17/05/2017 European Parliament

Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.

TRANSLATION: Dear colleagues, it is a great pleasure for me to welcome

the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Your

appointment is a historic one, you are the first citizen of the EU to

have occupied a variety of posts and to occupy this post. And our

organisations hasn't based on the same values and the same objectives,

which is to promote peace and prosperity, thanks to multilateral

co-operation. And today, more than ever, we must work together so as to

meet the expectations of our citizens and deliver tangible

results. We must meet the global challenges, conflicts, terrorism,

radicalisation, the management of migratory flows, but also climate

change, poverty, unemployment. Our citizens expect Europe to be more

present and effective on the global scene. We cannot continue to witness

the bombings in Syria, famine in Africa and the thousands of people

who die in the desert in the Mediterranean, the trafficking of

women and children, we cannot in differently look on and see that

human rights are being increasingly flouted. Democracy is receiving in

certain countries, such as Venezuela and Turkey. And minorities are being

persecuted, religious minorities. -- democracies are receding. Yesterday

we were discussing Africa, with the presence of a representative of the

African Union. I would like to reiterate the fact that Africa is a

priority for the European Union. This is why we must bolster

trilateral co-operation between the UN, the EU and the African Union,

particularly with regard to prevention and a rapid reaction to

crises and conflicts. We must find political solutions together for the

conflicts in the Syria, Libya and Yemen. And we must also come

together to challenge Daesh. We must defend the dignity of all human

beings and give confidence to future generations and implementing the

2030 agenda, so to be able to meet these sustainable develop and goals.

In view of all these challenges, Secretary-General, you can be

reassured, your agenda is ours, and you have the floor,

Secretary-General. Mr President, thank you very much

for your invitation and this opportunity to address the European

Parliament. I have been a parliamentarian in my own country

for 23 years, and during three, I was with your neighbours, the

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. So, allow me to

say, dear colleagues! The United Nations was created after the Second

World War, exactly because the world wanted to avoid another tragedy of

the same dimension. I believe this was exactly the main motivations for

the creation of the European Community is, with one very

important fronts, that the European communities, the European Union, are

clearly the most successful project of this sustainability in the world

since the beginning of history. And that is why I want to express here

are my very deep gratitude and appreciation for the strong

commitment of the European Union, with all its bodies, to

multilateralism, and for the very generous and extreme heat important

contribution you give in development co-operation, in humanitarian aid

and also in the key central aspects of peace and security which are at

the core of United Nations action. You see the European Union involved

around the Libya, in Somalia, in both financial support and training

in the Central African Republic of Mali, and the initiative of the

neighbours of Mali as well. European contribution is today an absolutely

essential part of what is necessary to make the UN effective. And I want

to express my deep gratitude for that. Dear colleagues, it would be

possible to come here and make the case that the world has never been

better. It is obvious that globalisation and technological

progress in the last decades have created the conditions for an

enormous increase in global health, in global wealth, for a meaningful

improvement in the living conditions of the majority of the population

and a strong reduction in the number of absolute poor, the Chinese

contribution being essential to that. And some might even say,

looking for instance that the number of soldiers on the battlefield, that

this is the most easeful period in human history. Now, these indicators

might be true, but they are far from the whole truth. And I think it is

important for us to recognise that we are facing a number of

unprecedented challenges which require Europe and the UN to work

together. Allow me to mention briefly four of them. First,

conflicts. We are seeing a multiplication of new conflicts in

the last few years, in Afghanistan, Somalia, the democratic Republic of

Congo. But the truth is that not only do we have a multiplication of

conflicts, but they have changed in nature. We no longer have wars

between countries, even if there are some threats, but most of the

conflicts are internal, many of them linked to fragility is --

fragilities in the countries, but sometimes they also have a global

and regional dimension. Sometimes they can be asymmetric, more and

more conflicts, more and more interlinked and more linked with the

new threat of global terrorism in the world. If one looks at the

situation from Nigeria to Mali to Libya to Somalia to Syria, Iraq,

Yemen, Afghanistan, all these conflicts are becoming more and more

intellect, with fighters going from one to another and then some going

back to their country of origin and potentially taking some of those

elements to their own country of origin. -- and we see these

conflicts becoming more and more interlinked and they are indeed

today a very relevant threat to our global security, wherever we live.

