Allow me at
the outset to congratulate Mr. Kerim on his assumption
of the presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-
second session. There is no doubt that his deep
familiarity with the academic world, tied to his
experience in the political world and in business, is a
major asset that will help him to lead us confidently in
the Assembly’s work. I sincerely hope that our debates
will be fruitful and lead to the adoption of relevant
resolutions.
Allow me also to welcome our new Secretary-
General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who recently honoured us
with his first visit to Haiti in August. We are firmly
convinced that the new Secretary-General will rapidly
bring to bear his experience of the United Nations
system, his vast learning and his broad open-
mindedness in carrying out the reforms that most
Members of our Organization know to be necessary.
Despite its difficulties, our Organization remains
the principal forum offering all States, large and small,
the same space for dialogue to address the fundamental
issues surrounding our coexistence and future on this
planet. May the Secretary-General be assured of the
support of the Haitians in his efforts to increase the
effectiveness of the United Nations and to enable it to
achieve its full potential.
I am speaking here on behalf of a people that has
endured great suffering over the past 200 years:
material deprivation of all sorts, vulnerability to
natural threats and disasters, poor access to health care
and education, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
children from malnutrition, and a very young
population 65 per cent below the age of 25
denied any true opportunity for employment.
I speak on behalf of a people that seems to be
depopulating itself as its most competent professionals
forsake a life of difficulties to the benefit of other
countries or businesses, and as its children, women and
senior citizens, weary of living what seems to be a
hopeless existence, take to the open seas on makeshift
boats, seeking a better life under other skies.
I speak on behalf of a State whose neighbours,
including the most powerful among them, sometimes
portray it as a threat to regional security because Haiti
appears too frequently on the agenda of the General
Assembly or the Security Council, with a burdensome
array of problems of insecurity or political unrest.
I speak on behalf of a country that analyses
somewhat prematurely describe as a failed State
because it has trouble making its institutions
operational and organizing a way of life appropriate to
the majority of its citizens, and because the State itself,
unfortunately, often finds itself waging an endless war
against its own children.
Haiti is on the way to bidding farewell to that
State slowly, patiently, yet resolutely. The organized
armed gangs responsible for violence against innocent
people have been dismantled and there is no longer any
forbidden zone for peaceful citizens anywhere on our
territory.
The management of our economy has improved
considerably. We have stopped printing money. That
has reduced the inflation rate which had run
rampant for several years and which just a few months
ago reached 40 per cent to less than 10 per cent. Our
gross domestic product has seen moderate but
sustained growth, after having been negative for more
than 10 years.
We have worked patiently to establish an
atmosphere of calm and collegiality within the political
class, which is a condition essential for enabling the
political forces to put an end to their perpetual
factional disputes and to mobilize around genuine
national reconstruction plans.
The Security Council will soon extend the
mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in
Haiti (MINUSTAH) for another year. Such an
extension would be most appropriate. This reminds us
that our victory over insecurity, the holding of
democratic elections, the improvement of governance
in the country and the strengthening of our judicial
system were possible thanks in large part to the efforts
of United Nations forces within the framework of the
Organization’s peacekeeping programme. Certainly, the
members of our national police, although young,
inexperienced and underequipped, have proved to be
courageous and determined in the fight against
insecurity, but MINUSTAH’s support at their side has
been greatly appreciated. Let me take this opportunity
to express once again our thanks to the Organization,
to the Security Council and to the friendly countries
that mobilized their own resources and citizens to
come to the assistance of Haitians at this difficult time
in their history.
Haitians, recalling that they belong to a people
who fought for their freedom and carried the torch of
liberty to many other shores of the continent, continue
to see the presence of foreign armed forces on their soil
as a wound to their national sovereignty. Practically
speaking, however, that is the only realistic formula
currently available that is enabling Haitians to regain
freedom and live in peace.
It is now up to Haitians to benefit from this
period of calm by pulling themselves together,
reconsidering their fate with a positive vision of the
future and returning to daily life as a disciplined,
hardworking and law-abiding people while our State
strengthens its internal cohesion, modernizes its
judicial system and improves its governance and its
capacity to intervene, so that it can create and maintain
an environment conducive to economic recovery and
genuine sustainable development.
The adoption of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) was an act of awareness. Nevertheless,
halfway towards the deadline set for achievement of
the Goals, it seems clear that many of us including
my country will not meet the 2015 targets, despite
the considerable progress made in various areas.
Mobilizing resources to support the pursuit of the
MDGs is a difficult but essential task. It is not only
necessary for ethical reasons or because the
international community must honour its commitments.
Problems that cannot be resolved in a poor State will
spill over to richer States, which will thus be forced to
revisit problems that they had already overcome by
themselves at the national level.
The General Assembly has included in the agenda
for the present session an item relating to cooperation
in combating the activities of transnational organized
crime. In that connection, I should like to highlight my
country’s efforts to fight against corruption and illicit
drug trafficking. In Haiti, we are currently developing
ways to deal with corruption. We have begun to work
to strengthen State structures and to plan legal and
regulatory reforms to be established to ensure that that
endemic evil disappears from our institutional
practices, both in politics and in business.
But the fight against drug trafficking is of another
scale entirely, because it sets us squarely against
sophisticated and well-organized adversaries who have
access to powerful international networks in both drug-
producing and drug-consuming countries. We are
sensitive to the human suffering and social upheaval
attributable to drug abuse, and we are aware of the
efforts being made to treat and rehabilitate addicts,
primarily in the major drug-consuming countries.
However, trafficking also has harmful effects on the
economic, social and political structures of small States
such as mine and poses a serious threat to their
sovereignty and security, even if they are only transit
States. The approach that has emerged from various
international conferences focuses on prevention and
demand-reduction in consumer countries first and then
to reduce supply in producing countries and suppress
trafficking networks.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the
trade route of one of the most intense flows between
the producer countries of South America and the
consumer countries of North America. We are firmly
committed to helping the countries of the North
eliminate the drugs that arrive in their countries by way
of our territory as a place of transit. But we cannot deal
with this scourge alone, and our efforts to improve the
monitoring of our land, sea and air borders and
strengthen our institutions come up against the power
of the networks put in place by the traffickers.
The solutions developed to deal with these
problems will clearly yield no results if we do not
urgently address the issue of economic development,
because, as has been eloquently stated in reports of the
Secretary-General, development is another name for
peace.
It follows from that observation that we need a
new culture of international solidarity based on a
comprehensive and coordinated approach in which the
fight against poverty goes hand in hand with
sustainable development. It is an approach in which
development assistance and the fight against insecurity
are supported by the efforts of more developed
countries to open up their markets, to encourage flows
of foreign direct investment and technology transfers
and to support the private sector and entrepreneurial
initiatives: a comprehensive approach in which rich
and poor understand that they are co-owners of this
planet and that its fate is in all our hands.