Mother Earth and humanity are suffering, stricken by
the environmental, climate, financial and food crises
generated by an inhumane, predatory capitalism that
turns human life and Mother Earth into merchandise.
Today we have an historic opportunity to build a new,
different world, and we must do so without delay.
The post-2015 agenda must express that mandate that
Mother Earth and humanity demand of us.
We welcome the proposal of the Open Working
Group on Sustainable Development Goals that
incorporates the proposals of Bolivia and the peoples
of the world to respect Mother Earth and the concept of
harmony with nature. That is not a matter of a simple
political statement. It is a commitment shared with
the entire world to change our visions of development
to a more comprehensive, holistic vision. What we
propose to the world is living well, in harmony with
Mother Earth, and the construction of a culture of life,
complementarity, solidarity and peace.
Respect for Mother Earth has been lost. Today
she is being marketed and manipulated, causing grave
danger to life. Now as at no other time, the premise
that man believes himself to be the lord and master of
nature is more true than ever. Humankind, encouraged
by capitalism, has turned everything into a market,
including genetic manipulation and the destruction of
human beings.
Human and natural life and their happiness
should be the reason why any vision, tool or focus for
development exists. No vision of development makes
sense if it does not respect or strengthen life. Economic
growth does not in itself lead to the realization of
social rights and good living. The horizon of equality
calls for the distribution of wealth and the economic
and political empowerment of the poor, the excluded
and the marginalized. It calls for strengthening
communities and building societies with solidarity, not
exclusive societies based on the accumulation of wealth
and governed by money, covetousness and the avarice
of the market.
Together with the Group of 77 and China, I must
state the fundamental importance of recovering the
sovereignty of our countries and peoples over our natural
resources. It is only by recovering control of our natural
resources that we will be able to garner greater benefits
for our peoples, in particular to eliminate poverty and
to invest in economic diversification, industrialization
and social programmes.
Each country has the right to decide on its priorities
and strategies for development, but it is important that
those strategies strengthen the environmental functions
and the ecosystems of Mother Earth in the framework
of complementarity and mutual support between
productive systems, communities and nature. It is vital
to strike a balance between the rights of Mother Earth,
the right to development, the rights of indigenous
peoples and social, economic and cultural rights, as
well as the right of the poor to emerge from poverty.
Complementarity and mutual support, not commercial
incentives, are instruments to preserve Mother Earth.
On this point we differ from the followers of the so-
called green economy.
An important issue to be promoted in the framework
of the post-2015 agenda is the human right to water and
the right of Mother Earth to enjoy water for regenerating
and reproducing life. Three billion people today live in
areas or regions where the demand for water exceeds
its availability, and that reality will worsen as years
pass. By 2030 the demand for water will have increased
by 30 per cent. In 2050, four billion people will suffer
from critical scarcity of water in the context of climate
change.
In Bolivia, in accordance with human right to
water and with our Constitution, and thanks to the
national programme known as My Water, we have
already reached the Millennium Goals. We did so three
years ahead of schedule. Declaring the human right to
water means it cannot be privatized. Water is life, and
it cannot be an object of profit or commercialization.
Likewise, to resolve serious social inequalities, basic
services such as water, electricity, telecommunications
and basic sanitation, as well as education and health,
must be a human right.
We have a pending agenda to eradicate poverty
and hunger, but for that we must also fight the pitiless,
inhumane forces of capital and the market, the
omnipresent power of banks and usurers who profit
from consumerism and hunger. The so-called vulture
funds are an expression of that. They are agents of
financial rapine who live off speculation, stealing from
developing countries with impunity, taking the bread
from the poor, extorting and defrauding with the help
of the legal systems of capitalism. They caused the
financial crisis and profited from it.
We must profoundly change the exclusionary
structures of financial institutions, such as the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
That should be part of the transformation of the world
financial architecture. Those organizations cannot be
governed only by developed countries, which, through
clever financial strategies, blackmail and oppress
developing countries, especially the poorest. That is
what we call eradicating financial colonialism.
In the world there still exists an offensive, abusive
reality — the 1.3 billion poor people and more than
800 million who are chronically malnourished — as
well as the gaps between the rich and the poor. That
is due to an unequal distribution of income, but also
to an unequal and discriminatory access to wealth, to
the means and factors to live well and to enjoy basic
services. The increase in the number of hungry people
in the world is due, without doubt, to the financial
crisis. If not for that, there would now be 413 million
fewer hungry people in the world. But the eradication
of hunger and poverty is unthinkable without changing
the international financial architecture.
The violence of war feeds the darkest interests,
such as the geopolitical control of the great Powers and
corporations that promote conflicts in order to ensure
their imperial or neocolonial interests. Today, it is the
economic interests of capital that promote neocolonial
wars. With the expense required for war campaigns,
humankind could overcome many of its problems,
including the Ebola virus, tuberculosis, AIDS or
dengue.
We have again witnessed the cruelty and barbarity
of the genocidal actions of the Government of Israel
against the Palestinian civilian population. We have
therefore denounced Israel for violating international
humanitarian law and universal human rights. We
demand an investigation of the crimes committed by
Israel in the Gaza Strip. The Plurinational State of
Bolivia, like other Latin American countries, agrees on
the profound need to reiterate the legitimacy of United
Nations resolutions demanding the end of the occupation
of the Palestinian territories and the construction of an
independent State within the borders existing prior to
4 June 1967. That is why we again reiterate the need
to recognize Palestine as a full-fledged Member of the
United Nations.
