It
is an honour for me to participate in this session of the
General Assembly. We have heard extremely
significant speeches, which have, deservedly, captured
17 11-50692
the attention of the Assembly. However, as I speak in
this lofty forum of the international community, I
would like to lay out Mexico’s views, a country that, as
one of the founding States of the United Nations, has
actively contributed to ensuring that the Organization
once again plays its role in promoting peace, justice,
security, equity and sustainable development among
nations.
The world faces major challenges, about which
we have spoken today. We have talked about terrorism,
war, peace, climate change and poverty. We know that
we are afflicted by other problems, such as the global
economic crisis. I would like to refer to just a few of
them now, as I am aware that our duty is to strengthen
the United Nations, to make it less bureaucratic and to
once again turn this into an Organization that is able to
tackle the pressing challenges of our time. Faced with
this reality, Mexico is shouldering its international
responsibilities firmly and with determination.
I would now like to refer to the problem that I
think today most afflicts the poorest people in the
world. More than 1 billion people, on every continent,
are living on less than $1.25 a day. This is the problem
of poverty. Over the past five years, the price of food
has risen by more than 50 per cent. Over the past
12 months, the average increase has been 26 per cent.
This means that the poorest families, who allocate most
of their income to food, have sunk even deeper into
poverty.
This is why poverty has increased around the
world. This is why we once again see famine in the
Horn of Africa, in various nations on that continent, in
Asia and in Latin America. This is why, in addition to
the democratic awakening of certain nations, we have
seen many people suffering from hunger who have
taken to the streets. Hunger is what has, in many cases,
awakened their awareness of democracy.
Why the hike in food prices? That is the first
question we must ask ourselves. It is partly because
developing countries have grown rapidly, and that is a
good thing. China, India and many others have reached
growth rates that allow their people to have greater
access to food. What is left to do is to develop the
necessary technology to increase our capacity to
produce food.
Secondly, drought and climate change have been
other contributing factors. We have not truly realized
that climate change is a serious threat to humankind as
a whole. In particular, climate change is behind the
drought that has restricted food production in recent
years.
Thirdly, there is financial speculation and
speculation on the financial markets. Let me point to
one bit of data. In 1987, financial agents and
companies bought just 7 per cent of food on the world
markets. Today, more than 30 per cent of sales of corn
and wheat in the world are made by financial
companies. Why do they want corn and wheat? Is it to
trade them on various markets or to distribute them to
certain regions? Of course not. Trade companies and
distributors buy 70 per cent of wheat and corn, but the
remaining 30 per cent is bought by financial firms with
one specific purpose in mind, namely, speculation. We
see how they buy and sell the rights to food with the
sole intent of driving up market prices, when thousands
of children are dying of hunger across the various
continents.
I am someone who believes in markets, economic
freedom and enterprise. But I also know that the time
has come for restrictions to be imposed on unbridled
markets, which are also behind world hunger.
The second challenge that I would like to refer to
is drug trafficking and international organized crime.
Everyone is surprised by the dozens, hundreds and
even thousands of deaths caused by repressive
authoritarian regimes, and of course, we also repudiate
these. However, we also have to be aware that
organized crime today is killing more people — and
more young people — than all of the current dictatorial
regimes put together. Today, thousands of people —
tens of thousands of people in Latin America, in
particular between Mexico and the Andes — are dying
because of criminals. I greet with affection and respect
my colleagues from Central and Latin America who are
here today.
Today, the world faces the challenge of
unscrupulous criminals who have no respect for
borders and who do grave harm to the citizens of many
nations. The power of crime is stronger than many
Governments, although assuredly not ours. This stems
from two fundamental factors, namely, the exorbitant
profits that flow from drug trafficking and unlimited
access to the purchase of powerful weapons.
With respect to weapons, why do criminals have
unrestricted access to AK-47s, R-15s and grenade
launchers? In my view, having fiercely fought
11-50692 18
criminals and having seized 120,000 weapons in five
years, the answer can be summed up in a single word,
profits — the runaway profits of an arms industry that
sees in every war, whether a civil war in some distant
country or a battle among criminals, an opportunity to
sell ever more weapons.
It is urgent for us to put in place serious controls
in countries that produce and sell high-power
weaponry, so as to prevent them from filling the
arsenals of organized crime. The United Nations has its
work cut out for it in that regard. The United Nations
must continue to promote the draft international arms
trade treaty and to prevent weapons from being
diverted towards activities that are banned by
international law.
Moreover, organized crime feeds off the
astronomical profits produced by the illegal sale of
drugs around the world. Unfortunately, the demand for
drugs in those markets continues to increase. We must
recognize that so long as there are drug consumers
prepared to pay tens of billions of dollars to maintain
their addictions or preferences, that market will remain
the primary financial support for criminal activity.
Mexico is doing its part to energetically fight
crime in all its manifestations. Today more than ever,
however, drug-consuming countries must undertake
effective efforts to radically reduce demand. It may be
argued that this is impossible and that the demand for
drugs is continuing to rise, as is the case here in the
United States, where nearly 30 per cent of young
people use drugs, and in other parts of the world.
What is the solution? I can honestly say that even
if those countries are unable or unwilling to reduce
their demand for drugs, or if they are resigned to the
fact that it will continue to rise, they still have a moral
obligation to reduce the huge profits that drug
traffickers obtain from that black market.
