CONFLICTS: PREVENTION, RESOLUTION AND RECONCILIATION ADDRESS OF BERTRAND G. RAMCHARAN ACTING HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS TO THE BARCELONA FORUM SATURDAY 19 JUNE 2004

19.06.2004

Mr. Chairman,

Introduction

May I say how honoured I am to participate in this Forum under your chairmanship, on Conflicts: Prevention, Resolution and Reconciliation and also what a particular privilege it is to share the panel with such distinguished laureates. I should like to take this occasion to reiterate our support and very best wishes for the Barcelona Forum.

The framework that assembles us is the prevention and resolution of conflicts and issues of post-conflict reconciliation. I should like, in these remarks, to develop the following propositions:

I. Conflict prevention works and requires more investment of time and resources.

II. Conflict resolution must be built on the foundations of human rights. This means that peace agreements must be crafted with human rights in mind and that their implementation must give special place to the protection and promotion of human rights.

III. Post conflict reconciliation requires coming to terms with the truth and fashioning ways of reconciliation that are attentive to justice and to the development of good-neighbourly relations in the future.

I should like to take each of these aspects in turn.

I. Conflict prevention works and requires more investment of time and resources.

Conflict prevention is central to the scheme of the United Nations Charter for the peaceful resolution of disputes. It was in this spirit that Article 33 of the Charter provided that “The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice”.

Building on these foundations, successive Secretaries-General have sought to develop instruments of preventive diplomacy and of preventive action. Preventive diplomacy featured particularly in the strategies of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. Secretaries-General Perez de Cuellar, Boutros Ghali and Annan have been particularly active in seeking to develop preventive actions.

I myself prepared the first draft of Agenda for Peace following the Security Council Summit of 1992 and we sought to lay the foundations for systematic preventive actions within the United Nations to head off conflicts. Since then, the emphasis on conflict prevention has pervaded the United Nations as well as regional and sub-regional organizations such as the African Union, ASEAN and ECOWAS.

In the United Nations conception, prevention involves multi-faceted actions in the political, security, economic, social, human rights, and humanitarian spheres. Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar, spelled this out in a comprehensive strategy for conflict prevention that he developed when he presented to the General Assembly in 1987 his Perspectives for the 1990s. The author of that document was James Sutterlin and he deserves pride of place in the pantheon of those who have sought to develop the capacity of the United Nations for preventive action.

One sometimes hears the comment that prevention is much talked about but that there is little evidence of its success in practice. It is this particular angle that I should like to touch upon. I am in the process of assembling a book on successful cases of conflict prevention and I should like to present to you a number of instances where conflict prevention has actually worked. In practically all of these instances I speak of cases on which I myself have been involved.

(a) Bulgaria - Turkey 1989

In 1989 Bulgaria expelled some 300,000 “Turks” (its nationals) and there was great danger of open conflict between Bulgaria and Turkey. Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar sent a discreet fact-finding mission, of which I was a member, which shuttled between the two countries over a month. We did a report to the Secretary-General advancing recommendations and the Government of Kuwait, as a Member of the OIC, took up the relay and conflict was averted. Conflict prevention worked in this instance.

(b) The prevention of internal conflict in South Africa 1992

In August 1992 Mr. Mandela and Mr. de Clerc requested Secretary-General Boutros Ghali to send United Nations Observers to monitor the ANC mass action campaign being organized as a show of strength. South Africa was tense and there was fierce competition for support between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Secretary-General Boutros Ghali rapidly arranged to send a team of ten United Nations Observers to monitor the mass action campaign with a view to preventing open clashes. I was one of the ten persons and I was assigned to the Natal-KwaZulu area. Over a period of ten days I criss-crossed this region – which was the most violent - and alighted from my helicopter in a number of situations where there was a risk of clashes between supporters of the ANC and the IFP. Without a doubt the United Nations Observers of the mass action campaign, helped by their presence, to prevent the deterioration of the contestation between the two forces into open conflict.

Following the end of the mass action campaign, the United Nations arranged for a follow up observation mission which stayed in the country for several months and helped discharge a preventive role on the eve of elections leading to the reassertion of South African freedom and independence.

