It is
a privilege to speak to the General Assembly today on
behalf of the United States.
A half-century ago the General Assembly first met
here in New York, across the river in a converted skating
rink at Flushing Meadows. In those modest surroundings
our predecessors began to put in place an ambitious
framework that they hoped would keep the peace as
successfully as they had prosecuted the war.
In the years since, the United Nations has helped
bring peace, prosperity and hope to countless people
around the world. Technological change has brought
nations closer together than the founders of the United
9

Nations could possibly have foreseen. The United Nations
itself has been challenged in unforeseen ways. It has had to
manage complex humanitarian emergencies, from civil wars
to mass movements of refugees to health epidemics. This
evolution has placed great strains on the Organization and
has revealed the necessity for far-reaching changes in how
it is run.
The Clinton Administration has vigorously made the
case to our Congress and our people for continued
American leadership at the United Nations. The United
States made a commitment to the United Nations Charter
50 years ago, and we are determined to keep our
commitment, including our financial obligations.
We will always remember that for millions of people
around the world, the United Nations is far from a faceless
institution. It is, as Harry Truman once said,
“a case of food, a box of school books; it is a doctor
who vaccinates children; it is an expert who shows
people how to raise more rice and more wheat.”
To millions more around the world, it is the difference
between peace and war.
Economic and social development, as well as the
protection of human rights, remain central to the United
Nations mission. But the United Nations must change to
meet new needs more effectively. When money is wasted
in New York, Geneva or Vienna, when time is lost in
bureaucratic inertia, the people who pay the price are those
most vulnerable to famine, disease and violence.
It is time to recognize that the United Nations must
direct its limited resources to the world’s highest priorities,
focusing on the tasks that it performs the best. The United
Nations bureaucracy should be smaller, with a clear
organizational structure and sharp lines of responsibility.
Each programme must be held to a single simple standard:
it must make a tangible contribution to the freedom,
security and well-being of real people in the real world.
In the last year, under the leadership of Secretary-
General Boutros-Ghali, the groundwork for substantial
change has been laid. The United Nations has an office
with the functions of an inspector general and a mandate to
crack down on waste and fraud. Under-Secretary-General
Joe Connor has embarked on an aggressive campaign to
improve the United Nations management culture, and we
fully support his good work. The United Nations Secretariat
has moved in the right direction by submitting a budget that
begins to restrain spending, and now this momentum for
reform must accelerate.
Let me propose a brief, concrete agenda for reform.
First, we must end United Nations programmes that
have achieved their purpose, and we must consolidate
programmes that overlap, especially in the economic and
social agencies. The United Nations has more than a
dozen organizations responsible for development,
emergency response and statistical reporting. We should
consider establishing a single agency for each of these
functions. We should downsize the United Nations
regional economic commissions. We should ensure that
the functions of the United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development do not duplicate those of the new
World Trade Organization (WTO), and we should adopt
a moratorium on big United Nations conferences once the
present series is completed, concentrating instead on
meeting the commitments of those conferences that we
have already held.
Secondly, we need to streamline the United Nations
Secretariat to make it more efficient, accountable and
transparent. Each part of the United Nations system
should be subject to the scrutiny of an inspector general.
The United Nations must not tolerate ethical or financial
abuses, and its managers should be appointed and
promoted on the basis of merit.
Thirdly, we should rigorously scrutinize proposals
for new and extended peace-keeping missions, and we
should improve the United Nations ability to respond
rapidly when new missions are approved. We must agree
on an equitable scale of peace-keeping assessments that
reflects fully today’s economic realities. And we should
have a unified budget for peace-keeping operations.
Finally, we must maintain the effectiveness of the
Security Council. Germany and Japan should become
permanent members, and we should ensure that all the
world’s regions are fairly represented, without making the
Council too large and unwieldy.
We welcome the formation of the high-level group
on reform, initiated under the leadership of the outgoing
President of the General Assembly, Mr. Essy. Our goal
must be that of a practical blueprint for United Nations
reform and to ensure that it is adopted before the General
Assembly finishes the work of its fiftieth session next
fall. The way forward is clear; we have already seen and
10

studied countless studies and reports. Now the time has
come to act on the best proposals.
As the Assembly knows, in my country there have
been serious efforts to curtail our support for the United
Nations. The President and I, and our entire Administration,
believe it would be reckless to turn away from an
Organization that helps mobilize the support of other
nations for goals that are consistent with American and
global interests. But to sustain support for the United
Nations among the American people and among the people
of other nations, it is not enough that we defend the
institution. The best argument against retreat is further
reform. Tangible progress in that direction will help us win
the battle for United Nations support that we are waging in
the United States.
The United Nations must emerge from the reform
process better able to meet its fundamental goals, including
the preservation of peace and security. From Korea to the
Persian Gulf to Haiti, the United Nations has provided a
mandate to its Members as they carried out their
responsibilities. The United Nations own Blue Helmets
have helped nations create the basic conditions of peace in
some of the most difficult situations imaginable around the
world, even though they have not always achieved their
intended purpose.
Recently, a young Haitian father was asked what the
peace-keeping forces had achieved in his country. He
answered,
“We walk freely. We sleep quietly. There are no
men who come for us in the night.”
In Haiti, as, for example, in Cambodia, Mozambique and El
Salvador, the United Nations has shown that peace-keeping,
despite its limitations, has been an enormously useful
instrument.
One region where United Nations forces and the
international community have played a critical role is the
Middle East. Another historic milestone will be marked this
Thursday, in Washington, when Israel and the Palestinians
sign their agreement to implement phase two of the
Declaration of Principles. That agreement will bring to life
a goal first set many years ago in the Camp David accords:
to protect Israel’s security and to give Palestinians
throughout the West Bank control over their daily lives.
The international community and the United Nations must
continue to support this process, both diplomatically and
economically.
There is no question that the United Nations has
never undertaken a mission more difficult than the one in
the former Yugoslavia. The limitations of that mission are
all too well known, but we all must recognize that it has
provided relief for hundreds of thousands of people and
has saved literally thousands of lives. Today, diplomacy
backed by force has given the United States and the
international community an opportunity to move forward
on a track that is producing genuinely hopeful results. The
United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) are working effectively together to
try to bring peace to the region. On 8 September in
Geneva, the parties to the conflict accepted the
fundamental goal that the Security Council has often
expressed: the continuation of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina as a single State within its internationally
recognized borders. I will be meeting with the Foreign
Ministers of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia later today, and
at that time I will urge them — implore them — to
maintain the momentum towards peace and to establish
constitutional structures for Bosnia.
The framers of the Charter of the United Nations
created this institution to meet threats to peace and
security posed by aggression and armed conflict. Those
threats are still, unfortunately, very much with us. But
today, the world also faces a new set of security
challenges, including proliferation, terrorism, international
crime and narcotics, as well as the far-reaching
consequences of damage to the environment. These have
assumed a new and dangerous scope in a more
interdependent world. As President Clinton said in San
Francisco in June, the
“new forces of integration carry within them the
seeds of disintegration and destruction”.
While, as I said earlier, new technologies have
brought us closer together, they also have made it easier
for terrorists, drug dealers and other international
criminals to acquire weapons of mass destruction, to set
up cocaine cartels and to hide their ill-gotten gains. The
collapse of communism has shattered dictatorships, to be
sure, but it has also left the political and legal institutions
of newly liberated nations even more vulnerable to those
who seek to subvert them.
Although these threats are sometimes sponsored by
States, they increasingly follow no flag. Each of us must
vigorously fight these enemies on our own, but we will
never be truly secure until we effectively fight them
together. That is the new security challenge for the global
11