At the same time it is clear power relations in the world became less

obvious, and with that is seems there is no respect and impunity and

unpredictability became the name of the game. In this context, when one

looks at the present trends of conflict, it is absolutely essential

to create the conditions to revert these trends. And so it is clear we

need to strengthen multilateral capacity to address conflicts, to

sort conflicts and to prevent and sustain this. This is an area where

the European cooperation with the United Nations is absolutely

crucial. We need to strengthen our own capacity to solve many of the

conflicts around the world, but that forces us to look into their nature,

like with Syria. They are, nobody is winning. Everybody is losing, and

not only is everybody losing from the point of view of the citizens of

the country, with the enormous suffering of the Syrian people, but

we see the impact on the destabilisation of the region and we

see Syria clearly as one of the feeding factors of global terrorism.

The point is that we need to create the conditions to make those that

are party to the conflict but especially those that have an

influence on the parties of the conflict to see that indeed these

are conflict in which nobody is winning, everybody is losing, and in

which the contradictions of interests are much smaller than the

absolute need to put an end to this nonsense and eliminate this terrible

threat for our own global security. APPLAUSE

And they are, as I said, we need to strengthen the capacity of the

United Nations. And those in conflict, resolution. Peace is our

important priority but we will not be able to do that without the

strong support and commitment of the European Union. A strong and united

Europe is an absolutely fundamental pillar of a strong and effective

United Nations, and this is a very clear message I would like to

address to you all. APPLAUSE

But in these conflicts we also see horrible violations of international

law and human rights law, and that is why I would like to mention the

second challenge. It relates to the fact that we see the human rights

agenda losing ground to the national sovereignty agenda. That should not

make sense. National sovereignty is a central pillar of the United

Nations Charter and indeed it is reinforced when countries are able

and governments are able to protect their citizens and preserve human

rights in their territories. But unfortunately we have seen national

sovereignty many times being invoked to justify the lack of capacity of

the international community to address the terrible human rights

violations and challenges we see in several parts of the world. It is my

belief we need to mobilise a broader coalition for human rights. And a

broader coalition that is able to understand that we only strengthen

national sovereignty by strongly promoting and protecting human

rights all over the world. But for that coalition to be effective I

think we need to match conditions. Firstly, we need to have a

comprehensive view of human rights. Civil and political rights, but also

economic, social and cultural rights, and secondly, it is

important not to be biased, not to have double standards or hidden

agendas. I think it is absolutely crucial to understand human rights

are evaluating themselves and should not be used at the service of other

political projects. APPLAUSE

-- human rights are a value in themselves. To be very frank, if we

want to champion human rights we need to have more authority. And the

recent migration and refugee crisis in the world has undermined to a

certain extent the moral authority of several countries around the

world to champion human rights in an effective way. This is why I want to

see how important it is from my perspective for the strong

commitment of the European Union, together with us, in making sure we

are able to establish the international protection regime for

refugees in international law, and to have Europe strongly engaged in a

positive and constructive dialogue in the preparation of the global

rules on safe and orderly migration which I hope will be approved by the

UN General Assembly in 2018. In addition to this I would like to

make a few comments. Firstly, it is essential that development

cooperation policies are linked to all concerned with human mobility.

It is essential these policies are built in a way that allowed people

to have the choice to remain in their countries, to have

opportunities to be able to build their lives with dignity in their

own countries. For migration to be out of choice, not necessity.

APPLAUSE Secondly, I think it is essential to

have a much stronger international coordination in cracking down on

traffics and smugglers which are in my opinion the worst criminals into

de's world. -- traffickers. I think it is also important to create more

opportunities for illegal migration, between countries of origin, transit

and destination. I think the European Union must be at the centre

of this dialogue and can be extreme positive to find the necessary

common ground to make this a success. Now, this massive

displacement we are witnessing into de's world brings me to the third

challenge I wanted to mention. That has to do with the fact that if you

look at the global megatrends we face... -- this massive displacement

we are witnessing in today's world. Food insecurity, which is

unfortunately now translated into famine in some critical areas where

conflict and climate change have been aligning themselves to create

terrible human tragedies. Water scarcity. All of these major trends

are interacting with each other in a stronger way in a world that is

getting smaller, and they are having a dramatic impacts in the increasing

fragility of states, increasing displacement of people and the

increasing human suffering in the world, and creating in several

circumstances the potential for conflict over scarce resources. Now,

in this context it is important to recognise if climate change is the

main accelerator of these factors, and it being the main accelerator of

these factors it is absolutely essential that the world implement

the Paris Agreement and implements leader implement it with increased

ambition -- and implement it with increased ambition. And if any

government doubts this objective, the reason for all others to come

together and make sure we stay the course in relation to the

implementation of the Paris Agreement, and that we build a

broader coalition with civil society, with the business

community, with the cities, the regions, in order to be able to make

sure that our emissions are met and we are able to deal with climate

change to the benefit of our present situation but also to the benefit of

our children and grandchildren. And in relation to this it is also

important to understand it is not only the right thing to do but the

smart thing to do, as Green businesses are becoming more and

more recognised as good business, and those countries not in the green

economy will inevitably lag behind in development in the years to come.

