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UN Looks at Ways to Prevent Wars - UN Secretary General - Global Policy Forum UN Looks at Ways to Prevent Wars
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
July 20, 2000
The United Nations can do better in conflict prevention, including addressing the "structural faults that predispose a society to conflict," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday. He cited the unequal distribution of power and resources among groups differentiated by race, religion or language as one of the structural faults in an address to the U.N. Security Council in an opening session to discuss conflict prevention.
Conflicts in the past 10 years, most of them internal ones, have killed an estimated five million people. He said the U.N. has been striving to relieve suffering and resolve conflict. "We can do better," he said. "There is now a consensus that prevention strategies must address the root causes of conflicts, not simply their violent symptoms." Annan said the U.N. secretariat under his administration has been engaged in conflict prevention through various programmes and cooperation with regional organizations.
He urged the 15-nation council "to play its part," citing the council's decision to ban illicit trade in diamonds as one form of prevention. The ban covers diamonds originated from countries like Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where armed groups have been fighting for control over diamond mines and trade. Profits from the diamond trade have been used to fuel the war in those countries.
Annan proposed that foreign ministers of the council's 15 members meet regularly to discuss "thematic or actual prevention issues. He said prevention issues should also be discussed among U.N. bodies. "There is no shortage of ideas for avoiding the sort of human suffering, killings and wanton destruction that so disfigured the 20th century," he said. "But there remains a worrying lack of political will among governments, which hold more of the levers of prevention in their hands, either to show political leadership when it is needed, or to commit the necessary resources," he said.
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