community, and it must be the new security mission for the
United Nations.
There is no single area in which the United Nations
can make a more significant contribution than in that of
non-proliferation. Fifty years ago, the United States was the
only country capable of making a nuclear bomb. Today
many countries have the technology that would enable them
to turn a fist-sized chunk of plutonium into a bomb as
small as a suitcase. That is one reason why more than 170
nations agreed, at a conference held here last May and
effectively chaired by Ambassador Dhanapala, to extend for
all time the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons. That is an achievement we must rejoice in but
also build on.
I should like to outline some steps in the field of
non-proliferation. First, we should have a comprehensive
test-ban treaty ready for signature by the time we meet here
next September. As President Clinton announced last
month, the United States is committed to a true zero-yield
test ban. We urge other nations to join us in that
commitment.
Secondly, we should immediately start negotiations on
a fissile material cut-off treaty. Those who have been most
vocal in calling for nuclear disarmament should recognize
that it is essential to ban future production of fissile
material for nuclear weapons.
Thirdly, we should push forward with the historic
reductions of the nuclear arsenals of the United States and
countries of the former Soviet Union. I call on the United
States Senate, as well as on the Russian Duma, to approve
the treaty on further reduction and limitation of strategic
offensive arms (START II) so that we can lock in deep cuts
in our strategic nuclear arsenals. In addition, Presidents
Clinton and Yeltsin are working together to ensure the
safety, transparency and irreversibility of nuclear-arms
reductions.
As part of this process, President Yeltsin will host a
nuclear safety and security summit in Moscow next spring.
This summit should have a very ambitious agenda,
including a declaration of principles on nuclear safety. We
look to this summit to address the worldwide problems of
nuclear-waste management, including those of ocean
dumping. The summit should also promote a plan of action
to safeguard nuclear materials, a plan that should include
new measures to prevent criminals and terrorists from
acquiring nuclear materials for use in weapons.
Finally, we should push for the earliest possible
entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
President Clinton has urged the United States Senate to
act promptly on its ratification, and to stop holding the
START II Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention
hostage to unrelated issues. The world has witnessed the
effects of poison gas too many times in this century — on
European battlefields during the First World War, in
Ethiopia and Manchuria during the 1930s, and against
Iranian soldiers and innocent Kurdish civilians in the
1980s. The Chemical Weapons Convention will make
every nation safer, and we need it now.
The United Nations is also playing an invaluable
role in focusing attention on pressing regional
proliferation problems. In Iraq, the United Nations Special
Commission (UNSCOM) and its Chairman, Rolf Ekeus,
continue to uncover horrific details about Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq developed a deadly
biological-weapons capacity hidden from view. It was
conducting research to turn some of the most toxic
substances known to man into weapons of war. We know
that Saddam succeeded in putting anthrax and botulism in
bombs and missile warheads. In December 1990, he
deployed these weapons, with every intention of using
them against the international coalition and innocent
civilians. He was dissuaded from doing so only by the
steadfast determination of the United States and the
international community.
In the light of what Ambassador Ekeus has
uncovered in Iraq, we can conclude only that for the last
four and a half years, Saddam Hussein has lied about the
full scope of Iraq’s weapons programmes. There should
be no easing of the sanctions regime against Iraq until its
Government complies with all the demands of the
Security Council and clearly demonstrates that it has
changed its ways.
The United Nations should also promote
responsibility and restraint in the transfer of conventional
weapons. At last year’s session of the General Assembly,
President Clinton proposed, and the Assembly approved,
the eventual elimination of anti-personnel mines. On my
recent trip to Cambodia, I saw the terrible damage these
hidden killers can do. This year, we will again call on
other countries to join us in putting an end to the export
of land-mines.
12

Two years ago, President Clinton called on the
international community to devise a true international
system governing the transfer of conventional weapons and
sensitive dual-use technologies. I am pleased that the
Russian Federation has joined with the United States and 26
other countries to agree on a common principle to control
the build-up of dangerous conventional arms. We hope to
activate this global regime, which is called the New Forum,
by the end of this year.
The proliferation of weapons worldwide has added a
disturbing dimension to another threat we all face: the
threat of international terrorism. Indeed, this year’s sarin
gas attack in Tokyo is a grim warning of what can happen
when terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction.
More nations are joining the fight against those
individuals and groups that attack civilians for political
ends. The United Nations has supported this effort in
important ways. The Security Council recognized the
importance of countering State-sponsored terrorism by
imposing sanctions against Libya for the bombing of Pan
Am 103 and UTA 772.
Terrorists must be treated as criminals and there must
be no place where they can hide from the consequences of
their acts. States that sponsor terrorists should feel the full
weight of sanctions that can be imposed by the international
community. Let us not deceive ourselves: every dollar that
goes into the Government coffers of a State-sponsor of
terrorism such as Iran helps pay for a terrorist’s bullets or
bombs. Iran’s role as the foremost State-sponsor of
terrorism makes its secret quest for weapons of mass
destruction even more alarming. We must stand together to
prevent Iran from acquiring such threatening capabilities.
The United States has taken a leading role in meeting
the international terrorist threat. We have intensified our
sanctions against Iran. Last January President Clinton issued
an Executive Order prohibiting financial transactions with
terrorist groups and individuals that threaten the Middle
East peace process. We are urging our Congress to tighten
our immigration and criminal laws to keep terrorists on the
run or put them behind bars.
The United States strongly supports the counter-
terrorism measures the G-7 and Russia announced at the
Halifax Summit, and we expect the G-8 Ministerial Meeting
on Terrorism in Ottawa to produce a concrete-action plan
to implement these measures that were adopted at the
Halifax Summit.
Other kinds of international crime also threaten the
safety of our citizens and the fabric of our societies. And
globalization brings new and frightening dimensions to
crime. The threat of crime is a particular menace to
young democracies. It weakens confidence in institutions,
preys on the most vulnerable in our societies and
undermines free-market reform.
Of course, every country must take its own measures
to combat these criminal threats. The Administration that
I represent is now completing a review of our approach
to transnational crime, a review that will lead to a
stronger, more coordinated attack on this problem.
To help other States deal with criminal threats, the
United States and Hungary have created the International
Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest to train police
officers and law-enforcement officials from Central
Europe and the States of the former Soviet Union. We are
providing similar help bilaterally, and through the United
Nations International Drug Control Programme, to those
countries whose laws are challenged by international drug
cartels.
A particularly insidious form of crime and corruption
is money-laundering. All nations should work together to
implement the recommendations of the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to
attack this insidious money-laundering. The nations of this
hemisphere should also advance the anti-money-
laundering initiative introduced at last December’s
Summit of the Americas. Together, we must work to
squeeze the dirty money out of the global financial
system.
Through the United Nations conventions on drugs
and crime the international community has set strong
standards that we must now act to enforce. We call on
Member States which have not already joined the 1988
drug Convention to do so promptly, and we call on those
countries which have approved the Convention to move
quickly to implement its important provisions.
We are also increasingly aware that damage to the
environment and unsustainable population growth threaten
the security of our nations and the well-being of our
peoples. Their harmful effects are evident in famines,
infant mortality rates, refugee crises, and ozone depletion.
In places like Rwanda and Somalia, for example, they
contribute to civil wars and emergencies that can be
resolved only by extremely costly international
intervention. We must carry out the commitments we
13

made last year at the Cairo Conference, as well as the
important commitments made at the Rio Conference three
years ago.
Never have our problems around the world been more
complex. It has never been more evident that these
problems affect all nations, developed and developing alike.
Only by working together can we effectively deal with the
new threats we all face that I have outlined here today.
That is why in this fiftieth anniversary year we must
shape the United Nations agenda as if we were creating the
institution anew. Just as the founders of the United Nations
devised a new framework to deter aggression and armed
conflict, the United Nations, in particular the Security
Council, must now assign the same priority to combating
the threat posed by proliferation, by terrorism, by
international crime, by narcotics and by environmental
pollution. We should dedicate our efforts in the United
Nations and elsewhere to turning our global consensus
against these threats into concrete and effective action. We
must renew and reform the United Nations not for its sake,
but for our own.


