On behalf of the people and Government of Honduras,
I wish to recognize Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki for his
leadership during the previous session. I also
congratulate President Joseph Deiss on his election to
the Assembly presidency and the Secretary-General,
Ban Ki-moon, on his wise leadership of our
Organization.
In this same house of the peoples of the United
Nations, at the world summit on the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), our President, Porfirio
Lobo Sosa, highlighted the faith that our country has in
this Organization and in its Charter for achieving a
world that is more peaceful, prosperous and fair (see
A/65/PV.3). As a founding Member of the United
Nations and a peace-loving country, we reaffirm our
obligations. As we have been working, ceaselessly and
together with many other Member States, since the
birth of the Organization, we will continue to work to
fully realize the ideals enshrined in the San Francisco
Charter.
Honduras — which is geographically small but
great of spirit and generous in its democratic and
peaceful vocation — has involved itself in the world,
basing itself on the principles of equal rights, self-
determination for peoples and non-interference in
internal affairs.
The imperative of promoting economic and social
progress for all nations moves us to acknowledge that
the MDGs have been a first step in the right direction.
We agree with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the
Millennium Goals are not easy, but they are achievable.
However, the struggle against poverty requires
additional efforts that recognize the fact that we have a
collective responsibility to protect and share what the
President of Honduras has called global common
goods, including solidarity.
Another global good should be the prudent
management of our economies. The financial crises
have proven that that responsibility does not fall just to
the developing countries. It is so important that,
according to the World Bank, the recent crises in food,
fuel and finances have sunk an additional 64 million
human beings into poverty. Such crises can make our
efforts to fight poverty more difficult or even
impossible.
The opening of trade and of financial systems is
another global good. Access to international markets is
as important as official development assistance itself,
although it does not replace it. We must add efforts to
enable foreign direct investment in our developing
nations; access to technology, in particular technology
having to do with medications; the reduction of
greenhouse gases; and the non-proliferation of nuclear
weapons.
The challenge of achieving the Millennium
Development Goals before 2015 in a manner as
responsible as possible lies with our Government.
Given the results already achieved and what remains to
be done, President Lobo Sosa has launched an appeal
to start talks as soon as possible on a new global
agreement that will guide our actions and goals after
2015.
We firmly believe that poverty is not only the
shortage of material goods, but also the lack of
opportunities. That is why we are committed to respect
for human dignity, the common good, support and
human solidarity. Those four principles are not just a
moral imperative; in the case of Honduras, they are a
national imperative.
In that regard, with broad consultation with civil
society, the political parties and other independent
sectors, we adopted a country vision and national plan
that sets out four focal points for achieving our
national goals, inspired by the Millennium
Development Goals: a Honduras without poverty,
educated and healthy, with robust social welfare
systems; a Honduras that is developing in democracy,
with security and without violence, with absolute
respect for human rights; a productive Honduras that
generates opportunities and decent jobs, that
sustainably exploits its resources and that reduces
environmental vulnerability; and a modern,
transparent, responsible, efficient and competitive
State, with fully independent branches of government.
The cohesion of our society, unity, reconciliation,
governance, coexistence and peace all depend on
achieving that. That is why we are engaged in building
10-54965 58
an inclusive society, since no country is so poor that it
cannot show solidarity with those that are even poorer.
Our first commitment is to helping people in
extreme poverty through the “Bono 10,000”
programme. Bono 10,000 is a credit programme that
will greatly strengthen family economics and,
furthermore, is conditional on steps to improve the
access of the most vulnerable Hondurans to education,
health care and nutrition through the broad
dissemination of the School Snack scheme and other
food security programmes.
We are strengthening the decentralization
processes and improving citizen participation in the
making, implementation, monitoring and assessment of
public policies. We are also addressing social
inequality by creating economic opportunities at the
local level.
Productive programmes, such as the United States
Millennium Challenge Corporation in Honduras, have
had a huge impact on the recipients, resulting in a very
significant increase in the income of the farmers
participating in the programme. With the same aim of
generating greater income for families, we have
launched a programme to finance microbusinesses and
small enterprises, thanks to the cooperation
programmes of the European Union, Japan and Taiwan,
as well as all those countries that are extending the
hand of solidarity to our people.
In all those programmes, women are a particular
target of our Government’s efforts because we know
that, along with the fight against poverty, we must
combat gender inequality.
While we work at the local and community
levels, we are also promoting private investment. The
purpose is to create decent jobs for more than 200,000
young people who join the labour market annually. The
Government of Honduras bases the successful
implementation of its social agenda on a social market
economy.
With those premises in mind, our Government
has drawn up a national programme to promote
investment for the period 2010 to 2014 in six main
sectors: industries generating more and better jobs,
agro-food and forestry production, clean generation of
energy, tourism development, infrastructure to support
manufacturing, and water and sanitation. We will
develop those programmes within the new framework
of the law on public-private partnerships, the law on
rural and marginal urban employment, a new law on
clean energy and the law on promoting and protecting
investments.
