At the outset, I wish to extend my warm congratulations and wishes for success to Mr. Csaba Korosi on his outstanding election to the presidency of the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session. I welcome the leadership and commitment of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to peace and development, climate action, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic response, as well as his sustained efforts to find solutions to the various sources of tension throughout the world.
In this Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, the climate emergency is creating humanitarian needs and exacerbating existing development challenges. Alarming evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that we may have already reached or gone beyond major tipping points and irreversible setbacks. Climate change exposes the African continent to worsening food insecurity, population displacement, recurrent droughts and pressure on water resources. Faced with the urgency of this situation, I welcome the fact that, during the special high-level dialogue on the theme “The Africa We Want”, organized on 20 July 2022 under the auspices of the United Nations, the international community recognized that the twenty- seventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP), to be held in November in Egypt, is a unique opportunity to adjust this imbalance. In that regard, I would like to express the Niger’s commitment to the proposal of the African negotiators for a new objective of $1.3 trillion in financing by 2025 to better address climate challenges.
In the Sahel, a geographical area to which my country, the Niger, belongs, climate change, which negatively influences agricultural and pastoral activities and water resources, is also the cause of extreme droughts, torrential rains and temperature increases above the world average. That is why the Niger is paying special attention to the African Great Green Wall initiative, which is part of the African Union Agenda 2063.
In terms of security, the situation in the Sahel and in my country has deteriorated considerably in recent years due to a particularly negative subregional environment. It all started, let us recall, with the fall in 2011 of the regime in Libya, which to this day has been unable to restore a stable power that could exercise real authority over the whole country. Consequently, the vast territory of southern Libya has become a platform for transnational organized crime where the trafficking of arms, drugs, fuel and migrants prosper, perpetuating structural insecurity in all neighbouring Sahelian countries.
Mali, which in 2011 succumbed to the violence that originated in Libya, has never really recovered. It has in turn become an incubation centre for a form of terrorism that is characteristic of a Sahel that is deeply affected by the effects of climate change preventing the practice of pastoral farming. That ecosystem of violence has had a deadweight effect on the young shepherds of the communities most affected by climate change, among whom a number of terrorist vocations have arisen. This scourge has spread from northern Mali to the Niger and Burkina Faso and is now attempting to spread to the countries of the Gulf of Guinea. The violence has such potential to destabilize State institutions that it resulted in the downfall of the democratically elected regimes of Mali and Burkina Faso in 2020 and 2022, respectively. The Niger, my country, in addition to the terrorist hotbed known as the three-borders region — Mali, the Niger and Burkina Faso — is also facing another terrorist hotbed in the Lake Chad basin, where the various groups that claim to be part of the shadowy Boko Haram operate.
Despite the strong pressures related to the circumstances I have just described, my country is showing great resilience centred on very wise governance, the promotion of a culture of tolerance and community cohesion, as well as the rules of democracy and the rule of law. It was that resolute choice of rights and freedoms that made it possible to organize transparent elections that sanctioned the first change of Head of the State by virtue of which a democratically elected President passed the baton to another democratically elected President in April 2021. Need it be said that our experience proves that the surest way to ward off the effects of terrorist violence is to strengthen the democratic regime and nothing else?
The war against terrorism now requires us to devote significant resources to increasing the numbers of our forces, acquiring adequate equipment and building the capacities of our soldiers. Allow me to take this opportunity to thank the various partners engaged with us in the fight against terrorism. I would particularly like to thank France, whose action through Operation Barkhane is a major asset in the struggle against our
enemies. I also thank the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany and all the other countries committed alongside us in various ways, all equally valuable.
That being said, I find it crucial to point out that the international community’s commitment to the fight against terrorism in the Sahel has shortcomings that need to be identified and addressed. Indeed, this terrorism derives a large part of its financial resources from trans-Saharan drug trafficking towards Europe and Asia, via Libya. Most of the weapons flooding the Sahel terrorist violence market also come from Libya. I believe that we are faced with a problem that is not particularly complicated. Why then has it not yet been possible to set up an adequate system with the necessary means to combat this phenomenon properly? It is indeed time for collective reflection. It is time for the great Powers present in that region and the international community as a whole to join the countries of our region in a far more relevant reflection to define an effective course of action in the fight against drug and arms trafficking in the Sahel.
Despite the major challenges we face, as described earlier, the Niger intends to remain a solid and stable State, backed by democratic institutions, and resolutely committed to the fight against poverty and for development. Our deep conviction in that regard is that the most effective means of combating poverty consists in promoting education. The development challenges for the Niger are summarized by the following simple statistics: an annual population growth rate of 3.9 per cent; an average synthetic fertility index of seven children per woman; a first birth for nearly 50 per cent of girls before the age of 15; and 50 per cent of the population aged 15 on average. Those statistics say much about the state of the education system in our country, and that is why we are committed to act with determination to improve things in this area. As such, the agenda based on which the people of the Niger elected us aims to take action on two fronts: improving access to and the quality of education.
With regard to quality, we have decided to place particular emphasis on the quality of teacher training and the professionalization of teaching. With regard to improving access, our policy emphasizes the building of school infrastructure. The other particularly important aspect of our educational programme that I wish to emphasize is aimed at achieving gender equity and building residential facilities for girls in rural schools.
Indeed, because of the precarious living conditions of children in rural schools, far from their parents, the latter tend to prevent their daughters from continuing their studies. These adolescents are given in marriage as soon as they are out of the education system, which explains some of the previously mentioned statistics. In offering girls the tranquility and security desired by their parents, residential facilities also offer girls conditions in which to continue their studies with the possibility of staying in school and acquiring the necessary academic and professional skills. The large-scale expansion of residential facilities for girls in rural schools contributes to improved education-system performance and a reduction in the rate of population growth.
My reason for highlighting our ambitions in the field of education for a country like the Niger, after having spoken about climate change, terrorism and insecurity in the Sahel, is that we are aware that these three issues — demography, climate change and insecurity — are closely related. Indeed, the terrorism currently at work in the Sahel is connected to the living conditions of certain communities whose environment has been considerably disrupted by climate change. The Sahel is also an area that has experienced particularly high population growth in recent decades. The combination of these two phenomena — demography and climate degradation — has created, as a result of the regional disorder following the fall of Colonel Al-Qaddafi’s regime in 2011, the situation of chaos that the countries of the Sahel are experiencing today.
That is why it is not enough for the United Nations and the international community to be moved by or to discuss terrorist violence at length. We must act by investing the necessary resources in education to combat the violence of today and prevent the violence of tomorrow.