As I stand here today to tell the story of my country, Pakistan, my heart and mind have not been able to leave home. Standing here, I still feel as though I am visiting one of the flood-affected areas of Sindh and Balochistan in my country. No words can describe the shock that we are living through or how the face of the country lies transformed. I have come to explain first-hand the scale and magnitude of that climate catastrophe that has pushed one third of my country under water in a superstorm of a scale that that no one has seen in living memory. For 40 days and 40 nights, a biblical flood poured down on us, smashing centuries of weather records and challenging everything we knew about disaster and how to manage it.
Even today, huge swathes of the country are still underwater, submerged in an ocean of human suffering. In that ground-zero of climate change, 33 million people, including women and children, are now at high risk from health hazards, with 650,000 women giving birth underneath makeshift tarpaulins. More than 1,500 of my people have left the world in the great flood, including more than 400 children. Far more are in peril from disease and malnutrition. As we speak, millions of climate migrants are still looking for dry land on which to pitch their tents, with heart-breaking losses to their families, futures and livelihoods, gone for a long time to come.
Early estimates suggest that more than 13,000 kilometres of metalled roads have been damaged; more than 370 bridges have been swept away; 1 million homes have been destroyed; and another million damaged. More than 1 million farm animals have been killed; 4 million acres of crops have been washed away, stripping the people of their source of food and resulting in damage of an unimaginable scale.
Pakistan has never seen a starker and devastating example of the impact of global warming. Life in Pakistan has changed forever. I have visited and spent time in every corner of my devastated country. People in Pakistan ask why has this happened to them? When global warming rips apart whole families and an entire country at such ferocious speed, it is time to ask, “Why?” And it is time to ask not what can be done, but what must be done. The undeniable truth is that the calamity has not been triggered by anything we have done. Our glaciers are melting fast, our forests are burning and our heat waves have surpassed the 53°C mark, making us the hottest place on the planet.
And now we are living through an unprecedented monster monsoon. It is literally a monsoon on steroids, as the Secretary-General described it most befittingly. It is on steroids. One thing is very clear: What happened in Pakistan will not remain in Pakistan. As the Secretary- General has so candidly said, hotspots like Pakistan fall in the 10 most climate-vulnerable list of countries, but emit less than 1 per cent of the greenhouse gases that are burning our planet. It is therefore entirely reasonable to expect some approximation of justice for the loss and damage, not to mention building back better with resilience and strength. Clearly, the time for talk about taking action has passed.
At this point, I am profoundly grateful that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Pakistan, where he spent time with climate refugees and mothers and children in tents and repeatedly assured us of his support and assistance. At this point, I want to thank each and every one of the countries that have sent help to Pakistan and their representatives to Pakistan for standing in solidarity with us at our most trying hour. On behalf of my nation, I once again express my sincerest appreciation to all of them.
The impacts on the health and wealth of my country are beyond calculation at this point. My real worry therefore is about the next stage of the challenge. When the cameras are gone and have left the Assembly and the story just shifts away to conflicts like that in Ukraine, my question is, will we be left alone, high and dry, to cope with a crisis that we did not create and is not of our doing? Where and how do we begin to rehabilitate and reconstruct after the rescue and relief effort that is still ongoing after 12 long weeks? For many of the lives we have saved, the future is dimmed by new fragility, lost homes, decimated livelihoods, deluged crop-lands, permanent food insecurity and exposure to uncertain futures. Approximately 11 million people will be pushed further below the poverty line, while others will drift to cramped urban shelters, leaving little room for climate-smart rebuilding.
For now, we have mobilized all available resources in our domain, squeezing resources from left and right, for the national relief effort, and have repurposed all budget priorities, including development funds, to the rescue and first-order needs of millions. Cash transfers to the most affected — 4 million women heads of household — began weeks ago via our social security programme, the Benazir Income Support Programme, which was established in the name of former late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Her son is our Foreign Minister today. We are spending 70 billion rupees, or almost $300 million, out of our own pockets on the Programme, but, at this point, the gap between our urgent needs and available resources is increasing by the day and is amplified by the sheer, unprecedented scale of the disaster. Our manpower and resources are totally overstretched.
The question that should be raised here is quite simple: Why are my people paying the price of such a high level of global warming through no fault of their own? We have not contributed to that. Nature has unleashed her fury on Pakistan without looking at our carbon footprint, which is next to nothing. Our actions did not contribute to that. The dual costs of global inaction and climate injustice are having a crippling effect on both our treasury and people, right now and over there.