Mr. President, I wish to
extend to you, on behalf of the South African delegation,
my sincere congratulations on your election to the
presidency of the fiftieth session of the General Assembly.
Your election demonstrates the high regard in which the
international community holds your country. I should also
like to express our deep gratitude to your predecessor, His
Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, a brother from Africa and the
Foreign Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, who presided over the
forty-ninth session with great wisdom. I should also like to
express to the Secretary-General, His Excellency
Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, our continued confidence in
his guidance of the Organization.
A half century ago representatives from 50 countries
met at San Francisco to draft the United Nations Charter,
the Declaration of Human Rights and the Statute of the
International Court of Justice. For the United Nations to
have survived for a period of 50 years in an imperfect
world is indeed a milestone and a tribute to the visionary
steps taken half a century ago towards the creation of a
better world.
South Africa’s involvement with the United Nations
goes back to the very conception and birth of this
illustrious body. The then-Prime Minister of South Africa,
Field Marshal J. C. Smuts, helped to draft the Preamble
to the Charter of the United Nations. In the Preamble
many lofty ideas were expressed, among which were the
following:
“to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in
the dignity and worth of the human person, in the
equal rights of men and women and of nations large
and small”.
How ironic that those in power in South Africa since
then, and until last year, acted in a precisely contrary
spirit. The United Nations contributed significantly in
bringing about change in South Africa. Through
perseverance and commitment, the United Nations
assisted us in our struggle to achieve democracy. Our
General Assembly 22nd plenary meeting
Fiftieth session 13 October 1995
reward is its reward. I should like again to express the
gratitude of both the people and the Government of South
Africa for its foresight and courage.
Just over a year ago, on 23 June 1994 to be precise,
I had the honour to address the Assembly on behalf of the
people and the Government of the Republic of South
Africa. On that occasion, which marked South Africa’s
resumption of its participation in the work of the General
Assembly of the United Nations, we were filled with joy
and pride at the peaceful transition of South Africa into a
united, non-racial, democratic and non-sexist society.
In the intervening months I have travelled to many
countries, visited with many foreign ministers and met with
several Heads of State or Government. We spoke of the
miracle that is South Africa. We shared our thoughts and
experiences on the road to that miracle. In that context, we
continue to encourage those who seek change for a better
life to stand fast in their belief.
As the representative of a Member of the United
Nations, I should like to reassure you of our belief in and
support for the purposes and principles of the Charter of the
Organization.
The events in April 1994 in South Africa marked a
break with the past as well as a commitment to the future,
placing a heavy burden on us. As a young democracy, we
are ready to meet the challenge. South Africa will meet this
challenge with a firm commitment to the promotion of
national welfare, prosperity and security, with a firm
commitment to the strengthening of cooperation in the
pursuit of the economic development and security of the
southern African subregion, with an active commitment to
peace, stability and good governance within the African
region and elsewhere, with a firm commitment to South-
South cooperation and with a commitment to responsible
international citizenship.
The Southern African Development Community
(SADC) was conceived in the struggle for freedom in
southern Africa and born of the courage of its leaders in
setting out to create a new reality.
The liberation of South Africa and the end of southern
Africa’s destabilization brought great opportunities for the
development of our subregion. We must now translate those
hopes into reality. In accordance with the Abuja Treaty, we
must transform the southern African region into one of the
reliable building blocks on which Africa’s economic
regeneration will be built.
Our greatest need today is to eradicate the scourge
of poverty afflicting the great mass of our people. Only
then can we fulfil the dream of Africa’s liberation in the
health, happiness and well-being of its children.
The mission of SADC reflects the reality that
southern Africa has long since passed the stage of
lamenting the privations of the past. The challenge is to
find within ourselves the resources to overcome this
legacy, with the cooperation of the international
community. We need to adapt to the demands of a rapidly
changing world economy and to develop the skills needed
to compete internationally.
South Africa’s main objective is to play a
constructive role in bringing peace and stability to the
region. We are totally committed to the utilization of
preventive diplomacy, peace-keeping and peacemaking,
through the use of regional and multilateral mechanisms.
In this context, South Africa participated with others
in the resolution of the conflict in Lesotho and provided
logistical support for the elections in Mozambique. Our
support for United Nations resolutions and actions
regarding Angola and the Western Sahara should also be
seen in that light.
As an elected member of the Central Organ of the
Conflict Resolution Mechanism of the Organization of
African Unity (OAU) from June 1994 to June 1995, we
participated in several missions to Burundi. South Africa
was part of a special four-member ministerial mission
elected to assess the nature and the scope of the Burundi
conflict with a view to encouraging and assisting the
Burundians to resolve their differences and end that
conflict. We continue to participate in the Mechanism as
an invited observer.
In view of the desperate situation in the former
Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, it has become imperative for
States to cooperate as far as possible with the respective
ad hoc criminal tribunals that have been created for those
territories. In that regard, my country has made available
some of its most talented jurists to assist.
These situations have demonstrated anew the real
need for the establishment of a permanent international
criminal court. This issue has been revitalized in the past
few years, and a window of opportunity now exists to
finally bring the court into existence. It is my sincere
hope that significant progress will be made in that regard
during this session of the General Assembly.
2
General Assembly 22nd plenary meeting
Fiftieth session 13 October 1995
As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the United
Nations, mankind is still faced with political instability,
dictatorship, corruption, civil war, millions of refugees and
internally displaced persons, persistent economic decline
and continued impoverishment.
In the past year, the international political climate has
experienced a succession of changes which have brought
both hope and a certain measure of despair to mankind.
Hope has, however, remained a beckoning beacon bringing
about a sense of confidence in the future. We were
saddened by events in Somalia, but rejoiced at the transition
in Haiti and El Salvador. We despair at the tragedy that is
Bosnia, yet hope that the emerging signs of a solution will
come to fruition.
In this spirit, allow me to congratulate the peoples of
Israel and Palestine on having reached yet another landmark
in their journey towards a lasting settlement. We encourage
and support the Middle East peace process.
The issues of proliferation and disarmament, in
particular nuclear disarmament, are among the major
questions that have been facing the international community
in recent times. At the historic 1995 Review and Extension
Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), all those present
agreed to exercise the utmost restraint pending the entry
into force of a comprehensive test-ban treaty. We are of the
view that the recent tests conducted by two nuclear-weapon
States are retrogressive steps in the international
community’s endeavour to ban nuclear testing. We believe
that these tests will negatively affect the outcome of work
on a comprehensive test-ban treaty. The South African
Government is strongly opposed to these and any further
nuclear tests being conducted, and calls upon those States
to cease testing, so as to enhance international efforts
towards non-proliferation and disarmament. We call upon
them to honour both the letter and the spirit of the
Principles and Objectives which they agreed to and helped
negotiate at the NPT Review and Extension Conference.
South Africa has dismantled its nuclear capability. South
Africa, for its part, has proven its commitment to nuclear
disarmament. Now it is the turn of others to manifest a
similar commitment.
South Africa notes with great satisfaction the progress
achieved thus far towards the establishment of an African
nuclear-weapon-free zone. We have been actively involved
in trying to find solutions to the outstanding issues, and we
trust that these hurdles can be overcome and the draft treaty
of Pelindaba can receive due consideration during this
session of the General Assembly. The draft treaty is
important as it would expand the non-nuclear-weapon
area of the globe considerably and would be a further step
towards the final goal of complete nuclear disarmament.
South Africa appeals to the nuclear-weapon States to
ensure that the draft treaty is concluded and the relevant
protocols signed.
Since the 1986 declaration of the Zone of Peace and
Cooperation of the South Atlantic, significant progress has
been made in the political, economic, scientific, technical
and cultural spheres to further the objectives of the Zone.
Only relatively few obstacles remain. We hope to advance
this endeavour when the next meeting of participating
nations takes place in Cape Town in March 1996.
On 13 September 1995 South Africa became the
thirty-seventh State party to the Convention on the
Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling
and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction.
On the same day South Africa also acceded to the
Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of
Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed
to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate
Effects. The ratification of the chemical weapons
Convention again underlines the commitment of the
Government of National Unity to the non-proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction. South Africa’s accession to
the Convention on certain conventional weapons
underlines my Government’s commitment to the
elimination of the suffering that is caused by the scourge
of war. South Africa has, for this reason, decided to
extend its moratorium on the export of land-mines by the
introduction of a permanent ban on the export or sale of
long-lived anti-personnel land-mines. Furthermore, on
30 August 1995 the Government of National Unity
approved the draft of a new conventional-arms-control
policy. A National Conventional Arms Control Committee
has been established and will function in accordance with
predetermined guiding principles and criteria to ensure
that arms trade and transfers conform to accepted
international practice.
As previously mentioned, the principal role of the
United Nations is to safeguard international peace and
security in order to implement universal respect for
human rights and to create conditions necessary for
sustainable development. Without peace, security and
human rights, sustainable development will be difficult to
achieve. Without development and respect for human
rights, international peace and security will continually be
threatened.
3
General Assembly 22nd plenary meeting
Fiftieth session 13 October 1995
As President Mandela stated in 1992,
“Our common humanity transcends the oceans
and all national boundaries. It binds us together in
common cause against tyranny, to act together in
defence of our very humanity. Let it never be asked of
any one of us what we did when we knew that
another was oppressed.”
Mankind should learn to act against all tyranny in a
unified manner through the United Nations. This should be
our basic aim for the future.
South Africa also wishes to call attention to the
activities of mercenaries, irrespective of their origin and
objectives. Their destabilizing activities cannot be tolerated.
We call on the international community and the United
Nations to be seized of this problem of mercenaries.
The women of South Africa have lived, in varying
degrees, under three forms of oppression, relating to race,
to class and to gender. One of the first steps towards
initiating positive change in the lives of all South African
women was the entrenchment of gender rights in our Bill
of Rights. It was with much pride that the South African
delegation took their seats at the Fourth World Conference
on Women, in Beijing. That was the first time South Africa
participated in a conference on women which focused on
the eradication of poverty, and equal access to education
and to health services. South Africa is fully committed to
implementing the Platform for Action adopted at that
Conference, which will serve as the impetus for a world of
equality, development and peace for all. In addition, our
Parliament has most recently approved South Africa’s
ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women, without any
reservations.
Years of apartheid rule have bequeathed the
overwhelming majority black population with a heavy
legacy of poverty, social disintegration and political
cleavages based on colour and ethnic animosities. It
therefore became the priority task of the South African
Government of National Unity to devise a national strategy
to address this catastrophic situation. A comprehensive and
multi-pronged developmental strategy known as the
Reconstruction and Development Programme is now being
implemented. The implementation of this Programme relies
primarily on the mobilization of domestic resources through
prioritization of budgetary resources, with a view to
addressing the huge material inequalities in such areas as
education, health, housing, infrastructure development and
land reform. It is a unique people-centred and people-
driven Programme, which seeks to translate into economic
benefit the political miracle in our country. At the very
heart of this Programme is the acknowledgement of the
inextricable interdependence between the need for
transparent, accountable and democratic governance of
our society and the imperative of dynamic economic
growth and sustainable development.
South Africa will host the ninth United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD IX)
from 26 April to 11 May 1996. This is an event which all
South Africans are looking forward to with great
expectation. Indeed, it is my pleasure to announce that
our preparations are well advanced and on course.
We attach great significance to UNCTAD IX for a
number of reasons. We believe that the rapid progress of
globalization and liberalization of the world economy has
underscored the relevance and importance of UNCTAD
as a United Nations institution with a strong development
mandate and perspective. We also believe that the
successful completion of the Uruguay Round of
negotiations and the resultant creation of the World Trade
Organization not only has stressed the validity and
relevance of UNCTAD, but has also reinforced the need
to retain and strengthen UNCTAD’s mandate as a policy-
oriented global intergovernmental forum on trade and
development issues. It is a forum where a strong
partnership for development between the developed and
the developing countries can, and must, be forged. While
there may be a need to streamline certain UNCTAD
activities, this should not lead to its demise. Without
UNCTAD, our world, especially the developing world,
would be the poorer.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my
Government’s satisfaction with the intergovernmental
process at the United Nations to draw up a United
Nations Agenda for Development. We believe that the
United Nations is the appropriate forum for the
elaboration of the Agenda for Development. The Agenda
for Development could open great possibilities for
development and for partnership between the developed
and the developing countries. It is for this reason that
South Africa is taking great interest in the work of the Ad
Hoc Open-ended Working Group of the General
Assembly on an Agenda for Development.
My Government has been following with great
interest the ongoing High-level Intergovernmental
Meeting on the Mid-term Global Review of the
4
General Assembly 22nd plenary meeting
Fiftieth session 13 October 1995
Implementation of the Programme of Action for the Least
Developed Countries. In this connection, I join others in
calling on the international community to devise a global
strategy to effectively address the debt question confronting
the least developed countries, and to use innovative
measures — whether it be official development aid, foreign
direct investment or multilateral financial assistance — to
arrest the decline of resources destined for the least
developed countries.
I would also like to call upon the international
community to vigorously pursue measures required to
successfully implement the United Nations New Agenda for
the Development of Africa in the 1990s. We are pleased in
that regard by the progress registered during the Economic
and Social Council’s session in Geneva, especially the high-
level segment, which was devoted to the aforementioned
Agenda. Of course, the challenge before the international
community is to find adequate resources to translate this
Agenda into tangible results. It is our hope that this issue
will be treated with the required urgency, given that next
year there will be a mid-term global review of the New
Agenda for the Development of Africa.
Recognizing the importance of cooperation between
developing States, South Africa has acceded to an
agreement establishing the South Centre. The South Centre
will effectively operate as a policy research unit for the
Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, and will draft
policy-oriented position papers on issues of critical
importance to the South. It will, in addition to this basic
function, generate ideas and proposals for consideration by
Governments of the South and other institutions.
The United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development engendered a process of environmental action
and awareness centred on the relationship between
economic development and the sustainable management of
the environment. It is our duty to carry this process forward
in an integrated manner and reconfirm our commitment to
the implementation of international agreements which seek
to manage and preserve the world’s environment.
South Africa is very conscious that the capacity of
developing countries to implement sustainable
environmental strategies will have to be strengthened. The
resources pledged towards the attainment of goals set out in
Agenda 21 will have to be made available if we are to
succeed in achieving the imperatives of development,
sustainable use of the environment, and democracy in the
world.
In Africa, in particular, the ravages of drought and
the advances of desertification require urgent attention.
The global community’s concern for the environment
should be reflected in a common approach to the
manifold environmental pressures threatening our global
heritage.
The United Nations also has an important role to
play in assisting States threatened by natural or man-made
disasters. Preventive diplomacy can contribute towards
eliminating man-made disasters. However, the results of
both man-made disasters and natural disasters can be
ameliorated by effective international humanitarian
assistance coordination through the United Nations. This
will naturally require more coherent programmed delivery
and coordination by the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United
Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) and
other international institutions. The United Nations will
have to ensure that the necessary capacities and
mechanisms are created. Recent international action,
especially the follow-up to the Tokyo Conference, has
demonstrated that sufficient international will exists to
perform this function.
We welcome the adoption on 14 September 1995 of
General Assembly resolution 49/252, on the strengthening
of the United Nations. I wish to assure the Assembly of
our intention to work constructively with the President in
this endeavour.
The world in which we find ourselves today is
greatly changed from just 10 years ago. The cold war has
ended, the scourge of apartheid has been removed from
our common society and peace has come to Mozambique
and now Angola. We have also seen the membership of
our United Nations increase to 185, a substantial increase
since the time the Security Council’s membership was last
increased. As a result of these, and other, factors the
international community faces a window of opportunity
within which the Security Council can be successfully
restructured and reformed.
Within the overall effort to reform the United
Nations, South Africa believes that the structure and
functioning of the Security Council should be reformed to
make it more representative, democratic and transparent.
The product of these efforts must be a Security Council
that is effective and legitimate, and that reflects the
5
General Assembly 22nd plenary meeting
Fiftieth session 13 October 1995
realities of our modern world. This result can be achieved
only if reform and restructuring is dealt with as a package.
One of the products of this reform process must result in
Africa having equitable representation on any enlarged
Security Council.
It would be appropriate for me to conclude by
referring to the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations.
The people of South Africa will celebrate this fiftieth
anniversary in concert with the rest of the world. Our
National Committee organizing the events in our country
has adopted the following as its Declaration of Intent:
“To create an awareness among the peoples of South
Africa of the role which the United nations can play
in their daily lives, and to assist the United Nations in
responding to the challenges of the twenty-first
century.”
President Mandela looks forward to joining his fellow
world leaders in a few weeks’ time to celebrate the
visionary step taken half a century ago towards the creation
of a better world. Building on the successes and victories
of the past, we now embrace the future. We can face the
challenges ahead, inspired by a vision of a new world
where peace and respect for human dignity are the standard.