(c) FYR - Macedonia 1992

In the tense situation in the Former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, the Co-Chairmen of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, asked me in November 1992 to prepare a recommendation from them to Secretary-General Boutros Ghali, calling for the deployment of preventive peace-keeping forces along the border between FYROM and Kosovo. In our submission to Secretary-General Boutros Ghali, we urged him to send an exploratory mission to the region to examine the concept. He accepted this recommendation and sent a mission which led to the establishment of the first preventive deployment of United Nations peace-keepers in the history of the United Nations. It is a matter of record that the preventive deployment helped keep the FYROM from conflict for a long time.

(d) Eritrea - Yeman 1996

In 1995, Eritrea and Yemen fought over the Hannish Islands. A fragile peace was negotiated and, in August of 1996, Yemen claimed that, in breach of the Agreement, Eritrean forces had re-entered the Hannish Islands. Yemen threatened to take military action within 24 hours. I worked on this case myself. The efforts of Secretary-General Boutros Ghali, Senior Officials and the leaders of countries on the Security Council, helped head off the resumption of conflict. This case involved use of the entire armoury of preventive diplomacy and was a spectacular instance of conflict prevention at work.

(e) Cameroun - Nigeria 2002/3

Cameroun and Nigeria clashed over the Bakassi peninsular and agreed, with the encouragement of the United Nations Secretary-General, to submit their dispute to the International Court of Justice. The International Court rendered a decision according some points to each country. Acceptance of the decision of the court was in the balance and Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with the leaders of the two countries, prior to the delivery of the judgment, and subsequently thereafter, to shore up the parties to accept and implement the decision of the court. Pursuant to the Secretary-General’s diplomacy, a Mixed Commission was established to implement the decision and the United Nations has put major investments into the work of this Mixed Commission. The implementation of the judgment is currently underway and United Nations diplomacy undoubtedly helped head off further friction and possibly clashes between the two countries.

(f) Visiting missions of the Security Council

On different occasions in the past, visiting missions of the Security Council have sought, by their presence, to contain situations or to head off further conflict. A particularly note-worthy example of this was a Security Council visiting mission to East Timor following the violence that erupted in that country in 1999. The President of the Security Council at the time, Ambassador van Walsum, has written about the delicate negotiations leading up to the establishment of the mission and to the work it did on the ground to help stabilize that very difficult situation.
(g) Guyana – Venezuela

For several decades now Guyana and Venezuela have been locked into a border dispute and, at times in the past, there have been border skirmishes. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, assisted by a Representative, has mediated between the two sides for a number of years now, and this process has helped contain the dispute and prevent it from deteriorating into open clashes.

II. Conflict resolution must be built on the foundations of human rights.

I should now like to turn to my second proposition that conflict resolution must be built on the foundations of human rights. This involves several aspects. In the first place it stands to reason that unless parties to a conflict feel that they have received justice through peace negotiations they will be tempted to return to military action before long. Secondly, it is important, in fragile post-conflict situations, to have human rights advisory and monitoring arrangements that can respond swiftly to crisis situations and help head them off. This is why all United Nations peace missions these days have a human rights component charged with promotional and protection functions.

In some situations the very essence of the peace agreement must be conceived and couched in human rights terms. One saw this in El Salvador, Guatemala and South Africa and one sees this in our time in Burundi, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Sudan. The core of the peace agreement needs to be conceived in human rights terms. In short peace agreements must be crafted with human rights in mind and their implementation must give special place to the protection and promotion of human rights.

III. Post conflict reconciliation requires coming to terms with the truth and fashioning ways of reconciliation that are attentive to justice and to the development of good neighbourly relations in the future.

In the last decade we have seen significant experiences with truth and reconciliation Commissions. One of the leading examples of this was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Other examples were the Verification exercise in El Salvador, the Historical truth project in Guatemala, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone and similar institutions in other countries.

One has also seen that justice is an important part of reconciliation. Sometimes the offenses committed are so grievous that healing will not take place, nor reconciliation take root, unless the ring-leaders are brought to justice. One has seen this in places like Cambodia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Yugoslavia. This is the raison d’être of the national and international tribunals that have been established in the past decade. It is also the raison d’être of the International Criminal Court.

From our perspectives today, it bears emphasis that processes of reconciliation and justice have an important preventive dimension. They are meant to head off the return to conflict in the quest for vengeance on the part of a group that feels wronged.

Concluding observations

From what we have said so far, it will be seen that these three strands must be nurtured and developed along side one another: the development of preventive actions; anchoring peace in human rights; and promoting reconciliation and justice as an integral part of preventive strategies.

Thank you very much.