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| You are here: 2004 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Plenary Panel 3: The Next Step Towards Genocide Prevention / Presentation by Ambassador Jan Eliasson | |||||||||
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Presentation by Dr. Elisabeth Rehn Presentation by Mr. Gareth Evans Presentation by Ambassador Jan Eliasson Presentation by Professor Carol Rittner Presentation by Ambassador Jan Eliasson Presentation by Ambassador Jan Eliasson Your Royal Highness, Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen, Since so many important things on the issue of this conference, practically everything on the substance has already been said, I will try not repeat it. I do well understand the frustration that Gareth Evans expressed of the work of international organizations, I spent considerably time involved there myself, when I was chairing the workshop yesterday I came to think of that there is really a need of reforming the way we conduct international meetings. I find the dynamics of these type of meetings extremely rewarding and I think we have reached the time to concider this very special type of meetings as a way of dealing with the difficult and intractable issues in the world. In the room of my workshop yesterday, when the discussion exploded on issue after issue, I felt a certain masochistic satisfaction when experiencing how representatives of governments an dof , international organizations, parliamentarians, NGO:s, academics and engaged citizens and, at least in my room, some survivors both from the Holocaust and from Rwanda, met and confronted their various viewpoints with each other. And I said to myself: This is what we need; we need this type of meetings where we meet informal groups and, at the same time, we discussing important matters, we do take some diplomatic risks, but still in the end achieving results. We had a sequence of my workshop called The Lessons Learned from Failures and Successes. We first had an overview over failures, and then we discussed conclusions of that. I was surprised how extremely forward looking, concrete and action oriented the didscussion became. Still, of course it would not be fair if I would not reflect the frustration of those involved in the discussions who had some personal experiences in their families from the Kurdish tragedy, the Armenian tragedy and the Cambodian tragedy and brought those images into the room. And I, as probably many others in the room, did the reflexion that if we are not honest about the past we cannot face the future with any hope of avoiding disasters of this kind - and the risk of genocide in the end. On the ”hope side” we had Macedonia. Have any of you ever seen a headline in a newspaper, on the first page, ”The disaster did not occur”? Probably not. Macedonia was such an example, there are some others. We never lined it in the headlines when prevention has worked. But one should remember the occurrence of the unic combination of preventive deployment, and preventive force in Macedonia, the exemplary co-operation between international organizations, UN, EU, others, the NGO community not least and, if I may say so from my present capacity, the co-operation between the European Union and the United States on stopping the disaster in the spring of 2001. Then I also want to mention a very special note from one of the particiapnts in my workshop, an engaged citizen, I think, or one of the NGO representatives, who said something that stuck into my mind, he said “We are talking all the time about the early warning and seeing disasters, but how about action on early hope?” There are so many interesting projects going on in disasterd areas by committed people and organizations and those efforts should be encouraged! So there is also an action on early hope that perhaps could serve as a note of hope to this meeting. My last comment is on the two approaches that I had in mind when I heard about this conference, a thought on how to precede. The first approach would be the institutional road, which means strengthening functions and the Secretary General’s role, fora for prevention etcetera. The other one would be the approach of leadership pressures, attitudes, even looking into ourselves and our personal possibilities to act. What we have to do, in my view, and I think we have a good chance now, is to combine the two perspectives, the two approaches, to creating such an institutional machinery along the lines of the Secretary General’s proposals with the force of the NGO community, the engaged citizens. We should see to that information will be going into the United Nations security council which has the responsibility to deal with threats to international peace and security, and then putting our governments on pressure of expectations to deal with that information in the form of action on very early warning. This would combine the two approaches and I think this is the challenge for this meeting, for all of us, to meet. Thank you very much. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session Plenary Sessions Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||