Allow me, Sir, to
congratulate His Excellency Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz
Al-Nasser on his election to preside over the Assembly
at the sixty-sixth session. Let me also commend his
predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Joseph Deiss, for his
leadership in guiding us over the Assembly’s sixth-fifth
session. May I take this opportunity to congratulate
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his reappointment.
Indonesia would also like to welcome South
Sudan as a Member of the United Nations.
Our world continues to be full of challenges,
political and military tensions and conflicts, as well as
threats of nuclear weapons and of acts of piracy and
terrorism. There is the financial and economic crisis.
Worse and more fundamental still, in many corners of
the world there is abject poverty and hunger,
environmental threats and natural disasters, energy and
food insecurity, intolerance and discrimination. There
are authoritarian regimes bent on suppressing the
clamour for democracy and respect for human rights.
We believe that in convening in this historic Hall,
as we do every year, we must seek more than simply to
review the past year, to lament opportunities lost and to
congratulate ourselves on the gains made. Rather, we
must ensure that, moving forward, as nations we stand
united — United Nations — in addressing and
anticipating the challenges ahead.
In particular, we must stand united in
transforming challenges into opportunities for nations
to forge mutually beneficial partnerships, anchored in
the principles of the United Nations Charter. We must
change challenges into opportunities to promote a new
kind of international relations that accentuates
partnership rather than confrontation, and that places
primacy on the building of bridges rather than the
deepening of fault lines and divisions, and on nations
aggressively waging peace and development.
Waging peace and development in the Middle
East must, first and foremost, entail correcting the
historic injustice to the Palestinian people that has been
allowed for too long. Indonesia’s support for the
legitimate aspirations and rights of the people of
Palestine to live in freedom, peace, justice and dignity
in their own homeland has been steadfast and will
continue unabated.
Indonesia therefore strongly supports Palestine’s
present quest for full membership in the United
Nations. Such membership is consistent with the vision
of the two-State solution and of a just and
comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Indeed, the
recent heightened worldwide focus on the issue of
Palestine can, and must, be channelled in a
constructive way towards the promotion of an inclusive
partnership among nations that leads to the fulfilment
of the historic responsibilities shouldered by our
United Nations.
The continued denial of the most basic rights of
the Palestinian people becomes all the more glaring in
the face of the welcome democratic transformation that
is under way in parts of North Africa and the Middle
East. Like many, Indonesia has been deeply concerned
by the untold losses and casualties suffered by innocent
civilians. The bloodshed and use of force must be
brought to an immediate end, for, ultimately, political
solutions must be found. That means that conditions
conducive for people to shape their own future must be
promoted. Thus in Libya, for example, Indonesia
11-51390 28
supports the National Transitional Council in its efforts
to promote a peaceful and democratic transition.
A decade or so ago now, Indonesia too went
through a tumultuous process of democratic change.
Today, as the third largest democracy, Indonesia is
reaping the democratic dividends of such change. That
is why we believe that political development and
democratization should constitute a priority item on
our agenda, to allow States to share lessons learned and
experiences in their unique paths towards
democratization. That is why we took the initiative of
launching the Bali Democracy Forum — the only
intergovernmental forum for the sharing of experience
and cooperation on political development in Asia. It is
a forum for partnership in the promotion of democracy.
Global partnership is particularly key in
addressing the challenges of development in order to
achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to
prevent the recurrence of famine, which we are
currently witnessing in the Horn of Africa. Thus we
must act in concert and in a focused and sustainable
way to ensure food security for the most vulnerable.
That means increased investment in the agricultural
research and development sector and increased
production and productivity.
I wish to highlight one particular driver of
economic growth and development. An enhanced role
for women in the economy is not only right, but also
smart, leading to both increased growth and more
balanced, sustainable and equitable growth.
Achieving food security also requires that we
confront the reality of climate change. The
international community must find the political
commitment to generate momentum for climate
change, towards a new climate regime after 2012. The
forthcoming seventeenth Conference of the Parties to
the Climate Change Convention in Durban and the
Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in
Brazil next year must deliver.
