The
UN and the Challenge of Human Security
By Hon. David Kilgour, Secretary of State
(Latin America & Africa)
The following
article was published in McGill International
Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, Winter 2000
Canada’s
foreign policy has long been based on engaging
the international community. As the United
Nations is the only international body whose
membership is virtually universal, and whose
focus is on nearly all areas of human activity,
it is therefore a primary vehicle of Canadian
foreign policy.
The nature
of international security challenges has
changed since the UN’s birth when World
War II was winding down and the Cold War
had not yet taken shape. Today’s threats
often occur at sub-national and supra-national
levels, and are no longer primarily problems
between states. The changes brought on by
globalization and new threats to human security
challenge the UN to redefine itself if it
is to remain relevant in the new millennium.
While the UN must change, it is simply too
important an institution to be abandoned;
Canadians thus have a vital stake in its
reform.
Canadians
have been active participants in the United
Nations since its inception. The McGill
Model United Nations, affectionately known
as McMUN, reflects the importance with which
Canadians view the UN. McMUN’s tenth
anniversary is an important milestone for
your organization. Looking ahead, within
the next 10 years, many of your members
will find active careers in the foreign
service of Canada, international organizations,
NGOs or business. The experience with McMUN
is excellent training for all. You are the
future of Canada’s international relations;
you are beginning your careers at a time
of great change.
Rejecting
isolationism
Canada has
long been open to the world, preferring
to act multilaterally on the global stage
in close cooperation with like-minded countries.
This notion of openness has enjoyed support
from all of Canada’s major political
parties since the founding of the United
Nations 54 years ago. Isolationism has remained
a strong undercurrent in American politics,
but it has never taken root here. That is
why some recent dialogue on Canada’s
foreign policy, calling for a more isolationist
stance, has been disturbing.
Canada earned
influence through active participation –
not by withdrawing. International institutions
are not perfect, but Canada has remained
at the forefront in seeking reforms to the
United Nations and other organizations.
This comes best through active engagement
– not by threatening to take our marbles
and walk away when we don’t like the
rules.
If Canada
is in fact "the world’s greatest
joiner," as a critic of our foreign
policy argues, this is not a bad thing;
rather it is a cause for pride. Our active
participation in the UN, NATO, the OSCE,
the Commonwealth, La Francophonie, the Organization
of American States, the World Trade Organization
among others has brought us significant
international influence. Testimony to it
was our successful campaign for a two-year
seat on the UN Security Council. During
the campaign, I visited numerous foreign
capitals and was struck by the genuinely
strong praise for Canada’s international
role.
Canada has
used its seat on the Security Council to
advance three key policy goals toward reforming
the Council’s role:
1. To broaden
the interpretation of the Security Council’s
mandate to include human security issues
along with traditional security issues;
2. To reassert
the primacy of the Security Council in peace
and security issues; and
3. To increase
transparency of the Council’s work.
Civilians
in armed conflict
Through the
Security Council we have advanced our human
security agenda on a number of major issues
affecting the world’s people. In February
1999, we served in the one-month rotating
seat as Security Council President. We used
that to advance – among other initiatives
– attention to the protection of civilians
in armed conflict. Canada’s initiative
led to a major report by Secretary General
Kofi Annan, and a Security Council resolution
which endorsed key report recommendations
and called for immediate establishment of
a review mechanism. Canada is chairing the
resulting informal working group.
Recent conflicts
from Kosovo to Sierra Leone to Sudan indicate
that "civilianization" of armed
conflict has become one of the most common
and disturbing features of modern war. More
than ever, non-combatants, especially the
most vulnerable, are not merely caught in
the crossfire, but are themselves principal
targets. In the past decade, casualties
from armed conflict have doubled to about
one million a year. In the First World War,
in contrast, civilian casualties accounted
for only five per cent of all casualties.
Today, in modern conflicts, closer to 80
per cent of the casualties are civilians.
The forced exodus, the appalling brutality,
the state-sponsored murders and disappearances
perpetrated against thousands of innocent
people – all of this underscores the
fact that in our world, civilians suffer
the most from violent conflict. They bear
the brunt of the new practices of war –
for example, the deplorable use of child
soldiers or savage paramilitaries. And they
suffer most from the inexpensive –
yet all-too-readily-available – tools
of modern combat, such as landmines, small
arms and other weapons.
The nature
of war has changed in other ways. Most conflicts
today occur inside rather than between states.
Wars from within can be just as brutal and
ugly as conflicts between states. While
the number of armed conflicts between states
has declined over the last 25 years, the
number of intra-state conflicts has increased
dramatically. Among the 103 wars fought
since the end of the Cold War, fully 97
were fought within rather than between states.
The crises in the Great Lakes region of
Africa, in Bosnia and Kosovo, and most recently
in East Timor are only some of the best-known
examples in a series of conflicts with tragic
implications for affected populations.
Brutalization
and exploitation of civilians, involving
gross violations of humanitarian law, have
led to massive refugee flows. Such situations
cannot simply be seen as internal matters.
They affect us all.
