What We Stand For
Good evening. I am truly honored to be here with you tonight, and thank you to the foundation for inviting me, and thank you all for sharing in this moment. We are here in the memory of Sergio Vieira de Mello and the twenty-one other men and women, most of them UN workers, who died with him in the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, August two thousand and three.
We remember all those who died to acknowledge each valuable life cut short and the families who share even today in their sacrifice. We also remember them for the power of the example they set. Brave individuals from eleven different countries working to help the Iraqi people at the direction of the United Nations Security Council and on behalf of all of us.
This is sometimes forgotten that in serving under the UN flag, they died in our names as our representatives. And at their head, Sergio was a man of extraordinary grace and ability, as many who knew him will testify. A man who gave thirty years to the United Nations, rising from a field officer to High Commissioner for Human Rights and Special Representative to Iraq.
From Bangladesh to Bosnia to South Sudan to East Timor, he spent the majority of his career in the field, working alongside people forced from their homes by war and assisting them with his skill as a diplomat and a negotiator. Perhaps the greatest testament to his contribution is how much his advice would be valued today.
As the Syrian conflict enters its seventh year, as we live through the gravest refugee crisis since the founding of the United Nations, as twenty million people are on the brink of death from starvation in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Southeast Nigeria, I cannot imagine that there is anyone in the leadership of the United Nations who would not welcome the opportunity to consult Sergio or to send him into the field once more.
He is truly missed. It is humbling for me to speak tonight in the presence of members of Sergio's family and his former colleagues. I never knew Sergio, but I have stood before the plaque in the place where he died.
I felt profound sadness at the fact that the conflict in Iraq, the source of so much Iraqi suffering to this day, had claimed the lives of men and women whose only intention was to try to improve a desperate situation. But I also saw clearly the value and nobility of a life spent in service to others.
Sergio was a man who never turned down an assignment, no matter how difficult and dangerous, or as others have put it, who handled one impossible task after another. He was a man, to borrow the words of Thomas Paine, whose country was the world, whose religion was to do good. He will always remain a hero and inspiration to all who follow in his footsteps.
The UN's work did not end there in the rubble of Canal House fourteen years ago. Hundreds of UN staff have served and continue to serve in Iraq as they do from Afghanistan to Somalia because the task of building peace and security can never be abandoned, no matter how bleak the situation.
My thoughts on Sergio's life and legacy derive from my sixteen years with UNHCR, the agency he spent so much of his career serving and representing. But I also speak as a citizen from my country, the United States. I believe all of us who work with the UN preserve this duality.
The United Nations is not a country. It is a place where we come together as nations and people to try to resolve our differences and to unite in common action. As a citizen, I find myself looking out on a global environment that seems more troubling and uncertain than any time in my lifetime, and I imagine many of you feel the same.
We are grappling with a level of conflict and insecurity that seems to exceed our will and capabilities, with more refugees than ever before, with new wars erupting on top of existing conflicts, some already lasting decades. We see a rising tide of nationalism masquerading as patriotism and the reemergence of policies encouraging fear and hatred of others.
We see some politicians elected partly on the basis of dismissing international institutions and agreements as if our countries have not benefited from cooperation, but actually been harmed by it. We hear some leaders talking as if some of our proudest achievements are in fact our biggest liabilities, whether it is the tradition of successfully integrating refugees into our societies or the institutions and treaties we have built rooted in law and human rights.
We see nations that played a role, a proud role, in the founding of the International Criminal Court withdrawing from it on the one hand, and on the other, we see arrest warrants for alleged war crimes issued but not implemented and other crimes ignored altogether.
We see a country like South Sudan ushered by the international community into independence and then largely abandoned, not by the UN agencies and NGOs, but effectively abandoned without the massive support they need to make a success of sovereignty. And we see resolutions and laws on the protection of civilians and the use of chemical weapons, for instance, flouted repeatedly, and in some cases, under the cover of Security Council vetoes, as in Syria.
Many of these things are not new, but taken together and in the absence of strong international leadership, they are deeply worrying. When we consider this, all of this and more, as citizens, what is our answer? Do we as some would encourage us to think, turn our backs on the world and hope that the storm will pass?
Or do we strengthen our commitment to diplomacy and to the United Nations? I strongly believe there is only one choice, demanded by reason as well as by conscience, which is the hard work of diplomacy and negotiation and reform of the UN. This is not to say that in any way this is an easy road, and there are reasons for people to feel insecure today.
The level of conflict and lack of solutions combined with the fear of terrorism, the reality that globalization has brought vast benefits to some and worsened the lot for others, the sense of disconnect between citizens and governments, or in some countries, the lack of governance, the overall feeling that for all our gains in technology and connectedness, the less we are in control of forces shaping our lives.
All these factors and more have contributed to a sense of a world out of balance, and there are no easy answers. And despite the millions of people who have lifted themselves out of poverty in our lifetime, the difference between the lives of those of us born in wealthy, democratic societies and those born into slums and refugee camps in the world is a profound injustice.
