PHILIPPINE STATEMENT
HON. TEODORO L. LOCSIN, JR.
Secretary of Foreign Affairs
Virtual High-Level Meeting to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UN
9:00a.m.-9:00p.m. (EST), Monday, 21 September 2020
Theme: “The future we want, the United Nations we need: reaffirming our collective commitment to multilateralism – confronting COVID-19 through effective multilateral action”
The idea of a united nations is a common one since the dawn of civilization. It’s been called empire; the quest for it continues. When you hear it called mutually beneficial cooperation, it is the empire talking to itself in the presence of native collaborators. The excuse for empire is the same as the reason for the UN: world peace; but in the former case Tacitus called it the peace of the graveyard. The only ones above ground are undertakers; the rest are six feet under in dungeons and mass graves.
The world peace for which the UN has strived through 75 years has been mostly a failure; yet it is still the only peace we can live with in freedom, dignity and sufficiency.
When the UN Charter was signed, the 51 Founding Members, including the Philippines, were standing in the ruins of war. Manila was the second most destroyed capital after Warsaw. Its inhabitants had undergone an equal horror. They envisioned a future of recovery, progress, and enduring peace of the kind uniquely associated with UN in place of the most murderous and destructive war in history.
The Philippines was not yet independent. Its inclusion suggested that the UN was less about states than about people— and how states treat them. Thus, the Charter begins, "We, the peoples of the United Nations."
In 1946, when the UN official seal was being selected, General Carlos P. Romulo, asked, “Where is the Philippines?” “It’s too small to include,” explained the US Senator heading the committee. “If we put in the Philippines it would be no more than a dot.” Romulo insisted, “I want that dot!” It is more than a charming anecdote. Without that dot I doubt the Philippines would enjoy territorial waters or exist except as the anonymous annexation of a conquering state. I’m not saying a seal confers rights, but it keeps inalienable rights, like national existence, in plain sight on the UN seal. The P5 tend to forget that.
As the only world forum, the UN is the main and only globally credible platform of opportunities for preempting violence and ending it after it’s broken out; for educating ignorance; curing and containing disease; for ameliorating and in time abolishing poverty, ending injustice and extremism—all enemies of universal values.
With the successes, and yes failures; through withering well-deserved criticism — Biafra, Rwanda, Bosnia where the bombs fell so late the genocide was almost complete — the UN has shown its ability to bounce back by reaffirming its continuing relevance against the backdrop of deliberately complicated global issues and threats to world peace and security.
The UN is the core of the present multilateral global order and must stay that way. As long as the UN exists, none can trumpet the end of multilateralism. But it must be a UN strengthened in its every member; so that together they can achieve peace, democracy and prosperity in a world where every state is accountable for the consequences of its action or inaction; where any of “we, the peoples…” can put up a credible fight long enough to make our case for UN help.
Multilateralism cannot be owned by a select club of member states let alone one. It is by and for all — or no one. COVID-19 reminds us of humanity's common fate, the perishability of life, progress and social order, and of the imperative of coordinated international action even in concerns we’d always regarded as too small to bother the world with. The virus is tiny.
The UN is a collective of sovereignties. That is its strength. It is not itself a sovereign collective. That is its weakness but also the secret of its endurance. It remains the focal point of the unceasing human pursuit of good in the face of an equally relentless human pursuit of evil. Much as states dislike outside interference in their internal affairs, when their actions exceed the bounds of plain humanity interference is a duty of humanity. But a clear case has to be made in a world where lying has achieved a level of perfection far exceeding the capacity for truth.
We renew our commitment to end the scourge of war, uphold justice and human rights, keep the peace and stay secure, and in all things act with decency which requires no explanation. You know decency when you see it; it is indecent when you don’t. A case soon to be made in point will be the universal availability of Covid vaccines without requiring any people, class or country to submit to another’s will as the price of cure. Withholding the vaccine — the most effective means of mass salvation — is a weapon of mass destruction. The UN remains the essential Organization. Thank you. END