Human security
focus
"Human
security" then – putting people
and not only states as the focus of security
analysis – is a cornerstone of Canadian
foreign policy in the United Nations and
elsewhere. Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd
Axworthy has brought this dialogue to the
world stage on numerous occasions. A hallmark
of the changing nature of violent conflict
and the "new generation" of transnational
threats is that they increasingly put people
at the centre of world affairs. Human security
is more central than ever to national security,
regional stability and global peace.
Understanding
this concept of human security involves
seeing the world through a different lens
from that used in the decades of the Cold
War. The end of the Cold War was hailed
as the beginning of an era of peace and
prosperity. There was a widespread optimism
that with the easing of the grip of the
ideological divide, the world community
would be freer than at any time in the past
to turn its attention to global problems
such as underdevelopment, poverty and the
environment.
The reality
of the past decade has been more sobering:
we have seen a wide range of new security
threats emerge. Threats to individual security
are not limited to situations of violent
conflict. Globalization clearly has a dangerous
underside. These problems include terrorism,
transnational organized crime, environmental
degradation, famine, drug trafficking and
money laundering, and the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction and small
arms. The world has changed; some of the
greatest threats to civilians now come from
non-state actors and go beyond traditional
understandings of security.
Instantaneous
communications, rapid transportation, increasingly
porous borders, and rising business, cultural
and academic ties have for better or worse
unalterably merged all our lives into a
common destiny in this world. The security
or insecurity of others has become very
much our own security or insecurity. As
a result, we have both a responsibility
and an interest to act when the safety of
others is imperiled. Canada’s human
security agenda is an effort to respond
to these new realities.
What is the
relationship between human security and
state security? Contrary to some claims,
the two are not mutually exclusive. The
security of the state is not an end in itself
– it is a means of ensuring security
for people. In this context, state security
and human security are in fact mutually
supportive. Building an effective, democratic
state that values its own people and protects
minorities is central to promoting genuine
human security. At the same time, improving
the human security of a people strengthens
the legitimacy, stability and security of
the state.
Where human
security exists as a fact rather than an
aspiration, the situation can be attributed
in large measure to the effective governance
of states. For this reason, peacekeeping
and peacebuilding efforts that focus on
building open and stable societies are an
important element in enhancing human security.
Canadian
peacekeeping and peacebuilding role
Canada has
been a supporter of peacekeeping operations
since their beginnings with the Suez Crisis
in 1956. It was for his role in that crisis
that Lester B. Pearson received a Nobel
Peace Prize. Since then, Canadians have
participated in the overwhelming majority
of peacekeeping operations begun by the
Security Council – most recently in
East Timor. Tens of thousands of Canadians
have served in over 30 different UN missions;
more than 100 have lost their lives doing
so. Peacekeeping has thus become an indelible
part of Canadians’ sense of who we
are. This is an example of how our international
involvement contributes to an ongoing process
of nation-building at home. It is no wonder
then that Canada has a stake in improving
the efficiency of peacekeeping operations.
In 1995,
Canada prepared a study on the United Nations
rapid response capacity. It urged the UN
and its members to develop a rapid deployment
capability which could be swiftly mobilized
to respond to crises and humanitarian disasters.
A number of its recommendations have been
adopted and are being implemented, but the
recent tragedy in East Timor underlines
the need for the international community
to have the capacity to respond even more
rapidly.
In the changing
environment, there has been a shifting emphasis
to peacebuilding. The focus on peacebuilding
does not signify a diminishment of our traditional
emphasis on peacekeeping. Monitoring truce
agreements provides the interim stability
that makes the realization of long-term
peace possible. We continue to take a leadership
role in peacekeeping through contributions
to international missions and by strengthening
the capacity of the UN to undertake peacekeeping
missions. New challenges, however, sometimes
demand new kinds of response.
Peacebuilding
consists of an array of initiatives to develop
social and human infrastructure to help
break cycles of violence. It includes civilian
policing, free and vibrant media, and independent
judiciaries. There are a number of occasions
where peacebuilding has been used on the
ground to support longer-term solutions.
Following the restoration of democracy in
Haiti, for example, Canadian support for
police training was a key part of efforts
to build an infrastructure for peace. The
situation remains delicate, but our ongoing
efforts give hope that a sustainable democracy
can in time be realized.
Old ideas
of national sovereignty
Unfortunately
the UN has failed to respond to some of
the most serious international crises of
the past half century. This is partly a
result of its unwieldy structure, partly
a lack of resources, and partly due to the
difficulty of arriving at a global consensus
with 188 member countries. As well, the
veto power of the five permanent members
effectively paralyzed the Security Council
during the Cold War. The threat of veto
was one of the reasons the UN was unable
to act decisively in Kosovo. Canada would
have strongly preferred that the United
Nations Security Council explicitly authorize
NATO’s mission in Kosovo. Unfortunately,
some members of the council remained wedded
to old ideas of national sovereignty and
non-interference, which are becoming less
tenable today.
Sometimes
when states are externally aggressive, internally
repressive or too weak to govern effectively,
they threaten the security of people. In
the face of massive state-sponsored murders,
appalling violations of human rights and
the calculated brutalization of people,
the humanitarian imperative to act cannot
be ignored and can outweigh concerns about
state sovereignty.
