Lecture “What Kind of United Nations for the 21st Century?”

Oxford, 23.11.2010  |  speech

Lecture by Dr Danilo Türk, President of the Republic of Slovenia, at the Oxford Union: "What Kind of United Nations for the 21st Century?"
Oxford, 23 November 2010


Thank you very much for this very warm welcome. Let me start by saying that it is always a pleasure to come back to Oxford, to see this environment, which carries so much history, and to think about how young people currently studying at Oxford feel about the burden of history, which is with us and which will also influence our future.

The United Nations is a child of history. It is a child of World War II, a child of a particular era in history, in which the big powers got together and established a system of principles and norms and created an institution, which is still with us today and which still gives rise to hopes and expectations, as well as disappointments. This is so because hopes are usually higher than the realities allow; and obviously, when hopes are high then the lack of performance leads to disappointments.

The history of the United Nations has been turbulent and diverse and the current situation raises questions as to what the future of this organisation will be. It might even be asked whether the current situation of the United Nations should be given much attention, because there are other organisations in the world that are currently attracting more attention than the UN itself. There was an important meeting of NATO last weekend in Lisbon, which has given rise to hopes about changing history and the strategic relations of Europe, given that Russia and NATO have come closer together and that, in itself, has created a new wave of expectations. It might well be asked: Is the UN still relevant in the world that is emerging? And if so, in what way is it relevant?

I would like to draw attention to three events that happened this month, each of which testifying in a different way to the existing level of relevance of the United Nations and each also leading to a further question about the future of this organisation. The first of these events was the statement by the United States President Barack Obama, suggesting that India should become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. That statement gave rise to a great deal of debate. It is certainly something that people in India want to hear, that policy makers in India firmly believe will happen, but it is also something that many people around the world view with a great deal of scepticism. There were also cynical remarks about the US President’s statement. The journal Economist wrote that the right things sometimes happen for dubious reasons and that perhaps such a situation had arisen because the major power needed India to have a strengthened role in the Asian region and therefore made promises that may not have been meant all that seriously but which may, in the end, still change the United Nations. The example does at least demonstrate how the relevance of the United Nations is sometimes expressed unexpectedly in the area of maintaining peace and security.

The second event of recent weeks was the G20 summit, which took place in Seoul, in South Korea, and which showed the difficulty, perhaps even the inability of this important group of states to provide coherent global economic leadership. People were very excited with G20 when it was created but we can now see that the difficulties that have emerged in crafting consensus among these countries are not much different from what we have seen in other forums in the past. Moreover, G20 may represent 80% of the global economy but it is still a select and self-appointed group and the question thus arises of whether this group should be linked to some institution with stronger legitimacy and which also includes other states, so that it can pursue legitimate policy and make legitimate decisions. Which brings us back to the United Nations as an organisation; it has a mandate in the field of international economic cooperation, its legitimacy is well developed and affirmed through being an all-inclusive organisation, it is open to all states of the world and with a history of dealing with international economic cooperation, some of which has been relatively successful. Let us not forget that in 2000, the United Nations was the institution capable of articulating a global vision of development, the Millennium Development Goals, which, again, is part of the legitimacy of the United Nations. This second example, therefore, shows us that the United Nations is a relevant organisation in the area of economic cooperation and must therefore be thought of as an organisation for the future.

The third example that I would like to recall, relates to human rights. At the beginning of November, a United Nations body called the Human Rights Council met in Geneva and discussed a report by the United States. The report was discussed in the context of a procedure known as the Universal Periodic Review. It is a procedure that requires all member states of the United Nations periodically to submit a general report on the state of human rights in their country and which allows other member states represented on the Human Rights Council to analyse and criticise that report. The US, as you know, is a country of exceptionalism; it does not normally find it easy to submit its reports or its situation to international scrutiny. The US recently decided to do so and the discussion on the US report was the most recent example of acceptance by the United States of the United Nations supervisory role in the field of human rights.

That discussion in early November this year dealt with a variety of human rights issues related to the United States, including what have been called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, which is something that you’ve heard about; techniques that are used in places like Guantánamo and which have been criticised by the international human rights community as forms of torture. That the United States accepted being analysed and criticised in Geneva at the Human Rights Council is a further demonstration that this aspect of the activity of the United Nations is not just there but is also accepted by all member states, including in this case the United States of America.

These three cases, in my opinion, demonstrate that examples can always be found in the actual practice of international affairs that show the continued relevance of the United Nations. How the United Nations is responding as an organisation to the needs of our time and how its structures are adjusting to those needs are another matter. The world in which we live is obviously a different world from the one in which the United Nations was established and there is a need for change in many aspects of its structure.

