Paraguay

Today our continent is experiencing a time of great opportunity, yet it is also beset by serious threats, including a falling standard of living for the masses, radical adjustment measures, the globalization of financial capital and a lack of access to markets in developed countries - all of which have not contributed to generating sustained economic growth, and even less to reducing poverty and inequality. The great challenge before us is to redouble our efforts daily to eradicate this cancer by strengthening public institutions and forging a new social ethic, as well as a new international order with multilateral bodies that truly contribute to peace throughout the world, human development and the sharp reduction of poverty, social inequalities and the exploitation of man by man and nation by nation. The United Nations, this noble institution, must not lose sight of its historic memory, its raison díÍtre and the objectives that led to its creation, if its efforts currently under way are to result in healthy attitude changes and a greater political capacity to institute regulatory frameworks that can put a stop to economic Darwinism and conflicts throughout the world. Today, more than ever, the possibility of building a more just world, free from such painful contradictions, depends upon the inclusion of the less developed countries in the globalized economy and the political will to overcome pure market forces. The industrialization of the United States, Germany and Japan in the nineteenth century could be described in similar terms, as could their emergence from their relative backwardness compared with Great Britain, the pioneer nation of that time. The failure throughout almost all of Latin America to overcome its backwardness, poverty and dependency is frequently due to selfishness and historic impediments to advantageous connections between our national economies and the worldwide market. If this seems to be a recurrent condition, then we should constantly keep in mind the message of the Consensus of Brazil: we must govern globalization if we are to turn it into a source of opportunity for all, if globalization is not to be what it has become ó a force synonymous with marginalization, exclusion or conquest, dependent on markets and cheap labour, which leads to a form of semi-slavery in many countries. I wish to propose to the General Assembly joint action that can be taken in four areas. First, social investment throughout the continent must reach levels that will make it possible to attain the Millennium Development Goals. To that end, the poorest countries, which clearly cannot obtain such levels of investment, could have recourse to a counterpart fund for social equity with soft financing coming from international organizations and unilateral contributions. Secondly, we realize that not everything can be solved with money. Money, when it is misused, weakens and corrupts. Accordingly, we must also commit ourselves to carrying out the necessary institutional reforms to ensure the proper formulation, implementation and assessment of social policies. And we must be ready to ensure that access to the aforementioned funds will lead to wide-reaching innovations in the management of public administration, demonstrable by means of indices on efficiency and transparency. Thirdly, international organizations must increasingly realize that economic and social reform must flow from the experience and wisdom of those countries themselves, with their own formulas that are in keeping with their cultural standards and that involve all the representatives of civil society. Fourthly, with growing levels of poverty it is impossible to meet the burden of external debt servicing. There must be a new, realistic policy that will put forward rational terms on future payment of debt, terms that will make it possible to lay the basis for sustained and equitable development, terms which allow us to meet our commitments without pushing our 19 people into irreversible poverty. It is important to place the needs of the poor and dispossessed over the repayment of the debt. That is why we must imaginatively and skilfully devise alternative financing mechanisms for the fight against hunger and extreme poverty. That task requires greater intellectual resources and technical expertise and a new and fair financial architecture, not the accumulation of wealth, worship of the market or the promotion of globalization that does not allow the just distribution of the wealth produced by all of us throughout the world. We need a new financial architecture that enables us to reduce poverty and to work for the stability of the worldís emerging democracies. One year ago, my Government inherited a situation characterized by economic stagnation, recession and spreading poverty and by weak and unreliable public institutions, resulting in timid social policies that could hardly tackle the Millennium Development Goals. Two major challenges face my country. First, the indigenous population - which in Paraguay is not large, totalling no more than 100,000 - lacks access to its most vital needs and faces the disintegration of much of its natural lands owing to the historical rule of indolent landowners, and most recently to a type of agrarian modernization that was insensitive to human dignity. Secondly, the unconscionable face of extreme poverty in my country is that of the peasants. Today, two out of three Paraguayans continue to belong to that social sector. Likewise, one of the most significant causes of that critical national problem is the very unjust distribution of land that has existed for many years in Paraguay. That is not only an urgent and very shocking social problem, but also a political and ethical problem that is manifested in a repeated and increasingly grave struggle for land. In the light of that situation, we propose a State with social, fiscal and environmental responsibility: social responsibility in the sense of guaranteeing health, education and basic services and avoiding concentration of profit and wealth; fiscal responsibility to avoid a deficit and chronic indebtedness, which ultimately punish social investment; and environmental responsibility to preserve natureís reproductive capacity and to ensure for future generations the right to enjoy resources not created by man. We also propose the implementation of a national anti-poverty strategy that will channel the domestic and external resources necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The national Government has defined as a top budget priority an increase in social spending to resolutely address the problems of poverty, destitution and inequality, with the objective of reaching 40 per cent of the central administrationís total public spending for next year, 2005. For development, cooperation is not enough; there must also be access to markets on preferential terms, liberalization of the agricultural product markets and special treatment for the landlocked least developed countries, such as Paraguay, punished by history and geopolitics, which make our foreign trade more expensive and significantly reduce our competitiveness. There needs to be a compensatory framework to place my country, Paraguay, on an equal footing with other nations in terms of international trade. In the international context, we join in the appeal for a more just and humanized international order in which the least developed are not always condemned to discrimination, indifference and backwardness. With that objective, we must move towards an inclusive multilateralism that will offer equality, rationality and justice in international relations. Similarly ó and in keeping with Paraguayís position on Taiwan in the United Nations ó we once more reaffirm our conviction that the brotherly Republic of China, Taiwan, should become a full- fledged Member of the Organization, in accordance with the principle of universality and with norms of international law. Today we have heard more of the same things we hear every year in the Assembly. But we hope that this time we can return to our countries and share with our peoples the news that finally, in New York, the worldís leaders have taken important steps forward in alleviating - even if just a little - the pain, sorrow and hopelessness of the millions of human beings who live on Earth. I am confident that God will give us the wisdom and the strength necessary to lead our countries on the path of freedom, peace, development and justice.