October 7, 2015 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In the wake of Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United Nations, the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the UN hosted examination the Holy Father’s address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and particularly that part of his words to the international community regarding peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, moderated the October 7 panel, which consisted of experts in security and disarmament, who advocated the urgent need for nuclear nonproliferation.
Senator Douglas Roche is the former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, an expert advisor to the Holy See’s UN Mission and author of the new book, The United Nations in the Twentieth Century: Grappling with the world’s most challenging issues: militarism, the environment, human rights, inequality.
“Both the pope and the UN seek and agenda of peace centered on the human rights of all. This is a common security agenda, and if we achieve it human civilization will have been elevated as never before,” Senator Roche said in his address.
In his address, he offered five steps for the international community to take to build conditions for peace: making the UN peace keeping force permanent, institutionalizing the “responsibility to protect,” promoting a nuclear weapons convention, reforming the UN Security Council and increasing the role of women in peace building efforts.
Kim Won-Soo, the Under-Secretary General and Acting High Representative for Disarmament Affairs for the United Nations and Jonathan Granoff, the President of Global Security Institute, also spoke on the panel and called for an end to nuclear weaponry.
The text of Archbishop Auza and Senator Douglas Roche’s statements are given below.
Statement of H.E. Archbishop Bernardito Auza
Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations
Side Event Sponsored by the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission
“Seeking Urgently Needed and Effective Solutions”:
Responding to the Call of Pope Francis to the United Nations
United Nations Conference Room 11
New York, 7 October 2015
Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates and Panelists, and Dear Friends,
I thank you for coming today to this side event which is an opportunity to reflect upon Pope Francis’ recent visit to the United Nations and to ponder what he said during his Address to the General Assembly.
Pope Francis stated that he hoped his words would be taken “above all” as a continuation of the words Pope Paul VI said 50 years ago this week, which he stressed “remain ever timely.” Paul VI, in the first papal address ever to the UN, said that “the appeal to the moral conscience of man has never been as necessary as it is today,” because the real dangers threatening the human person come ultimately not from progress, or science, but from the way we choose to use them either for good or for ill. “The real danger,” Paul VI emphasized, “comes from man, who has at his disposal ever more powerful instruments that are as well fitting to bring about ruin as they are to achieve lofty conquests.”
Twelve days ago, Pope Francis came here to continue and intensify the appeal to our moral consciences and those of all the citizens represented in the General Assembly. Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the UN, he said that the experience of these last seven decades is a tale of great achievements and sad failures.
At its best, he said, the United Nations has been a light that has helped “dispel the darkness of the disorder caused by unrestrained ambitions and collective forms of selfishness.” When the “full application of international norms” are applied with “transparency and sincerity,” “without ulterior motives,” according to the principles of justice, it has led to peace and development.
When, on the other hand, international norms are not enforced, when they’re reduced to a “declarationist nominalism” that mollifies our consciences but achieves little, or when they are manipulated as instruments to be followed only when they’re to individual advantage or narrow national or geopolitical interests, he said they become “a true Pandora’s box” and have occasioned great damage.
And so Pope Francis came to echo Pope Paul VI’s appeal to awaken our consciences and make them courageous and consequential. One of the most important principles of conscience, Pope Francis described, is justice: giving each person his due, recognizing that everyone has rights, and placing limits on the temptation to aggrandize control and power. But he added that according to the classical definition, justice isn’t a theory but the “constant and perpetual will” to give each his own. It is practical, persevering and effective.
For us to be just and conscientious leaders and servants of the good of nations, we need therefore tenaciously to press on to seek “urgently needed and effective solutions” to the endemic or epidemic problems that plague us. We need especially to recognize, Pope Francis said, that war is the greatest injustice of all, what he called the “negation of all rights,” and strive with all our energies to save our generation and future generations from the “scourge of war” every way we can: through integral and sustainable development, through protection of the environment, through the enforcement of international law and treaties, through peace making and peace building, and through forming a culture based on communion and cooperation rather than distrust and the fear of mutually-assured destruction.
In his September 25th address, Pope Francis appealed to our consciences specifically on this point about the choice we need to make between an “ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction and possibly the destruction of all mankind” — an ethics that seeks to keep nations at bay through “fear and distrust” — and an ethics of fraternity and solidarity. As Paul VI said a half-century ago, the greatest danger comes from man, who can use science and technology for ruin or for achievement. Pope Francis has suggested that the more we have such weapons in our hands, the more a culture is created, and consciences formed, based on potentially using them. Therefore, he stressed, “There is an urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons, in full application of the non-proliferation Treaty, in letter and spirit, with the goal of a complete prohibition of these weapons.”