I would like briefly to outline some of my ideas about changes in the structure of the United Nations in three key areas: security, economic development and human rights. For those of you familiar with these discussions, this will not be new, except perhaps in some details. This may be more unfamiliar to others who are less interested in the structural, institutional and legal aspects of international cooperation. Nevertheless, I believe that the question of the structure and structural forms of the United Nations are important for the future. Having said that, I would also like to say that I will be only too happy to discuss with you during questions and answers any aspect of the United Nations work that you consider interesting, whether a thematic issue from any of the areas that I have mentioned – peace, security, development or human rights – or any particular country-specific or situation-specific question. I say this because I believe that one can very easily relate any of these specific situations of today to a particular institutional setting and the specific practical experience that the United Nations already has in relation to such situations.

I would like to say a few brief words about the changes that are needed in the structure of the United Nations. First, in the area of security. As you well know, the key United Nations body in the area of maintaining international peace and security is the Security Council. It consists of 15 members, 5 of whom are permanent. As I mentioned earlier, the President of the United States suggested that there should be new permanent members and that one of them should be India. I should also explain that the Security Council is a body that has developed a very interesting methodology of work. Its modus operandi includes not only formal analysis and decision-making on issues of peace and security but also extensive consultations on a variety of topical issues, as well as the promotion of policies that have a profound influence on international peace and security, such as sanctions, counter-terrorism and post-conflict peace-building.

It is worth bearing in mind that the number of armed conflicts around the world has gone down in the last 10 years or so, to some extent as a result of organised international action, including action organised through the United Nations. It must also be understood that there is a need for stabilisation activities in these post-conflict situations, much of which is done through the United Nations. The United Nations has established a post-conflict Peacebuilding Commission, which works with the Security Council and the General Assembly and concerns itself with some of the more fragile situations after armed conflicts, allowing the international community to prevent those situations relapsing into conflict and war.

The United Nations Security Council has developed a variety of methods of work and that in itself has been an adjustment to the needs of our time. Will the composition of the Security Council will also change? I believe that the answer is yes. I have worked with the United Nations. I have participated in discussions that started in 1992, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and which all led to the conclusion that the Security Council must be expanded. How, though, and with which candidates? In my opinion, the Security Council has to be expanded in terms of both permanent members and non-permanent members. There should be an additional 6 permanent members, without the right to veto such as the current 5 permanent members have. Those current 5 permanent members have to stay and new ones should be added. Although new ones should be there without the right of veto, they should enjoy the advantages of permanence. The real advantage of the status of permanent member of the Security Council is not so much the veto, because the veto is rarely used and even the threat of veto has a limited role in today’s world.

Permanence is very important, though, because none of the international security issues is short-term and for a major power to be relevant with regard to them it must be there and must deal with issues on a permanent basis. So, to recap, permanence has great value for big powers and I believe that there should be new permanent members and that they do not need the right of veto. I believe that there should be 6, in order to satisfy all the regions of the world. There should be one from Europe, two from Asia, two from Africa and one from Latin America. I'm not going to mention any names, because as a sitting president I must be careful about the legal aspects of this talk, but it doesn't require much imagination to figure out which those candidates are. I’ve mentioned one because the name has already come out in recent discussion.

The interesting thing then is how the other, the non-permanent part of the Security Council, should look. I believe that the non-permanent membership of the Council should also be expanded and that this should consist of two categories – one of more frequent rotation and one of regular rotation. I say this because we have seen in the United Nations the need for a more orderly process of elections and rotation within the Council. The Charter of the United Nations only says that no non-permanent member of the Security Council shall be eligible for immediate re-election after the expiry of the two-year term of that non-permanent member. I believe that it's a valid rule, which has stood the test of time, and that it should be kept in the Charter. However, there should be provision for more frequent rotation, perhaps a system by which the General Assembly would elect 12 countries to become non-permanent members with more frequent rotation, and these would alternate. This would mean that, at any given moment, there would be 6 non-permanent members with more frequent rotation.

That would obviously leave the remainder of the Council, which I believe should consist of 8 more members, who would rotate on the basis of geographic representation. I believe that those countries would benefit from the fact that some of the larger non-permanent members would rotate more frequently and that we would see less of a phenomenon thtat we have often seen in the United Nations in the recent past, that larger non-permanent members make themselves frequent candidates for non-permanent seats and elbow out smaller members. If we were to have an organised category of more frequently rotating non-permanent members and another 8 seats for regular rotation, that would make the whole competition process more orderly, more predictable and, therefore, also more effective.

Such a council would be enlarged, would be 25 members as opposed to the current 15 members. It would be larger but, in my opinion, still manageable as a collective body for deciding on international security issues.

I'm sure that some of you are wondering whether all the current permanent members of the Security Council should be there forever. It’s a valid question and I think that if the European Union reached the stage of being able to decide that, instead of two current permanent members coming from EU countries there should be only one permanent seat for the European Union as a whole, that this would be a welcome development in international relations at the global level. However, I'm not sure that this is relevant to my lifetime and so I'm not particularly enthusiastic about such a discussion. I mention it simply because I know that such suggestions come out in any discussion on the United Nations.

