S/PV.5607 Security Council

Mr. President, let me thank you for those very kind words. And I thank you also for proposing the resolution that the Council has just passed, by which, needless to say, I am deeply honoured. Barring unforeseen crises in the next nine days — which in this Council, of all places, one should never rule out — today’s meeting will be my last meeting with you as Secretary-General. I must thank the Council, not only for using this meeting to pass such a generous resolution, but also for making it coincide with another decision that you are about to adopt, namely the resolution to extend the mandate of the United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL). Sierra Leone is definitely one of the success stories of our work together. But those of us who remember the anxious days of May 2000 know well that that was far from being a foregone conclusion. But today Sierra Leone is an example of what can be achieved by the United Nations and its Member States working closely together. The country is stable but still fragile. It needs our continued help in building effective State institutions, especially those dealing with security, human rights, justice, and the preparation for next year’s elections, which will be a critical moment in the consolidation of peace. So, I thank the Council for agreeing to prolong the United Nations role in Sierra Leone. And I thank the Council for all the work it has done for peace and security around the world. In my 10 years as Secretary-General, I have quite often allowed myself to make some critical remarks about this Council, particularly about its composition. I still hope that such composition will be modified, since I am convinced that, with a more democratic and representative character, the Council will gain even greater legitimacy, and its authority will be more widely respected. I have also occasionally criticized the Council’s actions, or, more often, its failure to act. And I have tried, following the excellent example of the Brahimi Report, to tell the Council what it needs to know, not what it wants to hear. Yet I know that the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”, with which the Charter endows the Council, is not an easy one to bear. In fact, it is much easier to criticize the Council from outside than to take decisions in it. In spite of that, the Council’s members have generally listened to me with surprising good grace. And I must also recognize that the work of the Council has been greatly strengthened during the 10 years of my service. The mandates it has given us have been more coherent, more robust when required, and often matched with something like the necessary resources required. And its members now follow up on their decisions with greater vigilance, demanding full reports from me and my colleagues on the missions they have mandated, and sometimes going to see for themselves on the spot how things are going. The Council has also passed some very important thematic resolutions — I think especially of resolution 1325 (2000) on the role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts and in peacebuilding — and it is generally much more cognizant of the need to prevent conflict, rather than wait to react after it occurs. We have all learned from some bitter experiences that we cannot afford to uncritically accept a Government’s word when it assures us that all is well in its country, or that it has the situation under control. We have also learned that the Council needs to be fully briefed on issues of human rights, since gross violations of human rights not only occur during conflict but are often the harbingers of conflict. There is certainly no room for complacency. As I said last week, it is painful for me to leave office with the Middle East in such a fragile and dangerous condition. I do fervently hope that we are now at last close to rescuing the people of Darfur from their agony. The reports I have received from my envoy in Khartoum, Mr. Ould Abdallah, encourage me to think we may tomorrow receive a green light from President Bashir for a full ceasefire, a renewed effort to bring all parties into the political process, and deployment of the proposed hybrid African Union-United Nations force to protect the population. We will, however, need to see the document that Mr. Ould Abdallah will bring. But after so many disappointments, I must say that I take nothing for granted. What I do know is that the Council will continue to work, ably helped by my successor, on these and many other crises. But there is no cause for despair, either. While change for the worse is often dramatic, change for the better is generally incremental. Many conflicts have been peacefully resolved. Many have been at least brought under control, with hope for better times on the horizon. And I believe — though this is much harder to prove — that many have been prevented. At all events, it remains the sacred and exalting duty of this Organization to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. It has been my privilege to share this effort with the Security Council, both in success and in failure. I now relinquish that task, with relief but not without regret. And I pray that the Security Council will have ever greater success in the future.

I thank the Secretary-General for his statement. The Security Council has thus concluded the present stage of its consideration of the item on its agenda.