Let me begin my statement
by echoing the sentiments of those who have
congratulated you, Madam on your assumption of the
presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-first
session, as well as of those who have expressed their
appreciation for the manner in which your predecessor,
Mr. Jan Eliasson, successfully conducted the business
of the sixtieth session. In the same vein, I should also
like to congratulate the Republic of Montenegro on its
admission to the United Nations family.
I also wish to pay special tribute to the Secretary-
General, Mr. Kofi Annan, for his vision and exemplary
leadership of the United Nations over the past 10 years.
We commend him for his tireless efforts to assist
Member States in transforming the United Nations into
a dynamic, relevant and effective instrument for
meeting challenges that confront us as we try to make
the world a better place for everyone.
The achievements of the Secretary-General,
especially in the area of the promotion of peace and
development — notable among them the Millennium
Summit in 2000 and the review Summit held last
year — will always be remembered as historic because
of the important decisions that we made on both
occasions. As he nears the end of his tenure of his high
Office, we wish him the best in his future endeavours
and hope that he will be available to serve the
international community wherever he may be needed.
The theme for our debate this year —
implementation of the global partnership for
development as a follow-up to the 2005 World
Summit — is very appropriate. We acknowledged last
year that fighting poverty was a collective undertaking.
Together, we recognized that mobilizing financial
resources for development is central to a global
partnership for development in support of the
implementation of internationally agreed goals,
including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
For many years now, the international community
has acknowledged the need for accelerated economic
development in Africa. There have been many
initiatives and programmes of action aimed at
achieving that objective. Indeed, the history of the
United Nations in the past three decades is littered with
well-meaning initiatives, many of which unfortunately
never made the transition from theory to practical
implementation.
We have agreed on goals and set targets for
ourselves in our quest to meet our economic and social
development challenges. Given this impressive array of
initiatives, it is curious and ironic that the aggregate
economic performance of our countries has not made a
difference in the lives of the majority of our people.
Mr. Belinga-Eboutou (Cameroon), Vice-President,
took the Chair.
One explanation for our development
predicament and the many failed initiatives is the wide
gap between rhetoric and concrete action on the
ground. We have on many occasions agreed on making
available the means of implementing agreed goals. We
have set targets for making those resources available.
Yet, at the same time, we have witnessed some
countries and groups taking concerted action, such as
illegal economic sanctions, to frustrate our
development efforts.
In the case of Zimbabwe, those countries have
blocked balance of payments support and other types
of assistance from the international financial
institutions that they control. Following the heroic and
successful efforts of the people of Zimbabwe to clear
requisite arrears to the International Monetary Fund,
those negative forces have manipulated decision-
making at that institution so as to deny us any new
support. They have even tried to restrict investment
inflows, all on account of political differences between
them and us.
Is it not a paradox that, while we are denied
resources for development, funding is readily made
available to support elements bent on subverting the
democratically expressed will of the majority of our
citizens and to unconstitutionally effect regime
change? We condemn such interference in our domestic
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affairs. Let me repeat what I have said before: regime
change in Zimbabwe — as, indeed, in any other
country — is a right of the people of that country; it
can never be a right of people of other countries. The
golden key to regime change is in the hands of the
people of Zimbabwe and is very well guarded. No one
from Washington or London has the right to that key; it
is our key and ours alone.
Let it also not be forgotten that those who want
regime change are the very same people whom we
fought yesterday. They represent British colonialism
and imperialism. We spent many years in jail; I spent
11 years in jail. Then we went into exile in order to
muster the military strength needed to overthrow
colonialism. Many of our people died in the process.
Many were killed by the British regime headed by Ian
Smith. Finally, our people were victorious. On 18 April
1980, a representative of the royal family, Prince
Charles, was sent to lower the British flag. I was there
to hoist the flag of independence, which today
represents the full sovereignty of the people of
Zimbabwe, never again to be lost. Never again shall
Zimbabwe become a colony.
And so, these manoeuvres and manipulations
continue, and my Government is well aware of them
and is well guarded. At every turn, we will take the
steps necessary to protect our sovereignty, defend our
people and defend our right to continue to ensure that
that sovereignty reposes in the hands of the
Zimbabwean people. From this rostrum, I want to warn
that any attempt to change that mandate through
unconstitutional means, by agents sent to undertake a
process that we regard as illegal, will meet with the full
wrath of the law.
It is for that reason that we welcome this debate,
which seeks to address the yawning gap between
agreed action plans and implementation, and between
rhetoric and what actually happens on the ground. We
fully acknowledge that national Governments shoulder
the primary responsibility for implementing their
development plans, including achieving the MDGs.
However, it is absolutely necessary that our efforts at
the national level — including adopting and
implementing correct and relevant programmes — be
supported, not hampered by a lack of international
cooperation. This session, therefore, would be of great
value if agreement were to be reached on financing for
development, including the establishment of
mechanisms to measure aid flows. Such financing, if it
is to have a meaningful impact, should be adequate,
predictable and consistent.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to cause
untold havoc in Africa — particularly Southern
Africa — owing to high levels of poverty, which make
it difficult for the affected people to gain access to
medication. Zimbabwe welcomes the continuing efforts
by the international community of nations to find
lasting solutions to the scourge of HIV/AIDS. We urge
the donor community, in cooperation with
pharmaceutical companies, to assist in scaling up
access to affordable essential drugs, particularly for
developing countries.