Expanding the Security Council is a necessary structural change in the area of maintaining international peace and security. There are other areas in which change must also take place. Let me briefly mention the spheres of economic affairs and human rights.

In the economic sphere, the role of the United Nations is more limited, because actual international cooperation relevant to international economic affairs has been largely concentrated in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation and some others. Nevertheless, the United Nations has retained an important deliberative function and, as I said before, it has articulated the blueprint or, rather, a vision of global economic development in the form of the Millennium Development Goals. So there is a role for the United Nations in that area, too. Because the UN is the only organisation with complete, full inclusiveness, this means that it is an organisation with a great deal of legitimacy, something that can also be helpful in work in the field of international economic cooperation.

The main body of the United Nations dealing with these issues is called the Economic and Social Council. It has 54 members at present and largely covers the G20 membership plus a good many other states. However, the composition of the council is not formally related to the members’ economic power, their donor status or their population. I believe that that is a major shortcoming. The future Economic and Social Council should incorporate those three criteria. They cannot, of course, be defined with full precision, but there has to be a provision to allow the composition to include the 10 largest donor countries, those who contribute the most to global development, the 10 most populous countries of the world – excluding, of course, those who are part of the first group of 10 donor countries – and other members elected on the basis of geographic representation.

I believe that such a composition would give the Economic and Social Council a good representational function and that such a council could be more effective than the present one. Such a council should deal with implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, should formulate policy recommendations and should also serve as a governing board of various United Nations funds and programmes in the field of economic and social development. As those of you who are familiar with the United Nations know, there are several funds, such as the UNDP – United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF – United Nations Children's Fund, UNFPA – United Nations Population Fund and UNIFEM – United Nations Development Fund for Women. These are funds and programmes that relate to the main part of the United Nations system and they should have a single governing board in the form of the Economic and Social Council of tomorrow.

The Economic and Social Council should meet on a basis of continuity. In that regard it should have a similar working pattern as the Security Council of the United Nations and it should also address, when necessary, a crisis situation in a particular country. I believe that this kind of attention will continue to be necessary in fragile countries. Some work in this regard has already been done by the existing Economic and Social Council, but more work is necessary and I believe a restructuring such as I have suggested could be of help.

Finally, the Human Rights Council. It was already proposed some time ago that this body should become another principal organ of the United Nations. I myself have been a proponent of that idea for about 20 years, which also gives you a sense of how long it takes for things to change in the United Nations. What is 20 years in the course of history, though? A relatively short space of time. In any case, human rights are a relatively new theme for the United Nations. Although there are some general provisions on human rights in the Charter of 1945, explaining that the purpose of the United Nations includes, among other things, the promotion of human rights for all, without any distinction as to race, sex, colour, religion or other factors of this kind, there wasn't much in the original structure to provide a framework for UN action in this area. This has all been developed later, through a process that has been fairly disorganised. The United Nations has negotiated a number of international treaties in the field of human rights. Six of them are called the principal human rights treaties of today, and each of them has established its own supervisory body, a body of experts. These experts then consider reports under the relevant treaty, which is how a mechanism is started on review of the implementation of human rights treaties. In addition, various permanent bodies related to the Economic and Social Council dealt with more general issues of human rights.

In the early years of this century, there was very widely felt dissatisfaction with the system and, as a result, there was a move towards the establishment of a new organ of the UN, called the Human Rights Council. This is the council that I mentioned at the beginning in connection with the American report and the fact that the United States has accepted its authority to discuss the general situation of human rights in the United States, including some of the more sensitive issues.

The Human Rights Council that I see as part of the future of the UN would be a principal organ. It would be on an equal footing with the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. That is not the case today. The current Human Rights Council is a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly and so lacks the kind of authority it needs. However, over time, it may be possible for such authority to come and for the Human Rights Council to grow. I'm an optimist in that regard. Unlike many people, I believe that the current work of the Council is promising. I don’t have time to go into all the details of that work, but to remain focused on the Universal Periodic Review, I would say that it is very important for all member states of the United Nations to be periodically exposed to critical review by other members of the UN. We need that. We need it to develop over time a sense of what it means to strive for the universality of human rights. At present, we still have a very much West-centred idea of human rights. We do not have a full appreciation of what it means to struggle for the realisation of human rights in the context of development. How does one do that in a country in which the primary objective of government must be to lift large numbers of people out of poverty? What kind of priorities does that bring and what kind of situations for human rights does that imply?

