The International Herald Tribune

Editorial/Opinion

Wednesday, October 21, 1998

NOW FOR A NEW DIPLOMACY TO FASHION A HUMANE WORLD

By Lloyd Axworthy and Knut Vollebaek

(The writers are the foreign ministers of Canada and Norway)

Ottawa - One of the most fundamental challenges we face is the realization of a humane world. This must be more than a vision. It is a moral imperative. The facts in the world around us speak for themselves.

We need a new approaches and new tools. We need a new form of diplomacy.

It will have to be based on collective efforts of a variety of actors, inside and outside of government. It will depend our ability to raise people's awareness of fundamental human security needs, and it will require a new and broad-based consensus to address squarely basic human needs and rights affecting the daily lives of millions.

This diplomacy reaches beyond relations between states to engage individuals and organizations from a variety of sectors within civil society. We see the beginning of this new drive toward a humane world in the successful fight to ban anti-personnel mines and to restrict proliferation of small arms and light weapons. In both cases, civil society is playing a crucial role, in addition to efforts among like-minded governments.

The Ottawa convention to ban the production, transfer and use of anti-personnel mines, which was negotiated in Oslo, was broke new ground. It was inspired and carried through by means of the new diplomacy.

As Burkina Faso became the 40th country to ratify, the Ottawa process has in less than two years produced a binding international legal instrument, which will enter into force early next year.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court to prosecute crimes against humanity, the crime of genocide and war crimes, is another important event in this regard.

In today's world there are worrying trends that are disruptive in themselves and that threaten the international order established in the last few decades. One example is the financial disaster that has swept through Asia and demonstrated that while global economic integration brings many benefits, it also produces new kinds of risks. Another example is the nuclear tests in South Asia, which threaten to undermine a generation's efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Such developments pose serious challenges to existing international organizations and to treaties governing states' conduct. Unless the present law based international order is respected in the years to come, the international community will face disintegration and international uncertainly that has not been seen since the 1930s.

We need to make every effort to secure full respect of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as of the provisions of international organizations whose aim is to ensure respect for human rights in all circumstances and all countries.

The development of weapons of mass destruction poses a real and present danger to us all, but most of the causalities resulting from conflict in the last decade or so have resulted from conventional warfare. Recent conflicts, almost regardless of where they have occurred, have shared a number of similarities.

They have been driven by ethnic, cultural or religious differences, and have tended to engage combatants within states rather than between states. Civilians have become a deliberate target. International treaties which regulate behavior between countries have too often done little to protect civilians.

It is clear that we need to increase efforts to strengthen international humanitarian law in order to improve the security of individuals. There could not be a better time to put forward a common humanitarian agenda. Ongoing strife in South Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and elsewhere makes progress in this area imperative.

There is an urgent need to make fresh efforts to promote universal respect for and observance of human rights and humanitarian law. Full and effective application of existing international treaties is essential in this regard.

In today's world, there are few things that a single state can accomplish on its own. More than ever we need to use the multilateral institutions that are available to us. But we also need to work with like-minded countries inside and outside those institutions to pool resources and extend our influence. This is something that Norway and Canada have put a high premium on for some time. And this partnering should not stop with states. We must cooperate with non-governmental organizations, the private sector and other nonstate actors.

The anti-personnel mines initiative demonstrated that the right set of partners can be enormously successful. It is for this reason that, building on our anti-personnel mines cooperation, we the foreign ministers of Canada and Norway recently signed the Lysoen Declaration (named after the Norwegian island on which it was negotiated. It sets out a common agenda for the coming year, with specific proposals for pursuing action on anti-personnel mines, child soldiers, women and children victims of conflict, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, human rights, child labor, the entry into force of the International Criminal Court, advancement of humanitarian law, and cooperation on Arctic and northern issues.

Our goal is to work with other like-minded countries and partners from civil society to promote respect for human rights and humanitarian law. This is the new diplomacy that we want to put to work. A humane world is a safe world.