On behalf of
the General Assembly, I have the honour to welcome to
the United Nations Her Excellency Mrs. Michelle
Bachelet Jeria, President of the Republic of Chile, and
to invite her to address the Assembly.
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President Bachelet Jeria (spoke in Spanish):
Eight years ago, representatives of all the countries of
the planet met in the General Assembly Hall to adopt
the United Nations Millennium Declaration
(resolution 55/2) — a text that is one of the broadest
and most explicit agreements ever drafted by the
international community on the subject of
development, well-being and quality of life. The
Declaration set a series of very precise standards in the
fight against hunger and poverty, education, health,
gender equality, environment and cooperation, stating
for each the minimum to which nations should commit
themselves.
The world at that time announced the civilizing
mission to which it aspired and identified the
inescapable challenges and unavoidable tasks for any
Government and for the international community. It
defined a real ethical vision for the leaders of the
nations. The world has changed since then, however.
We have witnessed, sometimes tragically, the
emergence or reappearance of various problems of
global significance, such as climate change, terrorism
or the food crisis. At the same time, the
interdependence of economies and communications has
become even greater over the past eight years, which
has undoubtedly created many opportunities but also
greater risks and inequities.
In that changing context, we have witnessed
outstanding progress towards the Millennium
Development Goals in many countries of the world, but
we have also witnessed many regrettable setbacks.
World events over the past year give us much food for
thought that will allow us to act decisively. The
optimism of the turn of the century, leading to talk of
the “millennium of hope”, seems to be dissipating. It is
estimated that the increase in food prices alone has
driven more than 100 million people into extreme
poverty. In turn, financial instability today is afflicting
many economies, threatening to generate a worldwide
trend towards recession in which — as always — those
most affected in the end will be the world’s poorest.
That is why it is so crucial to review our Goals.
We cannot remain indifferent to the deterioration of the
basic well-being of millions and millions of citizens all
over the world. Those of us who share the same
concept of progress and have made freedom and social
justice our watchwords must raise our voices.
The world has managed to secure the economic,
technical and scientific resources that, for the first time
in its history, can ensure the well-being of all mankind.
We cannot squander that capacity. A better world is
possible, but it requires determination to move
forward, and the current international economic crisis
shows that it is precisely such determination that has
been lacking.
The greed and irresponsibility of a few, combined
with the political negligence of others, has plunged the
world into a situation of great uncertainty. What a
paradox we are witnessing today! With the money used
to bail out the international banking system, the
scourge of hunger on the planet could easily have been
eliminated. Thus, now is the time to reaffirm our
resolve.
The international economic crisis is a blow to
those who believe that nothing can be done, that
nothing should be regulated or that inequality cannot
be remedied. That is the major lesson to be learned
from what has happened over the past year. None of
the current problems facing mankind, and certainly
none of the civilizing goals that we have set ourselves,
can be tackled properly if the public does not have a
clear option of collective action by States and civil
society.
That is why today I appeal to all to work together
to support emergency measures to address the food
crisis and to redouble our efforts to ensure that the
developing economic crisis does not prevent us from
attaining the Millennium Development Goals. That is
why I appeal for an urgent and genuine commitment to
multilateralism. That is why we must undertake to
continue supporting and reforming international
institutions, particularly the United Nations, to make
them more representative, more democratic and more
responsive to the hopes of our peoples.
That is also why we must reach agreement at the
Doha Round of the World Trade Organization. That is
why we must achieve concrete results at the
forthcoming Follow-up International Conference on
Financing for Development. That is why we must also
ensure the success of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate
Change Conference and convert those negotiations into
agreements that make a decisive contribution to
development.
I appear before this General Assembly as the
representative of a nation that has much to contribute.
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Modestly and proudly, we announce to this Assembly
that Chile is ahead of schedule towards achieving the
Millennium Development Goals set for 2015. I
emphasize that it is possible to eradicate poverty, that it
is possible to emerge from underdevelopment and,
even more importantly, that it is possible to do so in
democracy and freedom.
My country almost tripled the size of its economy
between 1990 and 2008, which are the years of
democracy in Chile. Just as we have made the economy
grow, we have also made social investment and equity
grow. We have advanced strongly on all fronts: health,
education, housing, quality of life, social cohesion and
greater gender opportunities.
The numbers speak for themselves. At the end of
the dictatorship, in 1989, 4 out of every 10 Chileans
were living in poverty. That 40 per cent dropped to
13 per cent in 2006. Although there is much to do,
whenever we achieve one goal we set ourselves a new
horizon of challenges. Just as we have drastically
reduced poverty, today we aim to guarantee universal
access for all Chileans to a social welfare system that
allows them to live their lives in tranquillity and
removes the fear of disease, poverty or old age, thus
increasing opportunities for all, so as to advance
steadily in greater equality and dignity.
However, this morning I wish to highlight the
reasons for those achievements. What underlies them is
a clear political determination, shared by the majority.
