ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON TO THE MAX SCHMIDHEINY FOUNDATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ST GALLEN
ADDRESS BY PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON TO THE MAX SCHMIDHEINY FOUNDATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ST GALLEN ON MONDAY 30TH MAY, 1994
Federal Councillor, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honour to be here at the University of St. Gallen today, as a guest of the Max Schmidheiny Foundation. This University, though founded less than one hundred years ago, is regarded as one of Europe's leading institutions of learning. Your special field is business education, and of the student body of over four thousand, a quarter comes from outside Switzerland.
I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to visit this beautiful city. I like to feel that I am following in the footsteps of the Irish monk, St. Gall, who, in the early seventh century built an oratory near the Western shore of Lake Constance. The Abbey that bears his name was founded near the site of the oratory. Its library, I am happy to say, houses several Irish manuscripts, some dating from the Carolingian period, when many scholars left Ireland because of the Viking invasion.
Today, I am here, not as a wandering monk or refugee from a Viking onslaught, but to accept the award of the Max Schmidheiny Foundation Freedom Prize. Let me say at once how deeply honoured I am, not only to be a recipient of this prestigious award, but to have the privilege of giving the acceptance speech both on my own behalf, and that of my distinguished sister recipients, Hanna Suchocka, the former Prime Minister of Poland, and Birgit Breuel, President of the German Treuhandanstalt.
The late Max Schmidheiny established the foundation, in his own words,
"to promote and encourage especially praiseworthy efforts to preserve and develop the free market economy and society, and, in particular, endeavours to safeguard personal liberty and the responsibility of the individual and to guarantee social security".
In establishing the foundation he was, as his son Stephan Schmidheiny has said,
"motivated by his personal conviction....that individual and social freedom are preconditions for guaranteeing the dignity of Man."
Since its establishment the Max Schmidheiny Foundation has won international respect and esteem throughout the world for its promotion, through the award of the Freedom Prize, of an environment in which each person assumes responsibility for the well-being of society as a whole, as well as his or her own well-being.
My companion recipients here today are women who, at a time of immense upheaval and change in their own countries, displayed steadfast and selfless commitment to the regeneration of economic and individual freedom.
Hanna Suchocka has, from the beginning of her political career, been a champion of democracy both within Poland and, internationally, through her work as Deputy Chairperson of the Council of Europe. Her term in office as Poland's first woman Prime Minister saw Poland make major progress in consolidating its democracy and the development of a free-market economy.
Birgit Breuel showed exceptional courage by accepting the Presidency of the Treuhandanstalt in 1991 when her predecessor in office had been assassinated by an extremist. The leadership and energy which she brought to her work has enabled the Treuhandanstalt to continue and expand its significant role in the restructuring of the economy of the new German Bundesländer.
Both my co-recipients have contributed in a very significant way to the transformation and development of their countries. For my own part, I welcome the opportunity to reflect on how, and in what ways, we can all, both as individuals and institutions, help create that vision of the environment which inspired the founder of this prize.
If there is one reality to be addressed in today's world, it is that of the interconnectedness of all things. The Chinese story of the mandarin who raises his hand and thereby sets in chain an effect that touches all the universe has more resonance now, in these closing years of the millennium, than ever. The time for compartmentalising, for separating the world into neat little boxes to be dealt with by tidy solutions, has gone. Confronting us now is a world where every action or inaction, every raising of the mandarin's hand, sets in motion a sequence of events which touches each and every one of us.
It is fitting that I mention here, in a Swiss university, the work of Hans Kung. He spoke of the great need that exists for a global ethic, an ethic which will put individual human beings at the centre of our world.
I believe strongly in that need to see the world as a single whole, where the destiny of the human race is inextricably and inexorably linked to the destiny of the natural world.
This month, in Africa, the world experienced two very differing realities. In South Africa, we rejoiced as a nation turned its face to a new and optimistic future. All around the world television screens flickered with rare images of hope and joy. Earlier, on that first day of the election, we saw, poignantly, the elderly making their halting way to the polling stations to vote for the first time in their lives. I was privileged to attend President Mandela's inauguration and can testify to the deep sense of joy and hope with which all present were imbued. This sense of hope in a country where for so long the most basic of human rights were denied to the majority of the people has given a great boost to all of Africa.
