Welcome address of Mr. Vladimir Petrovsky, former Director-General of the UN in Geneva and President of the Conference on Disarmament

Geneva, 18 July 2002—World Civil Society Forum

Audio

Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is both a great pleasure and an honour for me to address your Forum. First of all I would like to express my high appreciation to the organizers of the Forum and in particular to Mr. Sébastien Ziegler, whose able leadership we could feel it everyday here at the Forum as well as to thank to his staff.

It is a very timely meeting. Not only because of the forthcoming World Conference on sustainable development in Johannesburg and the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, but also because the global changes in general attach a special importance to this Forum.

Facing the challenges of the new emerging civilization of paradigm global international society, the political leadership at the Millennium Summit has agreed for the first time in the international history, on the question what has to be done to provide peace, stability and well being to all parts of our planet.

The major issue today is: How to achieve these goals?

At the beginning of the XX century, the U.S. president, W. Wilson, who was one of the founding fathers of the first international organization - the League of Nations- declared that “the world must be made safe for democracy”. In historical perspective, maybe more importantly, at the beginning of the XXI century, it is to say that "the world must be democratic to be safe."

Democracy implies good governance, responsible and transparent at all levels of human interaction - global, transcontinental, regional, state and local. Democratic governance cannot be achieved without civil society, that is, the sphere in which social movements organize themselves around objectives, constituencies and thematic activities.

Constructive dialogue between authorities, the civil society, academia and the private sector is the basis for consolidation at all levels of human interaction, which allow to face the challenges of the new civilisation of paradigm, where cultural diversities are supposed to live in harmony with common values.

On the global level the associations and organizations of Civil Society have already become indispensable partners of the United Nations. They represent a wealth of expertise, experience and specific knowledge. Their direct contacts with the grass roots are very precious to the United Nations.

Although NGOs do not have the right to vote in the UN, on the basis of article 71 of the Charter, they are consulted on elaboration of programmes and policies and participate more and more in the decision-making process. Their impact on world politics is quite significant. Results may sometimes be slow to come, but one has seen, in the past 25 years or so, many NGO initiatives succeed. To mention a few: the Convention against Torture, the Convention banning landmines, the Convention on Climate Change, the progress made in the promotion of the role of women and the protection of children, the actions undertaken in favour of indigenous peoples, minorities, people living in extreme poverty, etc. All this would not have been possible without the Civil Society organizations and we could feel it very strongly in the United Nations.

The growing influence and the role of Civil Society actions has been both a hallmark and a cause of our changing political environment. Within the framework of the United Nations, in a way, people of the United Nations and the governments of the UN member-states more often than now, found a sort of reconciliation and, on many occasions, a real constructive cooperation. What seems to be emerging is an organization that is offering the previously unknown possibility of looking at the peoples and the governments in the global context in a co-operative manner, but not in a confrontational one.

To keep this trend going, it is very important to encourage the dialogue among civilisations and, in particular, to involve the young people in this dialogue.

Confidence-building measures are needed today, not only in military field, but also probably to a larger degree on a general human level. It is very important to understand that in the process of interaction of civilisations, not only clashes, but also mutually enriching experience, have taken place. We need to take into account the positive example of such interaction and encourage it in the future.

From a pragmatic point of view, the Civil Society organizations could play an important role in public opinion, making and mobilizing political will towards practical deeds in implementing human rights and humanitarian law, as well as the promotion of human security, - that is the security of a human being from violence, hunger, diseases and environmental degradation.

Looking into the future, there is no doubt for me that without inclusion of the Civil Society in the process of good governance, the latter will be built on sand. I would like therefore to support the idea to constitute the World Civil Society Forum which shall meet us, seems to me, annually.

From the viewpoint of a stronger involvement of Civil Society into the United Nations activities, it would be desirable to structure the permanent Forum in the same way as the General Assembly.

In other words, in addition to the plenary meetings to establish six committees, the same as in the United Nations. This arrangement will facilitate the dialogue between the Civil Society and the UN on specific issues and make the partnership with UN as feasible as possible.

The time has also come to raise before UN member-states the issue of reconsidering present rules with regard to the participation of NGOs in the activities of the UN systems, because these rules were adopted more than 50 years ago, under very specific conditions of political and ideological confrontations.

A consultative status of Civil society organizations and the United Nations should be strengthened, there is no doubt for me, and the Civil society organizations should be present at the discussion not only social, economic but also political, disarmament, legal and all other issues which are on the agenda of the UN.

In conclusion I would like to express my hope that this Forum will really become a turning-point in the strengthening of Pax Multilateral and good democratic governance at all levels of human interaction, which implies the ever-increasing role of NGOs.

Thank you very much for your attention.