I would like to thank President Jabbara, Vice President Salem and Outreach Programme Director Samia for inviting me to speak here today.
I have experienced elsewhere of Model UNs but never one on the scale of the Global Classroom, and certainly not anything like the thousand participants here today who have participated over the months in the LAU program.
It is obvious from the video film how much you have enjoyed and benefitted from the program. Congratulations are in order for all involved. I was asked to say a word about diplomacy and conflict resolution, with specific reference to the work of the United Nations. My qualifications- like others here this evening, I served as a diplomat for my own country over thirty or more years and in the process saw the UN from the outside; then in Sudan, and now as the Secretary General’s Representative here, have come to esteem it from within. The United Nations was born out of the failure of international diplomacy, and the world wars that started in Europe in the last century.
The first sentence of the UN Charter sets out the central goal of the organization: “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The heart of the United Nations’ mission is to prevent conflict, to support those who are affected by it, and to help countries rebuild after the devastation war brings.
Over time, the scope of the United Nations’ work has grown. Peace requires more than just an absence of war. Peace and security; development; and human rights are the three central pillars of the UN’s work.
They need to be addressed collectively to ensure a safe and prosperous future. It is sixty-eight years since the United Nations was founded. Obviously the goal set by the founding members of the organization, including Lebanon, has not been fully met.
At times the United Nations has been helpless to prevent mass violence. The genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is one example. 500,000 to 1 million lives were lost. 20 years ago almost to the day, as a UK representative in the Security Council I saw at first hand the paralysis and consequent tragedy which can occur when member states – scarred in that case by experience elsewhere, in Somalia and Bosnia – are unable to agree.
Too frequently the central premise underlying the United Nations – that all countries will come together in pursuit of peace – is overlaid by division as individual states pursue differing or conflicting objectives. The cost then can be huge. At such moments or when we read of global warming, or the scourge of famine or disease it is easy to feel helpless, to feel that no organization in the world is capable of meeting such challenges. But there is also a story that does not make the headlines so often. One of mutual assistance, and indeed of hope. In terms of immediate relief, the United Nations feeds more than 90 million people per year, and more than 100 million children receive life-saving vaccines. With regard to longer term development, real progress is being made.
Extreme poverty has been cut in half worldwide since the Millenium Development Goals were adopted at the summit in New York in the year 2000.
Child mortality rates have been reduced by 40 per cent in the last twenty years. Around the world people can look forward to a brighter future than the generation before them because of the work of UN agencies or goals agreed in debate within the UN.
Just this month the UN Secretary-General visited Sierra Leone where the UN mission was being wound up successfully after bringing peace following years of civil war, disarming more than 75,000 ex-fighters and destroying more than one million rounds of ammunition.
There, as in former Yugoslavia, those responsible for crimes against humanity have been brought to justice in courts established by the United Nations.
Other countries - Cambodia, East Timor, Mozambique - have emerged from decades of conflict and become peaceful and prosperous nations as a result of similar peacekeeping and peacebuilding interventions by the United Nations. And in terms of international peace and security more generally, the institutions put in place in 1945 have been central to sparing the world a return to the kind of global conflict out of which the United Nations was born I am conscious that this positive account has a hollow ring to it in the part of the world where we live.
Diplomacy’s most enduring failure in the world since 1945 has been the inability to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. For the past three years we have been confronted too with a new, brutal and apparently intractable conflict in Syria. Resolving it -the Secretary General has repeatedly said - is the United Nations’ single most important political goal at present.
Persistence is key to successful diplomacy, but it also requires a measure of understanding between parties to a conflict and commitment to success on the part of key member states with influence over them.
In the meantime a core concern for the United Nations is to help ensure that Lebanon, which has itself endured decades of conflict, should be kept safe.
Despite the turmoil in the region we have seen almost 8 years of calm in the south and across the Blue Line, thanks in part to UNIFIL.
The Security Council has 4 remained at one in its support for Lebanon’s security and stability. And UN agencies have dramatically increased their presence to help Lebanon meet the many challenges arising from the war in Syria. Around the world the United Nations is working to provide relief, to promote stability and to assist development - working in short for a better tomorrow.
But getting there requires cooperation, laying aside differences, understanding the other. It requires precisely the skills you have been sharpening in the Model UN over the past two days – putting yourself in the place of another country, understanding their concerns and those of others, negotiating compromises, finding agreed ways forward towards common goals whether in resolving local conflicts, or easing regional tensions, or addressing the biggest global challenges such as climate change…in short diplomacy. I hope some of you will be inspired by this experience to look at a career in diplomacy or indeed in the United Nations as many great figures from Lebanon have over the years from Charles Malik on.
But if you do not, in today’s world you can still make a difference and the diplomatic skills and understanding you have acquired will help you to do so –whether in your local community, or at the national level, or beyond. More than any generation before, you are able to communicate, to harness and amplify the voices of millions of people. This is an incredible power, one which has already reshaped the countries of this and other regions.
Working together I have no doubt you have the power to overcome the biggest challenges now facing the global community - to eradicate extreme poverty, to combat global warming, to help create a world where men and women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right, and to bring peace to regions that still suffer from the scourge of war. In doing so the United Nations will be your strongest tool, and you can take strength from the principles established by it and the ideals underlying it.
Thank you.