It is a singular honour
and privilege for me to address this gathering of the
international community. Allow me, on behalf of His
Excellency the President of the Republic of Botswana,
Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, to
join other delegations in extending our warmest
congratulations to the President on his election to the
presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth
session. We are confident that his vast experience and
dedicated service to the Government and people of
Uganda will contribute significantly to the successful
conclusion of this session. My delegation and I wish him
every success as he embarks on this new responsibility
of steering the work of the sixty-ninth session of the
General Assembly. We also extend fitting tribute to his
predecessor, His Excellency Ambassador John Ashe,
for his sterling leadership of the sixty-eighth session of
the General Assembly. We commend him for his tireless
efforts to overcome many of the challenges confronting
the international community today.
My delegation welcomes the theme that the President
has chosen for the current general debate, namely,
“Delivering on and implementing a transformative
post-2015 development agenda”. We consider it both
pertinent and timely, especially as it coincides with
ongoing efforts by Member States to formulate a new
global development agenda to succeed the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). We shall tirelessly work
with the President and the international community
as we define the post-2015 development agenda. The
priorities that the President has laid out for this session
of the Assembly, that is, the issues of climate change,
poverty eradication, the empowerment of women and
gender equality, the rule of law and international peace
and security, are among the most critical and central to
the success and sustainability of a global development
agenda.
As we draw the curtain on the Millennium
Development Goals, it is important that we reflect on
our successes and failures in order to draw vital lessons
from our experience. The global community, most
notably in the developing world, has faced significant
challenges in fully realizing the MDGs. That has
resulted in many of our countries failing to deliver
tangible development achievements to their citizens, as
cogently set out in the MDGs, despite their best efforts
and intentions. We continue to witness intolerable
levels of poverty, disease, economic stagnation and
environmental degradation, as well as other drawbacks,
precipitated in large part by natural disasters and severe
resource and capacity constraints.
While Botswana has made impressive gains in the
implementation of the MDGs, it has not been without
enormous challenges, chief among which were resource
and capacity constraints. The Botswana Government has
strived to achieve the MDGs and improve the quality of
life of its citizens by allocating a substantial percentage
of the national budget to the sectors with significant
bearing on the country’s development, including
education, health, infrastructure, the development of
human capital, and women and youth empowerment.
Botswana continues to make every effort, in the
remaining time before the target 2015 completion date,
to finish the unfinished business remaining from the
MDGs, especially Goals 4 and 5, relating to infant and
maternal mortality.
The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus disease,
evolving, as it did, into a public health catastrophe, is
a serious setback to the achievement of the MDGs. We
therefore implore the Assembly to call on all partners
and organizations of goodwill to spare no effort in
rescuing the West African region from that scourge.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development of 2012 mapped a clear and strategic path
for the achievement of global sustainable development,
calling for an inclusive and transformative agenda that
integrates the three pillars of sustainable development,
namely, economic, social and environmental protection.
Botswana has keenly followed the work of the
Open Working Group on Sustainable Development
Goals, which has had as its primary objective the
formulation of a single, transformative and global
development agenda, as mandated by the Rio+20
outcome document. We are highly encouraged by
the spirit of consultation and the collective will and
commitment of the international community to craft an
ambitious yet inclusive, measurable and sustainable set
of goals, which should inspire and challenge us all to
excel in our quest for the attainment of the future we
want. I commend the co-Chairs of the Open Working
Group on Sustainable Development Goals for their
exceptional performance in driving the negotiation
process to its logical conclusion. We look forward to
the intergovernmental negotiations on the broader post-
2015 development framework, which will begin during
this session of the General Assembly. I assure the
Assembly of our fullest cooperation and constructive
engagement in those deliberations.
My delegation will actively participate in all
deliberations on the key development priorities outlined
by the Secretary-General, in particular the elaboration
of the post-2015 development agenda. However, there
are issues of major strategic importance to Botswana.
They include climate change, landlocked developing
countries, middle-income countries, countries in
special situations and issues of peace and security and
the advancement of human rights.
On climate change, Botswana knows only too well
the devastating effects of that phenomenon, which
continues to cause extreme temperatures, changes in the
patterns of rainfall, land degradation, desertification
and persistent droughts. In that regard, we believe
that addressing those problems should be a primary
consideration in the current deliberations on the post-
2015 sustainable development agenda. We therefore
look forward to the twentieth Conference of the Parties
to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, to be held in Lima this year, which
is supposed to lay the foundation for a legally binding
agreement for adoption at the next Conference of the
Parties in Paris. We commend the Secretary-General
for his initiative in convening the recently concluded
Climate Change Summit, which successfully injected
much-needed political momentum into the process as
we move towards 2015.