With such efforts, a new era is opening in
Honduras with the creation of conditions so that
private business can boost sustained economic growth
with social responsibility and the country is guided
towards prosperity and stability.
Honduras is ready to better address the challenges
of reducing its vulnerability to natural disasters and
climate change. The law on land management makes it
possible to utilize and protect the land properly, with
responsible management of the natural resources. At
the same time, we have launched a national risk
management system.
Efforts to improve the social situation and to
boost economic growth must be based on a legal and
institutional foundation. There is a strong link between
individual freedom and political stability with
economic growth and social justice. Higher rates of
economic growth that are sustainable over time also
help to create the social conditions for governance,
confidence and smaller political threats.
For 30 years, we Hondurans have strived to
develop our democratic institutions. The international
community has supported us throughout that process.
At the end of the third decade of our democracy, we
had an institutional system that had ceased to be the
monopoly of the executive branch and that shared
power more evenly among the judicial, legislative and
executive organs.
Despite that progress, we underwent a political
crisis, from which we emerged when the Honduran
people turned out in huge numbers on 29 November
2009 to vote in the election with the greatest turnout
and transparency in our electoral history. We
Hondurans exercised our popular sovereignty and our
right to self-determination. We sent an unequivocal
message: we love democracy and our institutions, and
we prefer dialogue to conflict. That is our message,
which has been understood and respected by the great
majority of the nations represented here. We wish it to
be acknowledged by all Governments in the world.
In that spirit, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa
endorsed a broad amnesty for political crimes and
formed a Government of national unity, with the
59 10-54965
participation of all the country’s political parties.
Furthermore, the President decreed the creation of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission — a totally
independent body that will ensure that the critical
events of 2009 will never happen again. The work of
the Commission is already under way, and its report is
expected during the first quarter of next year. Its
conclusions will be broadly disseminated and its
recommendations will be implemented.
We are convinced that national reconciliation and
unity are based on respect for all sectors of society
irrespective of political or ideological position.
Tolerance is and must be the foundation of democracy.
We are also convinced that the human rights
and fundamental freedoms of citizens must be
respected without restriction. The President of the
Honduras has proposed to the National Congress the
creation a Secretary of State for Justice to promote and
take charge of designing, implementing, supervising
and evaluating all public policies and ensuring that
they are based squarely on human rights principles.
Inspired by our respect for human dignity, our
Government condemns all forms of racial
discrimination and enthusiastically welcomes the
forthcoming launch of the International Year for People
of African Descent. To implement our commitment
against racial discrimination, Honduras is creating an
entity for the development of indigenous peoples and
Afro-Honduran people and a policy of racial equality.
In the context of those commitments any person
deprived of liberty must be treated with the respect
inherent in his human dignity. To that end, the
President approved an executive decree aimed at
reducing overcrowding in the penal institutions
through renovation of their infrastructure and
equipment.
Along that same line, the Government of
Honduras has energetically condemned and continues
to condemn human rights violations, especially
violation of the right to life. We are firmly committed
to the fight against impunity and will continue to make
every possible effort to bring to justice those who
violate that essential right of the human person.
We are thankful for the cooperation we have
received so far in overcoming difficulties in
guaranteeing security for our citizens. President Lobo
Sosa has also asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to
have the United Nations consider support for setting up
a commission to fight impunity, in order to support
national institutions and strengthen their capacities as
they carry out their tasks in investigating and
prosecuting crime. At the same time, we reiterate our
Government’s invitation to the agencies that make up
the United Nations human rights system to follow up
on the situation in Honduras.
I wish to convey the ongoing appreciation of
Hondurans to the United Nations system and its
Secretary-General for all the cooperation and
assistance given our country. We thank all of those who
have firmly supported Honduras, because that has
benefited our people directly.
I want to highlight the solidarity and friendship
that exist among the brothers of the Central American
region. Within the Central American Integration
System we will continue to go forward until our
common homeland becomes one great nation, beyond
the limits of the historic Central America.
Our Government is aware of the difficulties and
challenges of the moment in history in which we are
living, and we are taking decisions based on that
awareness. Today I can state with conviction that we
are moving along the path to prosperity, because I
believe in the determination of the people of Honduras,
their ability to deal with adversity, their hard work,
their strength of heart and their sprit and hope. We
have an unbreakable will; we have the human capital.
The time has come to reaffirm our commitment
and to act in favour of the poorest members of society.
The time has come to act in solidarity and with
determination so that all human beings may be
protected from discrimination and need. It is time to
create a world with tolerance, with harmony and with
freedom and security for all. The time to globalize
social justice with freedom and democracy is now.