour, or a 
     greater challenge, than this one.
       It will not surprise you to hear that Dag Hammarskjold is a 
     figure of great importance for me--as he must be for any 
     Secretary-General. His life and his death, his words and his 
     action, have done more to shape public expectations of the 
     office, and indeed of the Organisation, than those of any 
     other man or woman in its history.
       His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and 
     single-minded devotion to duty, have set a standard for all 
     servants of the international community--and especially, of 
     course for his successors--which is simply impossible to live 
     up to. There can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-
     General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than 
     to ask himself, ``how would Hammarskjold have handled this?''
       If that is true for any Secretary-General, how much more so 
     for one of my generation, who came of age during the years 
     when Hammarskjold personified the United Nations, and began 
     my own career in the UN system within a year of his death.
       And how much more true, also, for one who has the special 
     relationship that I do with this, his home country!

[[Page E1717]]

       So you see, it is quite a solemn thing for me to give this 
     lecture, especially so close to the 40th anniversary of 
     Hammarskjold's death. And I feel all the more solemn about it 
     coming here, as I do, directly from the part of Africa where 
     he met that death--and where, 40 years later, the United 
     Nations is again struggling to help restore unity and peace 
     to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
       I can tell you that the Congolese have never forgotten Dag 
     Hammarskjold. Four days ago, during my visit to the Congo, I 
     met with representatives of the parties involved in the 
     Inter-Congolese Dialogue. Their spokesman began the meeting 
     by telling me how much they appreciated the late Secretary-
     General's dedication, and the fact that he gave his life for 
     peace in their country. And he asked us to pay tribute to 
     Hammarskjold's memory by observing a minute of silence. I 
     found it very moving that people could feel like that about 
     him after 40 years.
       In Zambia, too--which, as you know, was where he actually 
     died-- Hammarskjold's death is commemorated annually. The 
     Zambian government, together with your own and with the 
     United Nations system, has launched a ``living memorial'', 
     which includes a programme to educate young Africans as 
     ``messengers of peace'', as well as a Centre for Peace, Good 
     Governance and Human Rights. There could be no better way to 
     commemorate him than by promoting these ideals, which he held 
     so dear.
       If Dag Hammarskjold were to walk through that door now, and 
     ask me what are the main problems the United Nations is 
     dealing with today, I could easily answer in a way that would 
     make him think nothing much had changed.
       I could talk to him not only about the Congo, but about the 
     Middle East, or Cyprus, or the relations between India and 
     Pakistan, and it would all seem very familiar.
       But I could also tell him things that he would find very 
     unfamiliar--though some would surprise him less than others, 
     and some would gratify him more than others.
       He would probably be relieved, but not surprised, to hear 
     that China is now represented at the United Nations by the 
     government that actually governs the vast majority of Chinese 
     people.
       It would surprise him much more to learn that the Soviet 
     Union no longer exists. But he could only be pleased to find 
     that there is no longer an unbridgeable ideological 
     difference between the permanent members of the Security 
     Council.
       He might be struck by the number of conflicts the United 
     Nations is dealing with today that are within, rather than 
     between, States--though the experience of the Congo would 
     have prepared him for this--and also by the number of 
     regional organisations that have developed as partners for 
     the UN in different parts of the world.
       I feel sure, in any case, that he would be pleased to see 
     the way United Nations peacekeeping has developed, from the 
     model that he and Lester Pearson so brilliantly improvised in 
     1956 to something much more diverse and complex, which is 
     often more accurately described as ``peace building''.
       And I imagine he would be equally impressed by the wide 
     range of issues that the United Nations is now called upon to 
     face outside the traditional security arena--from climate 
     change to HIV/AIDS.
       He would be gratified, and perhaps not all that surprised, 
     to hear that human rights and democracy are now generally 
     accepted as world norms--though he might well be distressed 
     to see how far, in many countries, the practice still falls 
     short of the rhetoric.
       He would definitely be distressed to learn that, within the 
     last decade, genocide had again disfigured the face of 
     humanity--and that well over a billion people today are 
     living in extreme poverty. I think he would see preventing 
     the recurrence of the former, and putting an end to the 
     latter, as the most urgent tasks confronting us in this new 
     century.
       He would no doubt be impressed by the speed and intensity 
     of modem communications, and momentarily confused by talk of 
     faxes and sat-phones--let alone e-mails and the Internet. But 
     I'm sure he would be quick to grasp the advantages and 
     disadvantages of all these innovations, both for civilisation 
     as a whole and for the conduct of diplomacy in particular.
       What is clear is that his core ideas remain highly relevant 
     in this new international context. The challenge for us is to 
     see how they can be adapted to take account of it.
       One idea which inspired all his words and actions as 
     Secretary-General was his belief that the United Nations had 
     to be a ``dynamic instrument'', through which its Members 
     would collectively ``develop forms of executive action''.
       During his time in office he became increasingly sensitive 
     to the fact that some Member States did not share this 
     vision, but regarded the United Nations as only ``a static 
