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1995 - Address by Mr Federico Mayor |
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| Director-General of UNESCO | |
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Your Excellency the President of the Republic of
Senegal, Allow me, first of all, to tell you how pleased I am to welcome you to UNESCO, the House of Peace, for this ceremony which brings us together today for the awarding of the 1995 Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and to the High Commissioner, Ms Sadako Ogata. I should like to extend my warmest greetings to Mr Abdou Diouf, President of the Republic of Senegal and the Patron of the Prize, and to Mr Henri Konan Bédié, President of the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, who once again have come to demonstrate their attachment to the Prize which bears the name of the Sage of Africa. I also salute the presence among us of Mr Salim Ahmed Salim, Secretary-General of the Organization of African Unity, who is anxious to join in the tribute to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and to the High Commissioner herself, and to demonstrate his support for the peaceful objectives of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Prize. My dear colleague Mr Jacques Diouf, Mr Yoshiro Mori, special envoy of the Prime Minister of Japan, Mr Emmanuelli, Minister, Ms Glynne Evans, Head of the United Nations Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, I bid you all welcome to this ceremony at which we shall honour the services rendered to humanity by the Office of the High Commissioner and by the High Commissioner herself. Excellencies, As you know, the purpose of UNESCO is to bring about a union of hearts and minds for a lasting peace founded upon justice, freedom, dignity and brotherhood. I am therefore pleased to welcome here today, as laureates of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, the United Nations agency which most fully embodies the values of solidarity and respect for individuals: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the High Commissioner, Ms Ogata. Since its founding in 1951, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has devotedly and effectively sought to ease the suffering of civilians forced by war or social violence to seek refuge outside their own countries. In the past 45 years, it has performed admirable, exemplary and universally acclaimed work, for which - need I recall? - it has twice been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Always ready to respond wherever its help is needed, it has coped with a steadily increasing volume of work without ever abandoning the fundamental principles underpinning its action. As a result of the instability of today’s world, the number of refugees worldwide rose from 2.5 million in 1970 to over 18 million in 1993, and there are a further 24 million displaced persons within the borders of their own countries. These figures give some idea of the challenge faced today and every day by the Office of the High Commissioner. Madam, Permit me to add my personal tribute to that paid to you by the Jury in deciding to award to you jointly the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize for 1995, as noted by the President of the Jury, Mr Henry Kissinger, ‘for the distinctive quality you have added to the mission that has been assigned to you, for the excellence of your efforts, and for the way you have raised international concern for the refugees’. The sheer scope of the refugee problem in the last five years reflects the upheavals that have shaken the world since the end of the bipolar equilibrium. Never in the past have so many people in so many regions of the world been forced to leave house and home and native land to seek refuge elsewhere. In the face of this worsening situation, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has, under your guidance, implemented new strategies designed to take into account not only the consequences, but also the causes of the forcible displacement of populations. Today, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees is much more concerned with ensuring that such persons may return home and resume a normal life in their own societies. When the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees first began its work, the most usual solutions were to settle refugees in the country in which they had arrived, or in some third country. Later, and particularly since your appointment as High Commissioner, this approach has gradually given way to programmes of repatriation and support to refugees once they have returned home. You have stressed that population movements are not inevitable, and that they may be averted by action to reduce or eliminate the threats that cause populations to flee. Rather than focusing on the right to seek asylum outside of one’s country, you prefer to stress the right to live in peace in one’s own country and not to be reduced to the status of refugee or displaced person. The Office of the High Commissioner owes this innovative handling of a problem affecting one of the most vital human rights as much to your passionate concern to ease human misery as to your realistic approach concerning the material conditions governing the achievement of this noble purpose. For these reasons, UNESCO is pleased to welcome you in order to award to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and to you personally this richly deserved distinction. By devoting your energy and talent to the fight against one of the most tragic aspects of current conflicts, you and the team you head are among those as yet all too rare individuals who are striving, on an international scale, to reduce the measure of injustice, violence and misery afflicting humanity. Ladies and Gentlemen, As at previous ceremonies, we are pleased today to be able to pay tribute to Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the Sage of Africa, who knew that the road to peace needed constant rebuilding. President Henri Konan Bédié, I thank you sincerely for your support for this Prize bearing the name of your predecessor. President Abdou Diouf, your presence here as the Patron of this Prize, in this, your House, is a great honour for us. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in his ‘Agenda for Peace’, reminded us that peace-keeping is not sufficient; there is also - and I would say above all – peace-building. Peace is the basic prerequisite. There can be no justice, education, work, normal life or, indeed, love of life without peace. Peace should be a human right, a fundamental right of all human beings. Let us hope that one day we may succeed in honouring the pledge given at the beginning of the Charter of the United Nations: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...’. That day, Madam, there would be no further need for the Office of the High Commissioner. And you, I believe, would be as happy as any of us. Thank you |
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