This is going to be a long haul, and, in these most trying circumstances, hope is the best enemy of darkness. Pakistanis are known to be exceptionally resilient people. For my part, I am fully committed and geared to fighting the battle for our survival in the tents and trenches with my people until we have rebuilt Pakistan to face the growing challenges of this century. It is high time we took a pause from the preoccupations of the twentieth century to return to the challenges of the twenty-first century. The entire definition of national security has changed today, and, unless the leaders of the world come together to act now, based on an agreed common agenda, there will be no Earth to fight wars over. Nature will be fighting back, and for that humankind is no match at all.
Pakistan’s urgent priority right now is to ensure rapid economic growth and lift millions of people out of poverty and hunger. In order to enable any such policy momentum, Pakistan needs a stable external environment. We look for peace with all our neighbours, including India. Sustainable peace and stability in South Asia, however, remains contingent upon a just and lasting solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. At the heart of that long-standing dispute lies the denial of the inalienable right of the Kashmiri people to self- determination.
India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019 to change the internationally recognized disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir and to alter the demographic structure of the occupied territory further undermined the prospects for peace and inflamed regional tensions.
India’s ruthless campaign of repression against Kashmiris has continued to grow in scale and intensity. In pursuit of that heinous goal, New Delhi has ramped up its military deployments in occupied Jammu and Kashmir to 900,000 troops, thereby making it the most militarized zone in the world. The serial brutalization of Kashmiris has taken many forms— extrajudicial killings, incarceration, custodial torture and death, indiscriminate use of force, deliberate targeting of Kashmiri youth with pellet guns and collective punishments imposed on entire communities.
In a classic settler-colonial project, India is seeking to turn Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir into a Hindu territory, through illegal demographic changes. Millions of fake domicile certificates have been issued to non-Kashmiris. Kashmiri land and properties are being seized. Electoral districts have been gerrymandered, and more than 2.5 million non-Kashmiri illegal voters have fraudulently registered. All this is in blatant violation of the relevant Security Council resolutions and international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.
For our part, the Pakistani people have always stood by our Kashmiri brothers and sisters in complete solidarity and will continue to do so until, no matter what, their right to self-determination is fully realized in accordance with the relevant Security Council resolutions. I assure the world from this rostrum that we in Pakistan remain consistent in our commitment to peace in South Asia. India must take credible steps to create an enabling environment for constructive engagement. We are neighbours, and we will be there forever. The choice is ours whether we live in peace or continue fighting with one another. Since 1947, we have had three wars, and, as a consequence, only misery, poverty and unemployment have increased on both sides.
It is now up to us to resolve our differences, problems and issues as peaceful neighbours through peaceful negotiations and discussions and save our scarce resources for promoting education, health and employment for millions of people, including young boys and girls, on both sides of the divide, not vesting them in buying more ammunition and promoting tension in the area. I believe that it is high time that India understood the message loud and clear that both countries are armed to the teeth. War is not an option. It is not an option. Only peaceful dialogue can resolve the issues so that world will become more peaceful in the future.
Afghanistan today presents a unique challenge; 30 million Afghans have been left without a functional economy or banking system allowing ordinary Afghans to make a living to build a better future. Pakistan would also like to see an Afghanistan that is at peace with itself and the world and that respects and nurtures all its citizens, without regard to gender, ethnicity or religion. Pakistan is working to encourage respect for the rights of Afghan girls and women to education and work. Yet, at this point, isolating the Afghan interim Government could exacerbate the suffering of the Afghan people, who are already destitute. Constructive engagement and economic support are more likely to secure a positive response.
A peaceful, prosperous and connected Afghanistan is in our collective interests. As a neighbour, Pakistan has a vital stake in peace and stability in Afghanistan. We have led the humanitarian efforts to help our Afghan brothers and sisters. We must avoid another civil war, a rise in terrorism, drug trafficking and a new wave of refugees, whom none of Afghanistan’s neighbours is in a position to accommodate. Pakistan urges the international community to respond positively to the Secretary-General’s appeal for $4.2 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance to Afghanistan and release Afghanistan’s financial reserves, which are essential to reviving its banking system.
