Let me first of all
congratulate Ms. Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa on her
election to the presidency of the General Assembly at
its sixty-first session. I am confident that, with her
wealth of experience, she will guide our deliberations
effectively. I wish also to thank her predecessor,
Mr. Jan Eliasson of Sweden, for the manner in which
he presided over the high-level segment of the General
Assembly at its sixtieth session.
Let me also pay tribute to Secretary-General Kofi
Annan for his leadership of our Organization. His 10-
year tenure has been marked by fundamental changes.
The United Nations has witnessed major reforms
geared at creating a more efficient and effective
institution. We are confident that he will leave behind a
more vibrant Organization capable of meeting the
challenges of our time.
As a firm supporter of multilateralism, Uganda
believes that the Assembly is the most appropriate
forum for addressing issues of global concern. A great
number of important decisions have been taken by the
Assembly. Landmark agreements have been reached
and important commitments undertaken by members of
the Assembly.
In spite of all these efforts, threats to global peace
and security and to human dignity are more serious
49 06-52885
than ever before. This situation obtains today because
we have yet to start addressing the real root causes of
the problems facing us. My delegation believes that
ensuring global peace will continue to be an uphill task
for us as long as the majority in developing countries
and elsewhere in the world continue to suffer the
indignity of poverty and deprivation while we continue
to think that it is business as usual.
We must ask ourselves why a large number of
international problems that are high on the agenda of
the United Nations are occurring in the developing part
of the world. These are real issues that affect the daily
lives of peoples, and they require urgent solutions
which have been to date been far too slow in coming.
The onus is on the Assembly to ensure that what
we agree upon or commit ourselves to doing is done in
a timely manner. The Millennium Declaration that we
adopted here 6 years ago (resolution 55/2) remains an
important milestone because it introduced a new
paradigm shift from emphasis on statement of
commitments to action. However, there have been
some obstacles to the achievement of the goals we set
for ourselves.
In areas where progress has been made, due
credit must be given. In that regard, Uganda welcomes
the establishment of the Human Rights Council to
work alongside the Security Council and the Economic
and Social Council. We are also pleased that action was
promptly taken to create the Peacebuilding
Commission as an important intergovernmental
mechanism to assist countries in transition from war to
durable peace. We welcome those as important
contributions to the reform agenda of the United
Nations.
While commendable progress has been achieved
in other areas of reform, great frustration remains over
the reform and expansion of the Security Council. In
my delegation’s view, the expansion of the Security
Council is the most important facet of United Nations
reform with regard to the maintenance of global peace
and security.
It is now a truism that the Security Council does
not reflect today’s geopolitical realities, but only the
balance of power that prevailed in the 1940s. Africa is
the only continent with no permanent member on the
Security Council, despite its size and population. That
is why Africa is demanding at least two permanent
seats on the Council. We acknowledge that the
existence of the veto is an anachronism, but as long as
it exists we should demand it, because do not want to
join as second-class members, with no veto.
Lack of agreement on how to move the
development agenda forward is one of our major
concerns. It is unacceptable for big sections of the
global community to continue living on less than one
dollar per day while we have the capacity and the
means to pull them out of that abject poverty. We must
address that problem as a matter of urgency. One way
of doing so is to live by our own commitments, as
reflected, for example, in the Monterrey Consensus,
the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the
Brussels Plan of Action, et cetera, et cetera. We must
put in place measurable benchmarks to realize those
goals.
It is disappointing to see that very little progress
has been made to date on official development
assistance, on foreign direct investments, on debts, or
even on market access. The stalled conclusion of the
World Trade Organization development agenda is a
case in point. The Doha Development Round was
launched as a process that would eventually give
developing countries a fair chance to compete in the
world marketplace. It was expected to restore the
momentum of the open market while giving genuine
priority to the concerns and interests of developing
countries. Five years down the road, we have not
agreed on opening up markets or eliminating
discriminative subsidies.
My delegation strongly feels that part of that
failure is attributable to the multilateral system’s lack
of good global governance, poor coordination and lack
of coherence. As the United Nations has a
responsibility to identify the causes hindering the
achievement of the internationally agreed development
goals, including the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), the Organization is the right body to track
implementation of commitments undertaken by
development partners. An effective mechanism should
be devised for doing that.
Uganda calls on the international community, and
the United Nations in particular, to explore new and
more effective ways of promoting consensus on issues
of vital importance to the peace, security and
prosperity of our global community. In that regard, we
would like to welcome and encourage the holding of
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the high-level events that have been organized
alongside this session.
The High-level Dialogue on International
Migration and Development held last week has
produced important outcomes that are going to be
valuable in the formulation of policies on international
migration and development. In the same light, the
convening of the High-level Meeting on the midterm
comprehensive global review of the implementation of
the Programme of Action for the Least Developed
Countries is a welcome decision as it will feed into the
midterm review.
With regard to Africa’s development, the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development — NEPAD — is
the key framework for action. We continue to urge
development partners to support Africa’s efforts by
contributing positively and effectively to the
implementation of that regional development strategy.
Of the United Nations system in particular we request
that the funding that comes from United Nations
development systems should focus on Africa’s
priorities as determined by the partner States, while
care should be taken to avoid diversion of development
resources to other donor-driven activities.
I would like now to briefly turn my attention to
the situation in our region. Uganda’s security and
development is directly interlinked with developments
in the Great Lakes region. We are therefore fully
committed to the realization of peace and security, and
have continued to play a key role in the search for
durable peace and security in our region.
We welcome the positive developments in the
southern Sudan following the signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement. We fully support the
democratic process being pursued in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo. We call upon all parties
involved to have full confidence in the process so that
it can be successfully completed. The regional
initiative on Burundi under Uganda’s chairmanship has
made steady progress, and we have full confidence in
its success.
Uganda also wishes to appeal to the international
community, especially our development partners, to
support the peace initiatives in the region by
contributing generously to the success of the
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region,
initiated by the United Nations in collaboration with
the African Union.
With regard to Somalia, we call for international
support for the Transitional Federal Government. We
call on the Security Council to support the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD)
peace process and the partial lifting of the arms
embargo to enable deployment of the IGAD Peace
Support Mission to Somalia and the African Union
forces.
At the national level, in Uganda there is an
organization called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),
a terrorist group with no political agenda, which has
for a number of years unleashed terror on the
population of northern Uganda, killing and maiming
people and abducting children for training as killers
and use as sex slaves. The LRA has now been defeated
and its remnants have fled to Garamba Park in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Government
of Uganda has now entered into peace talks with the
LRA under the mediation of the Government of
southern Sudan with a view to restoring peace and
stability.
After a careful analysis of the situation, the
Government of Uganda decided to take the painful
decision to offer amnesty to the LRA top leadership, in
order to facilitate the peace talks. That decision was
painful in the sense that we do not condone or tolerate
impunity whatsoever. However, we are convinced that
the alternative traditional justice system that we intend
to apply is an equitable solution and should be given a
chance. We call on the international community to
support the process that we have embarked on. We are
determined to resolve the conflict peacefully. Peace is
what our people want, and it is peace that we are
determined to give them.