“The future demands of us,” Pope Francis underlined, “critical and global decisions in the face of world-wide conflicts that increase the number of the excluded and those in need.” The world today demands of us “urgently needed effective solutions.” And Pope Francis is calling us — he’s challenging our consciences — to have the constant and perpetual will to help create the culture of justice, solidarity, fraternity, communion and cooperation that can lead to sustainable development and to the peace that both fosters it and flows from it.
Today I am very happy that we have three speakers who will help us to understand and apply Pope Francis’ summons with regard to the need to work together to work for a world free of nuclear weapons.
I am honored to welcome His Excellency Mr. Kim Won-soo, Under Secretary General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs here at the United Nations, who will be sharing his thoughts from the perspective of this new position he assumed at the beginning of June.
I am delighted to welcome Senator Douglas Roche, author, parliamentarian, diplomat, passionate promoter of peace and security through disarmament, and for more than two decades collaborator of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. He was Canada’s Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN from 1984 to 1989, and served as Chairman of the UN Disarmament Committee in 1988. He has just published his 21st book, entitled The United Nations in the 21st Century: Grappling with the world’s most challenging issues: militarism, the environment, human rights [and] inequality, which he will introduce at a signing event tomorrow at 1 PM in the UN bookstore. He’ll be sharing the fruits of decades of work and analysis today in light of Pope Francis’ address.
And I am also pleased to welcome Jonathan Granoff, the President of the Global Security Institute, the former Vice President of the NGO committee on Disarmament Affairs and the Senior Advisor of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Arms Control and National Security, who will bring his many years of experience and leadership to increase our understanding of the issues and stakes involved. He will provide the Response to the reflections of Senator Roche.
At the end of the interventions there will be time for questions.
Thank you once again for your attendance today. I now turn the floor over to His Excellency Mr. Kim Won-soo.
Statement of Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C.
Side Event Sponsored by the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission
“Seeking Urgently Needed and Effective Solutions”:
Responding to the Call of Pope Francis to the United Nations
United Nations Conference Room 11
New York, 7 October 2015
Still basking in the aura of Pope Francis’s visit to the United Nations, we are challenged in this panel to identify effective solutions to the problems he pointed to that hold back humanity from achieving the human security agenda. It is indeed a wide agenda and I cannot do justice to it all. Although I have had the honour of being an adviser to the Holy See delegation to the UN for many years, I am here expressing my own views.
The essence of Pope Francis’s social teaching is the intrinsic value of every person. The United Nation’s programs are also centered on the inherent human dignity of every person. Both the Pope and the UN seek an agenda of peace centered on the human rights of all. This is a common security agenda and, if we achieve it, human civilization will have been elevated as never before.
Although Pope Francis is widely regarded as a sort of “singular sensation” (after all, not many popes get on the cover of People magazine), his teaching about the need to honour every person’s human dignity in peace, freedom and respect is not new. Nor is he a lone churchman.
Pope Francis stands on a strong base of Catholic social teaching dating back to the 1891 publication of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which dealt with the mutual duties between labour and capital. Pope John XXIII, in his 1963 encyclical, Pacem in Terris, addressed to all humanity, set out a panoramic vision of peace, embracing economic and social development, the abolition of nuclear weapons, the reform o the UN, and vigorous adaptation of the principles of truth, justice and sincere cooperation. The Church’s calls for peace with sustainable development were carried forward into the Second Vatican Council, which declared: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, those too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”
The very words – “Human beings are at the centre of concerns” – stated in the first principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development of 1992 and repeated often thereafter in UN documents reveal how the political structures are gradually being imbued with a recognition of the dignity of the human being. Pope Francis has now projected his vision for humanity onto the world state in so doing has contributed significantly to raising the new global conscience.
Both the Pope and the UN stand for common security, which cab be expressed thusly: All people, not only states, have a right to a secure existence, and all states have an obligation to protect those rights. Thus, the primary goals of global security policy should be to prevent conflict and war and to maintain the integrity of the planet’s life-support systems by eliminating the economic, social, environmental, political and military conditions that generate threats to the security of people and the planet, and by anticipating and managing crises before they escalate into armed conflict. (Commission on Global Governance).
Pope Francis has aligned himself with the UN Charter and appealed for it to be used "as an obligatory reference point of justice." When the leaders of the world assembled at the U.N. in 2005 to commemorate the organization's 60th anniversary, they issued a declaration showing how the Charter has inspired a new global conscience. They pledged to work together for a collective security system based on development, peace, security, and human rights. Of course, actually doing all this would require another step forward in political leadership. But the fact that the leaders were able even to agree that sustainable development and human rights are integral parts of the quest for security is a remarkable testimony to human advancement. How to integrate these ideals into the messy business of state sovereignty remains a challenge.
