Speech
by
Anand
Panyarachun
Asia
High-Level Symposium on Threats, Challenges and Change
Shangri
– La Hotel, Hangzhou
2
April 2004
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Ladies
and Gentlemen,
It
is an honour and a pleasure to be with you today.
As
you know, the Secretary-General of the United Nations established the
High-Level Panel, and appointed me Chairman, on 4 November. The
Panel held its first meeting from 5 to 7 December in New York, and
its second meeting from 13 to 15 February in Switzerland.
We
originally were expected to deliver our report on 15 August, but we
have extended our deadline to 1 December, as our preliminary
discussions indicated that we would need more time to do our work
effectively.
The Terms of
Reference gave the Panel three objectives:
-
To assess current
and future threats to international security
-
To evaluate
whether the instruments and institutions of collective security are up
to the task of meeting those threats
-
And to recommend
policy and institutional changes to ensure that collective action will
be effective in providing peace and security.
As the
Secretary-General has emphasized recently this is not a Panel on UN
Reform. It is a Panel on building collective security for the
twenty-first century.
Of course,
the Panel may tackle the reform of institutions, including the
Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the General
Assembly and the Trusteeship Council. But it will do so only if it
deems it necessary for meeting the new challenges of international
security.
Thr Panel
recognizes the scope of its challenge, the short time frame, and the
high expectations from UN members and from public opinion.
For this
conference I would like to highlight four challenges that the Panel
faces – challenges that we hope your insight will help us to
overcome.
First, a key
challenge for the Panel is to reconcile the concerns of state
security and human security. We acknowledge that many of today’s
security threats cut across national boundaries and that there are
circumstances under which outside intervention may be necessary for
preventing crisis or protecting people. In addition, the Panel
recognizes that security threats are not posed by states alone, but
by various non-state actors. But how do we expand collective
security, which after all is traditionally focused on the security of
states, to encompass the new challenges of today?
Second, we
started this exercise with everyone agreeing on the value of
multilateralism. That is not a debatable point. The challenge,
however, is to put forward proposals for policy and institutional
change that will promote the attainment of multilateral response. The
onus is on us to convince the doubters that a collective response
is indeed more efficient and more effective and is in their interest.
A third key
challenge that we face is the lack of consensus about the threats to
peace and security. Certain countries have different priorities
concerning threats, and many countries feel that their major concerns
are not being addressed. At our first two meetings, the Panel
recognized that we must validate different perceptions of threats in
order to build support for a new collective security regime. This
has led us to take a non-hierarchical approach to threats and we will
examine such key threats as civil war, inter-state rivalries,
poverty, infectious disease (in particular HIV/AIDS), weapons of mass
destruction, terrorism, and international organized crime.
This is all
and good, but we also know that this validation is not enough – for
we must show the interconnections among threats and create a new
consensus that we face common threats.
This leads
to a fourth challenge. While the Panel wants to include a variety of
threats and to treat them in a balanced way, we must also try to
recognize our comparative advantage, and not repeat discussions and
reinvent the wheel in addressing each of these threats. Where there
are good, solid proposals moving forward in other forums, reports or
initiatives, we should have no qualms about endorsing them.
I would like
to conclude by sharing with you a flavor of our most recent
deliberations. At our second meeting in Switzerland, the Panel’s
discussions highlighted issues such as prevention, early warning, and
the need for coordination, both within the United Nations and between
the United Nations and outside actors such as the international
financial institutions and regional organizations and security
alliances. The Panel emphasized the role of regional organizations,
while noting that an emphasis on regional solutions should not
displace collective responsibility at the international level. The
Panel also noted that today’s security institutions suffer from a
reputation for double standards, and that the lack of equity in
response to common challenges makes a mockery of what we hope to
accomplish.
In closing,
I would like to thank His Excellency, Mr. Qian Qiqian for organizing
our meeting. I look forward to hearing your insights over the next
several days.