But side by side with this rare and transcendent moment in the history of our time the same television screens were flashing another message, a message of fear and horror, as we watched the literal cutting down of the people of Rwanda, the bloated bodies floating to the shores of Lake Victoria. Once again the world watched as the refugees spilled over the neighbouring country borders, seeking the comparative safety of makeshift refugee camps.
Once again we ask ourselves why this had to happen, and why it could not have been prevented. We need to ask whether we have been listening; listening and responding, to the people of an anguished nation. The happy beginning in South Africa shows what can result when individuals and the world do listen. The images coming from Rwanda show, terribly, what happens when it does not.
When I visited Somalia in October 1992, during the worst period of the famine and civil strife there, I came away with such a sense of what the world must take responsibility for. And by the world I do not just mean governments or international bodies like the UN. I mean each of us: the business communities, networks of NGOs, professional bodies, women's groups both nationally and internationally, voluntary service organisations, youth organisations. Those of us outside an individual country cannot prevent tribal conflict or civil war, but there is so much more we can do if we really care: if each of us cares enough to take some practical step within our own context.
Is there a difference between walking beside a lake, seeing a child fall in, and deciding whether to react or not, and looking at television images of the children of Rwanda desperately scrambling to survive? In each case we can affect their lives if we choose to.
If, however, we detach ourselves or turn away, how can we escape a moral bankruptcy which must have a subliminal effect on all our civil societies? How can we celebrate human achievement and diversity of culture if we disregard the life chances of men, women and children in their thousands, in their millions?
I believe that we cannot build a peaceful and stable international community unless we address the quality of the human condition.
We, the comparatively privileged from the industrialised world, must accept that the hopes for a better future in large parts of the world continue to be diminished by a combination of poverty, malnutrition, demographic pressures, unemployment, lack of health care, wasteful uses of energy, pollution and degradation of the air, water and land resources.
Even among the rural population livelihoods are increasingly threatened by the continuing process of environmental degradation which undermines the agricultural resources base.
The challenges which face the developed and the developing world have never been greater.
I firmly believe that success in implementing strategies can only be brought about through partnership. This partnership must exist at the level of government but it should also be developed at regional and community level. It must take in the interests of key sectors of society - farmers, trade unions, indigenous peoples as well as women and young people.
We have an opportunity to establish a new global partnership for sustainable development based on shared interests and common needs but differentiated responsibilities.
One way in which this process can be initiated is in forging an alliance between business and development. The notion of such an alliance may at first sight seem an odd one. Regrettably the role played by big business in the developing world has, more often than not, been exploitative.
When one looks back at Africa's colonial experience it is not too harsh to speak of naked greed, of predatory, unthinking despoilage of that continent's vast natural resources.
However, an increasing number of business men and women realise the potential of business in development. Indeed, business, in its broadest definition, lies at the heart of development in today's world. Without a deep engagement on the part of the business community the ideas and agenda which emerged from the Earth Summit in Rio will remain exactly that, ideas and concepts not put into practice until too late - if at all.
These issues cannot be regarded as being solely matters for governments to regulate and to legislate for. I do not say here that there is not an important role for government. What I do say is that the role of business is to use the freedom which it has been given to operate in a manner which will prove worthy of future generations.
The prize presented here today is a freedom prize. It is important that members of the business community remember that freedom also implies responsibility and that the profit and loss sheets may not be, in the end, the best indicators of what has been gained by that freedom.
The growth and achievements of bodies like the Business Council for Sustainable Development, with its emphasis on eco-efficiency and on the transfer of suitable technology, have given an impressive lead in this direction. In Central and Eastern Europe, where the search for growth was for too long pursued in an unsustainable manner, new initiatives and concepts are forging ahead, with business in the vanguard of the movement away from the old wasteful technologies and towards newer, cleaner methods.
Elsewhere, too, there are signs that governments, business and the international aid community, are realising the value of a shared approach and a pooling of resources to achieve sustainable development.
Another aspect of business in development is the need for effective transfer of the new, liberating technologies which should enable the developing world to bypass those deeply damaging stages and push through to a new level of sustainable development, similar to that achieved in the European and American industrial revolutions but without their terrible toll in human lives and well-being.
In conclusion, it seems fitting to quote James Joyce here in this country, where he spent some of his most creative years and where he died in 1941. In my inauguration address as President I made reference to that challenging reflection of young Stephen Dedalus in 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'
"I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race"
I think it would be the hope of the three of us who are honoured by this year's Freedom Award that it might serve to awaken further the conscience of the international community to a true sense of freedom and responsibility.