Applying these thoughts directly to our discussion today, I offer five steps - certainly not an exhaustive list - the international community should take to organize itself in an inter-locking way to build the conditions for peace.
1. A Permanent UN Peacekeeping Force
Establishing a permanent UN peacekeeping force for quick deployment in emergency situations is hardly a new idea, since it was first proposed in the UN formational meetings and again by Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali in his 1992 Agenda for Peace. The efficacy of UN peacekeeping has been proven through the years, and was highlighted last week when a summit of 50 countries involved in peacekeeping operations pledged to strengthen existing capabilities. But they did not go far enough in planning for the future.
Peacekeeping has become a critical element of a broader international peace and security architecture. The resources spent by the international community on UN peacekeeping are but a small fraction of global defense spending. Unfortunately, peacekeeping is done on an ad hoc basis. It often takes months, if not years, to assemble a force to respond to new aggression somewhere. A permanent, highly trained rapid reaction force on stand-by basis is required for immediate deployment upon authorization by the Security Council. A UN emergency peace service (an international "911") ought to be established to protect civilians and prevent regional conflicts from spreading into wars.
2. Institutionalize Responsibility to Protect
The responsibility of the international community to protect civilians from atrocities is starting to be better understood. Though still early, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine has a checkered track record. It worked reasonably well in Mali, the results are uncertain in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and it was misused in Libya. It should have been used in Syria, and it is scandalous that the major political leaders could not come to an agreement. The international community must develop norms that can find widespread agreement in stopping human slaughters, and governments must put more resources into the prevention of such evils. The criteria for the use of the Responsibility to Protect need to be sharpened. While the principle of protecting people is firmly and globally established, the practice needs urgent implementation.
3. Nuclear Weapons Convention
It defies logic that the world has global treaties banning chemical and biological weapons but none banning nuclear weapons. With the nuclear powers modernizing their nuclear arsenals despite giving lip service to nuclear disarmament, we face permanency in nuclear weapons unless a Nuclear Weapons Convention or a framework of legal instruments outlaw the possession as well as use of these instruments of evil.
Pope Francis made his view crystal clear when he spoke to the General Assembly: "There is urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons, in full application of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in letter and spirit, with the goal of a complete prohibition of these weapons." The Pope had previously backed the new humanitarian movement to rid the world of nuclear weapons when he sent a message to an international conference in Vienna stripping away any lingering moral acceptance of the military doctrine of nuclear deterrence: "Nuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction cannot be the basis for an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence." He called for a world-wide dialogue, including both the nuclear and non-nuclear states and the burgeoning organizations that make up civil society, "to ensure that nuclear weapons are banned once and for all to the benefit of our common home."
Three-quarters of the countries of the world have voted at the UN to commence comprehensive negotiations, but the major powers remain opposed. AI1 countries that profess to understand the "catastrophic humanitarian consequences" of nuclear weapons need to engage immediately in establishing the legal, political and military requisites for a nuclear weapons free world.
4. UN Security Council Reform
Efforts to reform the Security Council have been made in the past but floundered. The fault lies not just with the five permanent members, which are not keen on sharing power, but with regional powers competing for permanent spaces on an enlarged Council. The arrival on the international scene of the BRICS -Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa -- with their over-arching new power should be recognized by the selection of Brazil, India and South Africa immediately. Germany and Japan should complete the enlarged Security Council to make it more reflective of modem demography.
Important as these improvements would be, there is an even more urgent reform required - changing the major powers' attitudes toward prioritizing the UN when building the conditions for peace. The powerful states often treat the UN as if it were something to be tolerated rather than championed. They frequently marginalize the UN in the peacemaking process instead of putting it front and centre. They deprive it of funding, criticize its bureaucracy, and undermine their own commitments made when they signed the Charter.
All told, the entire body of work of the UN, including peacekeeping and the sweeping economic and social development programs of forty specialized agencies and programs, costs $30 billion per year. This works out to about four dollars per person on the planet. It is only 1.76 per cent of the $ 1.7 trillion that nations spend annually on arms.
5. Women in Peacebuilding
Peace processes generally have a gender bias in primarily involving male leaders of contending armed forces and groups and mostly male mediators or facilitators. When crucial decisions about post-conflict governance are made, women usually lack a seat at the table despite the different impacts of war on men and women. In short, we need a more human-centered peace leadership built on the principles of Resolution 1325. Women's participation in peacekeeping missions would be a significant step forward.
Also, I look to a highly qualified woman to be the next Secretary- General of the United Nations. There can be no guarantee that more women in positions of authority will automatically produce a more peaceful world, but given the record of men in producing a culture of war over the past few centuries, the possibility, if not the promise, of a more feminine-inspired world order is dazzling.