Change has become an
overriding theme in the language of today`s social and
political landscape. We speak of the need to change
behaviours, attitudes and laws. We speak of the need
to effect change in the areas of human rights and social
justice, in education and health administration. We
have come to understand the concept of change as a
constant in our lives as human beings and as citizens
of this world. But the question we are asking is, does
change automatically signify progress?
There is an old saying with which I am sure everyone
here is familiar: the more things change, the more they
stay the same. Sometimes, when I find myself listening
to reports of the many recent developments taking place
in the world, that saying comes to mind again, and I am
overcome with a strong sense of déjà vu, as though we
had been here before.
When I hear reports about the taking of hostages
and the savagery of beheadings, it is 2004 all over
again, and week after week there is news of the killing
of foreign hostages in Iraq. When I hear reports about
Israel and Gaza, it is 2005 all over again, and Israel
has launched Operation Summer Rain, immediately
followed by Operation Autumn Clouds. The resulting
death toll in the Gaza Strip was in the hundreds, and
many of the dead were children. Similarly, in the United
States, reports of police brutality against an unarmed
black man take me back to 1999, when 23-year-old
Guinea-born Amadou Diallo was shot 19 times by four
New York City police officers, or to 1991, when Rodney
King was brutally beaten by five Los Angeles police
officers. Both of those incidents caused a tremendous
public outcry, as did this year’s shooting death of
18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,
with the singular message of “no justice, no peace”.
Do such events indicate an outright regression?
Does the uncomfortable familiarity of some current
world events mean that, despite the changes so many
individuals and organizations have worked to achieve,
we have made little or no progress? I would like to
believe that this is not so. I would like to believe those
events of recent times are merely setbacks that will
motivate us to find more sustainable solutions; they
are just slight reversals on the sinuous path toward true
progress.
Dag Hammarskjöld, who served as the second
Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1953
until his untimely death in a plane crash in 1961, said,
“The pursuit of peace and progress cannot
end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The
pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its
errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be
relaxed and never abandoned.”
In the course of the past several months, since
the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa,
I have been reminded of both the importance and
the practicality of those words. True progress relies
on neither victory nor defeat; true progress relies on
persistence, on perseverance. Just last week, on Monday,
in my capacity as the Chair of Economic Community of
West African States (ECOWAS), I travelled to Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea — the three countries that
have been most affected by the outbreak of Ebola. They
are nations that are recovering from conflict. The civil
wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone also adversely affected
Guinea, which shares borders with both countries.
They are nations that were struggling to rebuild their
social and economic infrastructure. Even before the
outbreak of Ebola, they were already operating with
limited resources, an insufficient number of treatment
facilities and a shortage of qualified medical personnel.
So far, there have been 5,843 recorded cases of Ebola,
including 2,803 deaths. The World Health Organization
predicts that if the disease is not brought under control,
the number of cases could easily rise to 20,000 by as
early as November. What makes Ebola so dangerous is
that the virus dares us to compromise the impulses that
exist at the very core of our humanity — our impulse
to comfort one another with love, to care for each other
with the healing power of touch and to maintain the
dignity of our loved ones even in death, with a public
funeral and a properly marked grave.
Ebola is a disease of isolation. It leaves family
members afraid to embrace one another. It leaves
health-care workers afraid to attend to their patients.
It forces the living to abandon the cultural rites of
washing, embalming and burying their dead. Instead,
the dead are zipped into a secure body bag, carried on
a stretcher by makeshift pallbearers in protective wear,
and then tossed into a freshly dug grave.
Just as individuals with Ebola are often shunned and
ostracized by their communities, the initial slowness of
response by the international community in many ways
has left the affected countries to suffer their fate alone
and in isolation. In my travels to those three countries,
although I was aware that some airlines had suspended
flights, I was shocked to find the airports completely
vacant. Ebola is not just a Liberian problem, nor is it a
Sierra Leonean or Guinean problem; it is not just a West
African problem. Ebola is a problem that belongs to the
world because it is a disease that knows no boundaries.
