Burundi

It is for me a signal honour to take the floor today before the Assembly at its fifty-sixth session. On behalf of my delegation, I wish at the outset to express my sincere congratulations to Mr. Han Seung-soo of the Republic of Korea on his well-deserved election to the presidency of this body of the United Nations. We believe that his vast experience, his dynamism and his competence guarantee the success of our work at this session. He can count on my delegation to be fully available to him. We will spare no effort to facilitate his work so that his noble mission can be carried out to the fullest. Allow me next to pay sincere tribute to Mr. Harri Holkeri for the way he acquitted himself in his term of office leading the work at our last session. We all appreciated his many talents as a statesman and seasoned diplomat, which in large measure contributed to bringing the work of that session to a successful conclusion. I should like, finally, to avail myself of this felicitous opportunity to convey the greetings of the Burundian people to Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary- General of the United Nations, and to express to him once again my heartfelt congratulations on his unanimous re-election to the helm of the Organization for a second term of office. At the same time, I address to him my warmest congratulations on the Nobel Peace Prize just awarded to him and to the United Nations itself. This token of renewed confidence is a striking expression of recognition of the United Nations family’s tireless efforts in every corner of the world for the cause of peace and development. My Government is particularly obliged to the Secretary-General for his personal commitment to helping the people of Burundi emerge from crisis so that through the ongoing peace process they can resume the path of peace, reconciliation and development. All of us were shocked and horrified by the murderous attacks perpetrated here in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania on 11 September 2001. My Government firmly condemned those odious terrorist acts, characterized by indescribable barbarity. The President of the Republic of Burundi, Mr. Pierre Buyoya, dispatched a message of condolence to 22 President George W. Bush immediately after the tragic events had been reported. The events of 11 September 2001 mark a new global challenge for the United Nations in its resolute fight against terrorism and for maintaining international peace and security. The Government of the Republic of Burundi fully subscribes to the relevant resolutions of the United Nations on the fight against terrorism. Committed to the ideals of peace and security the world over, it intends to make its own contribution to building a world from which international terrorism will be banished. Towards that end, Burundi endorses the various international conventions against international terrorism. It has already ratified three of them, and this morning we signed the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, adopted in 1999. The necessary steps will be taken to sign and ratify the remaining conventions. Burundi hails the adoption by the Security Council of its resolution 1373 (2001) and stands committed to examining in depth its scope of application on our own national territory. In light of the plethora of sophisticated juridical provisions — extant for nearly 30 years now — to fight against this scourge, a profound awareness and far more sustained collective action today is imperative. The Government of Burundi agrees with the content of Security Council resolution 1373 (2001), which emphasizes: “... the need to enhance coordination of efforts on national, subregional, regional and international levels in order to strengthen a global response to this serious challenge and threat to international security” (S/RES/1373 (2001), op. para. 4). That global response obviously, and as a matter of priority, is an imperative for us, the Members of this institution, the United Nations, on which the Charter explicitly confers the role of maintaining international peace and security. As to the situation in my own country, Burundi, the present session is being held at a time when the peace process has just completed a particularly decisive phase. Indeed the Arusha Peace Accord, which Burundi signed on 28 August 2000, has begun to be resolutely implemented. May I be allowed to bring to the attention of the distinguished representatives gathered here certain major developments worthy of being emphasized. After a number of consultations held among the signatories to the Peace Agreement, and after the Facilitation and Regional Initiative, the matter of the transitional leadership for the next three years has been settled. On 1 November 2001, the solemn inauguration of the President and Vice- President of the Republic and the transitional Government was held. I wish to make a point of expressing the very sincere thanks of the Government and people of Burundi to the heads of State and other eminent personalities that elevated those ceremonies by their presence. At this important stage in the peace process, I should like to take care of a pleasant duty, namely that of paying tribute first to the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who was the first to play a mediator’s role in the inter-Burundian peace process in an extremely delicate setting. Secondly, I wish to make it a point solemnly to hail the courage, vision, perseverance and tact that His Excellency the former President Nelson Mandela