I would first like to
congratulate you, Mr. President, on your election to
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preside over the sixty-fifth session of the General
Assembly. Please be assured of my delegation’s full
support and cooperation. I would also like to take this
opportunity to offer our appreciation to both your
predecessor, Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, for the
exemplary manner in which he guided the work of the
sixty-fourth session, and to Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon for his leadership of the United Nations over
the past four years.
Last week, I had the opportunity to report on the
Maldives’ progress towards attainment of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). My report
demonstrated that while we have achieved five of the
eight MDGs — namely, Goals 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 —
several others remain challenges, and some
achievements are increasingly becoming threatened.
For example, the Maldives has made great strides in
eliminating poverty, in education and in improving
mortality rates among mothers and infants. However,
we have yet to make significant gains in the area of the
empowerment of women. We are also still struggling to
provide for our environmental and development needs.
Moreover, religious extremism runs counter to notions
of equality and social justice and endangers our
achievements in gender parity. All the while,
environmental and economic vulnerabilities threaten to
diminish our gains.
Those gains, among others, have improved the
lives of the Maldivian people and contributed to a
situation that has led to our imminent graduation from
the United Nations list of least developed countries
(LDCs) this year. While we look forward to our
graduation, we are also concerned about the sudden
withdrawal of some of the benefits afforded to LDCs
that have helped sustain our development efforts for
the past four decades. Those include preferential
market access and concessionary financing. While we
were very encouraged by the pledges made by our
partners at the donors conference held in the Maldives
in March this year to invest in urgent development
projects, we anxiously await the speedy disbursement
of the promised aid.
Furthermore, we look forward to working with
our development partners to achieve consensus on a
transitional model that provides for a gradual reduction
of benefits to avoid the disruption of our development
efforts, as stipulated in resolution 59/209. As a country
on the verge of LDC graduation, we look forward to
adopting a development strategy that places emphasis
on greater independence and economic stability
through private investment and public-private
partnerships. Our Government’s policies on
privatization and our employment of commercial
diplomacy are designed to achieve this transition.
However, like many other small island States, our
geopolitical and socio-economic circumstances will
continue to render the Maldives vulnerable.
The impact of the recent global recession clearly
demonstrates those vulnerabilities. As a country
primarily dependent on tourism and fishing, the
Maldives was severely affected by decreases in
consumption in our traditional markets. As a result, the
Government was compelled to implement severe
austerity measures that cut public spending and
undertook massive economic reforms. Nevertheless,
our people continue to face formidable development
challenges, and thus the Maldives will continue to push
for greater recognition within the United Nations for
the plight of small island developing States.
The economic transition in the Maldives
complements an ambitious political transition from
autocracy to democracy. Although this is a daunting
task, we have been successful in achieving important
milestones over the course of these past two years. In
fact, the two-year period of transition stipulated in our
new Constitution concluded in August. This process
resulted in the establishment of our Supreme Court and
the creation of other relevant institutions. While our
transition process was accompanied by some political
discord, it was largely peaceful.
Our friends in the international community
helped us find peaceful solutions during this somewhat
tumultuous period in our politics. I would like to thank
all members of the international community for their
continued engagement and assistance, and especially
President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka for his
constructive contributions.
The Maldives’ transition to democracy has been
accompanied by our evolution from an abuser of
human rights to a staunch advocate for them. We are
proud of what we have achieved, but are the first to
recognize that there is no shortage of challenges that
require our immediate attention. These include the
need to abrogate the use of torture, the need to
safeguard the rights of women, children and the
disabled, and the need to improve our capacity to deal
with human trafficking in our region.
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The Maldives is proud to have been elected to the
Human Rights Council in May, and we are cognizant of
the trust and responsibility conferred upon us by the
overwhelming support demonstrated by United Nations
Members across all regions. We will continue to
uphold our pledge to use our membership to promote
human rights through positive engagement and to
address sensitivities in our collective quest to protect
the most vulnerable. Moreover, the Maldives is
undergoing its own universal periodic review this year,
and we consider this exercise to be an opportunity to
further strengthen human rights protections at home.
While our interest in human rights is rooted in
our ambition to improve the lives of our own citizens,
it also emerges from our rising concerns about life in
our now interconnected global village, where the need
to compel tolerance, understanding and respect for
human dignity is greater than ever before. We support
the initiatives for a culture of peace, dialogue among
civilizations and tolerance among different faiths.
As a Muslim country, we lament the rising tide of
Islamophobia in non-Muslim States. The people of the
Maldives certainly appreciate the difference between
Government-sanctioned incidents and those anti-Muslim
activities that can be attributed to marginal segments of
non-Muslim societies. However, we believe that
religious intolerance, negative stereotyping, racial
profiling and discrimination thwart this institution’s
mission for peace and prosperity among all societies.
Therefore, we must intensify our efforts to promote a
culture of tolerance and understanding while pursuing an
effective dialogue to expand the scope of rational
discourse between the Islamic world and other
civilizations.
Some of the gravest threats facing humankind
today do not occupy their rightful places in the
headlines, nor do they gain the significant attention
they require. We believe that climate change is such a
threat. For the Maldives, the effects of global warming
pose an overwhelming threat to our infrastructure, our
economy and our very existence.
In an attempt to implement adaptation measures,
the Maldives has invested in water and sanitation
projects and coastal defences and is attempting to
develop voluntary resettlement programmes to more
viable islands within the country. We are also investing
in a low-carbon future that emphasizes renewable
energy and other green projects to achieve our goal of
becoming carbon neutral by 2020.
