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David Angell
Acceptance Speech by David Angell
June 7, 2001
"I was fairly certain that Canada’s work in giving effect to the sanctions against UNITA, and my part in that work, would be recognized in some form.
But I am very, very relieved that recognition has taken this form -- and not that of, say, reassignment, reprimand or a pink slip.
Or a combination of these.
In diplomacy, the line between success and failure is often very thin.
So it is between awards and unemployment.
When Canada joined the Security Council in January 1999 we took on particular responsibility for the implementation of the Council’s arms, travel, financial, petroleum and diamond sanctions against UNITA – measures that had been ignored and circumvented with impunity since the first elements of the sanctions regime were introduced in 1993.
We at PRMNY were tasked to make the implementation of the sanctions a priority and to do whatever was necessary to breathe life into the sanctions regime.
We were so instructed, in part, because of the great damage that had been done to the people of Angola by Savimbi’s UNITA: over a million people killed; a quarter of the population internally displaced. The Security Council had repeatedly determined UNITA to bear the primary responsibility for the continuation of this three-decade-old civil war. The sanctions were one of few tools available to prevent UNITA from pursuing its objectives through military means.
The Department was also concerned at the damage that had been done to the UN, and to the Security Council in particular, as a result of Council decisions being flouted. The Council has few options available to it between war and words; between mere statements and the authorization of military force. Sanctions are one such option, and it was thought to be crucial that their credibility and effectiveness be restored.
And so, with unanimous support around the Council table, we put in place a vigorous campaign using new instruments such as independent panels of experts tasked with naming sanctions busters and recommending how loopholes might be closed.
It was a source of enormous satisfaction to me, as a Foreign Service Officer, that this Department, at all levels, was prepared to take real risks so that the credibility of the sanctions instrument could be restored and an end to the Angolan civil war brought closer.
For example, in March 2000 and again the following December, the Department respected completely the independence of the Council-mandated Panel of Experts and its successor monitoring mechanism and encouraged a tenacious approach on their behalf despite the knowledge that the findings that were to be released in those months stood to unsettle various Canadian bilateral relationships given the extent to which Canada was identified with the reports, despite the fact that we did not determine their content.
The findings were dramatic. Names were named, even at the highest level.
The Department could have distanced itself from the reports. After all, it is one thing to give thought to a robust strategy, quite another to experience its consequences. In particular, the Department could not know beforehand, with any certainty, which bilateral relationships would be affected by the findings of the independent experts.
The Department did not distance itself in any way.
It stood by the reports, despite the bilateral turbulence they inevitably caused, and supported the implementation of the recommendations contained in them. It also stood by the robust strategy employed.
The result is that the sanctions against UNITA are beginning to have a real impact for the first time. The models put in place on Angola have been replicated with other sanctions regimes. And the credibility of sanctions as a whole has increased.
Colleagues in the Africa and International Organizations Bureaux, at the Permanent Mission, at our High Commission in Harare and at our Honorary Consulate in Luanda were invaluable partners in this work. Colleagues at other Missions and in other parts of Headquarters also provided great assistance.
It was a particular privilege for me to work closely with two of Canada’s most able diplomats, Bob Fowler and Paul Heinbecker, the two Canadian chairmen of the Security Council’s Angola Sanctions Committee, to whom our success in this work can be credited.
Both are men of enormous principle, ability and dedication. And enormously good company. I can say with authority that, if one is to find oneself in a small aircraft with a broken Global Positioning System, landing in error near UNITA-controlled territory in the wrong part of Angola, Bob Fowler is a wonderfully supportive companion with whom to share the experience.
Thank you for this award. It is both an honour and a real pleasure to accept – and not just because it is so much more satisfying than the other forms of recognition that seemed to be in the offing."
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