Mr. President,
we would like to join previous speakers in
congratulating you upon your election to the
presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-third
session. We are confident that under your wise and
diligent leadership, our deliberations will be
successful. We take this opportunity to assure you of
our full collaboration and wish you success in the
discharge of your important responsibilities.
We wish to express our gratitude to your
predecessor, Srgjan Kerim of the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia, for the pragmatism and
dynamism of his endeavours in conducting the work of
the sixty-second session. We also reiterate our
appreciation to the Secretary-General of the United
Nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his engagement in the
quest for peace, justice and solutions to the various
challenges faced by humanity.
We have witnessed an increasing number of new
and complex challenges. Among them, the food crisis
is one of my country’s main concerns owing to its
direct, immediate impact on the lives of our peoples.
The origin of this crisis may be linked to factors such
as climate change and the subsequent irregular rainfall
that affects agricultural productivity; desertification of
vast areas and droughts around the world; increased
demand for cereals; higher oil prices and the
consequent impact on the price of transportation and
other products such as agricultural raw materials; the
impact of trade liberalization and agricultural subsidies
in developed countries, which have led to a gradual
decline in agricultural production in developing
countries; and finally, the distortion of cereal prices
across the globe.
Once the causes of the crisis have been identified,
it becomes the responsibility of the international
community to implement relevant and necessary
solutions in a consistent and vigorous manner. Through
that process, the crisis can be transformed into an
opportunity to boost international partnerships and
develop our countries.
In that context it is important to emphasize that
international cooperation stimulates the revival of the
productivity of farmers in developing countries, thus
contributing to a speedy transformation of their current
subsistence farming practices into commercial
agriculture. Such cooperation includes improved access
to improved seeds and to fertilizers and pesticides,
investments in infrastructure for market accessibility
and water management. Accordingly, we reiterate the
need to implement the pertinent recommendations set
forth at the Conference of the Least Developed
Countries on the rules of the World Trade Organization
and the food crisis.
Likewise, we call for support for regional efforts
such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture
Development Programme in the framework of NEPAD,
and the ongoing work by the Southern African
Development Community, with a view to finding a
collective response to mitigate the impact of the food
crisis and to re-establish agriculture as the means to
ensure food supply and better conditions and quality of
life for the peoples of Southern Africa.
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Mozambique is vulnerable to natural disasters
and to the dynamics of the international prices of food
and fuel products. Those factors represent a major
threat to the implementation of the Government’s
socio-economic programmes. Despite the notable
progress that we have been registering for our
production of cassava and maize, we still import large
quantities of other food products. Therefore, any cereal
price fluctuation in the world immediately affects the
day-to-day lives of our people.
Mozambique is endowed with natural resources
which are favourable to mixed farming. However, the
shortage of financial resources and the weak banking
network in the rural zones, combined with the lack of
infrastructure and technology to secure the
development of commercial agriculture, have not
allowed us to scale up our production to the levels that
could meet the food needs of our population. The
situation is worsened by poor distribution and
marketing systems, making it difficult to distribute and
market the products from certain surplus zones to the
needy ones. Moreover, the cyclic natural disasters that
have struck us have resulted in losses of significant
plantation areas, causing the people of those areas to
live permanently in need. Those calamities have also
caused soil erosion and depletion and as a consequence
food insecurity and malnutrition affect our people.
Mr. Choquehuanca Céspedes (Bolivia), Vice-
President, took the Chair.
In order to address the food crisis, our
Government approved last June, a Food Production
Action Plan for the period 2008-2011. The programme
was designed as a mechanism to implement the Green
Revolution which we launched in 2007 and is goal-
oriented. We are aware that implementing the Action
Plan together with the Green Revolution will require
additional resources, and we are therefore appealing
for such additional resources for those programmes.
We acknowledge the positive effect of the Green
Revolution on the implementation of the MDGs, since
no one can think about tomorrow or about education or
about gender equality or the empowerment of women if
they are hungry.
In February 2008, we launched the Presidential
Initiative for women and children. At that time, several
meetings were held with health professionals, religious
and traditional leaders, women and youth. During those
meetings, which are being replicated at the local level,
it became clear that health issues permeate the MDGs.
Although the advances that we have recorded are
significant, they are not sufficient to have an impact on
the reduction of avoidable deaths in Mozambique.
Our assessments show that we could, for
instance, reduce maternal mortality by more than
50 per cent. We could achieve a decrease of 17 per cent
in child mortality. We could significantly facilitate
access to antiretroviral treatment and to treatment for
tuberculosis and malaria. We could, by 2010 have more
than 95 per cent of mothers and children sleeping
under insecticide-treated mosquito nets. However, in
order to achieve those dreams, we are dependent upon
an additional funding of $4 per capita a year for the
health sector, from now until 2010. Additionally, we
need $10 million more for mosquito nets. The $590
million needed to fill the deficit during the next seven
years could help us train and employ around 20,000
additional health workers. That amount would raise the
number of doctors by 119 per cent, the number of
nurses and of mothers with access to health care would
rise by 68 per cent.
Our dream is to prevent more avoidable deaths.
As we have indicated, we cannot realize that dream by
ourselves. We need the predictable, substantial and
long-term support of our partners to meet the needs
that I have just identified. We need an efficient health-
care system and coordinated support from our
international partners, which is a noble way to ensure
the achievement of MDG 8, which focuses on
developing a global partnership for development.
We therefore wish to take this opportunity to
commend and encourage the perseverance of the
international solidarity movement in helping Africa,
and Mozambique in particular, in the context of
women’s and children’s health with a view to fulfilling
all the commitments made at the Millennium Summit.
In numerous parts of the world, funds have been
solicited and initiatives undertaken in support of our
programmes. That interaction with our partners has led
to the building of the necessary consensus on priorities
and strategies to ensure sustainable development.
The world is changing and, along with all those
changes, new global challenges have arisen. The
United Nations is a universal institution with the
legitimacy and the mandate to debate strategies and
find solutions to such major challenges. Nevertheless,
structural reforms are needed in order to improve the
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Organization’s ability to overcome the current
challenges. In that regard, the reform process should be
pursued so that the United Nations can achieve greater
unity and improve its ability to provide appropriate
responses to the challenges ahead, which will require
us to strengthen multilateralism and promote
partnerships for peace, security and development
across the world.
In conclusion, we reiterate the importance of
international cooperation to secure the production of
sufficient and affordable food for all and to build a
viable consensus for United Nations reform.