 I wish to extend to the
President the sincere congratulations of my delegation on
his election to the presidency of this historic session of
the General Assembly. Botswana and Portugal have
enjoyed the best of relations over the years. It is therefore
with great pleasure that I assure him of Botswana’s
support and cooperation as he conducts the deliberations
of this body. Let me also take this opportunity to pay a
special tribute to his predecessor, my dear brother and
colleague the Foreign Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, His
Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, for the skilful manner in
which he guided the work of the forty-ninth session. His
was a most successful presidency, of which, as Africans,
we feel proud.
We salute our indefatigable Secretary-General, His
Excellency Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, and his team of
dedicated staff for their selfless service to the
international community at the most difficult and trying
period in the history of our Organization. The Secretary-
General’s tenacity of purpose and his untiring efforts in
the search for peace are crystallized in his comprehensive
and thought-provoking report on the work of the
Organization.
Five decades ago no one could have predicted with
any degree of certainty the future course of events in the
aftermath of the most devastating war on the face of the
Earth. It was therefore a feat of wisdom and vision that
the founding fathers of our Organization accomplished
when they conceived and established, from the ravages of
that tragic war, a global Organization that has had such a
profound impact on the conduct of international relations
and diplomacy. That the Charter of the United Nations
has been amended only thrice in its 50 years of existence
bears testimony to their foresight and diplomatic skill.
The formation of the United Nations captured the
imagination of peoples across continents, not only because
its Charter promised to protect succeeding generations
from the scourge of war, but also because it championed
the right of the colonial countries and peoples to self-
determination and independence, at a time when that was
considered antagonistic to the national interests of the
21