     conference machinery for resolving conflicts of interests and 
     ideologies with a view to peaceful coexistence''.
       In the Introduction to his last Annual Report--a 
     magisterial work, which reads almost as if he was consciously 
     writing his political testament--Hammarskjold argued that 
     those who regarded the Organization in this way were not 
     paying adequate attention to certain essential principles of 
     the Charter.
       He showed that the Charter clearly implies the existence of 
     ``an international community, for which the Organization is 
     an instrument and an expression''. The overriding purpose of 
     this community was to save succeeding generations from the 
     scourge of war, and to do this it had to follow certain key 
     principles.
       These were:
       First, ``equal political rights''--which encompassed both 
     the ``sovereign equality'' of all Member States, in Article 2 
     of the Charter, and ``respect for human rights and 
     fundamental freedoms'', in Article 1.
       Second, ``equal economic opportunities''--spelt out in 
     Article 55 as the promotion of ``higher standards of living, 
     full employment, and conditions of economic and social 
     progress and development'', as well as ``solutions of 
     international economic, social, health, and related 
     problems''.
       Third, ``justice''--by which he meant that the 
     international community must be ``based on law . . . with a 
     judicial procedure through which law and justice could be 
     made to apply''.
       And finally the prohibition of the use of armed force, 
     ``save in the common interest''.
       These principles, Hammarskjold argued, are incompatible 
     with the idea of the United Nations as merely a conference or 
     debating chamber--as indeed is the authority the Charter 
     gives to its principal organs, and particularly to the 
     Security Council, which clearly has both legislative and 
     executive powers.
       The context in which he put forward these arguments was, of 
     course, the Cold War, and particularly the Soviet campaign 
     against him during the Congo crisis of 1960-61.
       That campaign is happily long past. But we still face, from 
     time to time, attempts by Member States to reduce the United 
     Nations to a ``conference mechanism''.
       Those attempts no longer come systematically from one 
     particular ideological camp. Instead, they tend to vary 
     according to the subject under discussion.
       Broadly speaking, industrialised countries remain reluctant 
     to see the United Nations act on Hammarskjold's second 
     principle--the promotion of ``equal economic opportunities''. 
     And the governments of some other countries are equally loath 
     to see it actively promote ``respect for, and observance of, 
     human rights and fundamental freedoms for all''.
       In both cases, I believe the Secretary-General has no 
     choice. He has to follow in the footsteps of Hammarskold, 
     upholding the right and duty of the United Nations to pursue 
     the aims laid down for it by the Charter.
       Of course there is always a need for negotiation and 
     discussion on the appropriate forms of action. But the United 
     Nations will fail in its duty to the world's peoples, who are 
     the ultimate source of its authority, if it allows itself to 
     be reduced to a mere ``static conference'', whether on 
     economic and social rights or on civil and political ones.
       The same applies to Hammarskjold's exalted view of the 
     ``international civil servant'', which he also pursued in 
     that last annual report, and in a lecture given that same 
     summer at Oxford University.
       His argument here was that the people charged with carrying 
     out the executive functions of the United Nations could not 
     be neutral in relation to the principles of the Charter. Nor 
     could they be regarded, or allowed to regard themselves, as 
     nominees or representatives of their own nations. They had to 
     represent the international community as a whole.
       Here too, Hammarskjold based his argument on a very careful 
     reading of the Charter itself--in this case Articles 100 and 
     10 1.
       Article 100 forbids the Secretary-General or any of his 
     staff either to seek or to receive instructions from States, 
     And Article 101 prescribes ``the highest standards of 
     efficiency, competence, and integrity'' as ``the paramount 
     consideration in the employment of the staff''.
       Once again, Hammarskjold was arguing in the context of the 
     Cold War, in which first one side and then the other had 
     tried to insist on the right to be represented, within the 
     Secretariat, by people who were loyal to its political or 
     ideological point of view.
       Again, the context has changed, and I am glad to say that 
     States today, while extremely keen to see their nationals 
     appointed to senior positions, no longer seek--or at least, 
     not in the same way--to exercise political control over them, 
     once appointed.
       But the principle of an independent international civil 
     service, to which Harnmarskjold was so attached, remains as 
     important as ever. Each successive Secretary-General must be 
     vigilant in defending it, even if, on occasion, changing 
     times require us to depart from the letter of his views, in 
     order to preserve the spirit.
       To give just one example: Hammarskjold insisted that the 
     bulk of United Nations staff should have permanent 
     appointments and expect to spend their whole career with the 
     Organisation.
       That may have been appropriate in his time. It is less so 
     now that the role of the United Nations has expanded, and 
     more than half of our employees are serving in missions in 
     the field. This is a development which Hammarskjold would 
     surely have welcomed, since it reflects a transition from the 
     ``static conference'' model to the ``dynamic instrument'' 
     model which he so strongly believed in.
       But what is clear is that his ideal of the United Nations 
     as an expression of the international community, whose staff 
     carry out decisions taken by States collectively rather than 
     bending to the will of any one of them, is just as relevant 
     in our times as in his.
       And that, of course, has very important implications for 
     the role of the Secretary-General himself.

