My first
words are addressed to the President of the General
Assembly, at its sixty-third session, my friend Miguel
d’Escoto. I am pleased that the responsibility of
presiding over our deliberations has fallen to a
distinguished Latin American of such political and
diplomatic eminence in his country and in the region.
The President has invited us — and because of its
great importance we are obliged to comply with his
suggestion — to focus our debate on the impact of the
world food crisis on poverty and hunger in the world.
This Organization was founded at the end of a
world conflagration in order to banish war forever and
to prevent armed confrontations between nations or
groups of nations. Although it has not been possible to
avoid all such events, certainly it has acted as a
deterrent force that has prevented wars that might have
proved even more devastating. The nations of the
world decided that it would be here that conflicts
among its Members would be resolved.
Now we have to act on a conflict that is not
between Member States, but is rather one of all States
against hunger and poverty. It is difficult to explain
why, if the world is producing sufficient food for all,
854 million people find themselves in a state of food
insecurity and more than 1.7 billion people are
suffering from iron deficiency. In the last few days we
have noted how hundreds of millions of dollars have
been directed to rescue commercial enterprises, while
we still view with indifference the fact that every year
5.6 million children younger than 5 years are dying
directly or indirectly because of malnutrition — that is
640 each hour. In other words, since the moment when
we began our deliberations this morning, 5,000
children younger than 5 years have died. They did not
die because of terrorist acts, which all condemn, nor
because of natural disasters, which we all regret. They
died for a reason as simple as it is tragic — they were
poor. This situation is simply indefensible.
As part of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), we undertook to reduce the number of people
suffering from hunger by one half and the number of
people who live with an income of less than $1 per day
by one half between 1990 and 2015. How can we meet
this objective if the price of rice has risen by 74 per
cent and that of wheat by 130 per cent? How can we
meet this objective if more than one billion people who
have escaped extreme poverty run the risk of suffering
from hunger unless we do something to stop this
upward spiral of food prices?
What is the point of ensuring that more people
earn more than a dollar a day if the rise in food prices
has in fact altered that measurement of extreme
poverty? I do not want to suggest that nothing is being
done. The World Food Programme is doing formidable
work and donor countries have made extraordinary
contributions to alleviate the crisis and bring food to
the countries that need it most.
The deliberations of the Human Rights Council,
the High-level Conference on World Food Security
held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture
Organization and the meeting of the High-level Task
Force on the Global Food Security Crisis constitute
additional expressions of the concern of international
bodies.
But the fact is that we face a reality that has
already caused social disruption and to which no
immediate solution is in sight. The major mission of
the United Nations is the preservation of peace, and
peace is not just the absence of armed conflict between
countries, but also lies in the tranquillity of nations and
entails the elimination of adverse factors that may
disturb that tranquillity.
As if skyrocketing food prices were not enough,
they have now been compounded by unjustified
speculation, which has raised the price of fuel to
absurd levels. It is no longer just the exorbitant
earnings of oil companies that are at stake; what is at
stake now is the hunger of millions of people who have
seen their efforts and hopes go up in smoke without
even knowing what has hit them.
This means that we must see to it that from the
United Nations reforms that have been so often
postponed there emerges a strengthened General
Assembly so that, as an expression of all its
membership, it may act with authority in response to
such situations as those before us today. The
Constitution of almost all States of the world provides
for the declaration of a state of emergency as a
mechanism for dealing with imminent threats to
national security or to social harmony.
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I am convinced, and I want to say so today, that
because of the price of food, we are facing a threat to
social peace and that the General Assembly could so
declare it so that all governmental forces, private
initiatives and international bodies may coordinate
their efforts in a crusade to rescue hundreds of millions
of people from the clutches of poverty.
The world food price crisis cannot be dissociated
from climate change, as if these two problems were not
interrelated. Climate change has led to irregular crops
through droughts and floods that have had such a
severe effect on food stocks.
If the problem of the scarcity and the lack of food
is something that we have to deal with
comprehensively, we should take measures to mitigate
the polluting effects of carbon, at least by market
mechanisms or a limiting of carbon production. It is
indispensable to develop more efficient technologies,
such as wind and solar energy, to take the place of
fossil fuels, if our response is not to remain a
temporary palliative but may offer a lasting,
sustainable solution; we must see to it, without further
delay, that we tackle both problems, the food crisis and
climate change, in an integral, comprehensive and
consistent manner.
It is only thus that we will be able, without
further delay, to arrive at responses that are not just
stopgaps, but lasting, sustainable solutions. Indeed,
ever-greater importance is to be attached to the way we
relate to the ecosystems that sustain life throughout the
world, and how that affects the survival of our species
and civilization.
We must understand that the environmental
agenda of the twenty-first century cannot be built on
the basis of the idea of a conflict between the
environment and the market, nor between the
environment and trade barriers, but on the basis of
opportunities which the market and trade offer to
stimulate new ways of addressing the environmental
issues that affect us all.
We know today that there is no intractable
contradiction between conservation and development,
as perhaps there might have appeared to be when the
United Nations convened the first meeting to discuss
the subject in 1972. Let us make no mistake. The
opposite of conservation is not development, but waste.
It is clear from the intimate relationship that exists
between environmental problems and those that have to
do with social and economic development that the best
way to promote natural capital is to promote social
capital.
The only way to create a different environment is
to build a society free of the problems of poverty,
underdevelopment and ignorance which today limit our
capacity to establish harmonious relations among all
social sectors, and between them and their natural
environment.
We have the resources to do it: technology,
scientific knowledge and, above all, political
leadership and innovative capacity. But we can only
succeed through a common approach to environmental
management, shared by all the members of the global
community who are already moving in this same
direction.
The international community has been happy to
see that on the other side of the Pacific, tensions have
abated, but we note with concern that threats to
international peace and security have emerged in other
parts of the world.
Panama has set forth its positions in the Security
Council. I shall therefore only refer to what was also
suggested by the President, that is, the need to
democratize this Organization.
Over the last four years, I have heard from
countless speakers a widespread demand for the United
Nations to finally adapt its structures, which the
50 signatories of the original Charter designed 60 years
ago, to the reality of an Organization with 192 Member
States and a geopolitical situation very different from
that which then existed.
It has become a ritual repeated year after year for
every Head of State, foreign minister or ambassador to
call, without much success, for a recrafting of the
Organization. For myself, as is shown by the
commitment of my country to the United Nations, for
the fifth time in five years, I come to this podium to
ask with the same vigour and energy for the political
will to implement reforms.
Panama made a proposal, which, like all the
others, could not be the subject of consensus. We still
stand by it. We stand by the idea that this Organization
must modernize itself, and soon. We cannot allow a
situation where, in the absence of agreement, we end
up by abandoning the spirit of reform that has inspired
us up till now.
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I propose therefore that we agree, before the end
of the decade, upon initial fundamental reforms which
will begin to turn the wheels of modernization. There
are numerous examples in different parts of the world,
as well as in my own experience as a member of the
Government, that allow me to assure members that
small reforms, which may appear insignificant to begin
with, eventually lead to other, more profound reforms.
We must start somewhere.
I would like to express my gratitude to the
General Assembly for granting my country, Panama,
the honour of non-permanent membership of the
Security Council over the past two years. Panamanian
diplomats and jurists contributed to the drafting of the
Charter of the United Nations and, since that time,
Panama’s representatives have contributed the wealth
of their experience so that the principles which inspired
the Charter can continue to prevail. You may rest
assured that we will not rest until this Organization, so
vital for peace in the world and the sole hope for
millions of the poor, is finally endowed with a legal
structure appropriate for the twenty-first century.