In a stirring
speech to both houses of our Parliament
last April, Czech President Vaclav Havel
noted the declining role of the state and
the notion that what takes place within
a country’s borders is nobody else’s
business.
"I believe,"
he said, "that in the coming century
most states will begin to transform from
cult-like objects, which are charged with
emotional contents, into much simpler and
more civil administrative units, which will
be less powerful and, especially, more rational
and will constitute merely one of the levels
in a complex and stratified planetary societal
self-organization. This change, among other
things, should gradually antiquate the idea
of non-intervention, that is, the concept
of saying that what happens in another state,
or the measure of respect for human rights
there, is none of our business."
Havel observed
that the responsibilities of the state can
go in only two directions: down or up. Downwards
to the organs and structures of civil society,
or upwards to various regional, transnational
or global communities or organizations.
This transfer, he said, has already begun.
Reforming
the UN
Havel went
on to note the obvious implication of this
phenomenon: the United Nations must undergo
substantial reform if it is to perform the
tasks it faces in the new century. It can
no longer maintain conditions from the period
when it was formed; it must become less
bureaucratic and more effective, and must
belong to all inhabitants of the globe.
In other words, it must not simply be a
club of governments in which one state,
through its Security Council veto, can override
the will of the rest of the world.
The Canadian
government shares much of Havel’s vision,
in particular on the need to reform the
UN to bring it in line with a changing environment.
We have taken a strong stand against the
abuse of the veto or the threat of its use
that the five permanent members hold. I’ve
mentioned earlier our goals of making the
Security Council’s work more transparent
and reasserting the primacy of the Council
in peace and security issues. Other reforms
are needed simply to make the UN operate
more efficiently.
The make-up
of the Security Council has been controversial
and there have been proposals to expand
its membership to take into account the
increased UN membership resulting from the
decolonization process in the post-World
War II period. Canada wants to see a Security
Council that is more effective, transparent,
and broadly representative. Above all, it
should be less elitist and more democratic.
We believe that any expansion of the Security
Council should be in the category of elected,
and therefore accountable, non-permanent
members only. Canada does not favour adding
new permanent members, as some have proposed,
as this would deepen the existing imbalances
in the Council.
In recent
years at the UN and in other fora such as
G-8 meetings, Canada has played a leadership
role in calling for other reforms: of finance
and management, conflict prevention and
resolution, peacekeeping and peacebuilding,
and reforms to the UN’s economic and
social development activities. We strongly
support the set of reforms introduced in
1997 by Secretary General Annan aimed at
streamlining and modernizing the UN. Under
his leadership, the UN has been streamlined
with 1,000 positions cut. Savings in administration
are being channelled to development projects.
The changes are being implemented, and a
Canadian, Deputy Secretary-General Louise
Fréchete, is overseeing their implementation.
Canada’s
stake in the UN
The United
Nations was first conceived as an international
body involving, as its name suggests, the
nations of the world. In the wake of the
Second World War, the nation state was the
dominant actor in the global polity. In
the period of decolonization that followed,
and in the Cold War, the role of the state
was reinforced. Now, however, challenges
to human security occur on many levels,
local and global, and are multifaceted.
Increasingly, they involve such non-state
actors as transnational corporations, non-governmental
organizations, civil society, and ultimately
individuals. Without abandoning the role
of the state in this organization, the UN
must adapt to the new challenges. As Havel
argues, it cannot simply be a club of governments.
As the world’s
only multilateral organization whose membership
is nearly universal and whose agenda covers
a broad range of human activity, however,
participation in the UN is vital. It is
the cornerstone of a rule-based international
system, and is where much of the world’s
multilateral diplomacy is conducted. Canada,
as a middle power, must function multilaterally.
We simply cannot go it alone.
Canada has
been actively committed to the UN since
its founding in 1945 in San Francisco, where
Canada played a key role in drafting its
charter. John Humphrey, a Canadian, was
the principal author of the Universal Declaration
on Human Rights. Canadians have occupied
important positions within the UN system,
including the Presidency of the General
Assembly (Lester Pearson in 1952-53), and
we have served six times on the Security
Council. In January 1998, a Canadian, Louise
Fréchette, was appointed as the first-ever
UN Deputy Secretary-General.
We are the
seventh largest contributor to the UN budget,
after the U.S., Japan, Germany, France,
the U.K. and Italy. We always pay our annual
contributions – now at nearly U.S.
$30 million – in full, on time, and
without conditions.
Any organization
of its size and importance can be expected
to have flaws and failures, including some
serious ones. Changes are needed, and Canada
is at the forefront of working to bring
them about. As the UN redefines itself to
deal with the new challenges to human security,
Canada must continue to be a key player
– not as one that sulks and withdraws,
or walks away and refuses to pay our dues.
Secretary General Annan has repeatedly stated
that reform is an ongoing process, not a
single event. Many of the reforms already
accomplished were ideas originally advocated
by Canada. This progress has been achieved
through our active membership. The United
Nations is and must remain central to Canadian
foreign policy.
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