The tendency to use assistance in the fight against
HIV/AIDS as a reward for political compliance and
malleability is one that the United Nations should
condemn. Given the fact that the pandemic does not
respect borders, the denial of assistance to countries on
political grounds, through a self-serving and selective
approach, will do more harm and weaken international
efforts to fight the pandemic. For example, in my
country, a Zimbabwean AIDS patient receives, on
average, approximately $4 per year in international
assistance, compared with an average of approximately
$172 per year for other countries in the region.
However, even against that background, my
Government has registered some modest success in
reducing the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate from
approximately 29 per cent in 2000 to 18.1 percent in
2006, on the strength of its own resources and
programmes.
While we do not dispute the inevitability of
migration, the problem of the brain drain is of great
concern to my Government and, indeed, to other
developing countries. The brain drain has proved to be
a handicap to sustainable development. If it is not
addressed now, the chances that developing countries
will achieve the MDGs by 2015 are minimal. While
developing countries are losing skilled manpower
through migration, the benefits associated with migrant
remittances are far less than the cost of developing
human resources and skills. We need to develop
solutions that give due recognition and respect to the
investments made by Governments in human resources
and in developing the skills of citizens, as well as to
the human rights of migrants.
While official development assistance is
desirable, what developing countries need more is an
06-52885 10
open, rules-based, predictable, non-discriminatory
trading and financial system. If developing countries
are to realize the full potential of international trade to
enhance economic growth, it is essential that the main
barriers to their exports be removed. In that regard, we
are concerned that tariffs have remained high on
goods — such as textiles and farm products — that are
strategically important to developing economies. Much
could be done with the right partnerships and with fair
terms of trade. We share the view that the
implementation of the development aspects of the
Doha Work Programme will go a long way towards
assisting developing countries to compete in this global
village. It is therefore disturbing that there has been no
progress in breaking the deadlock on the Doha Round
of international trade negotiations. The failure of
multilateral negotiations will give rise to bilateral
arrangements that are inimical to fair trade. We cannot
help but suspect that the breakdown was deliberately
engineered in order to perpetuate the status quo that
favours one group of countries at the expense of
another.
The United Nations is uniquely placed to provide
the framework for international cooperation. There is
consensus that the United Nations should play a
fundamental and central role in the promotion of
international cooperation for development. In that
regard, it is important that coherence and coordination
be enhanced, as agreed in the 2005 World Summit
Outcome. At the country level, the United Nations
system should be effectively coordinated in order to
support national efforts in poverty reduction and
sustainable development.
While my Government applauds the United
Nations continuing efforts to elaborate a convention on
terrorism, we urge Member States to guard against a
situation in which established international conventions
are ignored and resolutions of the General Assembly
and other United Nations bodies on that issue are
disregarded. In our attempt to deal with the scourge of
terrorism, it is also necessary to address the underlying
causes of that phenomenon. To demonstrate its
commitment to fighting terrorism, the Parliament of
Zimbabwe has come up with the Suppression of
Foreign and International Terrorism Bill, which seeks
to fight foreign and international terrorism, as well as
mercenary activities.
The recent developments in the Middle East are a
cause of great concern. We condemn the
disproportionate use of force by Israel in Gaza and
Lebanon and the detention of elected Palestinian
members of Parliament and ministers. We firmly reject
the collective punishment of the Palestinian and
Lebanese people and the intrusion into their territories
in violation of international law. We call upon the
international community, particularly the Security
Council and the Quartet, to make every effort to ensure
that the brokered ceasefire continues to hold.
It is sad that the Security Council dithered and
failed to take timely action to stop the massacres and
wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure in
Lebanon, all because of the misguided national
interests of one super-Power. The status quo in the
Council, where a few powerful countries hold the
world to ransom, is no longer tenable. There is
therefore a strong case here for addressing the core
issue of the democratization of international
governance. Africa remains the only continent that
does not have a permanent seat with veto power in the
Security Council. That situation is unacceptable. It
needs to be corrected and corrected now. The position
of the African Union on that issue is very clear. Africa
demands two permanent seats, complete with veto
power — if the veto power is to continue — plus two
additional non-permanent seats. We will not
compromise on this matter until our concerns are
adequately addressed.
Those who take objection to that are perhaps
States that would want to remain in the position in
which they are considered to be superior to everyone
else. There cannot be superiority under the Charter of
the United Nations, which recognizes the equality of
nations. We are all equal under that Charter, and that
principle has got to be recognized, but it would appear
that some countries that have amassed military power
over time consider themselves to be superior to all the
others because they have that muscle of power. But the
muscle of power is not the consideration that we take
into account in judging the worth of nations. The
Charter of the United Nations has got to be taken into
account, and who knows whether the Goliath of today
may tomorrow not be the same. Anyway, every Goliath
has his own David.
In many parts of Africa, the dawn of an
unprecedented era of peace and tranquillity has
allowed us to refocus our attention and resources
towards economic development. There can be no better
time than now for the international community to
11 06-52885
augment our own efforts to bring home to our people
the peace dividend we have so patiently waited for. We
therefore call on the international community to renew
its solidarity with Africa through tangible support in
the form of increased resources, decisive debt relief, as
well as new and additional financial resources for
investment and growth.
Let me conclude by reiterating the fact that the
future of the international community is best served by
an international order that is based on strengthening
multilateralism and thereby destroying the present
unipolar system. It is our conviction that only through
a multilateral approach can we achieve peace and
development. For us to successfully tackle the
challenges that we face, there is a need for more than
just pious expressions of solidarity. Together as global
partners in development, we can guarantee a
prosperous future for generations to come. Such a
partnership should be based on the principle of the
sovereign equality of nations and on mutual benefit.
That is the path we should strive to follow.