Pakistan shares the key concern of the international community with regard to the threat posed by the major terrorist groups operating out of Afghanistan, especially the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant-Khorasan Province, the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Al-Qaida, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They all need to be dealt with effectively and comprehensively, with the support and cooperation of the interim Afghan authorities. In turn, the international community should address Afghanistan’s dire humanitarian needs.
Pakistan strongly condemns terrorism in all its forms, shades and manifestations. Terrorism does not have a religion. It is based on dogma, fuelled by poverty, unemployment, deprivation, injustice and ignorance and fanned by vested interests. Pakistan is the principal victim of terrorism. Over the past two decades, we have suffered more than 80,000 casualties and more than $150 billion in economic losses, owing to terrorist attacks. Our armed forces, with the support of our people — mothers, traders, students, teachers, engineers and doctors — have broken the back of terrorism within Pakistan. Yet we continue to suffer from terrorist attacks from across our borders, sponsored and financed by our regional adversary. We are determined to defeat such cross-border terrorism.
I must say loud and clear that the number of sacrifices that Pakistan has made to defeat terrorism over that period of time has been unprecedented in its contemporary history. I tell my friends often that if they see a mother or a child limping on the streets of Pakistan, maybe they were the victims of terrorists years ago. That is the kind of sacrifice that Pakistan has made. Our generals, soldiers, doctors, mothers, teachers, students and traders all paid with their lives for Pakistan’s wellbeing and defeated terrorism. And the peace that was restored in Pakistan, after great sacrifice, is not only for Pakistan; it is a peace for countries throughout the world and the global community. We are very proud of it. That is the greatest manifestation of our commitment, concern and continued efforts to defeat terrorism wherever it may be.
Islamophobia is a global phenomenon. Since 9/11, suspicion and fear of Muslims and discrimination against them have escalated to epidemic proportions. The officially sponsored campaign of oppression against India’s more than 200 million Muslims is the worst manifestation of Islamophobia. They are subjected to discriminatory laws and policies, hijab bans, attacks on mosques and lynchings by Hindu mobs. I am particularly concerned about the calls for genocide against India’s Muslims by some extremist groups.
Earlier this year, the General Assembly adopted landmark resolution 76/254, introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, designating 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. It is my sincere and ardent hope that that will lead to concrete measures by the United Nations and Member States to combat Islamophobia and promote interfaith harmony.
Pakistan is deeply concerned about the numerous conflicts across the Middle East, including in Syria and Yemen. We support all possible efforts to promote their peaceful resolution. We call on Israel to end immediately the blatant use of force against the Palestinian people, the flagrant violations of their human rights and the repeated desecration of the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. The only just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Palestinian question is the acceptance of a viable, independent and contiguous Palestinian State, within the pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
The Security Council and the General Assembly must be empowered to play their respective roles under the Charter of the United Nations. The Security Council must be expanded by adding 11 new non-permanent members to make it more representative, democratic, transparent, effective and accountable. Adding new permanent members will paralyse the Council’s decision-making, enlarge its representational deficit and create new centres of privilege in violation of the principle of sovereign equality of Member States.
The nations of the world must step back from the precipice. We must restore peace in Europe, avoid a war in Asia and resolve festering conflicts across the world. We must revive the vision that created the United Nations, which is often blurred by national interests and hegemonic designs. Pakistan is a partner for peace.
But peace can be ensured and guaranteed only when the rights of communities that have been suffering and subjugated for decades get and earn their freedom and are respected.
In that regard, before concluding, I will once again say, at the cost of repeating myself, that we want peace with India, but long-lasting, enduring peace can be ensured and guaranteed only through a just and fair solution to the issue of Kashmir, providing rights, including the right to self-determination, to the people of Kashmir in accordance with the Charter and the relevant Security Council resolutions. And I will be most forthcoming and ready to sit down and talk to our Indian counterpart to pave the way forward for the future so that our future generations will not suffer and we spend our resources on mitigating misery and building infrastructure to face those threats and outbursts of clouds.
We are developing societies. We do not have unlimited resources. We must deploy our resources for the people’s well-being, our children and their development, empowerment, employment, health and education. Of course, other developing societies must find their own place within the community of nations through hard work, untiring efforts and sacrifice. That is the only way forward. Therefore, we will work with all those committed to the principles of the Charter to restore the vision that created the United Nations and to equip the Organization with the capacity to preserve global peace and promote universal prosperity.