From the homeland of the liberator Simon Bolivar and Commander Hugo Chavez Frias, we convey warm greetings on behalf of the constitutional President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro Moros, and the entire Venezuelan people. Allow us to congratulate the President of the General Assembly on his election. We wish to express
our solidarity with the sister nations of Libya and Morocco over the recent and painful loss of lives due to natural disasters.
It is 78 years since the historic moment when humankind, having defeated fascism and Nazism, envisioned the creation of a space where dialogue among all States would prevail, on the basis of which we could build global stability and cooperation on the pillars of peace and security, human rights and sustainable development.
Eighteen years ago. at this very rostrum, our Commander Hugo Chavez Frias said:
“the United Nations has outgrown its model. It is not just a question of simple reform. The twenty- first century requires profound changes that will be possible only if the Organization is truly recast.” (A/60/PV.6, p. 17)
As painful as it is to acknowledge, that statement remains relevant. The United Nations has not been able to fulfil its founding purpose, and we now face much more serious challenges.
The United Nations has not managed to overcome the unilateralism of countries that, by replicating a colonial and imperial rationale, seek to assert themselves over and above the principles enshrined in this Organization’s founding Charter. The solution to the new and complex challenges facing humankind today cannot be achieved without consolidating inclusive multilateralism, the democratization of international relations and a genuine multipolar system.
Today we see how many agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system fail to fulfil their mandates and end up being exploited by the interests of the United States of America and its allies. We must reform the Organization to make it a democratic institution in which all Members have a voice and participate in decision-making on equal terms.
It is crucial to return to the practice of consensus, including within this General Assembly, which requires ending the zero-sum mentality and. instead, promoting a win-win vision that allows us to effectively address collective interests through cooperation, tolerance and understanding. It is equally necessary to move forward with the reform of the Security Council to correct historical imbalances and provide greater representation to our mother Africa in that important organ.
The United Nations cannot continue to operate as it is. How many resolutions must this General Assembly adopt to put an end once and for all to the criminal blockade against our sister Cuba? How many more resolutions must this General Assembly or the Security Council itself, the decisions of which are legally binding, adopt for the rights of Palestine to be truly respected as a free and independent State?
We wonder how many more summits it will take for us to realize that the commitments we have made, particularly in the area of development, have not been fulfilled? How much more time must pass for us to realize that, under the current system, it is impossible to achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves? Since the year 2000. when we agreed on the now defunct Millennium Development Goals, no less than 30 summits have been convened by the United Nations.
It is crucial to move forward without further delay regarding the reform of the international financial architecture, including the governance and decision-making methods of the Bretton Woods institutions, which serve the interests of a minority of wealthy countries, which also politicize them to exert pressure and domination over sovereign nations. The restructuring of the United Nations involves settling the historical debt of decolonization. Our peoples were victims of the crimes of colonization and slavery. A just future is possible only if reparations are made for the recognition, justice and development of historically affected populations.
We also reiterate our strong support for Argentina. Mauritius and the Comoros in their sovereignty disputes over the Falkland Islands, the Chagos archipelago and Mayotte island, respectively, as well as for the heroic brotherly peoples of Palestine. Puerto Rico and Western Sahara, with whom we firmly stand in their just claim for their inalienable right to self-determination and the realization of their legitimate national aspirations.
In the past few hours, very worrisome events have taken place. The Government of the United States of America, believing itself to be sovereign over our continent under the pretext of the illegal Monroe Doctrine, has once again intervened in a territorial dispute over our territory of Guay ana Esequiba. which has lasted for more than 200 years. The origin of that dispute lies in the dispossession of our territory by the British Empire during the height of its violence in the nineteenth century. The imperialist aggression was
imposed on us by the Powers of the time in 1899 under false pretences.
Today the Government of the United States of America seeks to appropriate our oil resources through the ExxonMobil company, which has incorporated the Government of Guyana into its ranks. Guyana is granting oil concessions in undelimited maritime territory, in complete violation of international law. It is not possible to utilize a disputed territory unilaterally, but the Co-operative Republic of Guyana persists in its illegal conduct. We condemn the fact that the Government of the United States of America intends to militarize the situation. The Southern Command seeks to establish a military base in the contested territory, with the aim of creating a launching pad for its aggression against Venezuela and entrenching the plunder of our energy resources.