colonial Powers. In addition, the Organization made a
commitment
“to promote social progress and better standards of life
in larger freedom”.
This historic session of the General Assembly offers
us a unique opportunity to evaluate the achievements and
progress made in the fulfilment of the ideals so brilliantly
and boldly expressed by the founding fathers in the Charter.
It is time for introspection and reflection on the work of the
Organization and a time to institute reforms, as necessary,
to attune the Organization to a changed world and the
challenges ahead.
It is regrettable that the military and ideological rivalry
between East and West should have hamstrung the role of
the United Nations in the maintenance of international
peace and security during the first four and half decades of
its existence. Although the world was spared the possible
destruction that could have been visited upon it by a third
world war, the cold war led to the loss of many lives in
regional conflicts across continents — on the Korean
Peninsula and in Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique,
Vietnam and the Middle East, to mention only a few. In
colonial countries, and in Africa in particular, the struggle
for self-determination and national independence was
perceived through the prism of super-Power rivalry, which
perception resulted in bitter liberation wars.
The past five years have, however, seen the birth of a
new era, an era of hope for the United Nations,
characterized by general goodwill and cooperation in
international relations. In other words, we are celebrating
50 years of the existence of the United Nations in a new-
found atmosphere of relative peace and stability in the
world. We should therefore commit and rededicate
ourselves to the purposes and principles of the Charter as
we draw the road map for the Organization in the next 50
years.
The unity and resolve of the United Nations,
particularly as reflected in the facility with which, in the
post-cold-war era, the Security Council takes decisions
pertaining to the maintenance of international peace and
security, has dramatically enhanced the efficacy of the
United Nations, a United Nations which has been freed
from the shackles of ideological confrontation. The Security
Council has indeed scored remarkable successes in the
maintenance of international peace and security over the
past few years. We have witnessed successes in Cambodia,
Namibia, Mozambique, El Salvador and, more recently,
Haiti. And this very day an agreement of great import has
been signed in Washington, D.C., between Israel and the
Palestinians.
This new atmosphere of international cooperation
has, however, not been without problems and setbacks.
The tragedies of Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia
remain a thorn in the flesh and conscience of the
international community. The internecine tribal wars in
the former Yugoslavia and in the Abkhaz region of
Georgia have remained intractable, and the traumatic civil
wars in Afghanistan and Tajikistan continue with total
abandon. These problems attest to the fact that all is not
well in international affairs. The United Nations must
intensify current initiatives aimed at addressing these
conflicts. The international community can never be at
peace when part of its body politic is being ravaged by
conflict and war.
As we approach the next millennium, the
responsibility falls on the generations that have benefited
from 50 years of relative peace, 50 years of the United
Nations, to prepare the ground for an even better
Organization to serve future generations in the next 50
years and beyond. We should establish a new system of
collective security in which unilateralism and the
pursuance of narrow national interests for undue
advantage should give way to multilateralism and
collective responsibility in addressing international
problems. Complex peace-keeping operations can succeed
only where there is multilateral cooperation and the
pursuit of policies which can yield long-term results.
Concerted efforts must be made to adopt consistent
criteria for the resolution of global problems.
The question of equitable representation on and
increase in the membership of the Security Council has
gained currency in recent years, and for good reason. The
United Nations of 50 years ago was definitely different
from the United Nations of today. The number of
Member States has swelled over the years, bringing in
countries of divergent national character and historical
backgrounds; and membership in the Security Council
must reflect this reality. In other words, the Security
Council should be a concentrated reflection of the cultural
and philosophical diversity represented in the General
Assembly. After all, democracy is about numbers, and the
United Nations, including the Security Council, ought to
be the best school for the teaching and practice of
democratic principles.
22