The country has freely chosen a path of economic
growth, political democracy and social justice. All
political sectors have converged on that path, with
differences, of course, as in any democracy, but all are
aware that those are the major goals of Chilean society,
because behind the achievements there is also a sad
learning process.
In the past, when the country became divided,
when the country became polarized in two
irreconcilable factions, there was much suffering and
very great social setbacks. Democracy placed at the
centre of public life, as a goal for a freer and more just
society, has been one of the main lessons that we
Chileans have learned and that largely explains the
achievements of the last 18 years.
That same conviction led us recently to be very
active in coming to the aid of a friendly democracy.
One week ago, when there was a threat to disrupt the
democratic institutional order in the Republic of
Bolivia, we nations of South America came to the
support of the legitimately elected authorities and
offered our cooperation to help in the resumption of the
domestic political dialogue, while condemning the
rebellion and bloodshed. Within a few days, we
succeeded in convening a meeting of the Presidents of
the member countries of the Union of South American
Nations in Santiago de Chile, in order to agree with the
President of Bolivia on a process for talks and to find
and support a peaceful solution to the conflict in that
country.
From this rostrum, as the convener of that
historic regional meeting, I wish to express
appreciation for the willingness displayed by all those
involved, because we thereby set an example of how
multilateral commitment should be understood. It is a
commitment forged in the diversity of political projects
but based on shared values, such as democracy, peace
and the defence of human rights. The La Moneda
summit — as that meeting was called, after the Chilean
presidential palace — will forever symbolize the
moment at which the South American nations decided
to strengthen their commitment to democracy,
whenever it is threatened anywhere on the continent.
Yet what does that episode tell us? It tells us that
the values of democracy, dialogue, human rights and
peace are becoming stronger than ever in Latin
America. It tells us that the region wants to leave
behind the dark moments of its history. It tells us that
democracy is established as a system of government. It
tells us that violence has no place in politics. And it
tells us that those values, in addition to being widely
shared by the citizens, are becoming entrenched in
multilateralism, in institutions and in international law.
Over these years, we have learned that national
policies, although essential, are not enough, that there
is no incompatibility between affirmation of one’s own
identity and integration, and that international
agreements must be formulated to govern globalization
and make democracy and the social rights of the
citizens a universal requirement. Each country has the
right and the duty to contribute to the creation of a
world in which the great values of mankind prevail,
regardless of the country’s economic or demographic
dimension, of its influence or its power, or of how
close it is to or how far it is from the hubs where
decisions that affect the lives of each and every one of
the planet’s inhabitants are taken.
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From our position at the south of the world, Chile
is cooperating. We have enthusiastically supported, and
in some cases promoted, the most diverse initiatives in
pursuit of the development of our peoples. A few days
ago, in Santiago de Chile, together with the Prime
Minister of Norway, we launched an important regional
initiative for the attainment of Millennium
Development Goals 4 and 5 in Latin America and the
Caribbean. Under that initiative, Chile will cooperate
in the assignment and training of troops in Bolivia,
Ecuador and other countries of the region. However,
when we say “troops”, we are not talking about
soldiers. It will be a force of nurses, midwives and
doctors specialized in maternal and child health, who
will travel through the fields and mountain ranges of
our America, delivering babies, helping mothers,
providing vaccinations and caring for sick children.
Because despite the progress made in that regard in
recent years, which has increased the percentage of
attended births from 78 to 89 per cent, still 22,000
mothers die in Latin America each year simply because
they received no professional care. Despite the
improvement in child mortality, 400,000 Latin
American children under five years of age are still
dying each year — hence, the urgency of that initiative,
which is the urgency of promoting democracy and the
social development of our people.
In just over two months, the world will have a
noble reason for celebration. It will be the sixtieth
anniversary of the adoption of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. What a great step
forward for mankind. That transcendental charter of
rights marked the beginning of the end of centuries and
centuries of arbitrary action, death, torture and abuse
of power. Certainly that charter did not represent an
immediate solution, but it did mean the beginning of
the largest and most effective social and political
mobilization in favour of people’s dignity.
Today, those who violate that charter sully their
reputation with the international community. We have
gone even further by creating an international
architecture of protection and legal advancement, in
which my region set a great precedent with the inter-
American human rights protection system.
We hope that something similar will happen with
the Millennium Declaration. We want it to become an
ethical and political requirement for all the world’s
rulers. We want the citizens of every country to protest
against famine, poverty and unsanitary conditions. We
want discrimination against women to be reason for
shame for all those who practise it. We want
discrimination against native peoples to be eliminated
from the face of the Earth. We want protection of the
environment to be part of the vocabulary of every
inhabitant of the planet and, definitely, of the priorities
of every Government in the world. We want
cooperation by those who have the most to be a
political as well as a moral obligation. That is Chile’s
achievable desire, which we have come to present to
this General Assembly.