It is obvious that our actions alone cannot save
us. The global community must act. Regional
initiatives that complement United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes
must be pursued. Weeks before Copenhagen, the
Maldives convened a group of countries and formed
the Climate Vulnerable Forum to declare our concerns
with a united voice. I am pleased to report today that
Kiribati will take over the leadership of this group
ahead of the sixteenth session of the Conference of the
Parties to the UNFCCC in Cancún this year, and that
Bangladesh will steer it to the seventeenth session in
South Africa next year.
The Asian region is one of the most vulnerable to
climate change. We recognize that failure to extend
emissions targets beyond 2012 will leave 60 per cent of
the world’s population without durable solutions for
the global warming effects already being felt. Threats
to food and water security for the world’s most
susceptible populations will undoubtedly perpetuate
disease, exacerbate conflicts and threaten to erode
decades of hard-won successes achieved by countries
throughout the region.
While we have high hopes for the ensuing
sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth sessions of the
Conference, we believe that alternative solutions that
harmonize the development needs of industrial States
with the human and economic rights of vulnerable
peoples should exist. Therefore, the people of the
Maldives and Timor-Leste call for an Asian initiative
that would forge a consortium of Asian countries and
regional partnerships. This will aim to enable our
region to aid the world’s most vulnerable States.
The Maldives believes that it is time to let go of
the mistrust and blame that has plagued the UNFCCC
process. We welcome the recent voluntary initiative of
India to curb its emissions and its commitment to
promoting green energy without waiting for others to
follow suit. We call upon all nations large and small to
come together in a cooperative spirit in Cancún so that
we may effectively establish and promote mitigation
activities that will restore our native carbon sinks,
increase energy efficiency, reduce emissions and
preserve our ecosystems.
The Maldives would also like to state its support
of the Group of Four position for reform of the
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Security Council. We believe that an expansion of
permanent membership to reflect the realities of our
contemporary international system will improve
representation in the Council and better serve to
address a panoply of concerns facing nations in all five
regions today.
The Maldives also continues to grapple with
traditional security threats. The scourge of terrorism
and the growing menace of piracy threaten national,
economic and maritime security throughout our region
and around the world. Yet deficits in the capacity to
attribute criminal accountability to the perpetrators of
terrorism persist. Our failure is marked by the advances
in the modus operandi of terrorists, the proliferation of
illegal technology transfer, and the surge in the trade of
illicit weapons. The Maldives cannot stress enough the
importance of this Assembly’s finalizing the draft
convention on terrorism.
Our geographical location in the Indian Ocean
makes the Maldives particularly vulnerable to threats
to its maritime security, as our vast open waters
continue to prove difficult to police. We are deeply
concerned over the surge in piracy that has moved
beyond the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean. If the
international community does not increase its efforts,
we fear that piracy may end up turning into an
uncontrolled threat to security in the region. Thus, we
were particularly encouraged by the adoption of
Security Council resolution 1897 (2009) and are
pleased with the work of the Contact Group on Piracy
off the Coast of Somalia. We feel, however, that it is
important for the Group to urgently establish an easily
accessible legal toolkit for States that enables them to
fill the vacuums in their national legal systems and
address piracy in a comprehensive manner.
The continued suffering of the Palestinian people
deeply saddens the Maldives. They have been denied
their right to self-determination and their right to live
in peace and freedom in their own independent State
for far too long. While recognizing the rights of the
Palestinians, we also appreciate and support the right
of the people of Israel to live in peace and security
alongside an independent and sovereign State of
Palestine. We continue our call for all sides to use the
ongoing peace talks as an opportunity to resolve their
differences, and are therefore heartened by the new
initiatives being pursued by the United States in its
pursuit of a Middle East peace treaty. Furthermore, we
call for continued support for the Governments of
Jordan and Egypt in their work on the Arab Peace
Initiative, which we believe may provide an enduring
solution to the conflict for the people of the region.
Additionally, our pursuit of a more secure and
just world and our respect for international law were
the basis of the Maldives’ recognition of the
independence of Kosovo, declared on 17 February
2008. The Maldives believes that the declaration of
independence by the people of Kosovo reflects a last-
resort remedy that embodies the best prospects for
peace and stability in the region. The Maldives also
welcomes the advisory opinion of the International
Court of Justice on the unilateral declaration of
independence in respect of Kosovo, issued on 22 July
2010, which concluded that that declaration of the
independence of Kosovo did not violate international
law. While we have been disappointed by recent efforts
to reverse this judgment, the Maldives welcomes the
alternative solution, contained in the unanimously
adopted European Union-sponsored resolution 64/298,
as a positive step towards Kosovo’s assumption of full
United Nations membership.
Closer to home, the Maldives has borne witness
to advances in democracy, sustainable development,
and peacebuilding throughout the region of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Notably,
we praise the progress made by the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan, including the development of democratic
institutions, as well as improvements in the areas of
health, education and the status of women. We wish the
Afghans continued success in their efforts to rebuild
their long-suffering nation, and implore the
international community to maintain their support of
the Afghan people.
Furthermore, the Maldives welcomes Sri Lanka’s
success in its ongoing consolidation of peace and
democracy, and we call upon the international
community to support that country in its reconciliation
efforts, as well as in its efforts to rebuild a nation torn
apart by 25 years of sustained conflict.
We are a small nation with big dreams. Our
dreams are rooted in the vision of the Charter that
binds the membership of this Assembly together here
today. Our hopes are inextricably linked to the fears of
the past that inspired this body and to the hopes of
those who dream of a future grounded in justice,
equity, opportunity and peace for peoples of the North
and South, in nations large and small. Our humanity
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defines our obstacles, but we believe that our dreams
for a better future defy our limitations.