displayed throughout the inter-Burundian negotiations so as to help the Burundian people regain the path to peace, reconciliation and democracy. From this lofty tribune I wish to express to him our feelings of profound gratitude. We feel the same sentiments of sincere appreciation to the United Nations and all countries and personalities that have worked from near or afar to see to the signing of the Peace Accord, people who continue to invest of themselves in order to see the Agreement fully implemented. It is thanks to all these pooled efforts that some glimmer of hope is perceptible in the Burundian political skies. The new Government has set itself as a priority task halting the war, rehabilitating victims and restoring the country in socio-economic terms. Notwithstanding, however, our firm determination to move forward, the programme continues to encounter enormous challenges, challenges such as the persistence of war and the exacerbation of poverty. With regard to the war, we must deplore the fact that armed groups continue to sow grief and desolation in various parts of the country, pursuing a nameless war, a war that is killing innocents in their homes, in the camps for displaced persons and along the roads, a war that favours pillaging and rape and that has destroyed social and economic infrastructures built at great cost. We denounce and condemn in the strongest terms this new type of violence, namely the seizing of school 23 children by rebel elements to press-gang them into guerrilla forces or to have them do their dirty deeds. In this context the priority of all priorities for my country thus remains the quest for a ceasefire, which would make it possible to begin the major reforms envisaged during the transitional period. Notwithstanding numerous initiatives directed by our Government towards the armed groups — the Conseil national pour la défense de démocratie-Forces pour la défense de démocratie (CNDD-FDD), and the Forces nationales de la libération (FNL) — inviting them to subscribe to the peace process and join in negotiations, as yet there is no sign of a firm, formal commitment on their part that would allow us to move forward in that direction. Nonetheless we feel that these armed groups no longer have political claims that they can truly brandish, given the fact that the Arusha Accords envisage their participation in transitional institutions, their recruitment into defence and security corps and their social and professional reintegration if they so desire. While thanking our partners for the variety of initiatives already launched to bring the Burundian rebels into the peace process, I should like once again to call upon all the countries members of the Regional Initiative, the Facilitation in the inter-Burundian negotiations, the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations, and the rest of the international community to continue to bring pressure to bear upon these armed groups so that they will lay down their arms and rejoin other Burundians around the negotiating table without further delay, in conformity with Security Council resolution 1375 (2001), adopted on 29 October 2001, and other resolutions of the Council. We particularly ask for the invaluable help of the countries in our subregion, all of them co- signatories to the Arusha Accords, so that all the necessary steps will be taken to stop these armed groups from attacking Burundi. Notwithstanding these various initiatives, if the rebels continue obstinately to refuse dialogue, my Government will call upon the international community and all parties signatories to the Arusha Accords to do all they possibly can to neutralize and disarm the FDD and FNL and, at the same time, the other negative forces allied to them. The continuing deterioration in the socio- economic situation in my country constitutes yet another source of major concern for the new government team. Indeed, eight years of the worst kind of fratricidal war, together with three years of unjustified economic embargo, from July 1996 to January 1999, have plunged the country into a state of extreme poverty which will be difficult to overcome. What is more, international cooperation since 1996 has, as it were, been frozen, thus confronting us with a lack of foreign exchange and a major erosion of our monetary situation. Furthermore, in the year 2000, economic activity continued to suffer from the heavy blows of drought, bringing about negative growth for two consecutive years in an essentially agricultural country. Over the same crisis period, the situation with regard to health has significantly deteriorated. Notwithstanding efforts exerted by my Government, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases such as those linked to malnutrition, continue to rage among our people, already weakened by the horrors of war. The major performance indicators for education reflect a net decline. Access to drinking water and general hygiene conditions have seriously deteriorated at a time when many of our dwellings and the basic social infrastructure, such as schools and health centres, have been destroyed by war. Faced with a particularly trying situation, Burundi looks for a great deal from the United Nations and its agencies, its various bilateral partners, international organizations and non-governmental organizations to help our economy to recover, in the name of international solidarity and for the benefit of our people plunged today into a state of unprecedented poverty. I thus urgently appeal to my country’s various partners