As a middle-income, landlocked developing
country with particular vulnerabilities, we also strongly
hope for a comprehensive account of those issues in
the post-2015 development agenda. We welcome the
10-year review of the Almaty Programme of Action,
to be held in November in Vienna, which will broadly
consider effective mechanisms for addressing the
vulnerabilities of landlocked developing countries. We
hope that, during the review, special attention will also
be given to countries with ever-increasing elephant
populations, whose numbers not only give rise to
serious animal-human conflict, but also devastate the
very environment that the elephants depend on for their
survival. Botswana has the largest elephant population
in Africa.
On issues of social development, I am delighted to
inform the Assembly that Botswana is making steady
progress in eradicating abject poverty, as a result of
the implementation of the national poverty eradication
strategy that was launched in 2010. Furthermore, we
have been able to achieve universal primary education
and access to HIV/AIDS treatment, care and support
services. However, challenges remain on the issues of
maintaining quality in education and general services.
Financial support, technology transfer and
capacity-building must invariably be factored into the
post-2015 development agenda discussions. Failing
that, our efforts towards poverty eradication and
sustainable development will be rendered futile. We
keenly await the adoption of the new development
agenda, which will, we trust, support our individual
and collective efforts to deliver our shared aspirations
of a safe, secure and prosperous world for both present
and future generations.
Threats to international peace and security
continue to be among the greatest challenges to human
development. Botswana is gravely concerned about the
increasing trend of instability, insecurity and violent
conflict in various parts of the world. We are currently
witnessing unimaginable levels of human suffering,
with thousands of innocent lives being lost and the
world hurtling precipitously towards calamitous levels
of humanitarian crises.
The Palestine/Israel conflict and the protracted
brutal war in Syria defy human imagination. In Africa,
the frequent eruption of violent conflicts in certain
parts of our continent, now particularly in South Sudan
and the Central African Republic, are distressing.
Regrettably, Iraq is also under siege by the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant and the Nusra Front.
Those terrorist groups threaten not only the stability
and security of the Middle East, but the maintenance of
international peace and security at large.
Not only are we failing as nation States to exercise
our duty and responsibility to protect populations from
war crimes and crimes against humanity, we in effect
inadvertently acquiesce in the annihilation of future
generations. Last June, Botswana and the Netherlands
co-hosted the fourth meeting of the Global Network
of Focal Points on the Responsibility to Protect, in an
effort to further consolidate that fundamental principle,
which promotes our individual and collective sense of
responsibility towards our citizens.
While such efforts may be effective in terms of
awareness-raising, swift and decisive action remains the
domain of the Security Council. It is therefore incumbent
upon members of the Security Council to demonstrate
exemplary leadership and a genuine regard for their
Charter responsibilities to maintain international peace
and security, as mandated by Article 24 of the Charter.
Botswana is deeply disappointed and concerned that
some permanent members of the Security Council
consistently thwart any efforts to find lasting solutions
to conflict situations. Surely, responsible members of
the international community would not, and should
not, abdicate their solemn responsibility and allow
the Council to be seemingly impelled into a state of
grim paralysis as the world burns towards extinction.
Just this past May, the Council failed to adopt a draft
resolution seeking to refer the situation in Syria to the
International Criminal Court (ICC). Needless to say,
that was nothing short of a travesty of international
criminal justice.
Botswana’s commitment to an effective international
criminal justice system remains steadfast. To that
end, we continue to support the independence and
credibility of the ICC as the only existing international
judicial mechanism available for the investigation and
prosecution of genocide, war crimes, crimes against
humanity and the crime of aggression. However, the
role of the Security Council in facilitating the work of
the ICC cannot be over-emphasized. It is our sincere
hope that, going forward, reason and basic human
compassion will prevail in Council decisions aimed
at eliminating threats to international peace and
security and at fostering a global culture of judicial
accountability, inclusive governance, the rule of law
and respect for human rights. In that regard, Botswana
welcomes the French initiative regarding voluntary
restraint on the use of the veto by the permanent
members of the Security Council in situations of mass
atrocities.
Botswana also commends those countries, human
rights defenders and humanitarian organizations that
have valiantly contributed to efforts to relieve human
suffering wherever it occurred around the world. We
especially applaud Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
for his unwavering commitment to the pursuit of
international peace and security, including addressing
the plight of vulnerable groups in society, such as
women and children.
Let me conclude by reiterating and reaffirming
Botswana’s commitment to the principles and ideals
of the United Nations as enshrined in the Charter. We
remain steadfast and resolute in our obligation as a
member of the international community to contribute,
in our own small way, to the creation of a peaceful,
secure and prosperous world for all.