We see it, and we know it's wrong at a simple human level. That inequality is contributing to instability, conflict, and migration, as well as to the sense that the international system serves the few at the expense of the many. But again, what? What is our answer as citizens?
Do we withdraw from the world where before we felt a responsibility to be part of the solutions? I am a proud American, and I am an internationalist. I believe anyone committed to human rights is.
It means seeing the world with a sense of fairness and humility and recognizing our own humanity in the struggles of others. It stems from a love of one's country, but not at the expense of others. From patriotism, but not from narrow nationalism.
It includes the view that success isn't being greater than others, but finding your place in a world where others succeed too. And that a strong nation, like a strong person, helps others to rise up and be independent.
It is the spirit that made possible the creation of the UN out of the rubble and ruin and sixty million dead of World War Two, so that even before the task of defeating Nazism was complete, that generation of wartime leaders was forging the UN. If governments and leaders are not keeping the flame of internationalism alive, then as citizens, we must.
The challenge is how to restore that sense of balance and hopefulness in our countries while not sacrificing all we have learned about the value and necessity of internationalism. Because a world in which we turn our back on our global responsibilities will be a world that produces greater insecurity, violence, and danger for us and for our children. This is not a clash between idealism and realism.
It is the recognition that there is no shortcut to peace and security, no substitute for the long, painstaking effort to end conflicts, expand human rights, and strengthen the rule of law. We have to challenge the idea that the strongest leaders are those willing to dismiss human rights on the grounds of national interests. The strongest leaders are those who are capable of doing both.
Having strong values and the will to act upon them doesn't weaken our borders or our militaries. It is their essential foundation. And none of this is to say that the UN is perfect, because of course we know it is not.
I have never met a field officer who has not railed against the shortcomings, as I imagine Sergio did in his darkest moments. And he like all of us, wanted a UN that was more decisive, less bureaucratic, and that lived up to his, its standards. But he never said it was pointless, and he never threw in the towel.
The UN is an imperfect organization because we are imperfect. It is not separate from us. Our decisions, particularly those made by the Security Council, have played a part in creating the landscape that we are dealing with today.
We should always remember why the UN was formed and what it is for, and take that responsibility very seriously. We have to recognize the damage we do when we undermine the UN or use it selectively or not at all, or when we rely on aid to do the job of diplomacy, or give the UN impossible tasks and then underfund it.
For example, today, there is not a single humanitarian appeal anywhere in the world that is funded even by half of what is required. In fact, worse than that, appeals for countries on the brink of famine today are seventeen percent, seven percent, five percent funded, for example. And of course, emergency aid is not the long-term answer.
No one prefers that kind of aid, not citizens of donor countries, not governments, not refugees. They do not want to be dependent. It would be far better to be able to invest all of our funds in infrastructure and schools and trade and enterprises.
But let's be clear, emergency aid has to continue because many states cannot or will not protect the rights of citizens around the world. It is what we spend in countries where we have no diplomacy or our diplomacy is not working. And until we do better at preventing and reducing conflict, we are doomed to be in a cycle of having to help feed or shelter people when societies collapse.
As another legendary UN leader who was also killed in the line of duty, Dag Hammarskjöld, said, "Everything will be all right. You know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they make themselves." The UN can only change if governments change their policies and if we as citizens, ask governments to do that.
It is moving if you think about it. We are the future generations envisioned in the UN Charter. When our grandparents resolved to spare future generations the scourge of war as written, they were thinking of us.
But as well as dreaming for our safety, they also left us a responsibility. President Roosevelt, addressing the US Congress in January nineteen forty-five, six months before the end of World War II, said this: "In the field of foreign policy, we promise to stand together with the United Nations, not for the war alone, but for the victory for which the war was fought."
And he went on, "The firm foundation can be built and will be built, but the continuance and assurance of a living peace in the long run must be the work of the people themselves." So today we have to ask ourselves if we are living up to that mission. They gave us the start.
What have we done with it? It is clear to me that we have made huge strides, but our agreements and institutions are only as strong as our will to uphold them. If we do not, for whatever reason, we bequeath a darker, more unstable world to all of those who come after us.
It is not for this that previous generations shed blood and worked so hard on behalf of all of us. The memory of those who came before us holds us true to our ideals. Resting unchanged in time, they remind us who we are and what we stand for.
They give us hope to stay in the fight, as Sergio did until his last breath. Fourteen years since his death, there is a stronger need than ever before for us to stay true to the ideals and purposes of the United Nations. That is what I hope his memory holds for us today.
We cannot all be Sergios, but I hope all of us can determine that we shall be a generation that renews its commitment to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security and to promote social progress and better standards of life and larger freedom.
But in the final analysis, if we do not, even if that level of vision eludes us and we continue to simply manage rather than overcome our generation's challenges, we just have to keep working determinedly, patiently.
And you can be certain that as you do, that you follow the example of one of the UN's finest sons, and that to do even a little of his good, to apply ourselves to the work he left unfinished in whatever way we can, is a worthy task for all of us. Thank you.