Two days ago. the National Assembly of Venezuela unanimously decided to call on our people to participate in a consultative referendum to reaffirm the defence of our sovereign territory in the face of the aggression of the American empire, which seeks to lead us into a war over natural resources. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace, but also its resolute determination to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The protection of cyberspace, the fight against cybercrime, the regulation of new information technologies, social media and artificial intelligence must become a strategic priority for the United Nations. If we truly advocate for the defence of human rights and democratic principles, we must promote fair and equitable regulation that does not allow the focus of those new tools to be for the interests and control of a few. Neither can we accept the use of those new technologies to destabilize legitimate Governments and destroy social harmony and peace.
In that regard, our country has serious and legitimate concerns given the destabilization, espionage, sabotage and cyberattacks that have been carried out in recent years against the banking sector, the electrical supply, the oil industry and national health-care systems.
In order to reclaim the founding spirit of the United Nations, hate speech and practices must be mitigated, and the attempts by some sectors to promote racist, discriminatory and xenophobic trends must be unequivocally rejected. Those trends seek to revive and even glorify ideologies that we thought were overcome, such as fascism. Nazism. neo-Nazism. white supremacism and nationalist radicalism.
While such phenomena have their main manifestations in Europe and the United States of America, our own region of Latin America and the Caribbean has not been exempt from such events. Fifty years ago. a just man. who dared to speak great truths from this very rostrum and called on us to work for a fairer international economic order, the martyr President Salvador Allende, was assassinated by fascists acting on behalf of transnational capital interests.
In more recent times, political extremism and the culture of hatred driven by similar interests instigated the attack on our Head of State and Government in 2018. as well as the assassination attempt on our colleague Mrs. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Vice-President of the Argentine Republic. Added to that is the attempt to disregard the democratic will of the Brazilian people at the beginning of this year and the recent developments in the sister Republic of Ecuador.
Using double standards, those who claim to defend freedoms become persecutors. Those who claim to defend democracy activate mechanisms of political persecution to reverse democratic processes or to restrict the freedom of expression, as in the case of Julian Assange, who remains a political target of those who cannot forgive him for revealing the true nature of imperialist interventionism.
We also condemn the persecution of diplomats, in clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, as in the case of our diplomat Alex Saab, who was illegally kidnapped by the Government of the United States of America. We demand his immediate release. That kind of persecution jeopardizes the security and integrity of all diplomatic envoys worldwide, regardless of their nationality. From the United Nations, we call on all countries to condemn that nefarious practice.
The current crisis of global leadership, including within this very Organization, coupled with the polarization prevailing in our world, exacerbates the current global crisis and threatens to entrench a Cold War mentality in international relations, based on confrontation, deepening divisions and the imposition of competing visions and agendas.
An example of that is the irresponsible provocations by the most powerful military force in the world, which, by dividing the world into power blocs, exacerbates
conflicts, pushing humankind into an arms race, which can lead only to the destruction of life on our planet. Let us count how much has been invested in armaments and how much in promoting spaces for diplomacy and dialogue, and we will sadly realize how many opportunities to save lives we have lost.
We express our concern at the rapid increase in military spending in recent months, reaching levels unseen in the past generations. That is about a new and alarming arms race that diverts resources that would be of greater benefit to humankind if they were used not only in financing development agendas or fighting poverty, but also in addressing the food crisis and the climate crisis that currently threatens our world.
We support the proposal of Colombian President Gustavo Petro Urrego to convene a world conference for peace in Ukraine and in Palestine. We call for addressing those issues in a balanced and cautious manner, reducing tensions and promoting confidence-building measures, not only in Eastern Europe, but also on the Korean peninsula and in Western Asia. We are confident that that will create a conducive environment for the success of diplomatic efforts for peace.
Venezuela is committed to the Declaration of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. We actively participate in the reconciliation process in the Republic of Colombia, convinced that the achievement of complete peace for our sisters and brothers will lead to strengthening regional peace.
The world still faces a major pandemic — the pernicious effects of an aggressive policy, manifested in the illegal imposition of unilateral coercive measures against a third of humankind. The so-called sanctions, in violation of all norms of international law and the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, represent mass violations of human rights for millions of people. Such measures are applied precisely by those who then claim to present themselves as champions of human rights.
