UNITED NATIONS UNDER-SECRETARY SPEAKS AT ABYSSINIAN

Transcript of the Speech by Shashi Tharoor, 16 February 2003

Published in "The Abyssinian Spirit", March/April, Issue 4

Some years ago, I was fascinated to read in an article about Harlem, this vibrant section of the city that has given the United Nations its home, a paragraph that read:

"There is a perception that no more than two feet separate church and state at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. The short distance between the preacher and his pulpit inside the [nearly 80]-year-old gothic fortress has been a gray area between politics and religion since the church's inception. From flamboyant lawmaker Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to fiery orator Calvin Butts, the church has long been associated with political as well as spiritual guidance."

So it is a special honor indeed for me to have been invited by the "fiery orator," Reverend Butts, to join you today, and I am touched by the warmth of your welcome and the affirmation of your faith in the United Nations and all that it can achieve. I am proud, too, to represent here a man who knows both Africa and America well, Kofi Annan. As he reminded us just a week ago, the United Nations is not a separate or alien entity, seeking to impose its will and agenda on others. The United Nations is us; it is you and me. Sometimes, in this great country, we find people who do not understand that, and who say in bumper-sticker language, "Let's get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US." Well, standing here in this great church, I have to say that hearing that kind of talk reminds me of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when Adam finds that Eve is becoming a bit indifferent to him. And so Adam says to Eve, "Eve, is there someone else?" Think about that a minute -- because you can ask the same thing about the United Nations. Is there someone or something else that can work to bring together all the nations of the world to fulfill our common aspirations?

Because, whether we like it or not, we do have to work together. Much of what the UN seeks to do requires rousing the consciences of the affluent and tranquil about the plight of the poor and the strife-torn. Large sections of the world's people require desperately needed help from the United Nations to surmount problems they cannot overcome on their own. These days some people say that the relevance of the United Nations depends on its conduct on one issue alone, Iraq. No doubt what happens in the Security Council on Iraq is of vital importance to the UN's role in maintaining international peace and security. But when this crisis has passed, the world will still be facing (to use Kofi Annan's phrase) innumerable "problems without passports" -- problems of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation of our common environment, of contagious disease and chronic starvation, of human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement. These are problems that no one country, however powerful, can solve on its own, and which are yet the shared responsibility of humankind. They cry out for solutions that like the problems themselves, also cross-frontiers. The United Nations exists to find these solutions through the common endeavor of all States. It is the one indispensable global organization in our globalizing world -- the only effective instrument the world has available to confront the challenges that will remain when Iraq has passed from the headlines. "The rest," to quote the telling phrase of a distinguished member of this congregation, E.R. Shipp, "is hamburger history."

This coming week, a summit of the movement of non-aligned countries convenes in Malaysia; the very first informal meeting of the leaders who inspired the movement was held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955. Adam Clayton Powell and Margaret Cartwright, the first African-American reporter assigned to the United Nations, were present at that conference. They saw early on the vital importance of connecting with nations around the world, many of whom had emerged from experiences of colonial oppression that African-Americans could understand and relate to.

I believe African-Americans are natural allies of the United Nations. The NAACP's Walter White, the great man of letters W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary McLeod Bethune were observers at the San Francisco conference that created the UN. Their activism was vital in infusing into the UN Charter many of its most precious ideals of equality and human values. But let me go beyond that. In the words of Ralph Bunche, whose birth centenary we commemorate later this year, if you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in a person." Let me wrap this idea up in Ralph Bunche. One of the greatest men ever to serve the UnitedNations, Ralph Bunche was also an African-American, who founded Howard University's political science department. During Kofi Annan's years as head of United Nations peacekeeping, he always kept a picture of Bunche on his wall, hoping to gain courage and inspiration from his life and work. From his days as a star at UCLA to his Ph.D. at Harvard, to his pioneering work as a researcher in race studies and civil rights, Bunche was destined for greatness. And he put his extraordinary abilities at the service of world peace. From Cyprus to Kashmir to the Congo to the Middle East, Bunche worked tirelessly for peace and justice. It was for his historic role making peace in Palestine that Bunche was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. In his acceptance speech, Bunche declared that "the United Nations exists not merely to preserve the peace but also to make change -- even radical change -- possible without violent upheaval."

The greatest American advocate of change without violence was Martin Luther King. Nearly fifty years ago he declared that "our world is geographically one. Now we are faced with challenge of making it spiritually one. Through our scientific genius we have made of the world of a neighborhood; now, through moral and spiritual genius, we must make of it a brotherhood."

His foresight was extraordinary. Dr King saw that the global village presents us with an ethical challenge: to seek to ensure that human progress is matched by human understanding. A remarkable thing about Dr. King was that he could describe the world in 1957 in the same way that we might describe our global village today. But the question that comes back to us today remains: How can what we dare to describe as a global village learn to act as a global brotherhood?

The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights has been a fundamental source of inspiration for national and international efforts to protect and promote human rights and freedoms. Conceived as a "common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations", the Declaration has become a yardstick by which to measure progress towards full equality for African-Americans in this country as well as the respect for, and compliance with, international human rights standards abroad.

The first article of the Declaration is quite simple. Let me quote it to you. "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

Brotherhood: there is that word again. That first article, like Dr King's words, is no less true, no less relevant and no less important today.

Since I am also an Indian writer, who normally spends his Sundays writing, let me tell you an Indian story a tale from our ancient scriptures, the Puranas. It is a typical Indian story of a sage and his disciples. The sage asks his disciples, "When does the night end?" And the disciples say, "at dawn, of course." The sage says, "I know that. But when does the night end and the dawn begin?" The first disciple, who is from the tropical south of India where I come from, replies: "When the first glimmer of light across the sky reveals the palm fronds on the coconut trees swaying in the breeze, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins." The sage says "no," so the second disciple, who is from the cold north, ventures: "When the first streaks of sunshine make the snow gleam white on the mountaintops of the Himalayas, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins." The sage says, "no, my sons. When two travelers from opposite ends of our land meet and embrace each other as brothers, and when they realize they sleep under the same sky, see the same stars and dream the same dreams - that is when the night ends and the dawn begins."

There has been many a dark night for the world in the millennium that has just passed. Whether as Indians, as African-Americans, or just plain Americans, we are citizens of the world, and brothers and sisters in it. There is one world, after all, and it is ours. It is only by realizing this that all of us can work to ensure that the world can enjoy a new dawn in the next one. And, in that spirit, let us keep the faith.

Thank you very much.