Summary of Speech by Singapore Foreign Minister S Jayakumar to the 54th United Nations General Assembly, New York, 24 Sept 1999

In his address to the 54th United Nations General Assembly in New York on 24 September 1999, Foreign Minister Jayakumar posed the provocative question, "Will the UN survive in the 21st Century?" He said that the UN had not yet adequately come to grips with the central challenges of the next phase of its development.

Minister Jayakumar did not predict the end of the nation state but he said that the concept of sovereignty is undergoing profound modification. The UN must work within the existing framework of the nation state even as the framework is being transformed.

The UN must cope with two powerful forces for change, namely the pressures of a truly integrated world economy and the end of the Cold War. While globalisation's effects are most evident in finance and economics, there are far-reaching implications across a range of issues. It affects the notion of statehood and government as hitherto understood.

Dealing with globalisation demands nothing less than shared responsibility for governance and pooling of sovereignties in the service of the general interest. This in turn calls for an international consensus on what is legitimately in the general interests of states.

[On the need to strike a balance between concepts of state sovereignty, non-interference and humanitarian intervention, Minister Jayakumar said:]

Striking a new balance between sovereignty and other values and devising rules and criteria for intervention will be "a major challenge for the international community if the UN is to remain relevant in the coming century". This is because we can expect to face "many more situations which will pose the dilemma of reconciling state sovereignty with international intervention".

Minister Jayakumar noted: "The Kosovo war illustrated a trend that has been underway for some time: that absolute sovereignty has to be qualified to require compliance with generally accepted standards of conduct and respect for human rights."

However, he added, international reactions had been mainly ad hoc. "The international community lurches from crisis to crisis with no clear sense of direction or consistency. Why Kosovo or East Timor and not Africa? Are the rights of humans everywhere not universal? How to choose when to intervene among all too many conflicts?"

Minister Jayakumar agreed with UNSG Kofi Anan that rules and objective criteria needed to be devised for such interventions. Failure to do so will breed uncertainty and instability.

Minister Jayakumar concluded that the trend towards the development of international regimes that transcend individual sovereignties was now established. "There is no going back. Whether we like it or not, the world has become too complex to be dealt with except multilaterally. But this does not mean that any particular international organisation will necessarily play an effective role in the organisation of international life in the next century. The UN cannot assume that it will survive intact, just by clinging to structures and processes conceived in 1945. The world has changed dramatically since then, and will continue to do so. The UN has no choice but to change in tandem. What is unclear is how. The process of discussion must start now."

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