On behalf of the delegation of the Central
African Republic, and in the name of our Head of
State, President of the Republic François Bozizé, I
extend warm and heartfelt congratulations to
Mr. Kerim on his election to preside over the General
Assembly at its sixty-second session. We are also
gratified to assert that his distinctive skills will
guarantee the success of our work.
I also wish to pay a warm tribute to his
predecessor, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of the
Kingdom of Bahrain. Five decades after the presidency
of Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India, she wisely led
the work of the sixty-first session of the General
Assembly, to the great satisfaction of all.
Finally, on behalf of President of the Republic
and Head of State François Bozizé, allow me to
address our sincere congratulations to Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon on his dynamism and the
efficiency with which he has undertaken his work in
the context of current important international issues,
including the maintenance of international peace and
security, climate change, human rights, and combating
drugs and terrorism in all its forms, which remain
pressing issues that no country in the world can address
in isolation.
The conflicts afflicting the innocent civilian
populations in the Middle East, the Great Lakes region
and the Sudan, a neighbour of the Central African
Republic, with their hosts of refugees and displaced
persons, are causes of grave concern. The conflict in
Darfur and the presence of rebels, armed groups and
road-blockers cause the proliferation and unlawful
circulation of small arms in that subregion, thus
provoking widespread and continuous insecurity.
The consequences for the Central African
Republic often take the shape of recurrent crises that
chronically undermine the economic fabric and
aggravate the poverty of our people by creating
hazardous and precarious living conditions. All of this
leads to the breakdown of the social fabric, the loss of
civic spirit and, ultimately, the failure of confidence in
their institutions and, especially, in justice.
We applaud the adoption of Security Council
resolution 1778 (2007) on the deployment of the hybrid
multidimensional force to the borders of the Central
African Republic, Chad and the Sudan. We should like
to see it accompanied, however, by genuine support for
the reinforcement of institutional capacities in the
Central African Republic. In that regard, we thank and
praise France for its courageous decision and effective
participation in that peacekeeping force.
During the fifteenth session of the Commission
on Sustainable Development, held in New York from
30 April to 11 May 2007, whose chosen theme was
turning commitments into action and working together
in partnership, participants highlighted the correlation
and interdependence among the four areas of the
thematic cluster: energy for sustainable development,
industrial development, air pollution and climate
change. The Commission’s fifteenth session also
demonstrated that much significant progress remains to
be achieved: advances in those sectors are minimal and
still far from the objectives the international
community set for itself in Rio in 1992 and in
Johannesburg in 2002.
In order to meet these challenges of the
environment in particular and sustainable development
in general, a partnership endeavour, supported by
sufficient resources, is absolutely essential in order to
allow developing countries, in particular in Africa, the
Caribbean and the South Pacific, to implement these
commitments, especially since those regions, and
particularly Africa, while bearing but little
responsibility for the advent of this phenomenon, are
more vulnerable to the risks associated with climate
change.
By choosing climate change as a central topic of
this General Assembly session and organizing the high-
level dialogue “The future in our hands: Addressing the
leadership challenge of climate change”, the Assembly
President has pinpointed the growing concern
associated with global warming for a country such as
ours, the Central African Republic. Indeed, the
problems associated with climate change now lie at the
core of international debates. The moment has thus
arrived to transform good intentions into concrete
actions.
For its part, the Central African Republic hopes
that during the Bali Climate Change Conference this
December the wealthy countries will at last honour
their commitments in the area of technology transfer
and will provide assistance to strengthening the
national and regional structures required for effective
action to combat climate change. I would like to pay a
warm tribute to the Secretary-General for the interest
he has shown in these problems and for his initiative of
appointing three special envoys in the area of climate
change.
Allow me to present the specific case of my
country, the Central African Republic, which spans
three climatic zones, with great diversity in its
ecosystem, from dense humid forest in the south, to the
pre-Sahelian area in the north.
This central position at the crossroads of different
African ecosystems from the Sudan-Sahelian areas
in the north to the dense humid forest in the south
gives it great ecological potential. It has many assets:
rich and fertile soil, mineral and forest wealth,
diversified fauna and varied agriculture, with the latter
being the country’s economic base.
The Central African Republic understands the
wealth of its natural resources, but also the threats
involved. That is why we have built environmental
concerns into the constitution of our country, notably
in its preamble and its article 9 where the collective
consciousness is called upon to respect the principle of
good environmental governance.
Despite these resources, the economic reality of
the country shows that the Central African Republic is
among the least developed countries, where the
population lives on less than a dollar a day. In recent
years, the rate of economic growth has fallen below the
average predictions. Structurally, the country comes up
against many obstacles in its development efforts. For
instance, its domestic market is tiny, and it is isolated
domestically and externally because of its distance
from maritime ports. The economic situation may be
summed up as follows: lack of individual income,
limited State resources, inequality between men and
women and the rate of illiteracy.
Our economy is largely dependent on
environmental resources. Aware of the difficulties it
faces, the Government has opted for regional and
international cooperation by participating in many
initiatives concerning the environment and sustainable
forestry management, such as the Central African
Forest Commission, the Network of Protected Areas of
Central Africa, the Sangha Tri-National Landscape and
the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
Generally speaking, the implementation of most
of these initiatives has not met expectations: the
initiatives were ambitious, but the capacities for
implementation and the financial resources were
inadequate. The enterprises exploiting these resources
impose binding environmental rules on us while the
population does not reap any benefit.
We need to halt and eliminate poverty with the
participation of all. Poverty creates injustice. Here I
wish to cite President Sarkozy, the printed text of
whose recent statement observed that justice meant the
same chances for success for each poor child in the
world as for each rich one. In this very Hall, President
Sarkozy said:
Justice means that a developing country on
which we wish to impose environmental rules,
even though its inhabitants have barely enough to
eat, can be helped to put such rules in place.
Justice means that we cannot tap a country's
resources without paying a fair price for them.
I solemnly appeal to the United Nations to
concern itself with the issue of fairer distribution
of wealth and of the income derived from
commodities and technology.
The Central African Republic is ready to open its
borders to developed nations and to public and private
investors in order to increase its resources. The Central
African Republic applauds the great nations - France,
the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Britain and
Russia and certain emerging countries of the South
for their willingness to cooperate in order to slow the
deterioration of the environment.
We thank the European Union and the African
Development Bank for their assistance and, in
particular, the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank for having allowed the Central African
Republic to reach the decision point under the
enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.
We praise the actions of those international financial
institutions, and we ask them to open a new chapter on
the environment and the economies of poor countries.
We call on all for a continuing effort to reduce
inequality between men and women, because in Africa,
women are very often heads of families in the most
remote regions. They play a very important role. In that
way, the support of the international community in
eliminating inequality will provide a solution in terms
of sustainable development.
We cannot achieve a healthy environment without
wiping out illiteracy. We hope that the developed
countries of the South and the North will help poor
countries to create the right conditions in terms of
informing and training their populations in order to
show them that they have an interest in preserving the
environment.
Our country is rich. It wishes to exploit the
wealth of its subsoil in order to protect its
environment. With assistance, we can hope to bring
ourselves closer to the Millennium Development Goals
by 2015.
In his opening statement, the President stated,
Keep your mind level. If the mind is level, the whole
world will be level.
The President of the Central African Republic,
Mr. Francois Bozize often teaches us about the mind of
the spirit:
Infinite spirit is all. All is one. All is all.
And all is the Universe. The Universe is calm. If
we have understood this, let the world follow the
example of the wise by avoiding the errors of the
semi-wise who perish because of their
foolishness”.
I would like to hope that this message will be
favourably received by our partners, both bilateral and
multilateral.