Once again, we have convened
at this seat of the Organization of the peoples of the
world, representing the whole of humanity and coming
from all corners of the world. Our pilgrimage this year
is tinged with sadness, because we are also paying
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homage to one of the most outstanding servants of the
United Nations, a native son of Africa, Kofi Annan,
whose term of office will soon come to an end.
The Group of 77 and China, as well as my own
country, South Africa, sincerely thanks the Secretary-
General for the selfless and dedicated work he carried
out during one of the most challenging periods in the
history of this Organization. In the midst of increasing
poverty and underdevelopment during an era of
unprecedented wealth accumulation and technological
advances, and as the river that divides the rich and the
poor zones of the metaphorical global village ever
widened, the Secretary-General never lost focus on the
imperatives of our time.
We thank him for never losing sight of the fact
that poverty and underdevelopment remain the biggest
threats to the progress that has been achieved, and that
equality among nations big and small is central to the
survival, relevance and credibility of this global
Organization.
We are only six years into the twenty-first
century. Those who populate the poorest of the regions
of the world — that is, Africa — have boldly declared
that it will be an African century. It is a century that
billions of citizens of the developing world and other
poor and marginalized people want to transform into a
century for all humanity.
If the wishes of the majority of the world could
turn into reality, this would be a century free of wars,
free of internecine conflicts, free of hunger, free of
preventable disease, free of want, free of
environmental degradation and free of greed and
corruption. Indeed, we began the century with great
hopes for a better, peaceful and more humane world.
Together, we crafted comprehensive plans and
bold declarations to defeat the scourge of poverty and
underdevelopment. Together, we committed ourselves,
with what seemed like renewed vigour, to transform
the United Nations to reflect the modern reality that is
defined by free, sovereign and equal nations.
However, six years into the twenty-first century,
dispassionate observers might well challenge us to
achieve our noble and lofty objectives, pointing to the
terrorists’ acts that welcomed us into the new century.
They might emphasize the unilateralism that threatens
to negate the democratic advances of the last decades
of the twentieth century and draw attention to renewed
conflicts and wars that seem to compete with the
destructive fury of the conflicts of the last century.
They would remind us that for a decade and
more, some of the developed nations have consistently
refused to implement the outcomes and agreements of
this world body that would help to alleviate the
wretchedness of the poor. Thus, Madam President,
when you correctly urge us to implement a global
partnership for development, we, the members of the
Group of 77 and China, who represent the poor people
of the world, understand you to be communicating a
message that we should give substance to the common
commitments we solemnly made at this supreme
Organization of the nations of the world.
Yet, this common commitment for a global
partnership for development cannot be transformed
into reality when the rich and powerful insist on an
unequal relationship with the poor. A global
partnership for development is impossible in the
absence of a pact of mutual responsibility between the
giver and the recipient. It is impossible when the rich
unilaterally demand the right to set the agenda and
conditions for the implementation of commonly agreed
programmes.
We who represent the poor know as a matter of
fact that these billions of poor people are increasingly
becoming impatient, because every year they hear us
adopt declaration after declaration and yet nothing
practical is done to assuage the hunger pains that keep
them awake at night. Only few and selected agreements
are implemented, with outcomes that are clearly
insufficient to alleviate the excruciating pain of their
children who cannot cry anymore because to do so is to
invite more pain.
Those of us who were at the 14th Summit of the
Non-Aligned Movement in Havana heard this message
very clearly emanating from all the countries and
organizations that spoke. Those who are capable of
listening should take note of what that great son of
India and South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi, said on this
matter:
“The test of friendship is assistance in adversity,
and that too, unconditional assistance.
Cooperation which needs consideration is a
commercial contract and not friendship.
Conditional cooperation is like adulterated cement
which does not bind.”
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Precisely because of the absence of a global
partnership for development, the Doha Development
Round has almost collapsed. Indeed, because the rich
implicitly invoked the slogan of an over-confident
European political party of the 1960s, and directed this
uncaring declaration to the poor of today — “I’m
alright, Jack!” — we have not implemented the
Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development,
thus making it difficult for the majority of the
developing countries, especially those in Africa, to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
and we have reduced the Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation to an insignificant, and perhaps
forgotten, piece of paper.
Part of the problem with this unequal relationship
is the imposition of conditions on developing countries
and the constant shifting of the goalposts, whenever the
poor adhere to each and every one of those conditions.
Among other things, we have recently seen an
outbreak of great social instability across Europe and
other reactions of the poor to their miserable conditions
in different parts of the world, which calls into
question the image of a seemingly harmonious well-
woven tapestry of diverse groups, because we continue
to fail to implement our own decisions as taken at the
United Nations World Conference against Racism,
Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related
Intolerance. Those who coined the slogan: “I’m alright,
Jack!” were communicating, whether consciously or
not, a message and an attitude that said “I don’t care
about my neighbour as long as my family and I eat
well and sleep peacefully” and that “It is not my
responsibility to ensure that my poor neighbour also
eats well and sleeps peacefully.”
