Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this important conference today on behalf of The Elders. The topic could not be more timely, and the values of international collaboration and dialogue that underpin the Tokyo Conference need reasserting more than ever.
I am sorry that I cannot join you in person, but I am looking forward to coming to Japan in May with my fellow Elders for our board meeting in Hiroshima.
It would be an understatement to say that the world is experiencing significant geopolitical volatility and tension. The new Administration in the United States appears to be calling into question fundamental principles of multilateralism and international law which have helped underpin global security for the past 80 years.
For example, President Trump’s proposals for a future for Gaza without its people do fly in the face of international law and also jeopardise prospects for settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For Ukraine, the prospect has been raised of Russia, the aggressor, deciding the country’s fate together with the United States, with neither Ukraine nor any European representatives at the table. That would be both unacceptable and unlikely to achieve a lasting and just peace.
In the Asia-Pacific, developments in the Middle East and Ukraine conflicts cannot be dismissed as peripheral concerns. After all, North Korean troops have been deployed on Russia’s front lines. More generally, the erosion of international rule of law sets a dangerous precedent for the conduct of war and conflict resolution everywhere.
Asian states can show much needed leadership in protecting the multilateral system and strong body of international law which has been built over the past eighty years. How the region responds at this moment of global tension matters.
This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the devastating nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At The Elders, we applaud the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to award last year’s Peace Prize to the Nihon Hidankyo group of survivors who have worked so tirelessly to raise awareness of the terrible dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
These dangers need to be taken more seriously than ever today, both by the nuclear states themselves (both declared and undeclared), and by those states which choose to shelter under a nuclear umbrella.
The Elders have worked to raise the profile of the ongoing threat of nuclear war with Heads of State and Government, policymakers, and civil society. We support the goal and ambition of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but, recognising that nuclear armed states are unlikely to join that any time soon, we also support a nuclear risk minimisation agenda.
Tangible progress is needed in four critical areas: adoption of a “No First Use” doctrine; de-alerting as many weapons as possible from their current high states of readisness; dramatically reducing the number of nuclear weapons currently deployed; and reducing the overall number of warheads to the lowest level possible.
Nuclear weapons are of course only one of several existential threats confronting humanity currently.
The climate and nature crisis continues to grow in severity, with the world dangerously off course on meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement - even before President Trump announced the withdrawal once again of the United States from this critical pact.
Pandemics remain an ever-present and growing danger as the world has not fully learned the lessons of COVID-19 and is repeating a panic and neglect cycle which results in necessary reforms not being made.
Artificial Intelligence is developing at a dizzying pace with profound implications for all aspects of society, but we are nowhere near any effective form of global regulation which protects human rights, dignity, and privacy.
The common thread running through all these challenges is that they can only be managed effectively through multilateral co-operation. No nation is capable of addressing them by itself, regardless of the size of its population, economy, or military.
We must not return to a ‘might-is-right’ world order, dominated by ‘spheres of influence’. That can only be assured by defending and updating the international system – not by abandoning it.
Neither can we tolerate a world dominated by so-called ‘strong man’ politics. Twenty-five years after the Women, Peace, and Security agenda was launched, we still see most decisions on peace-making and -building made by men. It is long past time that the meaningful participation and inclusion of women in those processes was regarded as mandatory.
States which value international law must defend the institutions and frameworks which are central to it – including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the UN Charter itself.
The international system must also be updated to reflect the world of the 21st Century – and the most glaring reform needed is for a more representative and effective Security Council.
The Elders support the development of a consolidated model for reform, as called for in the Pact for the Future.
Protecting and reinforcing multilateralism may seem to be a daunting challenge, but it is not impossible. We have done it before.
The world collectively pulled itself out of the wreckage of the Second World War and committed to the values and institutions of the new United Nations.
The UN Security Council was expanded, against the initial wishes of most of the permanent members, in the 1960s.
And the 1987 Montreal Protocol has succeeded in largely phasing out chlorofluorocarbon emissions which threatened to destroy the ozone layer.
Co-operation is not a utopian aspiration: it works, and we need it now more than ever.
But it will only happen if we organise and do the hard, often unglamorous work of building alliances, understanding each other’s’ positions, finding compromise where necessary, and rejecting fatalism and cynicism.
In the words of Nelson Mandela, the founder of The Elders, “it always seems impossible until it is done.”
Thank you.
