Bangladesh

It affords me great pleasure and honour to convey to you, Mr. President, on behalf of my delegation, as well as on my own behalf, our heartiest congratulations on your unanimous election. It is a fitting tribute not only to your outstanding diplomatic skills and long involvement with the United Nations, but also to your country, with which we enjoy friendly relations. To your predecessor, Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia, I should like to express our sincere appreciation for the remarkable job that he did. His was an extraordinarily proactive presidency. Indeed, he has given new stature to the office of President of the General Assembly. This is the first regular session of the General Assembly for our Secretary-General Kofi Annan since his appointment to that high office. In the discharge of his very onerous responsibilities he brings to bear unmatched expertise with regard to the United Nations system. Indeed, he is the archetypical insider of that system. His appointment to the highest Secretariat position is recognition of his manifest competence. The priority that he has attached to the task of making the United Nations system more streamlined and attuned to present-day realities and requirements is indeed commendable. While on the subject of reform, let me say that my delegation lends its full support to the initiative of the Secretary-General in submitting his reform proposal, which the Assembly will be examining later in the course of its business. There is no denying that the proposal is timely and that it has been put forward to make the United Nations more efficient and effective. We expect that the reform process will preserve and promote the centrality and sanctity of the principles and objectives of the United Nations Charter. My delegation also wants the process of reform to be carried out with the primary objective of strengthening the capacity of the Organization to address issues of development. Bangladesh would favour negotiating the reform package in informal plenary meetings with the full participation of all countries. The United Nations Charter is of enduring validity. By definition, reform has to be a dynamic and periodic process as times, problems and priorities change. My delegation would fully support any endeavour to improve the administration and management of the United Nations. Member States have the right and even the duty to insist that optimal use be made of the resources that they have entrusted to the Organization for the promotion of the Charter objectives. Bangladesh assures its unstinted cooperation and support to eliminate duplication and overlap and to effect better coordination and prioritization. However, reform cannot be an acceptable surrogate for political will, and those two aspects must be mutually supportive and reinforcing. In the context of the reform exercise, Bangladesh would like to stress that the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and his staff should in no way be compromised. According to Article 101 of the Charter, the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity should be the basic determinants in making appointments to the Secretariat, with due regard to geographical distribution. We therefore welcome the Secretary General’s proposal to submit a code of conduct for international civil servants. No endeavour at United Nations reform will be successful without the necessary financial resources. The continuation of the current financial crisis of the United Nations has seriously impaired the functioning of the Organization. For a financially sick United Nations, the much needed shot in the arm can come only from the full and unconditional payment of outstanding contributions by those Member States that have not yet done so. The cold-war era of adversarial alliances, power blocs and ideological divides is happily a thing of the past. However, another war, one in which the United 4 Nations will have to be in the vanguard, remains to be fought and won before a meaningful peace and international security can be achieved. That is the war against poverty, ignorance and prejudice. Peace does not simply happen or come about fortuitously. It must be sedulously built and nurtured and underpinned by a host of interrelated actions that are inextricably linked to development and human security. A culture of peace is essential to make it sustainable and all embracing. Over the years, the concept of security has evolved, as has the concept of development. The United Nations can be, as the President of the General Assembly put it last year, the main development catalyst, one that can strongly influence coordination at the macro level with other bodies that have more access to resources but that are less democratically set up. We have been discussing for the past few years the question of Security Council expansion and reform. There is a clear logic and rationale for an expansion of the overall size of the Council to make it more representative in character. On this aspect of the question a general consensus seems to have emerged, although there exist differences as to the exact size of any new Council. Where a convergence of view — let alone consensus — continues to elude us is on the question of the expansion of the number of permanent seats. Bangladesh’s concern, which we have already articulated, is that, in any enlargement exercise, the concerns of the smaller and more vulnerable States that have the most vital stake in an effective and dynamic United Nations should not be lost sight of. In the decade of the 1990s we have had a series of high-profile global conferences. These mega-conferences have addressed some of the major challenges that are confronting us today and, with the United Nations playing a central role, reached important political consensus. Those gatherings underscored in particular the primacy of human development in achieving sustained and sustainable development. The Agenda for Development adopted in June this year is in a sense the culmination of this series, representing a synthesis of the plans and programmes of action that had been adopted. The Agenda is the result of tortuous and painstaking negotiations carried out over a period of four years. It is a matter of gratification to have achieved a development consensus that was so badly needed and clearly warranted. It is, of course, most vital that, along with the Agenda for Development, follow-up and implementation should match the outcome of these conferences. Bangladesh believes that without the full involvement of civil society this process will remain incomplete. Recognizing the key role of civil society in promoting global partnership, we welcome the Secretary- General’s proposal for a people’s millennium Assembly in the year 2000. It is now widely accepted that free enterprise, the market economy, international trade and competition, as well as broad-based public participation in economic expansion, are the keys to economic growth and human development. To this mix must be added the components of democracy, good governance and the rule of law. This, however, in no way diminishes, particularly in the case of the least developed countries, the imperative of a supportive external environment. Improved access to world markets, greater inflow of foreign private investment, transfer of technology and managerial know- how and larger external assistance all have very important roles to play in ensuring development. Economic liberalization should invariably be combined, in our view, with adequate social safety nets to safeguard the most vulnerable segments of society. It is a matter of some concern to us that global official development assistance flows continue to slump. We sincerely hope, though, that this trend will be reversed. The development of the South is not only an investment in peace and security, but would clearly also rebound to the advantage of the countries of the North in the long and not so long run, since this would mean bigger markets for their exports, with all their concomitant benefits. Development has been most aptly described as a partnership. The plight of the least developed countries, in particular, calls for very careful consideration and has in the past merited a special place and focus in the international agenda. Two major international conferences on the least developed countries have been held in the 1980s and 1990s and important decisions and programmes of action adopted. The implementation of these, however, has been disappointing. We hope that the third United Nations Conference on the least developed countries can be held in the year 2000 to chart the course of global support for these weakest members at the start of next millennium. 