So it is the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do and we

count on Europe to read this effort at a global level. -- to lead this

effort. APPLAUSE

But indeed one of the key impacts climate change is the acceleration

of displacement, very much linked to the problems of migration and

refugees that I mentioned. This brings me to a forced challenge.

Globalisation has had an enormous positive impact, as I mentioned,

together with technological development, in relation to wealth,

living conditions, reduction of poverty, as I said in the beginning

of my intervention. But globalisation left a lot of people

behind. And we see that in the rust belts of this world, in youth

unemployment in parts of the world, but very clearly in North Africa and

the Middle East, which represent a tragedy for young people, a very

strong limitation for the development of the countries but

more and more meaningful threat for our global security, as youth

without employment, without jobs and opportunities, is becoming in some

areas of the world one of the key areas of recruitment for terrorist

groups, and one of the factors that facilitates the propaganda of

extremist organisations. Edessa -- now, we need to recognise

technological progress also has dramatically increased inequalities,

at global and country level. Eight people in the world today have as

much wealth as half of the world's population. All of these factors

have contributed to undermine the trust, between people and the

political establishments at national level, but also the trust between

people and international organisations like the UN and the

trust in global solutions for our global problems. That is the reason

why I am strongly engaged in the reform of the UN to be able to make

it more effective, more cost-effective, but also more than

anything else to make the UN closer to the aspirations, the needs and

the perspectives, of the people we are supposed to serve. That means

for us the reform of the UN development system, to make it much

more effective in supporting member states in the implementation of the

agenda, which we hope that an agenda for sustainable development, can

bring a very important contribution to re-establish that trust between

people and the international systems, based on bringing and

making sure no one is left behind, making sure we have a fair

globalisation and at the same time the reform of our peace strategy,

operational setups and architecture, in order to make us more able to

face the challenges mainly of today, peacekeeping. We have more cases

where peace is elusive and peacekeepers see themselves in the

middle of the conflict with extreme difficulty is to protect the people

they are supposed to protect. This requires a strategic analysis, and

new partnerships, namely with the African Union, several African

regional organisations, but very central cooperation with the EU in

this regard. And reform of our own internal management system. Some of

the rules and regulations that were accumulated in the UN seem to be

created to make sure we are not able to act effectively, and we need to

make sure we create the trust between member states, namely

Western countries and the G77, to make sure there is a win-win

solution to make it more flexible, but at the same time with

decentralisation, the procedures, freedom of movement of the

Secretariat, but at the same thing with more transparency and

accountability to make sure there is the responsibility for anything we

do. reform is essential at the level of the un, as it is at the level of

all international organisations, but also the understanding that we need

to rebuild that trust, both of country and global level. All of our

societies are becoming multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious. In

my opinion this is a good thing, and I believe diversity is a richness,

not a threat. But it would be naive to think...

APPLAUSE It would be naive to think diversity

will be an automatic success, for diversity to be a success we need a

massive investment. A political, social, cultural investment. By

governments, local authorities, civil societies, in the social

cohesion and inclusivity of our societies. To make sure that

people... APPLAUSE

To make sure that people understand that their identities are respected

but at the same time that they belong to the community as a whole

with all its rights and obligations. And at the same time we need, at

global level, to understand that diversity will not be automatically

a source of peace and understanding. That we also need a massive

investment in international cooperation to bring people

together, to make people know and respect each other, cooperate with

each other, and to do it in a way which means it is possible to have

everybody working together to face the global challenges that are in

front of us and that no country can solve in isolation.

Allow me to say a few words as a European. It is in this context that

I believe the values of the Enlightenment are the most important

contribution that Europe has given to world civilisation. And that

those values must a very solid cornerstone of our capacity to build

a more tolerant, more fair, more just, more peaceful and more

prosperous world. Thank you very much.

TRANSLATION: Ladies and gentlemen, I am very happy that I can welcome

here the French president, who has been inaugurated yesterday, I am

very happy