Today, the attitude among some of the rich also
communicates the same message to the rest of the
world, namely, “I’m alright, Jack!”, even when they are
acutely aware that many in their neighbourhood are
dying from hunger, preventable diseases and abject
poverty.
This happens also in the cruelly ironic situation
where resources flow from those who have little to
those who have plenty. Although the rich and powerful
know the miserable life circumstances of the poor and
have solemnly committed themselves to the collective
effort to reverse those conditions, their attitude and
response resembles that of the Biblical Cain, who, after
he killed his brother, Abel, and the Lord asked him
“Where is Abel, your brother?”, replied: “I do not
know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Perhaps, all of us, especially the rich, should heed
the words of one of the great sons of the United States
of America, who perished because of his belief in
equality and justice for all human beings and whose
civil rights movement is currently marking its golden
jubilee. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that
“As long as there is poverty in the world I can
never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As
long as diseases are rampant and millions of
people in this world cannot expect to live more
than 28 or 30 years, I can never be totally healthy
even if I just got a good check-up at the Mayo
Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you
are what you ought to be. This is the way our
world is made. No individual or nation can stand
out boasting of being independent. We are
interdependent.”
The majority of the human race is entitled to ask
the question whether the rich respond the way they do
because further impoverishment of the poor is to the
advantage of the rich, giving meaning to the old
observation that the rich get richer as the poor get
poorer. As the divide between the rich and the poor
widens and becomes a serious global crisis, we see an
increase in the concentration of economic, military,
technological, media and other power.
Something is seriously wrong when people risk
life and limb travelling in suffocating containers to
Western Europe in search of a better life. Something is
wrong when many Africans traverse, on foot, the harsh,
hot and hostile Sahara Desert to reach European
shores. Something is wrong when walls are built to
prevent poor neighbours from entering those countries
where they seek better opportunities. Something is
indeed wrong when all these people, whose fault is
merely the fact that their lives are defined by poverty,
try desperately to reach countries where they believe
the conditions of their existence could improve, only to
meet hostile, and at times, barbaric and inhuman
receptions.
In part, the United Nations is unable to fulfil
some of the objectives set by the founders in San
Francisco because, in truth, it does not reflect the
expansion of the global family of free nations. Because
this Organization of the peoples of the world has
grown to encompass the entire world, many had
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thought that it would be logical that this custodian of
global democracy would itself serve as a beacon in our
continuing quest for democracy in all our countries.
Clearly, for the United Nations to continue
occupying its moral high ground, it has to reform itself
urgently and lead by practical example, showing what
it means to be democratic. Even as we face the cold
reality of the indifference of many among the rich and
powerful, this Organization of the peoples of the world
has continued to offer hope and the possibility of the
fulfilment of the aspirations of the majority of the
peoples of the world.
All of us, including those who hesitate to
implement the commonly agreed positions, agree that
this Organization has entrenched the correct
understanding that development is a right and is central
to the advancement of humanity. All of us, individually
and collectively and as Members of the United
Nations, must do whatever is necessary to develop and
implement policies and strategies aimed at the
achievement of sustainable development. It is
important that international organizations such as the
Bretton Woods institutions, the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and others should, without any
equivocation, seriously embark on the implementation
of all the commitments that we have made as the
international community.
This Organization of the peoples of the world
cannot merely note the unacceptable situation that
Africa will not achieve the Millennium Development
Goals by 2015. We need further programmes, focused
and concrete, to accelerate development in Africa and
avoid the possibility of that continent sinking further
into the morass of poverty and underdevelopment.
Because we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers,
we have the responsibility to end the rhetoric and
implement programmes that ensure that all human
beings live decent, humane and prosperous lives.
On behalf of the Group of 77 and China, as well
as my own country, South Africa, I take this
opportunity to thank His Excellency Mr. Jan Eliasson,
for the great work he did in steering this Organization
during this past year as President of the General
Assembly.
We are honoured to welcome Her Excellency
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa as President of the
General Assembly at its sixty-first session, and we
wish her well in her important work. Madam President,
we pledge to do whatever is necessary to make your
work easier, so that through your efforts, the poor can
regain full confidence in the ability of the United
Nations to improve their conditions of life.
Every day the masses cry out in pain, frustration
and anger. Every day they ask whether there is
anybody who stops to hear their voices, anybody who
listens and who is ready to respond to their heartfelt
plea for the restoration of their dignity.