to make tangible the reality of the promises made at the Pledging Conference for Burundi, held in Paris from 11 to 12 December 2000, for the purpose of rebuilding and helping the recovery of our economy. A round table following through on these commitments made at that Conference is to be organized in Geneva in December 2001. The Government of Burundi counts on the active participation of our partners, particularly in making available the aid promised. On the international scene the delegation of Burundi hopes to see the implementation of the provisions of the Millennium Declaration adopted last year by the heads of State and Government of Member States of the Organization. It particularly supports the reforming of the Security Council and welcomes the fact that this matter already enjoys the broad-ranging backing of the Members of the United Nations. It 24 regrets nonetheless that discussions on the modalities that the reform is to take are at an impasse, and this, eight years after the establishment of the Working Group under General Assembly resolution 48/26, adopted on 3 December 1993. My delegation, notwithstanding all that, remains confident that the work of the Working Group concerned will be quickly concluded, the results being of the keenest interest in terms, once again, of galvanizing this major body. Burundi wishes to draw the attention of the Assembly to the problems that have grown more and more serious and alarming because of the accumulation and excessive and destabilizing proliferation of small arms and light weapons and the arms race. In this connection it is ever more necessary and urgent to develop and effectively implement specific disarmament programmes. We welcome the adoption of the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects at the United Nations Conference, held from 9 to 20 July 2001, here in New York. Our surest hope is for that Programme to be effectively implemented to relieve the suffering of people in the regions where this kind of weaponry continues to take the lives of thousands of innocent people. What is more, the Government of Burundi remains devoted to the goal of the total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, whether they be nuclear, chemical or biological. To have peace and security prevail required adopting a working strategy for conflict prevention, with a view to understanding fully the motives and dynamics of confrontation and to curing this evil at its root. It also means resolutely attacking the structural causes that drive people to revolt, namely ignorance, want, disease, extreme poverty, underdevelopment and its corollaries, and inequities in the distribution of wealth. There is a chain directly linking desperate acts and the fanaticism bred of frustration and humiliation. Thus, the imbalance between the North and the South is unlikely to promote harmonious equilibrium. Indeed, on the basis of available statistics, more than one third of mankind lives in absolute poverty. This is liable to grow worse if the rich countries continue not to shoulder their responsibilities in terms of aid for development. Improving the living conditions of people contributes, through its induced effects, to reducing other anachronistic factors growing out of poverty, such as the child labour ban by International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. My delegation continues to hope that the International Conference on Financing for Development, scheduled for March 2002 in Mexico, will adopt strategies to reduce these inequalities between and within countries. It expects from that Conference a definition of the strategic objectives in terms of consistent policies for integrating developing countries into the global economy, whatever their level of development. As to globalization, many indeed are those that denounce its perverse effects, as witness the clashes in Seattle and Genoa. In this context, we are duty-bound to see to it that globalization becomes a positive force for all mankind in the best interests of all. Yet another issue of concern to my delegation continues to be that of human dignity, which cannot be conceived as divorced from respect for human rights, including that of self-determination. Towards that end, the delegation of Burundi continues to hope that the Second International Decade for the Elimination of Colonialism, from 2001 to 2010, proclaimed by the Assembly by its resolution 55/146 of 8 December 2000, will help to eradicate its last bastions. It is impossible to talk about international concord without calling to mind the right to justice, genuine justice and real fairness in the settlement of disputes. On that score my delegation would like yet again to reiterate the importance the Government of Burundi ascribes to the International Criminal Court, regarding which preliminary steps towards ratification are being taken. Indeed, my delegation shares the same conviction as the Secretary-General of our Organization, Mr. Kofi Annan, when he affirms that we must build a world where order and justice reign in terms of respect for the primacy of law in international relations. The challenges confronting the international community are multiple and take many forms. The efficacy of the Organization will be judged by its ability to keep cohesion intact and to promote people’s holistic development, so as to fashion a world where all can realize their potential and where we all espouse peace, fraternity and equality. We are all called upon to strive towards the realization of that noble cause.