As Chair of the Group of 77 and China, I cannot
fail to mention the important commemoration of the
fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the Group of 77,
held on 14 and 15 June in the city of Santa Cruz de
la Sierra, Bolivia. The Summit of Heads of State and
Government of the Group of 77 and China adopted a
declaration entitled “For a new world order for living
well” (see A/68/948), which confirms the principles of
unity, complementarity and solidarity and the building
of a new world order that establishes a more just and
democratic system for the benefit of our peoples.
We commend the Bolivarian Alliance for the
Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Agreement
(ALBA-TCP) on completing 10 years of tireless work
towards the integration of peoples. That work goes
beyond commercial profit and focuses on promoting the
values of cooperation, solidarity and complementarity.
In its 10 years, ALBA-TCP has become a major player
in Latin America and the world.
Since March 2011, 150,000 people have died in
Syria and 3 million people have fled as refugees to
neighbouring countries. Bolivia agrees that the future
and destiny of Syria must be determined by the Syrian
people themselves in the full exercise of democracy, in
accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
Bolivia condemns and rejects the interference by
the United States of America in Iraq that triggered the
current crisis in the country. The war unleashed in 2003
against Iraq destabilized the entire region. It was said
that Iraq possessed large quantities of weapons of mass
destruction. That argument remains one of the biggest
lies ever told in the history of imperialism. On the basis
of that lie, peaceful coexistence among social, ethnic
and religious groups has been destroyed. The situation
has given rise to a terrorist group called the Islamic
State that is imposing a new war that threatens the entire
region. Bolivia rejects the extreme violence with which
that terrorist group has acted against civil society and
wholeheartedly affirms that nothing justifies fratricidal
violence.
The invasion of Iraq, together with other historical
events, has taught us a lesson that wherever the United
States of America intervenes, it leaves destruction,
hatred, misery and death in its wake, but it also leaves
wealth in the hands of those who profit from the wars:
the transnational corporations of the arms industry and
the oil industry. We must make use of the culture of
peace to eradicate extremist fanaticism, but also the
imperial warmongering promoted by the United States,
which, faced with war, threatens more war. The United
Nations was created to build and promote peace, not to
justify wars and invasions.
Using war against war is not the same as peace.
That is a perverse formula — the formula for death and
endless confrontation. We must resolve the structural
causes of war: marginalization, poverty, lack of
opportunities, cultural and political exclusion, social
discrimination, inequality, usurpation and territorial
dispossession, ruthless capitalism and dictatorship of
the interests of transnational corporations. Every year
here we hear Mr. Obama deliver a discourse on war,
arrogance and threats against the peoples of the world.
It is also a discourse of extremist fanaticism.
The economic, commercial and financial blockade
imposed by the Government of the United States
against Cuba is the main tool of United States policy
in its eagerness to destroy the revolution and restore its
hegemony over Cuban territory. The blockade against
Cuba is the most unjust, severe and prolonged system of
unilateral sanctions that has ever been applied against
any country. The blockade qualifies an act of genocide.
That colonial blockade must be ended immediately.
We want to affirm before this Assembly the historic
right of the Bolivian people to their access to the sea — a
right that was trampled by a brutal invasion promoted
by colonial business interests. The colonial imposition,
the absence of genuine participatory democracy and the
interests of foreign companies were interposed between
the Bolivian and Chilean peoples, fraternal peoples who
were led to a war favouring the transnationals. Because
my country firmly believes in and promotes peace and
harmony in our relations with all of our neighbours, we
turned to the International Court of Justice in search
of dialogue to resolve, peacefully and in good faith,
a prolonged dispute over our sovereign access to the
Pacific Ocean.
Our demand does not seek to alter the international
order of the limits and boundaries or to threaten
international treaties, as the the Government of Chile
would have people believe. On the contrary, Bolivia has
invoked international law and its principles to resolve,
methodically and in good faith, the issue of its sovereign
access to the Pacific Ocean. An effective and peaceful
solution regarding Bolivia’s sovereign access to the
sea would be in the interests of our peoples, the new
generations, the region and the whole world. I therefore
call on all countries of the United Nations system at
this sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly to join
us, not only Bolivia, but our neighbour Chile, in this
challenge to peace, justice and rule of law.
We must eradicate violence and war and denounce
the imperialist warmongering of the world Powers that
arrogantly believe they embody the ideals of freedom.
The imperial Powers use their communication media
to manipulate the wills and the emotions of the people.
They lie and deceive with impunity. They divide and
pit nations and communities against one another to
promote wars, control strategic resources and put them
at the service of their foreign capitals.
This is the century of peace, but peace with
sovereignty, with freedom for peoples and not with a
free market. This is the century of agreements on liberty,
life and peace and not for agreements on free trade
in life. There will be no harmony if the arrogance of
empires and their renewed colonialism harass, oppress
and kill human beings, cultures and the peoples of the
world. The empire of finance, the empire of markets,
the empire of the arms industry must all fall to give way
to the wisdom of life and life in peace and harmony.
To summarize with the greatest respect and
admiration for the Assembly, I would like to say that if
we want to put an end to poverty, if we want to defend
life and Mother Earth, our only path is to put an end
to the capitalist system and imperious thinking for the
well-being of humanity.