Address to the 51st UN General Assembly

Mr. President,
Mr. Secretary-General,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,

Tomorrow, I am going to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on behalf of Norway.

We join with almost all countries in celebrating our new freedom. Freedom from fear of nuclear contamination and proliferation. By our joint resolve, the terror of competitive madness fell victim to the shear force of reason.

Thanks to the United Nations, the norm of non-testing was galvanized. It is today part and parcel of international law. In the future, no country, whether it has signed, or not signed that treaty, will be able to break that norm.

That can no longer be done with impunity. In the annals of history, it will be told that nuclear testing happened over a period of 40 years in the 20th century, and then never again.

The decades of negotiations seemed endless, but without the perseverance of this organization, it would not have worked. Where else could we hew out a global test ban? Where else can we cast norms of global applicability? Where else can we extend the international society based on law and contract?

This is what the UN does best. It is easy to ridicule years of meticulous negotiations. It is easy to deride the process as bloated bureaucracy and inefficiency. It is easy because that too happens here by the East River, every day. And we must never become used to that.

But some processes take time, because they are difficult and because they have profound effects on the whole world. Every country, every man, woman and child depend on what we can achieve right here, and every country here represented has a stake in our success or our failure.

For more than 50 years, the United Nations has, for better but also for worse, reflected its members, global political trends, contrasts, conflicts and confrontations. It has been judged, unjustly, more by its failures than by its successes.

The integration of scores of new member states, peace-keeping operations, promotion and protection of human rights, field activities in developing countries bringing relief and consolation to millions of destitute people - all of this bears witness to how the UN has harnessed the best of humanity and civilization.

Today, the threats to peace come not so much from contention between great states. Today's killing fields are within states. Out of around 40 cases of armed conflict in the world today, hardly any occur between states.

These conflicts are deeply embedded in the history of regions and peoples, where fissures within societies date far back, some being centuries old.

The price of intra state conflict is being paid by civilians. 90 per cent of casualties in armed conflict are civilians. They literally walk the mine-fields where millions of antipersonnel mines are strewn out. Not only are the death-tolls numbing. Let us also count the many missed years of economic production, the livestocks lost, the ravaged schools, the clinics destroyed.

Millions pay the terrible human price. But we all pay a price if the gap deepens between the fundamental norms of civilization and the daily suffering in too many countries in too many parts of the world. Reversing that trend is our moral obligation - preventing deadly conflict is our common challenge.

True, the United Nations is increasingly involved in internal crises. Still we do not possess the necessary means, mandates and mission capacity to suppress devastating conflict. All too often, intervention happens when the conflict has erupted, when the battles have been fought and when the dividing lines have been cemented. When the peacemakers are ready to go it may be late - often too late.

We lack efficient procedures for dealing with emerging conflicts. To individual countries, emerging intra-state conflict may not be deemed vital. But to the UN, any armed conflict or threat of conflict must be vital.

We need more preventive action and more preventive diplomacy. Here at the UN we need to develop the institutional, legal and managerial capacity to act - as a model also for regional action. Preventing conflict and human suffering must not be hampered by the traditional norm of what is essentially within states' domestic jurisdiction. Killing people can not be protected by the Charter.

A situation which is not visibly dangerous, which does not offer spectacular pictures for the evening news, is all too often silenced out of the news picture. And since those who suffer have no vote in any of the countries which command the resources to help, it may be all too convenient to look the other way.

But reacting in time need not be costly - on the contrary - there is so much to gain - there is so much to save. A lot could be achieved if the UN were better able to send experienced diplomats and support missions to conflict-ridden areas, in timely endeavors to de-escalate conflict and reconstruct civil society.

We know that the hands of the Secretary-General often are tied in such cases when it comes to redirecting resources. That is another challenge. UN expertise - our expertise - may not show up because there is not sufficient funds for air-tickets.

Norway is ready to make an extra contribution. We offer to establish a Fund for Preventive Action here at the UN. We pledge to fill it with some million dollars on an annual basis, and we invite other governments to join. That fund would facilitate immediate deployment of first class expertise for pro-active diplomacy.

Any organization that fails to change is bound to lose its effectiveness. So we must press on with reform. But we can not accept intimidation. Withholding legally assessed contributions amounts to just that.

Today, some countries pay more than their fair share. Other countries voluntarily pay more than their fair share. Many countries pay too little or hardly anything at all.

We now need to settle for a long term solution based on a more equitable scale of contributions and the scrupulous respect by member states for their financial obligations and the payment of arrears.

We must press on with reform of the Security Council. We are not served by protracted denials of the world as it is. The Security Council must reflect this world, and the issue of a regionally balanced enlargement now must be addressed. Asia, Africa and Latin America should be represented on a permanent basis. Japan and Germany should each have a permanent seat. And as we enlarge the Council we must see to it that the efficiency of decision-making is retained and that its implementing ability is greatly enhanced.

If we had sat down at the drawing board to create the UN today, we would have grouped the most closely inter-linked challenges together and designated a limited number of agencies to deal with them. Today, in the social and economic field, responsibility for sustainable development, poverty, population and education is divided. There is too much fragmentation and too many turf battles.

We need a leaner - and thereby I believe - a stronger structure to deal with what we decided in Rio, Cairo, Copenhagen and Beijing. Now, we must do what we said there.

The Nordic countries, in their ongoing project for UN reform, have focused on the other end of the spectrum - on the country level. Today, there are several UN representatives in one country, often overlapping each other and often contributing to more fragmentation. But political issues, humanitarian issues and long term development are inter-linked. Our organizational set up should be the same.

Let us coordinate our humanitarian assistance activities better, allowing us to react more quickly and more effectively. And let us speak more openly about human rights.

Human rights are violated all over the world. But only in a few countries is the human rights situation deteriorating. We may be impatient, we may find that progress is too slow in important countries and there may be temporary set backs.

But in a world of global communication, facts can no longer be hidden. We cannot build fences around ideas in the age of Internet. It will be increasingly impossible to derive the benefits of the global economy, without exposing political power structures to the scrutiny of democracy.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty established a global norm. And this is what the UN does best and must continue to do. The first chapter of the Charter calls for effective collective measures for the removal of threats to peace. Our challenge is to grasp the complexity of today's threats. No single country is powerful enough to deal alone with the threats that transcend our frontiers - terrorism, nuclear proliferation, crime, drugs, disease and damage to the environment. They all require common action. They all belong on our common agenda

In Rio - five years ago - we reached consensus on Agenda 21. That was a call for action. Together we laid the first seeds of a global norm for sustainable development. Now we must struggle on with the implementation.

Later this year we will start the final work on a climate protocol. No challenge is more global than climate change. We owe it to present and future generations to come up with a binding agreement which is cost-effective, equitable and verifiable. That process will require a combined political and scientific craftsmanship which must draw on every experience we have made in multilateral diplomacy so far.

There can be no civilized world unless we unite to strengthen multilateralism. Establishing global norms. Building and raising the minimum standards of inter and intra-state behaviour. Building new norms of international accountability.

The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague is a building-block in that edifice. The preventive aspect would be served if the Karadcics and Mladics of this world were brought to justice to answer for their crimes.

But again - conflicts should not be allowed to come that far. We must be able to address the root causes of conflict in time. That is what prevention is all about. That is the win-win-game we should all play. We cannot afford not to.