We should exercise great care, however, in addressing
the question of the expansion and restructuring of the
Security Council, lest we create new problems in our zeal
to solve old ones. We should guard against the Security
Council’s remaining or becoming an exclusive club for the
pursuance of the policies and strategic national interests of
the rich and powerful nations. At the same time, we should
avoid making the Security Council a big and unwieldy
enterprise which would crumble under its own weight. We
should strike the right balance between equitable
representation and efficiency and effectiveness.
The report of the Secretary-General clearly shows that
peace-keeping operations are very expensive. Over the past
five years the budget of United Nations peace-keeping
operations has grown from an annual figure of
approximately $600 million to a staggering projection of
$3.6 billion by the end of this year. The United Nations
cannot hope to sustain this kind of budgetary escalation.
Greater attention must be given to preventive action.
Here we agree entirely with the Secretary-General when he
states in the “Supplement to An Agenda for Peace” that
“It is evidently better to prevent conflicts through
early warning, quiet diplomacy and ... preventive
deployment”. (A/50/60/para. 26)
A multifaceted approach is required to develop a capability,
including substantial human and material resources, that
would enable regional organizations to detect potential
conflict situations and prevent them from breaking out.
In this context, the Organization of African Unity
(OAU) Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management
and Resolution was established in response to the many
challenges facing the African continent in the field of
peace-keeping. It is an expression of Africa’s readiness to
take effective measures aimed at solving conflicts within
the continent. We welcome the support of the Member
States, international organizations and individuals that have
generously made resources available to the OAU
Mechanism, and we urge the international community to
make similar contributions.
We also welcome the conclusions of a series of
conferences on conflict prevention and peace-keeping in
Africa sponsored by the British Government, the latest of
which was held in Gaborone, the capital of my country, on
7 and 8 August 1995. Botswana is convinced that training,
planning and preparation, an effective early-warning system
and logistic support are fundamental to the OAU’s capacity
to predict and defuse conflicts and, once they have
erupted, to undertake peace-keeping operations. The
financial support of the international community is crucial
if the peace-keeping capability of the African countries is
to be realized.
The United Nations, in general, should be placed on
a firm financial foundation if it is effectively to tackle the
mammoth tasks facing the world today, including
assistance to regional arrangements in conflict prevention
and peace-keeping. The question of the financial
emergency in which the United Nations so often finds
itself, because of failure by Member States to honour
their financial obligations to the Organization, should not
be allowed to fester into the next century. It seems
logical, at least to Botswana, that the decisions and
resolutions which we adopt as Member States, and which
have financial implications, should be accompanied by a
commitment to make prompt and regular contributions to
the various budgets, programmes and funds of the
Organization. Otherwise there is no sense in adopting
such decisions and resolutions. As stated earlier, the
resources needed for peace-keeping operations alone are
such that every Member State must make its contribution
if we seriously expect results from the Organization.
We cannot talk about the maintenance of
international peace and security without reference to
nuclear proliferation, because of all weapons of mass
destruction, nuclear weapons pose the greatest threat to
international peace and security. In this regard, Botswana
is satisfied with the outcome of the Review and Extension
Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The States
Parties not only agreed to extend the Treaty indefinitely,
but also adopted the principles and objectives for nuclear
non-proliferation and disarmament and committed
themselves to strengthening the review process for the
Treaty. We were disappointed that some nuclear Powers
resumed testing immediately after the conclusion of the
Conference.
The States Parties further committed themselves to
complete negotiations, no later than 1996, on a universal,
legally binding and internationally and effectively
verifiable comprehensive nuclear test-ban treaty. The onus
now rests on nuclear-weapon States to honour their end
of the deal. My delegation firmly believes that the only
way to protect the world from the scourge of nuclear
weapons is through their complete elimination.
23

The contribution made by the United Nations and its
specialized agencies in the field of health, especially in the
developing countries, has been most impressive. Life-
threatening diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, smallpox,
malaria and river blindness, to name but a few, have largely
been eradicated in most parts of the world. The other
visible benefit of the work of the United Nations in
development has been the transfer of technology, especially
to the developing countries, resulting in improved
sanitation, education, human resource development and food
production and storage.
Currently, the United Nations is spending millions of
dollars on research and related expenditure on the AIDS
pandemic, which is threatening the very existence of
humankind and is posing a serious threat to the economic
development of many nations. It is our sincere hope that the
world will quickly find a cure to save humankind from the
scourge of this pandemic.
We are concerned that in recent years the resources
available to some specialized agencies of the United
Nations have been declining. This has negatively affected
their contribution to economic development in the
developing countries. It is clear from the report of the
Secretary-General that the core resources of the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have been
decreasing since 1992, and this has resulted in national
indicative planning figures in developing countries being
reduced by 30 per cent from their original levels. This is an
unfortunate trend indeed for developing countries,
considering that the UNDP is the agency of the United
Nations charged with responsibility for the financing and
coordination of technical and development assistance. And
the negative impact this trend has had in the execution of
development projects and programmes in the developing
countries cannot be overemphasized.
It is imperative that the ongoing dialogue on the
reform of the United Nations give due consideration to the
important role that these agencies and programmes play in
the improvement in the living standards of peoples in the
developing countries. The reduction of the administrative
costs and the rationalization of the operations of these
organizations should be carried out at the expense neither
of their capacity to deliver the goods and services nor of
the quality of their product. In this regard, I wish to
reaffirm the decision the African Ministers of Industry took
in Gaborone, Botswana, on 8 June 1995, in which they
appealed to the international community, particularly the
developed countries, to support the maintenance and
strengthening of the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization (UNIDO) to enable it to continue
participating actively in the industrialization of Africa.
The past five years have witnessed major
developments in the social and economic fields. The
international community has made great efforts in
addressing issues of international concern in these areas.
In this regard, the successful holding of the World
Summit for Children, the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development, the World Conference on
Human Rights, the World Summit for Social
Development and, most recently, the Fourth World
Conference on Women are illustrative. While the holding
of these conferences in itself deserves commendation, the
international community should not be satisfied merely
with summitry. It should strive to adopt declarations and
plans of action which are realistic and implementable.
Above all, there should be a genuine commitment to
providing the necessary resources for the implementation
of these declarations and plans of action.
It is now four years since the General Assembly, in
recognition of the difficult social and economic situation
prevailing in Africa, adopted the United Nations New
Agenda for the Development of Africa. At its high-level-
segment meeting held in Geneva from 3 to 6 July this
year, the Economic and Social Council concluded that
progress in the implementation of the New Agenda had
been slow and insufficient, and reaffirmed that success
depended on the full support of the international
community. It is clear that while the primary
responsibility for economic development in Africa rests
with the African Governments and peoples themselves,
there is still an absolute need for the support of the
international community.
One of the priority areas of the United Nations New
Agenda for the Development of Africa is regional
cooperation and integration. In this connection, we in
southern Africa are engaged in efforts to ensure
development through regional cooperation. The Southern
African Development Community (SADC), after 10 years
of rehabilitating and developing infrastructure, has
embarked on closer cooperation and integration aimed at,
inter alia, free movement of goods, capital, services and
people.
One of the recent major developments in the
building of the community was the accession of the
Republic of Mauritius to SADC at the organization’s
summit in August 1995 in Johannesburg, South Africa,
thereby bringing the membership of SADC to 12. We are
24

aware that we have set ourselves a difficult task as a
region, but there is no alternative to this path of collective
self-reliance if our region is to survive in the current
competitive international economic environment. We
therefore call upon the international community to continue
its support for SADC and its programme of action.
To conclude, I wish to reiterate that this historic
session of the General Assembly offers us an opportunity
to evaluate the achievements, review the lessons of the past
and chart a course for the future of our Organization. An
important component of this introspection and reflection on
the work of the United Nations should be the improvement
of public awareness of the United Nations, building a wider
constituency and demonstrating that the Organization will
continue to be relevant in the years to come.


