Finding the Will to Live by the Values We Proclaim

'Do we still have universal values?'

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, spoke at Tübingen University, Germany, on 12 December, 2003.

The values of peace, freedom, social progress, equal rights and human dignity, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are no less valid today than when, over half a century ago, those documents were drafted by representatives of many different nations and cultures.

And they were not any more fully realised in actual human conduct at that time than they are now. Those great documents expressed an optimistic vision, not a description of existing realities. Let's not forget that among the states that drafted and signed them was the Soviet Union, at the height of Stalin's terror, as well as several unrepentant colonial powers.

The values of our founders are still not fully realised. Alas, far from it. But they are much more broadly accepted today than they were a few decades ago. The Universal Declaration, in particular, has been accepted in legal systems across the world, and has become a point of reference for people who long for human rights in every country. [...]

Every society needs to be bound together by common values, so that its members know what to expect of each other, and have some shared principles by which to manage their differences without resorting to violence.

That is true of local communities and of national communities. Today, as globalisation brings us all closer together, and our lives are affected almost instantly by things that people say and do on the far side of the world, we also feel the need to live as a global community. And we can do so only if we have global values to bind us together. [...]

In the Universal Declaration, we proclaimed that 'everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services'.

Just three years ago, in the Millennium Declaration, all states reaffirmed certain fundamental values as being 'essential to international relations in the twenty-first century': freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. They adopted practical, achievable targets - the Millennium Development Goals - for relieving the blight of extreme poverty and making such rights as education, basic health care and clean water a reality for all.

Many millions of people in the world today are still far from enjoying these rights in practice. That could be changed, if governments in both rich and poor countries lived up to their commitments. Yet, three years after the Millennium Declaration, our attention is focused on issues of war and peace, and we are in danger of forgetting these solemn commitments to fulfil basic human rights and human needs. [...]

We must firmly condemn the cold-blooded nihilism of attacks such as those that struck the United States on 11 September 2001. But we must not allow them to provoke a 'clash of civilisations', in which millions of flesh-and-blood human beings fall victim to a battle between two abstractions - 'Islam' and 'the West' - as if Islamic and western values were incompatible. [...]

In the face of such a challenge, we can reassert universal values only if we are prepared to think rigorously what we mean by them, and how we can act on them.

That means we must also be clear about what they are not. And one thing that should be clear is that the validity of universal values does not depend on their being universally obeyed or applied. Ethical codes are always the expression of an ideal and an aspiration, a standard by which moral failings can be judged rather than a prescription for ensuring that they never occur.

It follows that no religion or ethical system should ever be condemned because of the moral lapses of some of its adherents. If I, as a Christian, for instance, would not wish my faith to be judged by the actions of the Crusaders or the Inquisition, I should be very careful to judge anyone else's faith by the actions that a few terrorists may commit in its name.

Also, our universal values require us to recognise the human characteristics, both good and bad, that we have in common with all our fellow human beings, and to show the same respect for human dignity and sensitivity in people of other communities that we expect them to show for ours.

That means we should always be prepared to let other people define their own identity, and not insist on classifying them, however well-meaningly, by our own criteria. If we believe sincerely in individual rights, we must recognise that an individual's sense of identity is almost always bound up with the sense of belonging to one or more groups - sometimes concentric, sometimes intersecting.

Therefore the rights of an individual include the right to empathize, and to express solidarity, with others who share this or that aspect of that individual's identity. [...]

Of course having such common values does not solve all problems, or eliminate the scope for different societies to solve them in different ways. [...]

On all such issues we must expect differences to continue for a long time - between societies and within them. The function of universal values is not to eliminate all such differences, but rather to help us manage them with mutual respect, and without resorting to mutual destruction.

Tolerance and dialogue are essential, because without them there is no peaceful exchange of ideas, and no way to arrive at agreed solutions allowing different societies to evolve in their own way.

Do we still have universal values? Yes, we do, but we should not take them for granted:

• They need to be carefully thought through.
• They need to be defended.
• They need to be strengthened.

And we need to find within ourselves the will to live by the values we proclaim - in our private lives, in our local and national societies, and in the world.