Thank you for inviting
me to be here today. I bring you greetings from the
people of the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and
Principe. This is my first opportunity to personally
congratulate Mr. Ban Ki-moon and to thank him for
taking on the huge responsibilities he has assumed as
Secretary-General. We offer him our full support for
the difficult tasks ahead.
I would also like to congratulate Mr. Srgjan
Kerim for his election as President of the current
session and to thank Ms. Al Khalifa for her work in
guiding the sixty-first session so well.
I would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate the Secretary-General for the choice of the
topics for this session, such as climate change, finance
for development, the Millennium Development Goals
and countering terrorism.
We come together this year at a time of enormous
challenges for the United Nations. The world situation
is very serious. One difficulty is that the problems are
of such enormous complexity that the mass of facts
presented to the public by the media make it
exceedingly difficult for average people to understand
the situation.
Many of us in this room today live far from the
troubled areas of the earth. So, it is, perhaps, hard to
comprehend the plight of long-suffering peoples like
those in Afghanistan, Darfur, Iraq, Palestine, Sierra
Leone and Somalia, among so many others. But we
must reject prejudice and discrimination and end those
conflicts.
For those who still ignore our existence, may I
remind them that my country, Sao Tome and Principe,
is an African nation composed of two islands in the
Gulf of Guinea and independent from Portugal since
12 July 1975. So, I wanted to say that we also join the
calls to defeat terrorist extremism everywhere.
However, we have already seen that this will not be
achieved by military force, but by ideas and ideals that
win hearts and minds.
Regarding the Millennium Development Goals, I
want to express my regret that so little progress has
been made towards achieving these worthy ends. How
can we ignore those who are to be helped by those
Goals, the least, the last and the lost? As the Nobel
Laureate Martin Luther King once said,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all
indirectly”.
I join previous speakers in saying that despite all
the technological and scientific advances, half of the
world’s population lives on less than $2 per day.
Twenty per cent of everyone alive suffer from chronic
hunger. Every single day, 30,000 children die
needlessly from dehydration, diarrhoea or infections,
which could be all too easily prevented or cured. In
many countries, children are not even given a name
until they are one month old because so many of them
do not live that long. One billion adults today are
illiterate; 100 million children cannot go to school
because of their poverty.
Now, with regard to how to finance development,
we are told that globalization is the way, that a rising
tide will lift all boats. But in many parts of the world
the rising tide of globalization lifted the yachts and
swamped the rowboats. Can private corporations
realistically be expected to combine their
entrepreneurial activities with furthering social causes?
Obviously, some companies must improve their
practices and be held accountable for cleaning up their
environmental disasters, such as those in the Niger
Delta. But to cast companies in the role of economic
reformers is unrealistic. It seems that perhaps
globalization has made the right to shop more
important than the right to vote.
At the same time, we must also be realistic about
the results of aid. It seems that international
organizations sometimes suffer from poverty of
expectations. Our own people in the developing world
are also at times crucified on the poverty of their own
desires. Instead of raging against our destiny, we have
lowered our standards. I think the humiliation of
poverty actually scorches the heart and creates despair.
How can we come here year after year and see
this despair, disease and hunger and not feel enormous
sorrow? We must accept that global poverty is the
disgrace of our affluent era. So how do we alleviate
poverty? Many say that Africa is poor because of bad
governance and corruption. I strongly reject that view.
Is it shameful to remember how all of our countries in
Africa, all of us, were when we became independent,
or how we were even more recently in Sao Tome and
Principe.
Let me say a little bit about how it was and how it
is in Sao Tome and Principe. The majority of people
grew up in wooden shacks, with no running water, no
electricity, no toilet and no chance for an education. In
1975, the country emerged from centuries of slavery
and oppressive colonialism to independence with
almost no teachers, no doctors, totally unprepared to
govern ourselves or create an economy that did not
depend on slave or contract labour as the only means
of profit. We have struggled. We have stumbled. But
today we have a vibrant and stable democracy that we
are proud of. We have a high percentage of girls in
school. We have literacy rates far above the average in
the developing world. We have free health care for all
of our citizens, although it is woefully inadequate for
lack of funds. We have almost eradicated malaria. We
have low corruption, while also being rated among the
best countries in the world for freedom of the press.
We spend almost no money on defence and we have
never fought a war.
We are grateful for aid. My people would suffer
even more than they already do without the World
Food Programme, for example. The World Health
Organization and the Global Fund to fight tuberculosis
and malaria are working with us very well. The
Republic of Taiwan, the people of the island of
Formosa, with their well-known generosity and special
attention to our realities, have been crucial in our own
success against malaria. Many organizations and
individuals have worked with us for many years with
open hearts and generous spirits, and we thank them all
for that.
Throughout our 32 years of independence, we
have followed the advice of international organizations
and built up some $350 million in bilateral and
multilateral debt, most of which was recently forgiven
under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative
and other programmes. Allow me to take this
opportunity to present, on behalf of the people of Sao
Tome and Principe, our deepest gratitude.
As long as massive poverty, injustice and obscene
inequality persist in our world, none of us can rest. I
say to all, please do not look the other way. Do not
hesitate. The future might say that what we failed to do
was tragic, but let me also say that what we did do was
truly heroic.
Finally, before ending, and as I have done in prior
years, I wish to refer to two situations to which I call
the attention of members and implore their solidarity,
regardless of whether they are poor or rich.
One of those situations is the issue of Taiwan.
There are 23 million people living on Formosa island,
also called Taiwan. They do not ask the international
community to help them because they are poor. On the
contrary, they are one of the main recognized world
economic powers, and they are helping other countries,
such as Sao Tome and Principe. They only ask to be
recognized as a sovereign country and to be included
as such on the lists of the United Nations and its
agencies. This is a question of justice.
Also a question of justice is the issue of the
United States Government lifting the embargo against
Cuba, repealing the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 and
allowing for free trade and free travel. Let the Cubans
settle their problems among themselves. This is a
democratic act.
I thank all members for being here today and
listening. May God bless us all.