99/49 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

NOTES FOR AN ADDRESS BY

THE HONOURABLE LLOYD AXWORTHY

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

TO THE SYMPOSIUM

"CIVILIANS IN WAR: 100 YEARS AFTER

THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE"

New York, U.S.A.

September 24, 1999

(9:15 a.m. EDT)

I am delighted to be with you this evening. It is a particular pleasure to be a guest of Vartan Gregorian so soon after his arrival at the Carnegie Corporation. Andrew Carnegie would surely be gratified to know that his work still inspires us to think about what needs to be done to protect people caught in the horrors of war.

I am also pleased to be associated again with the International Peace Academy (IPA) and its chair, Rita Hauser, herself a "force of nature," leveraging her far-reaching influence in support of the rule of law. Never has the IPA's blend of research, professional development and policy advocacy been more appreciated -- or needed.

Finally, I would like to thank David Malone for his hand in organizing this event. We counted on his mind, energy and ideas in Ottawa, which have clearly served the IPA well during his tenure.

I cannot think of a subject more important at the dawn of the next millennium than that of civilians in war.

In 1899, the Hague Conference on Peace set an agenda. In 1999, the world needs a new agenda -- one that puts people at the heart of foreign policy. The impetus for the generation involved in the first Hague Conference was a desire to make the act of war itself more humane, establishing rules to protect combatants at a time when civilians were largely bystanders.

Today, we face new challenges that could not have been foreseen by those who participated in the Hague Conference. In World War I, 5 percent of casualties were civilians: today that figure is closer to 80 percent. In 1999, civilians are direct targets of war, and live on its battlefields. In 1999, civilians have become tools of warfare, herded about to destabilize governments, pressed into military service, held hostage, exploited sexually, and used as human shields.

Modern-day warlords have created a new war economy, selling resources to fund their ambitions, terrorizing local residents for economic gain. They are aided and abetted by the discreet complicity of those who benefit from the marketplace of conflict. Arms dealers, with governments often turning a blind eye, are only too happy to oblige.

I realize that this is not news to any of you. The point is that the onus is on our generation -- 100 years after the Hague Conference -- to respond to these new realities. We need to change the discourse of diplomacy. And we need to change its practice. Fundamentally, we need to make human security at least as important as state privilege.

In February, Canada triggered a debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in the Security Council. Last week, the Secretary-General responded with a blueprint for action.

This morning, when I addressed the UN General Assembly, I urged the members to put people first. The UN Charter does not read "we the state" or "we the ambassadors" or "we the P5" -- it reads "we the peoples." To give renewed meaning to the Organization's founding credo of "saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war," we need to put "we the peoples" first. I am convinced that the future of the UN depends on it.

In Canada, we are determined to help establish the new agenda. We intend to make a real difference in the lives of the people actually living through conflict daily. Our approach is threefold: strengthening norms, creating the instruments to apply them, and integrating them with practice in other areas -- in essence, helping to set standards to protect civilians and taking international action to uphold them.

Some have questioned whether additional international legal norms to protect civilians are really required. Some argue that we already have a legal framework that provides the basis for protection, and that what is needed is better implementation.

I agree and I disagree! More rigourous implementation of existing norms is essential. However, as the circumstances of war change, the gaps in international standards widen.

This is the case, for example, with respect to the appalling issue of using child soldiers. The rules governing recruitment and deployment of children in war are inadequate. It is for this reason that I met earlier this week with a group of Foreign Ministers and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] to build momentum for change. The world's children need a strong Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

By itself, a new Protocol won't stop abuse. But it will create a new norm. We will need to give the issue profile, to advance the consensus of world opinion, to create benchmarks against which violators are held, and to orient and legitimize action to enforce it. In short, we need to make sending children to war a war crime that we can prosecute.

We also need to create mechanisms that hold violators of international law accountable for their actions. We must break the culture of impunity. The prospect of prosecution and punishment must be a real part of the calculus of those who resort to violence.

That is why we have been such strong supporters of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and for the former Republic of Yugoslavia -- and for the leadership shown by people like Canadian Justice Louise Arbour in making the tribunals work.

By the way, the indictments against President Milosevic and senior Yugoslav military authorities helped to hasten the end of Belgrade's aggression in Kosovo. Far from complicating the problem -- as some feared -- resolute action by the Tribunal helped to solve it.

This underlines the need for swift and determined action in East Timor to ensure accountability. Certainly, we must not destabilize Indonesia. Without doubt, we need to take care to support Indonesia's own fragile transition to democracy. But we do not accept the view that supporting a tribunal undermines Indonesian democracy -- what kind of future can Indonesians aspire to if it is premised on impunity? And what help can Indonesians expect from a world that is complicit?

