I bring with me to this session of the
General Assembly greetings of peace, friendship and
solidarity from the people of Equatorial Guinea and
the full readiness of their Government to contribute to
our common task of maintaining peace and stability
throughout the world, and promoting the harmonious
development of humankind.
Allow me at the outset to congratulate you, Sir, on
your brilliant election to preside over the work of this
sixty-ninth ordinary session of the General Assembly.
Your well-deserved election is justified by the policy
of peace, respect for the principles of international
law and the promotion of development advocated by
your country, the Republic of Uganda. Indeed, your
decision to devote this session of the General Assembly
to the theme “Delivering on and implementing a
transformative post-2015 development agenda” is
testament to Uganda’s interest in overcoming the
current problems of underdevelopment throughout the
world.
Equatorial Guinea recognizes the relevance and
importance of the topics to be debated at the two high-
level meetings proposed for 2015 — one in February,
to consider ways of implementing the post-2015
development agenda, and the other in March, on gender
equality and the empowerment of women.
We also wish to convey our sincere appreciation and
congratulations to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his
outstanding work at the head of the global Organization
in very difficult international circumstances marked
by terrorism, piracy, mercenary activities and major
epidemics affecting the world today. Indeed, this session
of the General Assembly bears the heavy responsibility
of finding solutions to the problems of the poverty
and hunger prevalent throughout the world, violence
and armed conflicts, terrorism, piracy and mercenary
activity, and major epidemics, such as the recent Ebola
epidemic that is now laying waste to some countries
in Africa. Given Ebola’s deadly effects and the lack
of adequate resources to combat it, on the occasion of
the award of the second UNESCO Equatorial Guinea
International Prize for Research in Life Sciences, the
Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea
announced a donation of $2 million to the World Health
Organization to finance programmes to combat Ebola.
The United Nations will not be able to find solutions
to these thorny problems unless the role of the General
Assembly, which in recent years has grown routine, is
strengthened and revitalized. The United Nations will
never be able to find lasting solutions to these problems
if the Security Council is not governed by rules that
respect the spirit of democracy and international
justice. Ultimately, the United Nations will not be able
to find satisfactory solutions to these problems as long
as the current system of the rule of force in international
relations persists.
The Republic of Equatorial Guinea is therefore very
concerned by the proliferation of acts of intervention
that do not respect the principle of non-interference
in the internal affairs of States. These interventions
interrupt the process of genuine democracy in the
affected countries in that they ignore the essential
characteristics and idiosyncracies of those societies,
thereby further fuelling divisions and the sociopolitical
instability of nations. We must distinguish clearly
between support for a genuine internal democratic
process and interference perpetrated through pressures
that lead to misunderstandings, intolerance, exclusion,
resentment, hatred among citizens and fratricidal wars.
In Equatorial Guinea we say that democracy is
not an imported product and cannot be designed in
the offices of other countries. Democracy is shaped by
the application of the positive values characterizing a
society, and only the people are entitled to define the
model that best suits them and to beat their own path
towards their own development. With this as our vision,
in 1982 the Republic of Equatorial Guinea adopted the
theory of democratic experimentation, which gave our
own citizens, through community councils, a hand
in designing their own political development, the
implementation of which has given rise to the current
climate of peace, stability and economic prosperity
through successive political reforms.
The latest of these reforms is making Equatorial
Guinea a modern democratic State in which popular
participation and representational politics are ensured
at the highest possible level. The transfer of power is
guaranteed by equal rights for all political options.
Public affairs are administered with the utmost
transparency, accountability and responsibility, and
human rights are protected and monitored by reliable
institutions.
In this spirit of ensuring the participation of all
citizens of Equatorial Guineans in the management and
administration of public affairs, our Government has
extended an invitation to all political parties — those
within the country and those in the diaspora alike — to
attend a national dialogue that will be held in November
as an opportunity to strengthen democracy in our
country as a positive experience in our democratic
experiment, which has yielded fruit since its inception
in 1982.
Concurrently with this political process, and thanks
to the peace and political stability that we have achieved,
our Government has undertaken economic initiatives to
develop our natural resources and position Equatorial
Guinea as an economically emerging country by 2020.
On behalf of the people of Equatorial Guinea, I wish to
thank those countries that have been cooperating with
my Government in developing our economic and trade
relations, in particular the United States of America,
the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Cuba,
France, Brazil, Russia and Morocco.
In conclusion, and with the fervent wish to see the
United Nations recover its leading role in delivering
peace, security and global development, I wish the
sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly every
success.