It is an honour to return to this Assembly of nations once again as President of my country, a position to which I was re-elected five months ago. I am conscious of time, so I have distributed my full speech, and I will skip over many pages as a courtesy and out of respect for the Assembly.
Like almost every country on the planet, Timor- Leste has endured multiple climate change catastrophes, a prolonged dry season followed by floods, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and now the global economic impact of the confrontation between Russia, Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
We had a minimal direct impact from the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of hospitalizations and fatalities.
More children died of dengue than of COVID-19. But the policies we undertook to prevent the spread of that insidious virus, such as curtailing the free movement of peoples and goods, inevitably affected the livelihoods of rural and urban people across the country. Farmers and traders suffered the most.
To protect our children, we closed down schools even though we knew that this decision would have serious detrimental consequences for the hundreds of thousands of children and youth who had to miss school and miss out on the one-meal-a-day programme, which provides a meal for every child in schools across the country.
In the very early days of the onset of the pandemic, our health authorities and the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies on the ground scrambled and worked hard, day and night, to prevent the much-feared virus from killing our people. Thanks to the prompt actions taken by the Government, supported by our partners and friends, we avoided a public health crisis.
Australia proved to be a true sisterly neighbour, promptly delivering every assistance our fragile health system required. We are deeply grateful for the speedy generous action taken by the Australian Government in deploying medical specialists, ventilators and intubation equipment and in training local staff. When a vaccine became available, Australia provided it beyond our needs, enabling the vaccination of more than 72 per cent of our people, including children, in record time.
Government and civil servants, who at times move at a tropical leisurely pace, quickly drafted a COVID-19 prevention and economic recovery strategy, which included cash transfers and food baskets for every low- income household.
We are grateful to the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (COVAX) for the initial shipments of vaccines. We are grateful to New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Japan, China, the European Union, Portugal and the United States for their generous support in kind and cash.
In a world plagued with conflicts and man-made catastrophes, from Myanmar to Afghanistan, to Yemen and to Ukraine, Timor-Leste is an oasis of tranquillity. Common criminality is very low; armed robbery is unheard of. We do not have organized crime.
Our Catholic majority population — 98 per cent of the population — and their Protestant and Muslim brother and sister communities live side by side in total harmony. Timor-Leste does not have a single case of ethnic or religious-based tension or conflict.
In 2023, Timor-Leste will hopefully gain World Trade Organization (WTO) accession, another natural extension of our country’s regional and global economic integration. The accessions to WTO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are driven by Timor-Leste’s own economic interests, such as the domestic economic reform process, to ensure a healthy enabling environment for foreign direct investment, national investment and the diversification of our economy.
ASEAN membership is a strategic imperative, which is as important for Timor-Leste’s stability and prosperity as our country’s peace and prosperity should be to ASEAN. As much as peace and prosperity in our neighbourhood benefits us all, conflicts, threats of conflict and risks originating in one country inevitably affect others.
At our independence 20 years ago, we had only 20 medical doctors. Today we have more than 1,200 doctors for a population of 1.5 million. That would not have been possible without Cuban solidarity. At independence 20 years ago, life expectancy was less than 60 years; now a Timorese woman can expect to live beyond 71 years of age.
Connectivity will surge in the next three to four years, as Timor-Leste will be linked by several submarine cables to Australia, Indonesia and beyond. As it is, we already have a high percentage of mobile phone and social media users, and we are experimenting with exciting digital and e-government technologies.
I wish to now touch upon three matters of profound concern.
The first issue is the extremely serious food crisis affecting millions of people in Africa and Asia. I hope that all have carefully read the letter of our esteemed Secretary-General, dated 31 August and addressed to all Heads of State, which provides with clinical precision exact figures on the number of our fellow human beings who are affected — women and children, youth and the elderly, in several African countries, Yemen and Afghanistan.
The World Bank’s Food Commodity Price Index, which reached a record high in nominal terms during March and April, increased by 15 per cent between April and May, and is more than 80 per cent higher than it was two years ago. Add to that the recent devastating floods in Pakistan inflicting heartbreaking suffering on over 30 million people.
