I bring the Assembly
greetings from Her Excellency Mrs. Ellen
Johnson-Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia,
who should have been here today to address the
Assembly but chose to remain on the front lines in
Liberia to lead our fight against the deadly Ebola virus
disease.
Liberia congratulates the President of the Assembly
on his assumption of his high office and acknowledges
the astute statesmanship and wisdom that he brings to
that important assignment, which inspire confidence
for a successful sixty-ninth session of the Assembly. We
assure him of Liberia’s full cooperation and support.
We pay a special tribute to Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon for his able and visionary stewardship of the
affairs of this global institution.
With just one year until the expiration date of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the theme
of this sixty-ninth general debate, “Delivering on and
implementing a transformative post-2015 development
agenda”, could not have been more appropriate. Liberia
was put on the pedestal of global honour when President
Johnson-Sirleaf was selected as one of three co-chairs
of the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-
2015 Development Agenda, formed by the Secretary-
General in 2012 to advise him on the contours of an
ambitious but realistic post-2015 global development
agenda and to define the critical steps required to
reinvigorate and sustain global partnership. The Panel’s
report, A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and
Transform Economies through Sustainable Development,
contained a clarion call to leave no one behind, which
has been embraced as a motivating theme by many.
At the continental level, our President chairs a
10-member high-level committee of African Heads
of State, under whose leadership a African Common
Position has been developed and endorsed by the
membership of the African Union (AU). That Position
is based on six pillars that represent Africa’s vision
of the prerequisites for eradicating poverty on the
continent and for ensuring its future and development.
We are encouraged that the concepts and strategies
defined under each of the pillars have been significantly
incorporated into the proposed 17 sustainable
development goals. That makes us optimistic that the
substance of our pillars will form an integral part of
the post-2015 development agenda. As we await the
Secretary-General’s synthesizing report, I can assure
the Assembly of Liberia’s continued active participation
in the negotiations that lie ahead.
As we survey the regional and international
political landscape, we are increasingly concerned
about the spread of extremist ideologies and terrorist
activities around the world, especially in Africa.
Whether we are speaking of Al-Shabaab in Somalia
and Kenya, Al-Qaida in the Maghreb or Boko Haram
in Nigeria, the African continent has not been spared
the deadly and destructive consequences of extremism.
Additionally, over the past year, while peace processes
were being consolidated in many African countries, we
have been sad witnesses to the eruption or exacerbation
of conflicts on the continent, notably in South Sudan
and the Central African Republic. We laud the efforts
of the AU and the United Nations to resolve those
conflicts, and join in the call for sustained international
action to bring about a more secure and peaceful world.
Liberia commends the Secretary-General for his
convening, last week, of the high-level Climate Summit,
which elicited concrete commitments from the global
community on reducing greenhouse emissions and other
measures aimed at achieving sustainable development.
As a small country and one that is still endowed with
43 per cent of the remaining Guinea forests, we are proud
that we too have concluded partnership agreements and
made concrete commitments aimed at supporting the
goals of sustainable, climate-sensitive development.
Small countries like Liberia contribute less to
greenhouse emissions but suffer disproportionately
from the adverse impact of climate change. To right that
anomaly and in the united spirit of saving our one world,
all countries, big and small, should make proportionate
commitments to saving our planet and take concrete
action to make such commitments a reality.
A year ago, when President Johnson-Sirleaf
addressed the Assembly (see A/68/PV.6), it was with
a more positive message from a President reporting
significant achievements and lofty aspirations for the
future. President Johnson-Sirleaf, full of gratitude,
informed the world that Liberia had just celebrated
10 years of peace in August 2013, and that, despite some
challenges, was still registering remarkable progress on
the path of socioeconomic development. The country
had transitioned from an emphasis on stabilization to
a focus on transformation within the framework of
a long-term development agenda, Vision 2030. The
President also informed the Assembly that the countries
of the Mano River Basin Union — Liberia, Guinea,
Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone — were at peace and
were pursuing regional integration through initiatives
that would facilitate connectivity within their power
and transport systems, thereby enhancing the cross-
border trade in which our market women are mostly
engaged. She even reported on how a small contingent
of Liberian peacekeepers, who are still in Mali
today, had contributed to the laudable United Nations
peacekeeping efforts there, creating an environment
conducive to stability and democratic transition in that
country.