However, let us not wait. In Indonesia, we are
committed to being proactive and to being part of the
global solution to climate change. Through the REDD-
plus programme — Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation — we are using
our natural rainforests as an important part of our
mitigation efforts.
Our commitment to work in partnership in
addressing climate change must not founder before the
looming and renewed threat of the global financial and
economic crisis. In the face of that challenge, we must
take bold measures. The reform of international
financial and economic governance must be expedited.
Enhanced coordination of national economic policies is
essential. We must learn to step out of our comfort
zone and address those critical needs in concert. As
emerging economies are now an important engine of
global economic growth, they must have a greater
opportunity to contribute to promoting solutions.
The challenges confronting us are persistent and
formidable, but we have the opportunity and the
capacity to address them and, most of all, to turn
challenges into opportunities. For a start, since those
challenges defy national solutions, they can at the same
time motivate countries to strike partnerships and build
cooperation. In that regard, allow me to highlight two
basic points.
First, we need to strengthen multilateralism in
order to address global challenges. That means the
central role of the United Nations. To be able to
address new and emerging challenges, and, not least, to
identify new opportunities, full support for and reform
of the United Nations are key. That is the only way that
the United Nations can remain relevant and to ensure
that multilateralism flourishes.
Through reform, we must ensure that the United
Nations and its decision-making processes are more
effective, efficient, transparent and inclusive. We must
persevere in strengthening the General Assembly, the
Economic and Social Council and their subsidiary
organs, as well as the Human Rights Council. We must
support the Peacebuilding Commission as it helps
countries emerging from conflict.
The Security Council must better reflect the
current world situation. It should become more
representative, more transparent and, thus, more
effective. All key issues of United Nations reform
should be addressed as integral parts of a
comprehensive package.
Secondly, cooperation and partnership between
the United Nations and regional organizations are key
to addressing today’s global challenges. Thus, there
should be synergy between global and regional efforts.
That is particularly true in conflict prevention and
resolution, linked to the theme of this year’s General
29 11-51390
Assembly session, “The role of mediation in the
settlement of disputes by peaceful means”.
In South-East Asia, as Chair of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia has
worked ceaselessly to develop the region’s capacity to
prevent and to manage potential conflicts, and to
resolve them. Our efforts have been focused not only
on the further development of ASEAN’s conflict
prevention and resolution mechanisms, but also on
developing and nurturing the necessary comfort level
among ASEAN member States to resort to such
mechanisms.
As a result, we expect South-East Asia to remain
a net contributor to international peace and security, as
well as to economic development and prosperity.
Beyond its own subregion, anchored in a strong
ASEAN Community, we are indeed set to attain those
achievements by 2015. ASEAN continues to be the
driving force in promoting a regional architecture
throughout Asia-Pacific that is conducive to the
maintenance of regional peace and stability, which is
precisely the kind of conditions that have enabled
countries in the region to pursue a development path
uninterrupted by wars and conflicts.
In the current regional setting, in Indonesia we
describe that as conditions that are marked by a
dynamic equilibrium, where dominant power is absent
owing to a lack of the promotion of block politics and
often self-fulfilling geopolitical fault lines. Rather,
there exists a new kind of international relations, with
its emphasis on common security, common prosperity
and common stability.
This November, a revamped East Asia Summit
will convene in Bali, Indonesia, with the participation
of the Russian Federation and the United States for the
first time. That will be part of an important regional
architecture.
As ASEAN builds its Community and continues
its central role in maintaining a stable and peaceful
environment in the Asia-Pacific region, it sets a new
challenge and a new vision for itself, that is, to develop
greater cohesion and a common platform on global
issues - an ASEAN that is a net contributor to the
solution of many of the world’s ills and challenges.
That is in keeping with ASEAN’s theme for 2011,
“ASEAN Community in a Global Community of
Nations”.
To conclude, I wish to assure Members of the
United Nations that Indonesia will be relentless and
unceasing in promoting the ideals embodied in the
Charter of the United Nations in promoting peace.