We cannot afford to let fear keep us away or to let
it compromise the very impulses that not only define
but sustain our humanity. We must erase the stigma. To
that end, my country, Ghana, has offered the use of its
capital city, Accra, as a base of operations for activities
geared towards the containment of the disease. I would
like to commend Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and
the Security Council for establishing the United Nations
Mission for Ebola Emergency Response. I would also
like to acknowledge and commend President Barack
Obama and the people of the United States of America
for their enormous commitment to the fight against
Ebola.
Health officials have announced numerous times
that in theory, it is relatively easy to stop the spread
of Ebola because it is transmitted through contact
with bodily fluids. It has been suggested that through
changes in our behaviour and practices the public could
potentially reduce, if not eliminate, their exposure
to the virus. Yet in reality, the Ebola virus was able
to spread so quickly throughout the West African
subregion because of the fluidity of our borders.
The free movement of people, goods and services
throughout the West African subregion is something
that ECOWAS has been promoting for the last several
decades. It allows interaction and increased trade
between our 15 member States. However, without the
proper preventive measures in place, such fluidity can
also enable the free movement of disease, drugs, arms,
human traffickers and terrorists.
Unfortunately. Africa is especially vulnerable to
terrorism because its sheer size and vast terrain offers
myriad places for terrorists to hide and create safe
havens. With over 60 per cent of Africa’s population
under the age of 35 and a significant number living in
extreme poverty, terrorists also have the opportunity to
recruit new members by exploiting the ignorance and
disillusionment of young people who lack the skills,
education and opportunity to find gainful employment.
The proliferation of technology has made even
the most remote areas of the continent accessible
through a phone call or keystroke. What that does is
facilitate communication within terrorist cells and
between terrorist organizations. It would now be far
too simplistic, not to mention myopic, for a nation
to believe that it is dealing with any one terrorist
organization, such as Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab. Ansar
Al-Dine, Al-Qaida, Hizbullah, the Taliban, the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant or, recently, the Khorasan
group. Because of the assistance and cooperation that
exist among them, they have in fact become different
tentacles of a single organism. So too must we come
together as one cohesive body, united in our battle
to defend our freedoms and values. We too must
communicate within and among ourselves. We must
cooperate and lend assistance and resources to fight
and conquer the common threat we face.
Since the start of the global recession, economic
growth rates have generally declined and people have,
by and large, become pessimistic about their future.
This month, the Pew Research Center published the
results of a 44-country survey conducted in the spring of
2014 to assess public views of major economic changes
in the world. According to the results, a global median
of 69 per cent are not pleased with the way things are
going in their countries. That includes both advanced
and developing economies. The concerns expressed
cut across a wide spectrum of issues, such as inflation,
unemployment, income inequality and public debt.
My country, Ghana, is no exception. Over the
past year, the public has seen an increase in the cost
of living. Falling commodity prices led not only to a
fall in tax revenues from companies that operate in
Ghana, but they also led to a massive decline in our
export earnings. That contributed to a general sense of
macroeconomic instability and placed a great deal of
pressure on our domestic currency, the cedi.
For the past 22 years, Ghanaians have witnessed
a steady improvement in the circumstances of our
nation. With the return of democracy and the rule of
law, six successful elections and peaceful transitions
of power, Ghana became an example for other African
nations turning towards democracy and constitutional
rule. The stability inspired investor confidence and
increased growth. Soon Ghana was deemed one of the
fastest-growing economies in the world.
That did not make us immune to the economic
challenges that many nations were facing across the
globe — quite the opposite. Instability in the global
commodity markets has a direct bearing on our budgets
and hence on our ability to finance our development.
The global downturn exposed the weaknesses in our
foundation. It alerted us to the need for change, the
need to establish the proper institutions for effective
economic management, institutions that will foster
resilience and an ability to better absorb the blows of
unexpected occurrences or outcomes.
