General:
“To remain the symbol of the world’s ethical commitment to peace, prosperity and freedom, the U.N. must recommit itself to serving all of its many stakeholders, providing them with the effective and ethically legitimate voice they deserve. Only then can the Charter’s mission to “practice tolerance” and spread its faith in “the dignity and worth of the human person” be realized.”

“The U.N. must be an organization that learns from its institutional heritage and continuously adapts its practices to better address current challenges facing the international community. There is no question that we can do more to foster a culture of political responsibility in all U.N. organs.”

“The U.N. must be a site for learning from diverse approaches, for sharing best practices. Our diverse humanitarian organizations should be encouraged to innovate and to develop new tools to respond to old problems. Where the U.N. can contribute, it should be prepared to pick up an oar alongside and in partnership with other organizations, be they public or private, regional or global. The U.N. will need to ensure that its own efforts are well coordinated – but that should also not mean that they are uniform. We can and should coordinate the heterogeneous, but we cannot and should not homogenize what we have coordinated.”

UN Reform:
“But the real need for significant institutional reform does not in the least detract from the significance of the Charter’s ethical vision. We must not allow our criticism of the U.N.’s performance to derail the opportunity to renew that moral vision and rearticulate those fundamental human values for this century.”

“We must remember that when the U.N. is ineffective, it is ineffective for everyone. When the U.N. fails, it fails us all. The status quo benefits no one – and that should be sufficient for the international community to pursue more vigorously efforts to strengthen what are the pillars of this great Organization.”

“As the U.N.’s missions become more expansive, its capacity to coordinate both internally and with private actors must also be enhanced. Reform must be pursued with a view to ensure that the U.N. uses the most effective strategy. And it is particularly important that the U.N. strategize to develop better channels of coordination.”

Human Rights:
“The language of human rights can be misused and can limit our vision of what humanity might achieve. It is no surprise that great injustice, even the senseless violence of war, can sometimes be defended in the rhetoric of human rights. We should not be surprised that a rising generation sometimes seeks new language to articulate its aspirations for freedom and social justice. As we have expanded the human rights vernacular, we have sometimes settled for vague and noble-sounding words rather than engaging in the difficult social and political work necessary to build justice on the ground where rights often conflict and hard choices must inevitably be made.”

“As we think about a world of “larger freedom”, however, the human rights tradition must remain our starting point. When we hear affirmations of the right to fresh drinking water alongside the right not to be tortured, a right to vote or even a right to entrepreneurship, we are hearing the surface echoes of a deeper human yearning for freedom and dignity.”

“We must be clear that no one is free where women are denied their rights. It is easy to treat men’s interests as universal or global, while leaving women’s rights to the peculiarities of their local context. We must be clear that women’s freedom is human freedom.”

“Human rights have rightly been seen as the beginning --- the background conditions necessary for human flourishing. The freedom to flourish requires food, health, the capacity to support oneself and one’s family. It requires that one be confident of social inclusion in one’s community. It requires good governance, and the political freedom to hold one’s leaders accountable. And it requires freedom from what the Charter termed ‘the scourge of war.’ ”

Culture of Peace:
“This is the time to learn to embrace the diversity within every culture, alongside differences in faith and belief. This is the time to let diversity enrich and strengthen the world, and to understand that the values of peace, of social equality and of the sanctity of life are common to all religions. A culture of peace and a dialogue among all faiths can instil values of tolerance, mutual respect and understanding of diversity and differences. But we must firmly build understanding into our collective consciousness to sustain these values.”

“We are all richer in a world of cultural heterogeneity. Our ability to recognize this truth will pave the way toward making our diverse cultures the vehicles for the realization of human rights rather than shields that guard against the fulfillment of human dignity.”

Peace and security:
“We must rekindle the aspiration for both collective security and peaceful change. To manage peace, we must learn to manage change. Peace will be an ongoing process of listening, adjustment, and understanding. Change has become increasingly difficult to manage as conflicts within nations have come to outnumber conflicts between nations.”

“Moreover, the peace and security we seek will not be for the elites alone --- the world’s poorest, neediest, most powerless have the most to gain should we realize the Charter’s eloquent promise of life “in larger freedom.” Nor should the desire for peace be used as a pretext for conflict or repressing dissent. Peace cannot be imposed. The peace we seek must be a peace of laws.”