5 We would urge special consideration and concessions for the least developed countries in order to enable them to meet World Trade Organization deadlines. Indeed, if the situation so warrants, deadlines may even be made flexible for that group of countries. We would also urge that, at the forthcoming high-level meeting in Geneva next month, all major issues of concern to the least developed countries, including duty-free access of their products to foreign markets, be given most favourable consideration. The end of cold war perhaps naturally raised our hopes for a new and exciting world order in which nations would share the responsibility for freedom and justice and the strong would respect the rights of the weak — a world of open borders, open trade and open minds. Such a vision can and should surely be our goal and inspiration. To achieve it, in particular at the regional level, cooperation in carefully identified core areas of activity, including trade and investment, is a valuable tool of development. In our own region, through the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), we are striving to accelerate progress in core areas of cooperation, such as poverty eradication, expansion of regional trade and investment. We have also, within the ambit of SAARC, launched a “growth quadrangle” involving four member States — Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Bhutan — in order to explore areas of joint economic activity and take advantage of the factor of contiguity. Moreover, outside of SAARC, Bangladesh has entered the Bangladesh-India-Sri Lanka-Thailand Economic Cooperation (BIST-EC) in order to boost cooperation in the economic and commercial fields among its four member countries. A consensus decision has now been taken to allow Myanmar to join this subregional group as a full member. Last year, while addressing the General Assembly, I referred to the negotiations that were being held with India on sharing the waters of the Ganges River. This had proved to be an intractable problem for over two decades and it is a matter of great satisfaction to us all that, in December last year, we signed a 30-year treaty at the highest political level with India on sharing arrangements. The signing of this treaty, within months of the present Government’s assumption of office, demonstrated that, given goodwill and political will, the most difficult problems can be resolved. At the national level, we are affording every facility and cooperation to our private sector and providing liberal incentives to foreign entrepreneurs to invest in our country. The Government’s role will be to oversee and to provide safety nets where necessary. The Government is making every effort to combat the blighting scourges of widespread poverty and deprivation, so that we may realize the dream — to which the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, dedicated his entire political career and life — of a country free, progressive and prosperous, at peace with the world and with itself. Ours has also been a pioneering role in the field of microcredit. Initiated by the Grameen Bank and considered a most innovative approach to the eradication of poverty and empowerment of women, it has been recognized and emulated in a good number of developing and developed countries. The Microcredit Summit held in Washington earlier this year was a success: a target was set there to free 100 million families from the stranglehold of poverty by the year 2005. At the United Nations, the “Friends of Microcredit” ambassadors have taken the initiative to follow up the implementation process throughout the United Nations system. In Bangladesh, we have accorded priority to and placed special emphasis on social sector development in such areas as health care, education, family planning, women in development and the preservation and promotion of human rights. The initiatives and efforts of our Prime Minister in this regard have been widely appreciated. I would particularly mention here that the Government, under the dynamic leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the illustrious daughter of the Father of the Nation, has announced the decision to set up a National Human Rights Commission. Our Parliament is expected to pass the required legislative mandate for this Commission next year. We are also working towards the establishment of grameen, or rural, courts, which will take justice to the people at the grass-roots level. This concept of participatory justice is still a novel one. Its purpose is to ensure speedy, effective and inexpensive justice to the humblest of citizens. While on the subject of human rights, I should like to express our pleasure that an individual of the eminence and distinction of Mrs. Mary Robinson has been appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. We would like to assure her of the wholehearted cooperation of our Government. We look forward to working with her in close concert in the promotion of human rights, a goal that all of us share and cherish, with special focus on the right to development and the rights of women and children. 6 The Constitution of Bangladesh specifically provides for our international relations to be based, inter alia, on the principles of the United Nations Charter. It is thus for us a matter of singular pride and gratification that Bangladesh should be playing such an active role in United Nations peacekeeping operations. This is a role that we consider to be a solemn duty and an earnest of our commitment to the United Nations and the principles and purposes of the Charter. We still have a long way to go in the area of disarmament, particularly nuclear disarmament. The entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention is a major step forward. It is a truism that our world is becoming increasingly interdependent. The uncomfortable fact remains, though, that it is still a far more dangerous place than that it should be. West Asia, the Palestinian issue, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and the Great Lakes region all present problems that impinge on international peace and security. The United Nations, of course, is playing a pivotal role in seeking peaceful and equitable resolutions of these problems. We sincerely hope that the peace process in the Middle East will move forward and that the years of negotiations, investment and effort will bear fruit. Our views on this particular issue are well known. Relevant Security Council resolutions exist, as do agreements negotiated outside the ambit of the United Nations, on the basis of which a meaningful peace can be achieved in the Middle East and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to an independent homeland, restored. As we approach the next century, it will have to be our collective endeavour to strengthen and to reinforce institutions at the global level that can effectively address the problems of the post-cold-war world. The United Nations in essence represents the entire human race in microcosm, with its wisdom and follies, its successes and shortcomings. It is an experiment, as was once said, in living together as a single human family. To be sure, the United Nations is an Organization of Governments — the apex of intergovernmental organs. And yet it is also true that its foundations rest on the yearnings of the peoples of the world for a lasting peace. The opening words of the Charter read: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. The peoples and nations of the world will have to work in concert if stability, prosperity and a meaningful peace are to be achieved on a global scale. Bangladesh, of course, will be at the forefront of this endeavour.