Aid to poorer countries of the South should not be cancelled out to be reallocated to address the refugee crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. In 2015, donor countries reallocated their official development assistance commitments to the North African, Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugee crisis flowing into Europe, causing an estimated 15 per cent drop in total aid. The potential for a diversion of aid is even greater now, after $349 billion was estimated as needed for the reconstruction of Ukraine. We must ensure that the Ukrainians are supported, but not at the expense of unity with the many struggling people in other nations.
In the aftermath of the 2008-2009 subprime crisis, which had knock-on effects across the globe, hundreds of billions of dollars were quickly mobilized to rescue exposed European and American banks. Draconian fiscal austerity measures in the form of cuts in public expenditure and higher taxes were forced on workers and the middle class in the crisis- affected Western countries. But rarely are we able to inspire the rich to show the same level of compassion and wisdom towards the poorer South. I continue to believe that we are all part of the great human family, yet some seem to feel that we are not really equal or part of that same human family. Part of the world lives in dazzling citadels, while their billions of distant relatives live in poor global neighbourhoods. The Western countries and others started off on high moral ground in confronting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but may end up losing the support of the developing world, which constitutes 80 per cent of the global population, after all. They should pause for a moment to reflect on the glaring contrast in their response to other wars elsewhere, where women and children have died in thousands from conflict and starvation. Our beloved Secretary-General’s cries for help in those situations have not been met with equal compassion in response.
And we are now facing a ruinous situation in terms of the rising cost of living for the poor, which has already resulted in riots in Sri Lanka, Peru, Kenya and most recently Haiti. Low-income countries were able to spend only a fraction of the amounts that high-income countries spent on COVID-19 stimulus packages. High-income countries spent 20 per cent of their gross domestic product, middle-income countries, 6 per cent, and low-income countries just 2.5 per cent. As a result, many countries had to increase their debt. Debt levels now limit our ability to protect the weakest and most vulnerable from the effects of rising prices, let alone to increase our efforts to address the climate emergency that threatens our very existence. Since 2015 the number of developing countries in debt distress or at high risk has doubled, to 60 per cent.
But equally I want to address our cries for solidarity and fraternity to the billionaires and trillionaires of Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is more liquidity in Asia than in Europe and the United States combined. It is time for the richest families and corporations of the so-called global South to gather at a historic summit, hosted by the Secretary-General, to commit to a vision and plan of action to rid Asia, Africa and Latin America of extreme poverty and child malnutrition, ensure that every poor community has clean water and sanitation, provide vaccines and basic public health services and offer better education facilities and better housing with renewable energy and connectivity for better access to education and business. That can be done by the rich of the global South — all it requires is vision, great heart, courage and the understanding that by investing in the poor of our own countries we are investing in peace.
Finally, I want to talk about the situation in Myanmar. The people of Myanmar feel abandoned and betrayed by the so-called international community. They are asking why there is such a stark difference in how they are treated compared with the prompt and extremely generous support for Ukrainian civilians and refugees. They are asking why there is so much sophisticated military support for Ukraine’s resistance, yet such a mute reaction to the war that has been waged on them. The Myanmar conflict is affecting the security and stability of neighbouring countries and may escalate. There has to be dialogue among all involved in the conflicts in Ukraine and Myanmar and in other crises around the world. The Tatmadaw cannot claim it is defending itself from external aggression.
In the Ukraine conflict, Russia and Ukraine should clear their ports and sea routes and allow a resumption of normal international shipping activities, following the breakthrough in the grain and fertilizer agreements brokered by the Secretary-General. Considering the extremely limited number of credible, neutral global leaders, the Secretary-General and the envoys of his choice should work hard day and night to reach a humanitarian ceasefire agreement and a provisional peace agreement. The ultimate goal should be a comprehensive, permanent peace agreement, but in the short term we must aim for a temporary cessation of troop movements and military action, the opening of humanitarian air and land corridors and zones for unimpeded humanitarian assistance and a resumption of export and import activities. Russia, Ukraine and NATO countries must swallow their pride, review the past policies that have led to this mutual suicide, back away from each other’s borders, let the Ukrainians rebuild their country and their lives and let Russia retreat in security to its borders.