Speech by President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the 18th General IPRA Conference in Tampere on 5.8.2000

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Meetings between cultures have become part of our everyday reality. Growing numbers of people are spending shorter or longer periods of their lives in places far from where they were born. They also meet people from elsewhere who have come to their home districts. Electronic media take us into the living rooms of the world and prompt us to make comparisons between our own values and the events that we witness. Modern communications technology makes it easy to maintain contacts between one continent and another.

Economic life is internationalising. Business expects the environment in which it operates to be predictable to the greatest extent possible. An awareness that decisions made elsewhere affect our lives either directly or indirectly makes ordinary people demand the observance of some kind of common ground rules. "How much can I influence the world and how much do I just have to accommodate myself to it?" is a question that many people ask.

The UN human rights system or the rules of the World Trade Organisation are changing this world, as is the Kyoto climate change protocol. Can we agree on the ground rules to be followed in this world that we share, and to what extent? Who are entitled to make agreements? Human rights are of paramount importance. But I believe that the importance of also broader totalities will arise during your deliberations: the concept and significance of the nation-state as well as our relationship with and dependence on our shared environment and what we can do to ensure its wellbeing.

A few years ago, one of the favourite themes of international conferences was Samuel Huntington’s theory of "A Clash of Civilizations". In Europe, terrorism, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, the Gulf War, Chechnya and Islamic radicalism have all added their own extra dashes of colour to the discourse. However, it is important to distinguish between causes and effects, or between ends and means. Perhaps I should say right at the beginning that I do not believe there will be any fateful clash of civilisations; a big bang. But I do consider it important to be aware that encounters between different people and their communities bring both threats and opportunities. For that reason it is rewarding to study conflicts and their causes. Religions, cultural differences or more broadly civilisations certainly have their significance, but they ought not be mystified.

For one things, most of the problems and conflicts that plague the globe are still clearly material in character. We have rivalry over wealth (as with Sierra Leone’s diamonds) or a struggle against want. These conflicts are by no means always international; many of them take place within the borders of a single state.

Sustainable development is of crucial importance in preventing and resolving conflicts. To promote it we need dialogue and collective efforts. The elimination of poverty must remain our common goal, because forcing people into poverty does nothing to ennoble them; instead, it only causes further problems.

We know how to eliminate these problems. Forgiving the debts of the poorest countries and programmes to boost development have a key role in combination with each other. It is essential to increase the amount of development aid and to focus it more effectively. Aid could be made conditional in ways that benefit the population, such as demanding health care and education or cooperating in the development of good governance. These are examples of the everyday measures that are needed in this world of AIDS and illiteracy.

Giving products from developing countries better access to markets in the industrial world and transfers of modern technology are matters that are obviously necessary, but also partly fraught with problems.

For all that many religions idealise poverty and however great the need to curb hysterical consumerism, scarcity of resources in society and forcing people into want rarely make anyone a better person. We need respect for individuals and their rights. Full respect for human rights means respect for both political and civil rights and for economic, social and educational rights. By this I mean, naturally, both the majorities and the minorities in each community.

A fact that is probably all too familiar to you is that very many recent conflicts have stemmed at least in part from violation of the rights of various minorities. Since at the same time there has been a strengthening global tendency to see human rights as having an intrinsic value, indeed even relative to the sovereignty of nation-states, violations of these rights have led in some instances to military intervention. This is a new situation, and one that calls for fresh-minded examination also within the peace movement. I at least have difficulty in finding one single clear set of rules.

Nevertheless we know a whole lot of facts associated with this. We know that a country where democracy prevails, where human rights – including those of minorities – are respected and where the rule of law is observed is less likely to suffer internal armed conflicts. All the better if the country is enjoying good, balanced economic development and the fruits of this are shared in a spirit of social justice. If we further add good governance and ecological equilibrium, most of the causes of disasters have been removed. And then, if its neighbours value the same matters as it does, the country in question can really congratulate itself.

Today, peace and balance do not yet prevail in our world. Development does not happen by itself. We need a global dialogue. I am an optimist. We share a planet and we need common rules to guide our actions. The word "dialogue" is an excellent one. It assumes mutual interaction and requires that the other party be respected and listened to. In my assessment, the EU’s human-rights dialogues and for example Finnish-Iranian cooperation in the field of human rights, not to mention the OSCE process that we recently celebrated, have produced a lot of positive results. Development is not simple nor always as rapid as we would like it to be. But it is worth going on with.

I noticed from your programme that one of the themes you will be discussing is gender equality, peace and development. The status of women varies greatly from one culture to another, but genuine equality is something that we find all too rarely. Gender equality is a prerequisite for development – and for development cooperation. Without it, development goes only half way.

Women have had and continue to play a central role in sorting out a variety of crises, as we have seen in such places as Argentina and Chechnya. A negative trend is that violence in armed conflicts is being directed increasingly at civilians, especially women. In the Balkans crises, for example, rape has been a central form of violence and means of intimidation.

Because of the heading assigned to me, I have not gone into traditional arms limitation issues in any greater detail. I would like, nevertheless, to point out briefly that arms control agreements remain a cornerstone of international security. I hope you will have the time and interest to examine also these questions. Both nuclear and conventional weapons are obtained to enhance security, but they also cause enormously increased risks.

I hope we are beginning a new kind of millennium. We are becoming more and more dependent on each other and I hope this will lead to our understanding and respecting each other better than we have done in the past. I wish you boldness of spirit and fresh ideas.