On behalf of His Excellency Mr. Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, I would first like to congratulate His Excellency Mr. Csaba Korosi of Hungary on his unanimous election as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session, and the members of the Bureau. We assure him with absolute certainty that he will be able to count on the support and cooperation of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea during his presidency.
The past few years have been very difficult for humankind owing to the emergence of a series of multifaceted crises ranging from the desolation brought about by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic to the energy crisis; deteriorating food security; the monetary crisis, aggravated by the current tense international situation just as we are commemorating the seventy-seventh anniversary of the creation of the
United Nations and coinciding with the war between Russia and Ukraine. Today’s global situation is calling on and compelling us to make use of innovative and multilateral cooperation focused on human solidarity.
Indeed, and as is stated in the motto of this seventy- seventh session of the General Assembly, this is a watershed moment for world leaders to search for lasting, consensual, transformative and sustainable solutions to the interlocking challenges that have a transversal impact on every continent on the planet. We are living in a globalized world, and it is therefore to be hoped that we will forge partnerships of solidarity, support and multilateral cooperation, through frank dialogue, to address inequalities and settle our differences.
Equatorial Guinea is today launching an appeal on the need and importance of enhancing multilateralism and international cooperation, which are so necessary to address those global challenges and to revive development and sustainable economic growth in our countries, especially developing countries. We need to promote the building and strengthening of different infrastructure, especially health infrastructure, in order to face not only potential new pandemics, but also endemic diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and malaria.
From the establishment of the United Nations until today and into the future, the maintenance of international peace and security is essential to the development and prosperity of Member States. The coexistence of traditional conflicts and emerging challenges, such as transnational crime, cybersecurity, biosecurity, climate change and piracy, among others, are becoming increasingly prominent, which means that the current world situation can be solved only by seeking peace by all means necessary through negotiations and inclusive dialogues.
Equatorial Guinea calls on the countries involved in the ongoing conflicts, as well as on the Governments directly or indirectly involved in those conflicts due to geostrategic, economic or other interests, to prioritize dialogue and inclusive negotiations, in a realistic and pragmatic way, to resolve them. In that connection, we again call on the Assembly to collectively denounce and categorically reject the constant foreign interference destabilizing some countries of the world.
The African continent must remain at the heart of initiatives to support and finance development with the decisive implementation of the commitments for financing sustainable development in order to implement the goals contained in the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063 of the African Union, leaving no one behind, and funding support for peacekeeping as a prerequisite for addressing the phenomenon of terrorism, migration, human trafficking, piracy, mercenaryism, among others, as factors that hinder Africa’s development.
Faced with their own humanitarian challenges, the Heads of State and Government of the African Union met in Malabo in May for an extraordinary summit and a donor roundtable to discuss and provide the necessary support to address the humanitarian challenges facing Africa, which have been exacerbated by the socioeconomic effects of COVID-19 and disasters across the continent, in order to find lasting solutions to the current humanitarian crisis, especially humanitarian funding. In that context, we welcome and appreciate the Global Security Initiative presented by the People’s Republic of China, whose precepts are relevant to the current global situation.
Equatorial Guinea is committed to the promotion of human rights and has therefore designed a wide range of national strategies and standards to strengthen rights, such as the rights of the child and of persons with disabilities and the right to food, to equal access to vaccines against pandemics, to housing and so forth.
In terms of the promotion of justice and international law, Equatorial Guinea stressed the need to reform the United Nations system, including the Security Council, whose structure today is one of the great injustices within the United Nations and reflects a serious lack of the democratic spirit in the Organization. Africa, in the framework of the Ezulwini Consensus, has been calling for that injustice to be corrected for more than 15 years through the allocation to Africa of two permanent seats and two additional non-permanent seats on the Security Council.
Within the same context of the promotion of justice and international law, we call for the lifting, once and for all, of the commercial, economic and financial embargo imposed on Cuba six decades ago. That brotherly country deserves the opportunity to play its part on the global stage as a sovereign country.
In Central Africa, we remain deeply concerned about the ongoing crisis situation caused by maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, the perpetrators of which are increasingly acquiring ever more sophisticated methods for greater autonomy in the open sea, with
consequent harm and damage to the countries of the subregion.
We welcome resolution 2634 (2022), recently adopted by the Security Council, calling on countries of the Gulf of Guinea to criminalize piracy and armed robbery at sea under their domestic laws, and to investigate and prosecute or extradite, in accordance with applicable international law, perpetrators of piracy and armed robbery at sea, as well as those who incite, finance or intentionally facilitate such crimes.
As His Excellency Mr. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has always expressed in international forums, and in particular at last year’s seventy-sixth session of the General Assembly (see A/76/PV.11), we wish to insist on the imperative proposal of the need to organize a Summit on the Gulf of Guinea in order to design a strategy to stop all terrorist activities and attempts that threaten regional and international peace and security, as well as to pool our efforts to advance the region and tackle the challenges that surround it.
In conclusion, I wish to once again express my congratulations to the President of the General Assembly and to wish him every success during his presidency. We again encourage Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to continue his noble work on United Nations reforms and to resolutely support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Peace. We also express our strong desire that the United Nations assume its role as mediator in world conflicts in order to reach peaceful, just and negotiated solutions that avoid the use of weapons, which are not the appropriate means for the resolution of any conflict.