With 15 October 1995 only a few days away — the first
anniversary of the restoration of the democratic process in
Haiti — I am pleased on behalf of the Government and
people of Haiti to extend our greetings to the international
community gathered here and our wishes for a long life to
the United Nations, which is playing an ever more decisive
role in the lives of our peoples.
I should like to extend my warmest congratulations to
His Excellency Mr. Diogo Freitas do Amaral of Portugal on
his election to the presidency of this fiftieth session of the
General Assembly and extend my best wishes for his
success in the exercise of his important duties.
I should like also to pay a well-deserved tribute to His
Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, Minister for Foreign Affairs
of Côte d’Ivoire, for the wisdom and ability he showed in
conducting the work of the forty-ninth session.
Allow me also to congratulate Mr. Boutros Boutros-
Ghali on his effective management as Secretary-General
of our Organization. His thorough knowledge of the
issues and his proposals contained in the Agenda for
Peace and the Agenda for Development have enabled him
to make a significant contribution to the thinking on
reforming the Organization with a view to making it more
capable of facing the challenges of the twenty-first
century.
This session of the General Assembly coincides with
our commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
founding of the United Nations. More than any other, this
session is destined to affect the history of our
Organization because of the reflection this anniversary
will certainly inspire with regard to its future.
Fifty years have elapsed since 51 States, including
my own, the Republic of Haiti, recognizing the absolute
need to take collective action to work for peace,
development and social progress, decided to found the
United Nations. From its inception, the United Nations
has been a focus of the aspirations and hopes of peoples
world wide for a more peaceful future and a more
promising tomorrow.
Throughout the half century of its existence the
Organization has exerted great efforts to achieve the goals
set forth in the Charter. It has addressed a broad range of
complex international problems and has, in many cases,
been able to find a satisfactory solution to them.

Thus, the United Nations has distinguished itself in the
decisive role it has played in the decolonization process, in
the strengthening of international security and in the
restoration of peace in many parts of the world. It has also
contributed to the development of international law.
Through a series of global conferences, it has progressed
towards an international consensus on such world problems
as the environment, population, human rights, the status of
women, the rights of the child, sustainable development and
many other fundamental questions.
Quite recently, United Nations activities in support of
peace have taken on added scope with the increase in
peace-keeping operations, some of which have met with
outstanding success — operations in Cambodia, in El
Salvador or in my own country, Haiti, where the joint
action of the United Nations and the Organization of
American States brought about a return of constitutional
order and thereby provided eloquent testimony to this
success.
In that connection allow me on behalf of the people
and Government of Haiti to express to the international
community our gratitude for its support and its contribution
to the restoration of the democratic process in Haiti. Thanks
to you, Haiti now has a valid peace; political stability is on
the verge of becoming a reality; and the security of Haitian
society is a virtual fact.
You helped us to emerge from a period of turbulence
and to create in our country conditions favourable to peace
and development, replacing the repression under which we
had lived for the three years of coup d’état. Once again, I
wish to express the deep gratitude of the Haitian people to
the great family of the United Nations and to each of the
nations that, in one way or another, provided support for
the return of constitutional order.
In this connection I should like to share with the
Assembly the work our Government has accomplished
since its restoration.
One year after the return of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide to Haiti, significant progress has been achieved in
all spheres of national activity. The Government has made
it a point of honour to draw the Assembly’s attention to the
fact that the rights of all Haitians are scrupulously
respected, freedom of expression and association is
guaranteed, our institutions have resumed their normal
functioning, the scheduled legislative and municipal
elections have been carried out, and insecurity in both
towns and countryside has noticeably diminished.
In achieving that result the Government had to adopt
measures that were vigorous but welcomed by the vast
majority of the population. Among others, I would cite
the dismantling of the corps of section heads and their
auxiliaries, the demobilization of the armed forces
pending approval by Parliament of their dissolution, the
establishment of a new national police force in keeping
with the wishes expressed in the 1987 Constitution, the
creation of the National Magistrature School and the
National Penitentiary Administration. All of those
measures enjoyed the wholehearted assistance of the
United Nations Mission in Haiti, which has been an
invaluable partner in the restoration of democratic
processes in Haiti.
To strengthen the population’s confidence in the
process of national reconciliation the Government has set
up a National Commission for Truth and Justice to shed
light on the atrocities committed during the three years of
coup d’état, and that Commission has made great
progress in its work.
In addition, the Government has understood the need
to go further in making reparations and combating the
acceptance of impunity. In a Decree of 29 September
1995, the Government decided to allocate 20 per cent of
the budget of the Ministry of Justice to victims of the
coup d’état and to provide them with legal aid in bringing
cases and prosecuting criminals. Such measures
demonstrate a determination to put an end to impunity
and to render justice to those to whom justice is due.
Thus, we are firmly and irreversibly committed to
democracy. There are still some problems to be solved,
but no one can question the enormous progress
accomplished since 15 October 1994. The struggle for the
establishment of a democratic State in Haiti continues
with ever-greater determination. However, there can be no
viable democracy without sustained economic
development. In Haiti, the link between democracy and
development is fundamental, affecting as it does the very
survival of our nation.
In this connection the Haitian Government has given
pride of place to two major approaches that define the
national development policy, namely, regeneration of the
space some 8 million inhabitants will share before the end
of the century, and universal education.
Natural resources — restored, revived and protected
from continuous and uncoordinated overexploitation —
must be managed by citizens, families and communities,
2

