On behalf of the
Senegalese delegation, I would like to wish you, Sir, all
the best as President at the sixty-eighth session of the
General Assembly.
By focusing its debate on the post-2015
development agenda, the General Assembly reminds us
that there is not much time left before attainment of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is finally
evaluated. Despite progress after more than a decade
of implementing the MDGs, the magnitude of the
challenges is still overwhelming. In terms of access to
food, housing, education and healthcare, the daily lives of
nearly one billion people have barely improved. Women
continue to die in childbirth. Inequalities persist within
and between countries. The economic crisis continues
and environmental degradation is worsening. We need
to take concrete and resolute actions to transform our
collective ambitions into reality.
In the quest for sustainable development, a
conference on climate change in 2015 in Paris will
provides us with another opportunity to pull ourselves
together, by reversing the negative effects of climate
change on Earth, our common habitat.
Addressing the challenges of sustainable
development and building the future we want, in
the spirit of the Rio+20 Conference, require a more
sustained effort than the fight against poverty.
We should invest more in education, as the Global
Partnership for Education expects of us. We need to
modernize agriculture, make electricity accessible to
everybody and develop infrastructure to foster trade and
investment. These are the pillars that underpin growth
and prosperity. It is precisely this vision that the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) seeks
to promote through its Programme for Infrastructure
Development in Africa (PIDA).
As part of that programme, 51 priority projects
have been identified and established throughout the
continent. Overall, they will cost $68 billion between
2012 and 2020. As Chairperson of NEPAD’s Orientation
Committee, I am pleased with the consensus that our
partners have built around PIDA, namely, the Group of
Twenty and the Group of Eight (G-8) and with Brazil,
Russia, India and China.
I also welcome the very strong signal which the
G-8, meeting in June in Lough Erne, sent concerning
the need for a concerted campaign against tax evasion
and other fraudulent practices affecting our economies.
We must now push ahead and launch the mechanisms
we have agreed on for improving transparency in
international transactions, including the mining
industry. This is the best way to support Africa’s efforts
to mobilize domestic resources in order to finance its
development.
Similarly, Senegal calls for the reform of
international economic and financial governance,
notably the terms for accessing credit and obtaining
financing for economic and social development
projects. Let us not pave the road to the future with
the instruments of the past. While plummeting official
development assistance no longer meets Africa’s needs,
the trend towards progress should lead us to explore
other innovative financing mechanisms available to
our countries. Africa is no longer a zone of turmoil
and humanitarian emergencies. Africa has become an
emerging centre of opportunities and investments for
innovative and mutually beneficial partnerships.
The world has changed; Africa has also changed.
Let us therefore change our paradigms and visions; let
us change the way we look at the continent.
Change is also needed for the reform of the Security
Council. The Council’s legitimacy is not derived
only from its status as the guarantor of the collective
security system; it is also and especially derived from
the representativeness that justifies its action in the
name of and on behalf of all Member States.
This time last year, Mali was doubly affected by
a coup and a terrorist attack reminiscent of a bygone
age. They were a source of great concern for us.
Senegal, which remains active within United Nations
Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission
in Mali, welcomes the restoration of the territorial
integrity and constitutional legality of Mali. We
congratulate the people of Mali and their political
leaders for that happy outcome. We strongly support
the national reconciliation efforts being made by the
Government in the spirit of the Ouagadougou Political
Agreement.
Today, while the armed groups have been
defeated, the terrorist threat to the Sahel has not yet
been definitively ended. It is only through ongoing,
coordinated and sufficiently deterrent action that we
will be able to address the emerging security challenges
on the African continent. It is urgent to make operational
the African rapid response force, proposed at the last
African Union summit.
In Guinea-Bissau, Senegal is supporting the
Government’s efforts to successfully carry out the
electoral process. We urge our partner countries and
institutions to pursue their support for the definitive
resolution of the Guinea-Bissau crisis through the
country’s economic recovery, the crucial reform of
the defence and security sector, and the fight against
illicit drug trafficking. We hope that similar attention
will be paid to the Central African Republic and to the
Democratic Republic of the Congo in the legitimate
aspiration to peace, stability and the preservation
of territorial integrity. Throughout Africa, we are
committed to upholding respect for the African Union
principles against anti-constitutional changes of
Government, regardless of the process used.
In regard to the Middle East, Senegal expresses its
deep concern over the untold suffering of the Syrian
population. We urge the Syrian Government to exercise
restraint and to comply with the Chemical Weapons
Convention in the control and destruction of its arsenal
of chemical weapons.
In its capacity as Chairman of the Committee on
the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian
People, Senegal is following the resumption of the
Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It is a courageous
and responsible act because it translates the vision of
two States, Israel and Palestine, living within secure
and internationally recognized borders. We therefore
call for a halt to acts likely to affect that perspective,
notably the ongoing establishment of settlements on
Palestinian land by the Israeli Government.
On 24 September, Senegal joined other countries
in launching the international campaign for the fight
against sexual violence in armed conflict. Sexual
violence in conflict is an act of unbearable cruelty for
the victims and their families. It is a war crime and
a serious violation of human dignity and universal
conscience. In the name of our common humanity, it
is time to act to prevent and stop such horrors. It is
time to act so that victims will no longer feel alone in
their suffering, which destroys the very foundations of
society. It is time to act so that the perpetrators and
their accomplices in those crimes are tracked down
everywhere, prosecuted and punished in a manner
commensurate with the atrocities of their crimes.