One year later, as I address the Assembly, I am the
purveyor of a different kind of story, and a sad one. Over
the past six months, a dark cloud has been hanging over
the Liberian landscape, such that instead of reporting
economic growth, we are constrained to report economic
decline. The implementation of virtually all the pillars
of our Agenda for Transformation has been placed on
hold, and gains are perhaps already being reversed.
Instead of devoting attention to regional integration
through the facilitation of power and transport projects,
we are talking about regional cooperation in dealing
with a deadly enemy. The market women who traded
goods and services across borders a year ago are now
constrained to remain within those borders and suffer
the consequences of economic inactivity.
The deadly enemy that has visited so much harm
and misery on my country and our neighbours is the
Ebola virus disease, which began wreaking havoc in
Liberia in March. Since the outbreak, the Government of
Liberia has taken a host of measures. We have declared
a state of emergency and suspended schools, and,
with the constructive involvement of all stakeholders,
including pastors, imams, chiefs, elders, young people,
Government officials and opposition politicians, we
have stepped up awareness and prevention campaigns
to address the rigid denial and deeply rooted traditional
and cultural practices that create fertile ground for the
spread of the disease. We have also committed and will
continue to commit significant portions of our own
paltry resources to the fight.
In spite of such efforts, which have been buttressed by
those of our partners, Ebola has confounded all of us and
has sprinted faster than our collective efforts, snuffing
out the life candle of more than 1,800 of our compatriots,
with a total of nearly 3,500 infected. Cumulatively,
women, as the majority among our health workforce and
the main caregivers in our deeply traditional society,
have been disproportionately affected. Sadly, as Ebola
widens its deadly circumference, it is creating a trail of
traumatized orphans across the country, which includes
a 10-year-old child from Barkedu, Lofa county, who
is the last person standing from a family of 12. Our
already limited pool of health workers has been further
reduced, because 89 of them have fallen victim to the
virus, out of a total of 182 infected.
The resulting panic that has arisen in health workers
who see their colleagues die from Ebola has precipitated
the closure of many health facilities across the country.
As we and our many international partners struggle to
douse the wildfire caused by Ebola, we are left with
inadequate resources, time and personnel to attend to
routine illnesses such as malaria, typhoid fever and
measles, thereby causing many more, tangential deaths.
An increasing number of pregnant women are dying in
the process of bringing forth life. In short, our public
health system, which totally collapsed during our
years of conflict and was being gradually rebuilt, has
collapsed again under the weight of the deadly virus.
Ebola is not just a health crisis; it is a total crisis. It is
an economic crisis, a social crisis and a potential political
and security crisis. Indeed, its deleterious impact has
been very wide and very deep. On the economic front,
it has occasioned a 3.4 per cent downward slide in
economic growth in Liberia, and some experts have
predicted that, if not contained quickly, it could cause a
12 per cent decline in our economy in 2015. As a result
of the slowdown in economic activities, our revenue
generation capacity has been seriously undermined,
thereby constricting our ability to provide basic social
services and to continue to fund key development
projects. The suspension of flights as well as the travel
and other restrictions and sanctions imposed on Liberia
and other affected countries despite expert advice to
the contrary from the World Health Organization and
others, have not only undermined the humanitarian
efforts aimed at quickly containing the disease, but
have also aggravated the adverse economic effects of
the Ebola crisis.