who shall learn to acquire know-how, to share knowledge,
to spread information, and to tap both the vast, exciting
stockpile of human knowledge and their own rich national
culture. Through formal and non-formal education and by
using all training and information technologies, we must
meet the needs of our population, from elementary
education to command of the high technology appropriate
to our development.
It is easy to see that, because of their importance,
those two fundamental decisions will involve redefining all
sectoral and non-sectoral policies and programmes. It is
along these lines that we shall define policies of direct State
management, fiscal, monetary, budgetary, public-
investment, public-administration, public-enterprise
management, credit and other policies, as well as policies
that demand a degree of partnership with various sectors of
the nation. When the conditions are met we will be able to
engage in a process of restoring social balance through an
improved sharing of national wealth. From there we shall
move gradually to narrow the gap between the individual
incomes of different groups. If the State uses the means and
the tools at its disposal, especially fiscal and credit
measures, it should be possible to hasten this movement.
With the support of the international community our
nation is working with high hopes to build a State based on
law and to restore the fabric of our national economy.
The example of Haiti, which I have just described,
along with other successes achieved by the United Nations
over the past 50 years, must not hide the reality of a world
far from fully achieving the objectives of peace and social
progress for all that were the dream of our forerunners.
Despite the end of the cold war, which has lessened the
probability of nuclear conflict, the Earth continues to be an
arena of murderous conflicts that cause unspeakable
suffering and vast humanitarian tragedies. In Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Rwanda, Burundi, Georgia and Liberia to
name but a few, wars born for the most part of ethnic,
religious or tribal antagonisms seem to resist any attempt at
solution by the international community. It is true that there
has been significant progress with respect to certain crises,
such as those of the Middle East and Angola, and my
Government joyfully welcomes this. But the persistence of
such conflicts dampens our hopes for the establishment of
a lasting peace.
In that context, I want to recall the threat that mankind
still faces from stockpiles of nuclear weapons and other
weapons of mass destruction. My delegation hopes that the
nuclear-weapon States will keep the promises they made at
the 1995 Review and Extension Conference of the Parties
to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT), with respect to ridding the planet of
nuclear weapons. The conclusion of a nuclear-test-ban
treaty, next year we hope, would be an important step
towards that goal.
One of the ideas developed by the Secretary-General
in his “Agenda for Peace” is that peace cannot be viable
without development. It is acknowledged that a basic
cause of instability and conflict throughout the world is
increasingly flagrant social and economic disparities and
the destitution afflicting a large part of mankind.
In many speeches, the Secretary-General has said
that the globalization of problems requires global
solutions, whether in the sphere of the environment,
migrations, development or international security. It is
also time to adopt a comprehensive approach to the
collateral effects of inevitable structural adjustment. A
timid step in that direction was taken at the Halifax
summit of the seven most highly industrialized countries,
but what is needed most is greater participation by the
countries of the South in the international economic
system with a view to defusing the fearsome “social
bomb” described at the Copenhagen World Summit for
Social Development.
Let us remember how vulnerable our countries —
especially small island States — are to natural disasters.
This year, the Caribbean region has been the victim of an
unprecedented number of hurricanes and tropical storms,
which have caused significant damage to the
infrastructure of a number of countries, which have seen
years of effort shattered in a few hours or less. We extend
our sympathy to our brother countries, and appeal to the
international community to mobilize all the resources
needed for their rehabilitation. Clearly, small island States
are not equipped to deal with such situations. Perhaps we
should consider a multilateral instrument that could limit
their effects on the lives and property of affected
populations. In that connection, we welcome the “White
Berets” initiative inspired by Argentina, of which Haiti
was the first beneficiary.
In a world where the burden of globalization in all
of its forms is increasingly being felt, the need for a new
global contract is becoming more and more imperative, as
a means to guarantee international peace and security. At
the present time, many countries, including my own, are
not able to satisfy the most elementary needs of the
majority of their population. With the increasing
3

globalization of markets, and the political, economic,
financial and cultural environment of the world, some
countries are achieving a degree of success, while other
countries continue to slip towards deterioration. The result
is that millions of men, women and children are living in
subhuman poverty, without access to health care or to
adequate nutrition.
This is a timely occasion for our Organization to play
its role as an instrument of solidarity and international
cooperation, in keeping with the mandate that was
conferred on it 50 years ago. The implementation without
delay of the Copenhagen decisions would be desirable. It
should be of concern that, otherwise, these situations would
spill over national borders and become a source of
destabilization on a world-wide scale. In that regard, let us
recall that sustainable development is the process that
guarantees economic, social, political and cultural progress
for the present population, and survival with happiness,
dignity, peace, democracy and justice for future generations.
To the Bretton Woods institutions, we would say that
structural adjustment programmes are useful only to the
extent that they lead to actual development programmes
based on growth, full employment and equity, designed and
carried out primarily for the benefit of the most
disadvantaged classes of society.
This awareness, which implies the will to put forward
a new global contract, also prompts us, on behalf of the
Haitian Government, to call upon the relevant forums, not
only to define and articulate once and for all the areas of
common interest in the various activities of the
Organization, but also to seek out the ways and means to
release the financial resources necessary to make the
actions of our Organization more relevant.
In the context of increased interdependence, which is
characteristic of national policies — especially those of
third world countries — the instruments used by
international institutions and bilateral agreements determine
any experience of a certain scope. For that reason, it is not
just support that we are requesting from our partners: we
are asking them to share with us the experience of
addressing these challenges. Let them have a stake and
involvement — which is possible and even probable — in
the redefinition of their own instruments, which should
change if those instruments are to be equal to the
challenges which, for decades, have faced the world’s
efforts to improve the world order.
We can understand that changes in institutions of a
certain size may give rise to much reluctance. And we ask:
What are the risks to the international community if it
engages in an experiment sufficiently limited not to
frighten us, yet sufficiently important to test the
desirability of extending it to more determining situations
and bringing about a significant institutional change?
Our Organization is at a decisive crossroads in its
history. As we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its
founding, we are faced increasingly with the problem of
the financing of the Organization’s budget for the
operation of the system. From the experts’ reports, we
have already learned that the core resources of the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have shrunk
by 15 per cent, and we have noted, with some fear, that
contributions to various United Nations trust funds have
been undergoing some decline for at least four years. In
the long term, this process of regression in the area of
financial contributions will constitute a definite threat to
the various operations conducted by the United Nations
system, whether it be in the field of peace-keeping or in
the area of development activities properly speaking.
These considerations prompt us to ask the question
that concerns all of us on this fiftieth anniversary, the
question of the reform of the United Nations system. At
the dawn of a twenty-first century that is so filled with
promise — but also so disturbing in certain respects —
our Organization will increasingly be called upon to face
certain major challenges in the fields of ecology,
population, economics, information and the fight against
organized crime. Faced with those daunting challenges,
some of which are as yet unknown or unimagined, it is
important to restructure and to strengthen the basic
framework of this universal Organization.
The strengthening of the United Nations structure
should, we believe, be built around a legal, administrative
and institutional reform. In that respect, my Government
would ardently wish to see a reform of the Security
Council, with respect both to its mode of operation, which
should be more democratic, and to its membership, which
should better reflect the diversity that characterizes the
great family of the United Nations.
In this regard, we invite all States to look into the
most effective ways and means to cooperate with non-
governmental organizations. We must acknowledge the
fact that, increasingly, these organizations are serving as
forums for reflection and initiatives in civil society and
are becoming essential partners in the quest for a new
world of more human and integrated development.
4

One area of great concern to the Government of Haiti
is the precarious nature of the present situation of many
refugees, especially women and unaccompanied children,
who deserve special attention. Also, I take this opportunity
to state our increasingly resolute opposition to any forced
repatriation of refugees in violation of international legal
instruments that govern this question, including the 1951
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967
Protocol. Discriminatory policies, racism and xenophobia
will only inflame an already tragic situation which has long
troubled our conscience. It is time for barbarism to give
way to civilization and for respect for human rights to be
enjoyed by all, men and women, without distinction.
The Government of the Republic of Haiti supports the
plan to create an international criminal court to give effect
to the principle of individual criminal responsibility in cases
of serious and unacceptable violations of human rights.
My Government is deeply alarmed at the scale of the
illicit production of, trafficking in and abuse of narcotics
around the world. In order to protect ourselves against this
scourge, it calls on producer and consumer States, transit
countries and those laundering drug money to give their full
support to the fight against this evil.
Since the end of the cold war, a war that actually was
only cold on the territories of the great Powers, the limited
conflicts that seemed to go along with the inherent situation
there have multiplied constantly. We must recognize that
only the pretexts have changed. The real reasons for those
conflicts, we repeat, are the maintenance of an excessively
profitable trade in conventional weapons.
Today, the standing of a nation is not measured, and
should no longer be measured, by its economic power or its
military arsenal. Today, a great nation must apply itself to
solving the problems of its people and those of mankind as
a whole.
In 1945, 51 States created the United Nations, whose
intrinsic purpose was to maintain international peace and
security and to promote the economic development of all its
Members. Fifty years later, as we take stock, the changes
that have taken place in the international arena only bear
out the validity of these ideals of the founding fathers.
The celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the
United Nations is an occasion for us to recognize the
capacities of this Organization and the need to reform it in
order to turn it into an increasingly effective instrument that
can face the challenges of the twenty-first century to build
a better world.