They are also a deliberate attack on the right to development of entire peoples and an impediment to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which we have discussed to such an extent throughout this week. Those illegal measures have created a crisis in the system of international relations, and we therefore demand their complete, immediate and unconditional lifting.
It is unacceptable to our peoples, who daily resist the effects of a criminal blockade policy, for the General Assembly to seek to disregard such a disgrace in its policy documents. We therefore cannot endorse any declaration that ignores or omits that pivotal issue for the lives and existence of hundreds of millions of human beings. How much our countries could improve the quality of life for our peoples, eradicate hunger or cure diseases if we were allowed to fully develop our capacities, based on our potential.
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been a victim of a cruel policy of aggression and siege. More than 930 unilateral coercive measures have been imposed on our country by the Government of the United States of America and its accomplices. Those illegal measures have caused great pain and suffering for our people, with economic losses amounting to more than $232 billion, a steep drop in our gross domestic product and the confiscation of billions of dollars in sovereign resources held in the international financial system, including 31 tons of gold seized by the British Government in the Bank of England.
Not even the coronavirus disease pandemic was reason enough to lift those illegal measures. Today we face a new wave of crueller and more destructive unilateral coercive measures, which affect access to vaccines, food and other basic goods and services, turning such atrocities into true crimes against humanity.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has recommended the suspension and lifting of all unilateral coercive measures harmful to human rights. Venezuela demands a complete, immediate and unconditional end to all illegal policies of sanctions and economic, commercial and financial blockades imposed on Venezuela. Cuba. Eritrea. Iran. Nicaragua. Syria. Zimbabwe and other sister nations, which have successfully weathered those imperial policies through determination and commitment.
In that context, we thank all the peoples of the world and the many sister nations that have called for the lifting of sanctions from platforms such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Agreement, the Caribbean Community and the Southern African Development Community, as well as every country in this very Hall that has demanded that the sanctions be removed. That demonstrates that Venezuela has never been alone.
Without the obstacle of unilateral coercive measures. Venezuela is prepared to be part of the solution to the crisis, particularly in the areas of food security and energy. We propose the establishment of a zone free of unilateral coercive measures, in which we can conduct our financial transactions and interbank payments, enabling us to ensure direct investments and legal trade among our nations without risk or arbitrary or punitive impediments from Western Powers. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties and aggression, our Government’s commitment to eradicating poverty, achieving social justice and fully enjoying our human rights, as well as to the sister peoples of our Latin America and the world, is unwavering.
Despite the attacks, aggression, siege and looting resulting from unilateral coercive measures, the Venezuelan economy has begun a process of recovery, with projected growth figures far surpassing those of other countries of our region, as highlighted by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and other specialized organizations. Such results, achieved through our own efforts, have made us a regional benchmark for economic growth, while never neglecting the essential — protecting our people through social investment.
We are facing an existential climate catastrophe for millions of people, especially our brothers and sisters from small island developing States, in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. The effects of years of climate injustice, marked by unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, have accelerated in recent years. Libya has been one of the most recent victims of the impacts of climate change, also affecting our country, which has experienced floods and record temperatures in recent months.
In renewing our firm commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, we stress the need to ensure adequate funding for the loss and damage fund, always bearing in mind the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities and equity. We know that the resources exist, where they are and who has them. As Commander Chavez Frias said 14 years ago. let us not change the climate; let us change the system.
Given the economic and financial crisis that particularly affects developing countries, we need a new model for the mechanisms of global governance, where the global South has fair access to international financing. Until there is a genuine and effective reform of the multilateral system in the financial sphere, the Sustainable Development Goals, the focus of this session, are doomed not to be met.
Debt is a crucial issue for developing countries, and there is little hope that things will improve soon if the current system is not radically changed. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and Western credit institutions in general, while charging their friends low interest rates, burden developing countries with unpayable interest rates, which some experts have termed criminal financial apartheid. That neocolonialist system of plunder and financial dependence must be rooted out.