As destructive as the Liberian civil conflict was, at
least our people knew the warring factions and the front
lines. With Ebola, the enemy is more insidious, and
there are no clear-cut front lines, because someone’s
child, someone’s husband or someone’s workmate
could actually be the enemy and in the front line at the
same time. That difficult feature of the disease, coupled
with a host of other challenges, has occasioned its rapid
spread. We are heartened that, as a result of separate
and joint appeals of the heads of State of Liberia, Sierra
Leone and Guinea to the Secretary-General and leaders
of friendly countries and institutions, the international
community is showing a better appreciation of the
unprecedented scope and magnitude of the Ebola
outbreak in our countries. There is a chorus of leaders
advocating and committing to support more robust,
scaled up and urgent assistance to the affected countries.
Thanks to the Secretary-General and other
world leaders, the past few weeks have witnessed a
host of positive developments that constitute a major
heightening of focus and scaling up of the international
response. Those developments include the following.
First, we welcome the announcement by President
Barak Obama of the United States of his Government’s
decision to scale up assistance to the region, including
the deployment of 3,000 military and medical personnel
to help us with the fight.
Secondly, the Security Council meeting held on
18 September 2014 (see S/PV.7268), under the leadership
and Council presidency of the United States, adopted
resolution 2177 (2014), which recognizes the Ebola
crisis as a threat to international peace and security,
necessitating a strong and concerted international
response through firm commitments of support. The
resolution also called on Member States to lift travel
and other restrictions imposed on affected countries.
Thirdly, the Secretary-General announced on
18 September his intention to establish the United
Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response, which
was formally endorsed by Assembly resolution 69/1,
submitted by the President and adopted on 19 September.
Fourthly, we have seen the start of the deployment
by the African Union of contingents of medical and
relevant personnel drawn from across Africa to Liberia
and other worst-affected countries.
Fifthly, the high-level meeting on response to the
Ebola virus disease outbreak, convened at Headquarters
by the Secretary-General on 25 September, witnessed
announcements of substantial commitments of
assistance by many countries.
Those concrete demonstrations of solidarity have
taken many forms, and we are deeply grateful for all
of them. They should, however, not lead us towards
complacency, because we definitely have not yet
achieved the 20-fold increase in response recommended
by the experts to contain the disease. Additionally,
while we struggle with the first war, which involves
actually disrupting the transmission of Ebola, we must
begin to prepare for the second war of tackling the
long-term socioeconomic impacts of the Ebola crisis,
including building and creating the capacity for a new
health system that can robustly deal with any future
health challenge, and raising the resources needed to
address a legion of socioeconomic, political, security
and other challenges made more acute by the presence
of Ebola.
We are also cognizant of the positive contributions
of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL),
which has helped us enjoy 10 years of peace. The
presence of UNMIL in Liberia, especially at a time when
we were experiencing isolation, has helped to reassure
our people and create a security climate conducive to
tackling some of the multifaceted challenges of the
Ebola crisis. Therefore, the continued engagement
of UNMIL in Liberia will be critical to enabling
Liberia’s transition from the Ebola crisis to resume the
implementation of strategies for the achievement of our
long-term development agenda.
Ebola is a difficult enemy that has frustrated and
bypassed our collective efforts in the past, causing some
experts to project that, in a worst case scenario, about
1.4 million precious lives could be lost in our countries
by January 2015. In spite of the gloom of today — and
as Liberians ponder the question: “Will I, my wife, my
husband, my child, my friend or my workmate be one of
those to populate the 1.4 million doomsday statistics?”—
we should not sink into defeatism. Instead, President
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the resilient Liberian people
feel that Ebola has presented us with a one-option,
multiple-choice test, and that option is to fight back.
And we are fighting back.
As President Johnson-Sirleaf aptly put it in her
17 September update to the people of Liberia on the
Ebola crisis:
“I believe in the Liberian people. I believe that
we are stronger than the greatest threat with which
we are currently faced. And 1 believe we will
prevail. The war did not defeat us, a completely
destroyed economy — the greatest collapse since
World War II — did not defeat us. Ebola will not
defeat us”.
We know that the road ahead may be long, curvy
and hilly. But with bigger, bolder, timely and sustained
efforts on our part, buttressed by the international
community, we are sure that dawn will soon break on
this long, dark night occasioned by the Ebola virus.