SG/SM/7572

TRANSCRIPT OF REMARKS MADE BY SECRETARY-GENERAL KOFI ANNAN TO UNHCR STAFF AT HCR HEADQUARTERS, GENEVA, 2 OCTOBER

Thank you very much, Sadako. My dear friends and colleagues, it is again wonderful for me to be here. This is homecoming. As I look around the crowd, I see lots of old friends and colleagues. Of course, with time, we have all aged a little bit. We have more white hair and the wrinkles are beginning to show a bit more. But our dedication to this Organization and to our colleagues is undiminished. I think we all believe in what we have to do and we all know why we are in this building. I must say, for me, it is a particular pleasure to come back here, even though when I was with the UNHCR, we had nicer premises on the lake and I could go for a walk at lunch time.

Let me also thank you for this warm welcome. To see so many of you out to say hello and to welcome me. I would want to pay tribute to the outstanding work that you do, work that is not without risks as we know, and I know sometimes it is difficult to explain to a parent and to loved ones why staff members who have gone to particular situations to help, assist and to reach out to those in need become targets of brutal murder. I think the last decade has been particularly treacherous.

I want to praise Mrs. Ogata for her work and her leadership of this Organization and this house over the past 10 years. I have had the opportunity of knowing her and working very closely with her in my previous capacity as head of peacekeeping, because we often share the same territory and space and operate under the same conditions. So I got to know Mrs. Ogata well. We were often on the phone. As I said this morning, we are all going to miss her. She is going to be very difficult to replace. I think she can leave with the full knowledge that she has made a major contribution to the cause of refugees and to the UNHCR.

I know the one thing perhaps foremost on your minds is who is going to replace Mrs. Ogata and that you had hoped that I would come and announce who your new leader is going to be. Let me say that I am not in a position to do it today. If it were possible, I would do it. But I can assure you that I know this house, I know you, I know the nature of the job, I know what Mrs. Ogata has gone through and I think I have a sense of the kind of leader we need for this house. Let me assure you that I will select a good leader for you and that by mid-October or in the course of this month, that decision will be taken. I want the decision taken early so that whoever he or she is will have two to two-and-a-half months to organize themselves and come in and take up from Mrs. Ogata and probably spend some time with Mrs. Ogata before she leaves.

I think whoever comes in is going to face a very difficult situation. This morning at the Executive Committee, both Mrs. Ogata and myself had a chance to

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share with the members and the staff some of the difficulties that are facing this Organization and the challenges ahead of us. In Mrs. Ogata�s brief statement, she summarized the three key areas. I think that one of the other areas that the new High Commissioner will have to focus on is staff security. But he will not be doing this alone. It is my responsibility, the responsibility of the Member States and the responsibility of the system as a whole. UNHCR staff have suffered great and major losses in recent years, especially in the past few weeks. I am really very happy that following our losses in East Timor and Guinea, our colleague who was taken hostage, Laurence Djeya, has been freed. I think we can all feel relief and satisfaction that this has happened. I think we need to do whatever we can to protect our staff. I myself recall that for a brief period, I was the security coordinator for the system years ago and I was quite involved and concerned with staff security. I think, as I said to the Member States, it is their responsibility as well to protect our staff who go into their countries to work; not only to protect them, but to ensure that those who commit these heinous crimes and who attack our staff are brought to justice and are prosecuted.

You may know that at the upcoming General Assembly, I will be giving a full report, asking Member States to strengthen both qualitatively and quantitatively our security personnel at Headquarters as well as in the field. We have had a very good study done by Scotland Yard and experts which has given us a good basis for moving. I hope the Member States will be forthcoming because it will cost money. As I said this morning, staff security is not a luxury, it is not an option, it is a necessity and an essential part of the cost of doing business, and they will have to pay for the cost entailed in protecting our staff. On the financial front, I have spoken to quite a few governments and I will keep pressing them to give us the resources and the financial support we need. I will be going to Strasbourg and Brussels and I will continue that fund-raising effort with our European Union partners.

I think the UNHCR has a role to play, and not only for the refugees. Recently you, like other humanitarian agencies, have been pushed into doing what you can for internally displaced persons. But this extra assignment, which is often given to the High Commissioner, does not come with extra cash. This is also something that we need to do something about. We are thinking a lot about what more we can do to help them. Dennis McNamara is working with us on that and the other agencies, and I hope in the course of the next few months, I will be able to maybe suggest some major approaches that we can take on that. Of course, given what is happening around us here in Europe and elsewhere, it is important that we strengthen asylum. I have stressed this with many of the governments that I have met because it is the basis of the work that we do here.

The other area where I am going to need the help of UNHCR is the implementation of the Brahimi report and our attempt to transform the peacekeeping operations. I think we have learned some lessons from the past. We intend to strengthen and professionalize these operations. Of course, often we are on the ground with you, UNHCR, and other agencies. And you are participating in the task force chaired by the Deputy Secretary-General for the implementation of that report. I think the Member States have now realized the report we put to them suggests that if you are going to do peacekeeping, you should do it properly. We should be able to match the mandate with the right resources. We should be able to do better analysis, have better intelligence, to be able to anticipate how the crisis is likely to develop. We should be able to go in with the right structure and the right strength to be able to protect ourselves and our mandate and protect civilians in our immediate vicinity. We should be able to tell the public what it is that we are able to do and not able to do. We should be able to coordinate better with the humanitarian agencies and we should be able to begin the processes of economic and social development as the operation or the crisis begins to ebb. This is because in the final analysis, it is the economic and social development and the developmental issues that give the peace efforts we are trying to achieve a deeper ground. It is essential that we all work together.

Let me conclude by making a brief reference to the Millennium Summit, which I am sure most of you were able to watch here on television. It was a unique and historic experience. We have never had so many leaders come under one roof to discuss the future of the United Nations and the future of the world. The fact that we had 147 Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, and Crown Princes and 42 other senior officials come to the United Nations to reaffirm their belief in our Organization, to tell the world that this Organization is important, and we want to work with you Mr. Secretary-General to make it the Organization it ought to be as we enter this century, is indispensable. It was a great testament and a great belief in what it is that we are all trying to do. I think we should build on that momentum, and we should be proud that we all belong to this Organization, this indispensable family that is trying to do whatever it can to help the poor and the needy and alleviate their suffering.

Once again, we all share the pain and the suffering of the families and the loved ones who have lost dear ones in the cause of duty. Words will not be enough. We cannot explain it. We cannot even begin to ask all the questions we want to ask, much less get the answers. But what I can assure you is that we will do whatever we can, in a determined and sustained manner, to ensure that we have better protection in the field. My dear friends, thank you very much. It was wonderful to see all of you again.

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