Guatemala

Our President, Mr. Álvaro Colom Caballeros, participated in the High-level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (see A/65/PV.3) but had to return to Guatemala owing to commitments related to his high office. Similarly, our Minister for Foreign Affairs, who unexpectedly had to leave New York yesterday. It is for this reason that I have the high honour of presenting this message, which was prepared to be presented today by the Minister. 10-55276 40 Before proceeding, I should like to express our profound gratitude to Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki for his outstanding performance in heading the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. Likewise, Mr. Deiss, we wish you every success as President for the current session. We have no doubt that with your vast experience you will guide our deliberations and enhance the work of the General Assembly as the main policymaking organ of the United Nations. We have just concluded our review of the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, adopted 10 years ago in an international environment that was perhaps more encouraging than today’s. As has been highlighted in recent days, the results reflect both light and shadow, with some countries showing impressive gains, and others even suffering setbacks. The majority have made progress on some of the Goals but not in others, or have made advances whose benefits have been distributed very unequally among different segments of the population. In addition, today’s international environment is far less encouraging than that of 10 years ago. The previous decade began with the attack on the twin towers in this very city, placing counter-terrorism squarely as a priority on the international agenda. It continued with a military confrontation that was not sanctioned by the Security Council, with all its consequences, and concluded with three simultaneous crises — food, energy and, especially, financial and economic — from whose effects we have yet to recover. Further, after building up a cumulative body of scientific evidence that no longer allows any room for doubt, we have confirmed that the very effects of technological progress have brought with them devastating consequences for our common habitat — this planet — and that the destruction wrought by climate change is palpable and dramatic. On another matter, in the current decade we have witnessed very clearly that organized crime does not recognize borders and tends to spread to those countries with the least capacity to confront its considerable resources. My own country has been a victim of some of these phenomena, which nullify or at least mitigate the considerable efforts we have deployed, especially since the Administration of President Colom took office early in 2008, to stimulate development, achieve higher levels of well-being for the disadvantaged sectors of our population, and strengthen our democratic institutions. Here again we see both light and shadow: in spite of an unfavourable international environment and as President Colom noted in this very Hall on 20 September, we have achieved progress is addressing some of the pressing problems faced by the our country’s most vulnerable. But the shadow is still present. Its origin lies in phenomena that are totally or partially out of our control. I highlight three of them. First, the financial and economic crisis had a sharp adverse impact on our economic performance. Gross national product grew less than 1 per cent in 2009, with declining exports, shrinking family remittances and collapsing foreign direct investment. This had an extremely negative impact on our tax revenues, in spite of the many Government initiatives to raise tax rates to deal with increasing demands for social services and public security. Although we have seen a modest recovery this year, its strength will depend to a large degree on uncertain developments in the international economy. In other words, the international economic environment has not been very conducive to meeting our economic growth goals, in spite of the official cooperation that we have received, which we sincerely appreciate. Secondly, in the last decade a array of unlawful activities related to organized crime have taken root in our country. Trafficking in persons, arms and narcotics, and money laundering have expanded to a worrisome extent, given the dual abilities of organized criminal groups to co-opt and intimidate. Above all, drug trafficking has undermined our democratic institutions. In response, we have associated ourselves with the United Nations and friendly countries, through both bilateral and multilateral cooperation. This can be seen mostly clearly in the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), to which I will return later. Furthermore, recognizing that the struggle against illegal activities and organized crime — a basic responsibility of all States — has today assumed a clearly transnational character, we have joined our neighbours in Central America and Mexico in combating regional criminal networks. Thirdly, as if what I have already said were not enough, we have also fallen victim to natural disasters with an unusual frequency, which highlights the extreme vulnerability of Guatemala to the effects of climate change, given its location in a tropical area. We had not even begun to recover from the effects of tropical storm Stan of late 2005 when we were hit by a serious drought in 2009 and, over the past few months, 41 10-55276 the eruption of the Pacaya Volcano, which caused extensive damage to agriculture, followed by tropical storm Agatha in June, which affected some 330,000 persons, killed approximately 100 and caused material damage totalling an estimated $1 billion. These estimates in human suffering and material losses have continued to grow with the unprecedented levels of rainfall during the past month, which has contributed even more human victims and material damage. The Government has done all within its power to address the situation and has appealed for international assistance. I commend the fact that the United Nations was among the first to respond to our call, and I therefore express our appreciation to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. To date, we have been focused on the emergency phase, but it is imperative that we move on to reconstruction and recovery as soon as possible. The Government has drawn up a detailed plan to address those goals, and we will convene an international conference to present the plan to our partners in Antigua in Guatemala on 11 and 12 October. I shall now make some brief remarks on our Organization and its agenda in the immediate future. I begin by reiterating our support for multilateralism in general and for the United Nations in particular. We have enjoyed strong, continuous support from the Organization, in supporting our peace process, facilitating development cooperation and providing assistance when we have faced emergencies, as at the present time. The latest example of that fruitful and innovative cooperation is the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala. In only three years, the Commission has shown that it is indeed possible to combat impunity and strengthen the rule of law. We value this cooperative effort between the Government of Guatemala and the United Nations, and we will continue to support it. We also value the work of our Organization in the area of peacekeeping. We have participated in several operations, principally in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We support the work of the United Nations in the area of peacebuilding, and we hope to participate in the Peacebuilding Commission as a full member as of next January. We welcome the decision of the General Assembly to establish the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and we are pleased that its first leader will be Ms. Michelle Bachelet. We also commit ourselves to continue supporting initiatives aimed at achieving greater system-wide coherence. At the same time, we harbour the hope that, in the coming year, some tangible progress will be made in the long-delayed reform of the Security Council. We believe that it is crucial to provide greater legitimacy to that body, which would benefit all of the main bodies and the Organization overall. In the meantime, we have announced our candidature for one of the seats allocated to our region in the Security Council for the biennium 2012-2013, in the hope of continuing to contribute to its work. We reiterate our profound commitment to achieving significant progress during the next Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Cancún. We have participated actively in the preparatory work, based on the understanding that rarely has humanity faced a larger challenge that affects all countries and communities on the planet. In rejoining the Human Rights Council, we reiterate our commitment to the full respect of human rights in all their aspects, including the responsibility to protect our respective populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It is commonly held that without peace there can be no development. Promising signs have been seen in various parts of the world, which, we hope, may lead to the resolution of long-standing tensions. We trust that the direct negotiations recently begun in the Middle East will be fruitful and lead to a Palestinian State that can coexist with Israel in peace and harmony, within borders that are secure for both parties. We also applaud the engagement and growing climate of cooperation being generated between the parties separated by the Taiwan Straits. Finally, I am pleased to announce that we have achieved a major step forward in addressing the International Court of Justice, together with Belize, to seek a juridical solution to the age-old territorial dispute between us. That step required the approval by 10-55276 42 our Congress of the Special Agreement signed with Belize in December 2008, which cleared the path for a popular referendum, as provided for under that Agreement. We hope that the Belizean Parliament will also authorize as soon as possible the referendum to be held simultaneously in both countries, as the final step that allows both parties to present themselves to the Court.