Ad-hoc arrangements -- while necessary -- are by definition temporary and limited. The world needs a permanent International Criminal Court. A Canadian is in the chair at negotiations under way to make the Court a reality. He has the full support of his government.

Finally, making norms meaningful for the people they are intended to protect means making them the impetus for action. In arms control, the Ottawa Convention on Landmines [AP mines] puts people first by marrying the principles of the Convention to a concrete plan of action for de-mining and rehabilitation.

From the outset, the landmine campaign was driven by the conviction that decisive action was needed to protect human lives swept up in war. Today, over $500 million has been mobilized for this effort -- resources which, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, are having a real impact in saving civilian life and limb. The number of mine victims is down, over 14 million mines have been destroyed, producing countries are in decline, exports have practically stopped.

We have succeeded in stigmatizing mines and mine users, and in bringing a people-centred approach to an issue that was once mired in the outmoded discourse of state sovereignty. We can and must do the same with the other issues that plague people living in conflict.

That is why Canada's main objective during our tenure on the Security Council is to make human security -- in particular the protection of civilians -- the central focus of the Council's work.

The shortcomings of the Council are no secret. Its failure to act more resolutely in preventing the endangerment of civilians -- especially when the threats are patently obvious -- is one of its principal defects. More preventive engagement by the Council would help.

Its reliance on comprehensive sanctions as a way of doing peace and security on the cheap -- with their capacity to inflict harm on the innocent -- needs to be addressed. Sanctions need to be used more wisely to hurt where they are supposed to hurt. They also need to be enforced more resolutely. This is the goal of Canada's efforts as chair of the Angola Sanctions Committee: to tighten the arms flow and diamond trade, and to diminish the capacity of rebels to wage war.

I do not wish to exaggerate the Council's shortcomings. We are making progress. The Council is mainstreaming the application of humanitarian law. Council members are being exposed more and more to humanitarian actors and concerns (including for the first time last week a presentation by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights). Peacekeeping operations now routinely include human rights components. References to human rights and humanitarian law in Council statements are standard practice.

All are important advances, all are useful in moving the Council, à petit pas, in the right direction. Yet the Council's risk-averse culture remains entrenched and the P5's privileges undiminished, particularly the obstructive recourse to the veto. Council actions are too subject to the vagaries of national interests and exclusive power politics, and are too rarely motivated by human concerns. This endangers the Council's credibility, while leaving the security of the people for whom it was created at risk. There has been progress.

Over the past decade, the Council has established a track record for authorizing enforcement for humanitarian purposes -- even if we are troubled that it has been uneven and inconsistent in how it responds. We all know that the humanitarian imperative for action in Sierra Leone and Angola is as great (or greater) than in Kosovo and East Timor, but regrettably, we have no way of enforcing equal treatment.

That is why we believe that the international community needs to establish criteria to trigger military intervention for humanitarian purposes. And if such criteria are to be respected, we will need to find ways to overcome the reluctance of some to take risks on behalf of victims of war in far-flung places.

Canada is committed to grappling with these questions in order to make the Council more responsive to the human security threats we face.

But clearly, protecting civilians is not just a job for Canada, the Security Council or the UN. Civil society has an important role to play in elaborating norms and moving from norms to results. The IPA and the Carnegie Corporation, with your commitment to expanding the reach of international humanitarian law, are ideally suited to making an intellectual contribution toward shaping criteria to guide humanitarian intervention. I hope you will do so.

I have focussed this evening on the protection of civilians, specifically in situations of armed conflict. However, I believe that this is only part of the picture. In a changed world, the sources of threats to civilians also come from the darker side of globalization -- such as crime, drugs, terrorism, kidnapping and slavery. In these new global circumstances, if our aim is to protect civilians, we require a broader definition of security and a comprehensive approach to protecting it.

As Foreign Minister, my goal has been to adapt Canada's foreign policy to these new realities, where prospects for global peace increasingly turn on issues of individual safety. This underlies Canada's human security agenda. That agenda is a broad effort to make the safety of people a new measure of global security and a new impetus for global action.

It is obvious that devotion to the privileges of the nation state to the exclusion of all else is a dangerous anachronism. Peace will not be built behind walls of sovereignty, on the backs of the poor, the powerless and the dispossessed. To be sure, the state will remain an instrument of action. Reports of its demise are premature. But international law and practice will have to adjust. In any state worthy of the name, people come before privilege. And in any democracy worthy of the name, law comes before privilege. And in any diplomacy worth practising, people come first.

Thank you.