[[Page E1718]]

       Hammarskjold pointed out that Article 99 of the Charter--
     which allows the Secretary-General, on his own initiative, to 
     bring matters to the Security Council's attention when in his 
     view they may threaten the maintenance of international peace 
     and security--makes him clearly a political rather than a 
     purely administrative official.
       In practice, successive Secretaries-General, including 
     Hammarskjold, have invoked this article very sparingly. I 
     myself have never yet found it necessary to do so. But the 
     fact that the Secretary-General has this power crucially 
     affects the way he is treated by the Security Council, and by 
     the Member States in general.
       Few people now question the responsibility of the 
     Secretary-General to act politically, or to make public 
     pronouncements on political issues.
       In fact, the boot today is if anything on the other foot: I 
     find myself called on to make official statements on almost 
     everything that happens in the world, from royal marriages to 
     the possibility of human cloning!
       I do my best to satisfy this demand with due respect for 
     the decisions of the Security Council and General Assembly. 
     But those bodies would find it very strange if on each 
     occasion I sought their approval before opening my mouth!
       Their members can, and do, take exception to some of my 
     statements--and thank goodness they do. There must be freedom 
     of speech for governments, as well as for international 
     officials! But they do not question my right to make such 
     statements, according to my own understanding of the purposes 
     and principles of the United Nations as set out in the 
     Charter.
       No doubt Dag Hammarskjold would also disagree with some of 
     the specific positions I have taken. But I suspect he would 
     envy me the discretion I enjoy in deciding what to say. And I 
     have no doubt he would strongly endorse the principle that 
     the Secretary-General must strive to make himself an 
     authentic and independent voice of the international 
     community.
       What he might not have foreseen is the way our concept of 
     that community has developed in recent years. In his time it 
     was essentially a community of separate nations or peoples, 
     who for all practical purposes were represented by States.
       So if we go back to the things about today's world that we 
     would have to explain to him, if he unexpectedly joined us 
     now, probably the most difficult for him to adjust to would 
     be the sheer complexity of a world in which individuals and 
     groups of all kinds are constantly interacting--across 
     frontiers and across oceans, economically, socially and 
     culturally--without expecting or receiving any permission, 
     let alone assistance, from their national governments.
       He might well find it difficult to identify the precise 
     role, in such a world, of a body like the United Nations, 
     whose Charter presupposes the division of the world into 
     sovereign and equal States, and in which the peoples of the 
     world are represented essentially by their governments.
       He might find that difficult--and if so, he would not be 
     alone! But I am convinced he would relish the challenge. And 
     I am sure he would not stray from his fundamental conviction 
     that the essential task of the United Nations is to protect 
     the weak against the strong.
       In the long term, the vitality and viability of the 
     Organization depend on its ability to perform that task, by 
     adapting itself to changing realities. That, I believe, is 
     the biggest test it faces in the new century.
       How would Hammarskjold approach that task?
       First of all he would insist, quite correctly, that States 
     are still the main holders of political authority in the 
     world, and are likely to remain so. Indeed, the more 
     democratic they become--the more genuinely representative of, 
     and accountable to, their peoples--the greater also will be 
     their political legitimacy. And therefore it is entirely 
     proper, as well as inevitable, that they will remain the 
     political masters of the United Nations.
       He would also insist, I am sure, on the continuing 
     responsibility of States to maintain international order--
     and, indeed, on their collective responsibility, which their 
     leaders solemnly recognised in last year's Millennium 
     Declaration, ``to uphold the principles of human dignity, 
     equality and equity at the global level''.
       And he might well say that, with a few honourable 
     exceptions, the more fortunate countries in this world are 
     not living up to that responsibility, so long as they do not 
     fulfill their longstanding commitments to much higher levels 
     of development assistance, to much more generous debt relief, 
     and to duty- and quota- free access for exports from the 
     least developed countries.
       But then he would also see that his own lifetime coincided, 
     in most countries, with the high watermark of State control 
     over the lives of citizens. And he would see that States 
     today generally tax and spend a smaller proportion of their 
     citizens' wealth than they did 40 years ago.
       From this he might well conclude that we should not rely 
     exclusively on State action to achieve our objectives on the 
     international level, either.
       A great deal, he would think, is likely to depend on non-
     State actors in the system--private companies, voluntary 
     agencies or pressure groups, philanthropic foundations, 
     universities and think tanks, and, of course, creative 
     individuals.
       And that thought would surely feed into his reflection on 
     the role of the United Nations.
       Can it confine itself, in the 21st century, to the role of 
     coordinating action by States? Or should it reach out 
     further?
       Is it not obliged, in order to fulfill the purposes of the 
     Charter, to form partnerships with all these different 
     actors? To listen to them, to guide them, and to urge them 
     on?
       Above all, to provide a framework of shared values and 
     understanding, within which their free and voluntary efforts 
     can interact, and reinforce each other, instead of getting in 
     each other's way?
       Perhaps it is presumptuous of me to suggest that this would 
     be part of Hammarskjold's vision of the role of the United 
     Nations in the 21st century--because it is, of course, my own 
     vision.
       No doubt if he were alive today he would offer us something 
     nobler and more profound.
       But I like to think, Ladies and Gentlemen, that what I have 
     just described would find some place in it.
       Thank you very much.

       

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