UN should protect people, not states – Annan

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on the world body to change to better respond to the needs of the peoples of the world, rather than to their governments.

Speaking at the opening of a seminar commemorating the 40th anniversary of the publication of “Peace on Earth,” a worldwide letter from Pope John Paul XXIII, Mr. Annan said the letter demonstrated that the pope “understood that, although we are an organization of sovereign states, our founders acted in the name of the peoples of the United Nations.”

“The problem is, of course, that if people look to an international organization to safeguard their rights, they do so because they have not found that safeguard in their own State. Yet in the governing bodies of the United Nations they find themselves represented by the same State that they are appealing from,” he said.

“In the mid-1990s, especially, we were all shamed by our failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda, and in the former Yugoslavia,” he said, adding that he was “not greatly encouraged by our hesitant and tardy response to the events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Liberia, this very year.”

The Secretary-General said that the UN, through its Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Committee, Special Rapporteurs and specialized subcommittees work on behalf of the world’s peoples, but that Member States were “reluctant” to criticize other Member States.

“It is necessary – and I believe confidently that it is possible – to adapt the structure and methods of operation of the United Nations to the magnitude and nobility of its tasks, so that people everywhere can indeed look to it to safeguard their personal rights,” Mr. Annan said. “We must always remember that States exist to serve and protect people, and not the other way round.”