“I am confident that the U.N. can sow the seeds for a stable peace: a peace that nourishes and is nourished by diversity, a peace that is rooted in our communities, a peace that can withstand change. The U.N. can be a focal point for an ethically robust global governance regime that will help build a lasting peace, a peace of laws, if we can find the courage to redeem the promise of our shared commitments together.”

Poverty alleviation:
“Communities trapped in the nightmare of poverty can stoke the embers of ethnic conflict and political extremism. Disease, hunger and illiteracy block the first move towards developing self–reliance and impede full participation in self-government and the global economy. Poverty alleviation requires that individuals have basic access to the global economy in the form of jobs and capital. It requires assistance for nations to pursue development that is tempered by – but not dominated by – the logic of the global economy. It requires the commitment to help cultivate self-help and “prosper thy neighbor” regional policies to advance development goals.”

“All poverty is local – to the family, the village, the neighborhood, the city. Solutions must also be local. But all local solutions, different as they must inevitably be, are now also part of the global economy, and must be supported at the national and international level.”

“At the same time, we must build the local conditions, the local expertise and knowledge, the regional and neighborly collaboration necessary to spread the benefits of growth and to ensure the stability needed for our poorest citizens, regions and neighbors to prosper.”

Democracy:
“Sound democratic governance at every level offers the hope that the voices of citizens who provide the backbone of the economy and the government be heard consistently.”

“But democracy is more than a name or a slogan. Democracy is realized when every citizen has the right to be heard on the decisions that affect his or her future and when government at every level is accountable and transparent.”

“Nations, communities, and citizens disagree vigorously on what democracy means. That is how it should be – democracy is not a recipe or a straightjacket. We can affirm the spirit and promise of democracy without worshiping its current institutional forms – without abandoning the aspiration to experiment and remake our public institutions. Heterogeneous government is no threat to democracy – indeed, with greater democracy we would hope to see the human spirit generate ever new institutional forms for this enduring hope.”

“I believe we must advance a richer, more substantive version of democracy than most global citizens know today. Our moral vision for democracy – and for the freedom it must bring – cannot stop at elections. It must embrace the opportunity for all citizens – for women, for minorities, for the poor and the dispossessed – to participate equally in the public life of their nation and the public life of the broader world. It must include freedom of expression, association and religion. And it must affirm the freedom that comes with the social and economic means – education, health, security – to participate meaningfully in public life.”

Good Governance:
“As it models what good governance might be, the United Nations must be careful not to imagine that one model is all good governance can be. Every society must find its own way to responsive and accountable national leadership. When the international community does become involved, we must focus on building local ownership and engagement. We should navigate by the principle that all local stakeholders must feel they own whatever solutions are devised to overcome national institutional or infrastructure weakness.”

Management reform:
“The U.N. administrative system must be a model of effective and accountable administration and proper management. U.N. programs throughout the world must be models of corruption-free governance, responsive to stakeholders and held firmly accountable for their performance. Whether the issue is results-based budgeting, ensuring a discrimination-free workplace, or implementing modern management techniques, the U.N. should be an illustration of best practices.”

“Political accountability must be about results, performance and goals, guided by optimization and efficiency, not the details of management. Administrative accountability must mean the flexibility to mobilize the Secretariat’s resources to address new challenges.”

“The U.N. must have adequate internal structures to instill in its staff the courage to be creative, together with the ethical rectitude that is an obvious precondition for employment in an organization that should be a symbol for our limitless potential. In doing so, it lays the foundation for allowing senior staff the flexibility and authority to manage projects effectively with a view towards achieving the best possible results on the ground.”

Role of the Secretary-General:
“The Secretary-General must guard the legitimacy of his office and, along with it the power of his bully pulpit, just as he must ensure the trust of all with whom he consults with discretion and a reputation for honest and straightforward communication. Few diplomatic advances are made by surprise or ambush. The trust necessary for peace must be built judiciously and earned by a track record of responsible cooperation and consultation. Where he must speak out to defend the Charter, the Secretary-General must be confident he has pursued every avenue of cooperation and consultation, and he must be persuaded that his public statement may, in fact, be effective.”

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