It would be best to reduce demand, but failing
that, reduce profits. Drug-consuming nations have the
obligation to find a way to cut that source of endless
economic gain, and to seek every possible solution,
including alternative markets that would prevent drug
trafficking from being the source of violence and
death, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean
and various African countries.
The third challenge to which I would like to refer
is climate change. Along with Mexico, my Central
American and Caribbean colleagues are experiencing
ever more violent hurricanes that destroy the homes of
the poor and cut short many lives. Ironically, just a few
weeks ago, one of those tropical hurricanes that was
headed for our Caribbean coast landed instead on the
streets of Manhattan. There are still some who are
surprised that there are hurricanes in New York,
unprecedented droughts in Texas and never before seen
floods in Pakistan or Mexico or Colombia or
Guatemala. Even with all this, they still do not accept
the fact of global warming.
I can proudly state that we have made progress
and that Mexico has done its part in moving towards a
solution to this problem. We organized the sixteenth
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Cancún,
where important agreements were reached. For
example, for the first time, nations agreed within the
framework of a binding United Nations instrument to
establish a global limit on the rise in temperature of
our planet — of no more than 2° centigrade by the end
of this century.
We also agreed to establish the Green Fund, to
support developing countries in their mitigation and
adaptation efforts.
In addition, we created a mechanism for
technology transfer that incorporates methods for
reducing emissions caused by deforestation and soil
degradation, which will allow the poorest countries to
contribute to reducing global warming by preserving
their forests and jungles. In Mexico, more than
12 million people in indigenous communities, who
make their living from jungles and forests and who
have had no choice but to destroy them, today use their
woodlands in a sustainable way and are paid by the rest
of society for the environmental service that their trees
provide.
With the approach of the seventeenth Conference
of the Parties, in Durban, we fear that without
sufficient political leadership and commitment to its
own Convention by the United Nations, we may lose
part of what we have achieved in the battle against
climate change. We must advance within the Kyoto
Protocol, keeping in mind that the provisions of annex 1
expire next year. What will happen with our
environmental obligations in the light of the failure of
the most relevant nations to take action?
19 11-50692
The best way to fight climate change is to break
with the false argument that we must choose between
economic growth and combating climate change. They
are in fact perfectly compatible. Through actions that
build sustainable development, we can simultaneously
reduce poverty and climate change.
Finally, another challenge is the social basis for
reducing poverty and marginalization. In Mexico we
established a programme for transferring money to the
poorest of our population, with incentives for mothers
who take their children to school or health clinics. The
programme offers an average of $80 monthly to the
bottom fourth of Mexico’s poorest families, benefiting
more than 30 million people and reducing extreme
poverty in our country by nearly 50 per cent between
1995 and 2010.
Recently, we have focused on guaranteeing the
health of all Mexicans. In five years, we have added
2,000 new hospitals and clinics, reconstructed
2,000 more and introduced a national health policy that
already covers more than 100,000 people. This allows
Mexico to proudly state today in the United Nations
that this year we will achieve universal health
insurance, covering doctors, medicines, treatment and
hospitalization for any Mexican who needs them. That
achievement, of which we are proud, confirms the fact
that Mexico has already achieved almost all the
Millennium Development Goals to which it committed
itself.
Finally, I should now like to discuss a crucial
issue that has to do with the transformation and
modernization of the United Nations. The conflict in
the Middle East is a matter that has clearly tested the
capacity of the Organization. We are particularly
concerned about the stalemate in negotiations between
Israel and the Palestinian National Authority. The
United Nations bears the responsibility for making a
constructive contribution to the peaceful resolution of
this conflict — one that makes possible the existence
of two States, reaffirms the recognition of Israel’s right
to exist and makes the establishment of a Palestinian
State a reality. Of course, we must bear in mind that
this must be a genuine, viable and negotiated solution
in which legitimate and balanced mediation plays a
fundamental role. Such a solution must also be
politically and economically viable and enable Israel
and Palestine to truly exist side by side in peace, so
that new generations of Israelis and Palestinians can
truly know what it is to live together without hatred or
violence.
We should also remember that no solution can be
found while either of the sides, explicitly or implicitly,
desires the annihilation of the other. In addition, we
must make progress on compliance with United
Nations resolutions in order to put an end to policies
that we all know are contrary to international law.
It is also vital that we move forward together in
transforming and modernizing the Organization. It is
an excellent thing that the United Nations building is
being renovated; now we need to modernize the
Organization at its core. It must not fail in its
commitment to history and humankind. It is time that
all Member States play our parts in ensuring that the
Organization has the strength and viability that it
needs, and that it lacks. There have been many
occasions, for instance, when the United Nations has
been paralysed by the tyranny of consensus, where a
minority is able to defeat a large majority. Consensus
must no longer be seen as the veto power of the
obstinate; rather it should be understood as the
possibility of building shared and genuinely legitimate
solutions that reflect the will of the majority.
Keeping the United Nations relevant also
necessarily implies the reform of the Security Council,
whose rules of participation have not been revised in
more than 40 years. Mexico seeks a total reform that
improves representation for all Council members while
at the same time preserving the Council’s capacity to
take action and promoting its members’ accountability.
We cannot allow the chief supranational body to
become a decision-making centre for the few.
Mexico reaffirms its confidence in the United
Nations as a forum that represents the diversity and
plurality of human beings. Mexico also reiterates that it
will continue to be a strategic ally of the Organization
in the struggle for peace, the war against hunger and
the struggle for security and the progress of all peoples
of the world.