We have also not fully appreciated that the human rights situation has improved greatly in the last three and a half decades, an improvement of historic proportions. Just consider what the world looked like in the late 1970s – dictatorships in Latin America, communist rule in Eastern Europe, many dictatorships in Asia and Africa. Much has changed since then, in Latin America, in East Europe, in Asia and in Africa. We thus have a much more complex world now, in which acceptance of human rights has become much higher. However, the complexity of implementing human rights has also grown and, while we have not learned to appreciate the achievements of some, we remain critical of the mistakes of many. For example, if one looks at the improvement in places like Turkey or Indonesia, or some other countries, one could say: Things really have improved considerably since the 1970s or early 80s. Why don’t we appreciate that? Why don’t we consult those countries and see what kind of change was needed and what kind of further change still has to take place?

Discussions in the United Nations with regard to human rights remain pretty much dominated by a predetermined view arising out of the Western experience of human rights and dominated by legal concepts of human rights. In a developing environment, though, the legal concept does not always suffice. I remember very well an expert discussion on human rights in which I participated some 20 years ago, in which a member, a representative of an African country, was asked about the right of every individual to be defended by a lawyer in case of trial. The specific question was whether any discrimination exists with regard to legal defence. The answer then was: No, there’s no discrimination in that regard in our country, but that’s because we don't have any lawyers. It tells a little bit about the complexity of human rights implementation, which is not fully grasped, which is not fully internalised by the United Nations organs or by the general public globally. So, there’s a big task ahead of us and I believe we must be patient. We must look at these problems with a sense of the historic change that has already occurred and the further change that is likely to occur in the future. Vituperative lecturing is not going to help. We need something else. What that else will be depends very much on how we structure these discussions in the United Nations and what kind of structures are built to allow such structured discussion to take place.

That is what I wanted to say about human rights. Finally, a word or two about the General Assembly. As you know, the main body of the United Nations, called the General Assembly, meets every year in the autumn, when heads of state and government travel to New York and talk about general issues of organisation and international cooperation. Committees of the General Assembly then meet for the rest of the year, and sometimes beyond into the next year. Over the course of time, the structures of the General Assembly have become too complex. There has been too much duplication and, at the point at which the three council structure that I explained earlier begins to work, the General Assembly would also have to be reformed. I think that the majority of committees of the General Assembly could be abolished, that the Assembly should mainly work in plenary session, that it should consider reports of the Councils and that it should focus on guiding the Councils in a very general sense. That is a minimum explanation of what I wanted to say about the General Assembly. The General Assembly is obviously a major story in itself. There’s lots more that could be said for those who want to study that international institution in detail but I don’t think that today’s meeting is appropriate for me to go into this in more depth.

Let me just make a few concluding remarks and to ask you to raise questions or make your own comments. I would like to say at the end that it must be understood that the UN has been changing over time. I have not mentioned several aspects of the change, with which I believe you are familiar or have heard something about if you are not all that familiar with the United Nations. One is that the UN was originally devoted to setting norms and to the organisation of international conferences, whereas today it has become a much more operational organisation, an organisation that manages 120,000 peacekeepers in about 18 peacekeeping operations around the world. About two thirds of the United Nations Secretariat work in the field. They do not work in headquarters in New York, Vienna or Nairobi. They work in the field in various development, humanitarian and other projects.

The development of the United Nations has also produced an interesting capacity, which is relatively new, of being the convening authority for a variety of non-governmental humanitarian organisations, a capacity that is extremely important in the case of natural disasters or post-conflict situations, in which a large number of NGOs come to a country with the honest intention of helping. The question of coordination then becomes very serious and somebody has to convene those organisations and to discuss the tasks and to make the assistance as effective as possible. It is a complex job, but one that the UN can perform well because it is seen as sufficiently neutral, sufficiently well endowed with expertise and sufficiently effective as a coordinator. So the convening capacity of the United Nations is also something that has come as a result of evolution.

Here we have an organisation that is operational, that has developed a variety of practical activities, some of which are not even mentioned in the United Nations Charter or any other basic instrument but have come about as a result of practice. This has changed the United Nations very considerably and so the question of its general structure, the structure of the main bodies of the organisation, is an open question, something that we legitimately discuss, something that we must consider and something that will have to change over time. I believe that the change will take place. It will take place incrementally, but the organisation will be transformed.

Finally, I do not think that there is any competition to the United Nations as a global organisation. We live in a globalised world and, in a globalised world, we must be careful and attentive to the only global organisation that is open to all states of the world and that also has the broadest possible mandate and full inclusiveness. This gives it unique legitimacy. It is a very precious instrument, to be preserved and developed for future needs. This is something with which your generation will have to live. So I suggest that you think about the United Nations. Those of you who are studying the UN are obviously already familiar with what I have been talking about, and much more. Those of who do not will perhaps have found in my presentation a small element of encouragement to pay attention to the UN, to think about it as a global instrument and to consider how it can be made most useful. Thank you very much.