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afrol.com, 8 September - Sierra Leone President, Tejan Kabbah, yesterday held his speech to the UN Millennium summit. He started by urging the United Nations to pursue further measures to make the voices of the peoples of the world more directly heard by increasing their participation in the decision-making processes of the Organization. The tasks ahead have become more difficult, Kabbah said. This is because the problems and issues that the United Nations was created to tackle have taken on different forms and dimensions. They are becoming more complex and challenging. Many of them seem to have become immune to the prescriptions and remedies developed over the years to tackle, resolve or eradicate them. With the end of the cold war, for example, we are confronted by widespread “hot wars” that continue to take the lives of millions. - How do we then act on the challenges of the new century? How can the United Nations meet these and other challenges identified by the Secretary-General in his Millennium report? The Organization must adapt and re-equip itself to deal with the new manifestations of perennial problems such as human security and under- development, Kabbah answered his own questions. Sierra Leone has itself tested the United Nations ability to deal with some of the challenges of the new century. For example, in the areas of human rights protection and the administration of justice, the Organization has been called upon to adapt itself to a unique situation, by devising an innovative process to deal with impunity. The people of Sierra Leone have called for assistance, and the United Nations has responded accordingly by establishing a special court to bring to justice those who have committed gross violations of human rights, international humanitarian and domestic criminal law, the President said to the assembly. In the area of conflict management, my Government recently endorsed a Security Council ban - albeit a temporary one - on the export of diamonds, Kabbah went on. Although this has resulted in the loss of much needed revenue, we did so in order to strengthen the Organization’s capacity to deal with the new menace to international peace and security - conflict diamonds. In the area of conflict management, Sierra Leone expects to host some 16,000 United Nations peacekeepers in one of the largest operations ever undertaken by the Organization in its history. In a sense, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone has been designed especially for my country. Meeting the challenges of the new millennium therefore requires us to accept the fact that governments alone cannot solve all our problems. Partnership in one form or another is required. Source: UN
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