The anxieties and concerns of the Ghanaian public
are understandable. Like so many African countries,
Ghana has been through dark economic times, and our
seemingly changing fortunes, with their uncomfortable
familiarity, brought on a fear of regression. But this
was merely a setback, only a slight reversal. Already,
the home-grown measures of fiscal stabilization that
we have taken are yielding results. Only this month,
Ghana surprised its most ardent critics when it launched
its third Eurobond for an amount of $1 billion. That
successful flotation represents a return of investor
confidence in the prospects of the Ghanaian economy.
That confidence is apparent in the recent rebound of
our domestic currency, the cedi, which in the last two
weeks has appreciated significantly against its major
trading currencies.
Last year when I addressed the Assembly (see
A/68/PV.12), I explained that it is not sympathy we
want in Africa; it is partnership, the ability to stand
on our own feet. In an attempt to establish such a
partnership, we have entered into discussions with the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization
that is no stranger to the process of self-assessment
and the implementation of change in the pursuit of
true progress. Indeed, both Ghana and the IMF have
evolved, and the partnership has the potential to bring
about the sort of transformation that will move Ghana
from the ranks of the low middle-income countries into
a fully fledged middle-income country.
The coming year will mark the twentieth
anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on
Women, which was held in Beijing in 1995. I would
like to note with pride that it will also mark the fortieth
anniversary of Ghana’s establishment of the National
Council on Women and Development, which has since
been renamed the Department of Gender. Ghana has
a long-held commitment to the betterment of women’s
lives, and my Administration has made it a priority to
carry on with that tradition. In fact, much, if not all, of
what we are doing falls directly in line with the areas
of concern enumerated in the Beijing Platform for
Action of the World Conference. My Administration
boasts one of the highest number of women appointed
to public office in the history of Ghana. Seven of our
Cabinet ministers are women, as are the holders of
several senior public service posts, and I hope that the
fact that they are too numerous to list is an indication
that we are reaching towards the ideal.
We have submitted to Parliament an intestate
succession bill, which ensures that if a spouse dies
without having written a will, the surviving spouse will
not be dispossessed of their marital assets. We have also
submitted to Parliament a bill on the property rights of
spouses, which ensures that spouses are entitled to a fair
portion of property acquired during the union. There
area also several other pieces of legislation designed
to offer protection for and empowerment of women,
such as the Domestic Violence Act, the Anti-Human-
Trafficking Act, an affirmative action bill and a gender
policy.
I spoke earlier of isolation. Very few nations have
experienced the sort of exclusion that Cuba has suffered
for the last several decades as a result of the United
States embargo on that country. Ghana reaffirms its
position that this embargo should be lifted. Ghana also
calls for a halt to the establishment of settlements in the
Palestinian territories. We have consistently expressed
our support for a two-State solution to the Israeli-
Palestinian question, with the two nations coexisting
peacefully.
This year the world’s attention has been drawn
to the urgency of addressing the growing problem of
inequality and the threats that it poses to our unrelenting
pursuit of peace. I would also like to draw attention
to the pervasive presence of religious intolerance. At
the root of all of the world’s major religions is the call
for compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, peace and love.
Nevertheless, the use of religious dogma and extremism
as a weapon of violence persists.
In this age of terrorism and political turmoil, of
national, regional and ethnic conflict, it may be tempting
to use the actions of a few to justify prejudice toward
many. It may be tempting to combine the faithful with
the fanatical. But those of us who envision a just and
peaceful world cannot, and should not, yield to those
temptations. Time and time again, history has shown us
that the changing of a world begins with the power that
rests in the hands of the people, ordinary individuals.
Or, in the words of one of the greatest teachers and
leaders of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, “You must
be the change you wish to see in the world’’.
Today our Jewish brothers and sisters are
celebrating Rosh Hashanah, their New Year. To them,
I say, “L’shana Tova.” Next week, our Muslim brothers
and sisters will be celebrating Eid al-Adha, the Festival
of the Sacrifice. To them, I say, “Eid Mubarak.” And,
to you, Mr. President, I say, “Many thanks for the
opportunity and for your kind attention”.