By Holy See Mission
Address of Cardinal Angelo SodanoSecretary of State
of the Holy Seeat the High-level Plenary Meeting of the60th Session of the General
Assembly of the
United NationsNew York, 16 September 2005Mr. President,
It is my honour to convey
the most cordial greetings of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to you and to the
Heads of State and Government here assembled, and to the other representatives
of the Organization’s member states.
My voice also echoes the
sentiments of Catholics throughout the world who look to the United Nations as
an institution that is ever more necessary for the peace and progress of the
whole of humanity.
Sixty years have passed
since that day, 26 June 1945, when this Organization was born, with a view to
implementing the four great goals listed in the Preamble of its Statute. Much
has been achieved in the service of humanity during these years. Nevertheless,
time has taken its toll upon this agency, as upon every human undertaking. It is
now widely believed that the UN needs to be renewed, in response to the great
challenges of the present day.
1. Contemporary relevance
of the UN
It is true that the UN is
not a super-government. Rather, it is the result of the political will of
individual member countries. Yet ordinary men and women, the many millions who
constitute the “we the peoples” of the UN Charter, are saying to the leaders of
nations: give us a modern institution, capable of taking resolutions and then
enforcing them. This is an insistent appeal issued to us by men and women who
are disheartened by promises made and not kept, resolutions adopted and not
enforced. Their cry must instil in us the determination necessary to undertake
an institutional reform of the UN, a reform that is attentive to the real
demands of our peoples rather than to the balance of power.
In this regard, it must be
said that the mechanisms established in Chapters VI and VII of the Statute of
the United Nations retain all their value and contain the criteria necessary for
pre-empting the threats to peace and for guaranteeing collective security.
Today, however, this juridical framework must be complemented by the necessary
international juridical instruments for disarmament and the control of arms, for
the fight against terrorism and international crime and for effective
cooperation between the United Nations and regional agencies, in order to
resolve situations of conflict.
2. The responsibilities of
the UN
The long history of
peacekeeping operations, with their successes and failures, offers a rich
reservoir of experience from which to develop parameters for future action in
conflict resolution. To this end, the Holy See is in favour of the creation of
an agency to restore peace to countries that have suffered armed conflicts. The
Holy See, in other words, is in favour of the Peacebuilding Commission,
intended to design and implement an ambitious strategy to overcome those
elements of ethnic rivalry which give rise to conflicts and which could
re-ignite them in the future.
The tragedies that have
occurred in the Balkans, in the Middle East and in Africa should cause us to
reflect. What is important now is the commitment we make to foster a culture of
conflict prevention, but we must also explore thoroughly the problem of the use
of force to disarm the aggressor. The “Responsibility to protect” arises from a
very important political and juridical concept, developed progressively in the
60 years of the UN’s existence. In essence, it refers to the pre-eminent dignity
of every single man and woman over the State and over every ideological system.
In connection with the
reform of the UN, the Holy See asks member States to have the courage to
continue their discussions on the application and practical consequences of the
“Responsibility to protect”, in order to find the most opportune solution,
through the Security Council and in accordance with the indications given in
Chapter VII of the UN Statute, to those situations in which national authorities
either cannot or will not protect their own populations, in the face of internal
or external threats. The Statute of the United Nations, in its Preamble, says
specifically that the United Nations Organization was created “in order to save
future generations from the scourge of war”.
For this purpose, it
remains an obligation in justice in the service of human dignity to attain and
even to surpass the Millennium Development Goals, thereby establishing an
essential pre-condition for peace and collective security, and for the
elimination or substantial reduction of the threat from terrorism and
international crime.
3. Commitment to
development
Focusing our attention now
on the great theme of development, we must acknowledge that recent years have
witnessed a number of promising gestures on the part of governments. For
example, the proposal for new mechanisms to finance development (the U.S.
Millennium Challenge Account, the International Finance Facility, the
Nouveaux mécanismes de taxation internationale recently proposed by the
French Government and other States, etc.), and especially the recent decisions
of the G8 summit at Gleneagles, are greatly appreciated by the Holy See.
However, much work remains to be done in order to achieve greater economic and
financial solidarity. This must include a solution to the debt problem of the
poorest countries and of average-income countries with serious foreign debt
problems, together with the relaunching of public development aid (ODA,
Official Development Assistance) and a generous opening of markets to assist
poor countries.
It is true that such
actions by developed countries must be accompanied by a renewed commitment on
the part of the governments of developing countries, who have a duty to combat
corruption, to guarantee the rule of law and above all to take responsibility
for the social aspects of development, such as education, job security and basic
healthcare for all. To a world already exposed to pandemics, while others are at
risk of breaking out, to the millions without access to basic healthcare,
medicine and drinking water, we cannot offer an ambiguous, reductive or even
ideological vision of health. For example, would it not be better to speak
clearly of the “health of women and children” instead of using the term
“reproductive health”? Could there be a desire to return to the language of a
“right to abortion”?
4. The contribution of the
Holy See
Mr President, the Holy See
has a spiritual mission first and foremost, but in consequence of this it has a
duty to be present in the life of Nations and a commitment to promote justice
and solidarity among peoples. Armed with this conviction, the Holy See reaffirms
its full support for the objectives of this Summit and undertakes to do what it
can to help the Summit produce the desired fruits rapidly so that an era of
peace and social justice may quickly follow. The words spoken by the late Pope
John Paul II on his famous journey to Chile in 1987 have lost none of their
relevance: “Los pobres no pueden esperar” - the poor cannot wait! Thank
you!
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