Among the major challenges facing humankind today, in the context of that global systemic crisis, in which this Organization has a fundamental role to play, is the phenomenon of international migration. We cannot allow migrants to be stigmatized and criminalized. President Nicolas Maduro Moros requests the support of the United Nations to hold an international conference in Venezuela, without any exclusion, to reach joint agreements and commitments to address the phenomenon of migratory flows from a comprehensive and humanistic perspective — a genuine international commitment to ensuring the rights of migrants to citizenship, identity, dignified work, social security and respect for their dignity.
We. the free peoples, are building a new world order. That new multipolar and multi-centric world of peace and economic prosperity, free from hegemony, anchored in the United Nations Charter, must be based on the values of genuine multilateralism, international cooperation and solidarity. In that regard, we acknowledge the contribution of the Brazil. Russia. India. China and South Africa (BRICS) bloc, which Venezuela aspires to join, to the current global geopolitics and the democratization of international relations. We also applaud the efforts of countries that contribute to dialogue, understanding, global peace and common progress, such as the People’s Republic of China. Venezuela supports its Global Development Initiative, its Global Security Initiative and its Global Civilization Initiative. It is through common efforts, in a spirit of complementarity, solidarity and cooperation, that we can change the course towards a common destiny of prosperity and stability for all humankind.
It is up to us to save the system of international relations from the threats that currently loom over it. It is up to us to preserve the principles of the United Nations Charter, on which international law is based. It is up to us to make our people’s aspirations for peace and security, sustainable development and human rights a reality.
Cognizant of that historic task. Venezuela, together with a group of countries from various regions of the world, undertook the task of building a platform from which all responsible members of the international community can be mobilized to preserve, promote and strengthen the founding treaty of our Organization. Thus, two years ago. the Group of Friends in Defence of the Charter of the United Nations was born, which has now positioned itself as a key actor in various intergovernmental processes taking place in this multilateral forum.
As our President. Nicolas Maduro Moros, said a few weeks ago at the BRICS Plus summit:
“Definitely, unity is what makes strength, and that united strength promotes a new global relationship paradigm and promotes a new twenty-first-century global geopolitics”.
Let us work together so that the United Nations also becomes an organization that meets the needs of peoples for this century.
In recent years, much has been said about Venezuela. Much disinformation has been spread through major media corporations and social networks about the reality of what is happening in our country. Many attempts have been made to disseminate a media campaign through so-called fake news, with the aim of deploying a humanitarian intervention in our country, in flagrant violation of our sovereignty. However, thanks to Bolivarian peace diplomacy, under the leadership of President Nicolas Maduro Moros, the truth about Venezuela has always prevailed and has always resonated strongly within the United Nations.
Today the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is in complete peace and tranquillity. Dialogue has been an ongoing policy of the Bolivarian revolution and has prevailed as the only option on the table, without foreign interference or tutelage of any kind, and within the framework of our national Constitution, to settle differences that exist in our nation and that are characteristic of the robust Venezuelan democratic system. We have been, are and always will always a country open to. and ready for. respectful debate among equals.
Those who tried to subjugate our people through economic terrorism, hunger, disease, foreign invasion, the thwarted assassination of our Head of State and Government and the imposition of fictitious entities to promote a regime change agenda and facilitate the theft of national assets have failed miserably. Dozens of countries took a senseless and foolish position, which, unfortunately, rendered them ridiculous in the eyes of history. Today the vast majority of those countries, with few exceptions, have overcome the awkward episode and have returned to the path of diplomacy and understanding among equals.
In Venezuela, we continue to stand tall, fighting alongside our people, in perfect harmony with all sectors of the country and heading towards a new electoral process, which, despite the campaigns that have already been launched to discredit it or question it. we are sure will result in new victories of the people, based on the sovereign will of the Venezuelan people. Once again, in 2024. we will go to the polling stations in a civic and collective manner to reiterate support for the Bolivarian revolutionary socialist movement initiated by the eternal Commander Hugo Chavez Frias.
Allow me to conclude by reiterating that Venezuela remains determined to be the master of its destiny and to exercise its sovereignty, resolved to continue to consolidate its independence and its right to live in peace. Our nation and our people will never yield to pressure, blackmail or threats and will remain free. Today we find ourselves in high spirits and with a heightened awareness and unity to continue to move forward in building a homeland of social justice, solidarity and inclusion, inspired by our liberators and the enduring will of a people who does not surrender and will never surrender, determined to continue to triumph in revolution.