I congratulate you, Sir, on
your well-deserved election as President of the General
Assembly at its sixty-sixth session. My delegation has
full confidence in you, and we assure you of our full
support and cooperation. I also thank and congratulate
your predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Joseph Deiss, for
very ably steering the affairs of the sixty-fifth session.
A lot has been achieved, which, I have no doubt, you
will consolidate and advance.
Allow me also to take this opportunity to extend
my heartfelt congratulations to our illustrious Secretary-
General, His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, on his well-
deserved second mandate. His reappointment reaffirms
the trust that we have in him and in his leadership skills.
It is also recognition of his dedicated service to the
United Nations and humankind as a whole.
Once again, I congratulate and welcome the
newest member of the United Nations family, the
Republic of South Sudan, and assure them of
Tanzania’s continued friendship and cooperation.
This year the United Republic of Tanzania, which
is a union between two sovereign States — the
People’s Republic of Zanzibar and the Republic of
Tanganyika — will celebrate 50 years of the
independence of Tanganyika. We will also celebrate 50
years of our membership in the United Nations. I stand
before the Assembly today, 50 years later, to reiterate
that same faith in, and that same commitment to, the
United Nations as expressed by the founders of our
dear nation. I am proud that Tanzania has remained
faithful to the ideals of the United Nations, and is a
proactive Member of this body. We promise to stay the
course for the next 50 years and beyond.
The people of Tanzania are happy to have had the
opportunity to contribute to maintaining peace and
security in Africa and other parts of the world. We have
always believed that mediation, conflict prevention and
pacific settlement of disputes are the best means of
resolving conflicts. As a result, Tanzania has been in
the forefront of mediation efforts to resolve conflicts in
the countries around us, in our region and elsewhere on
the continent.
Our country also has been contributing troops,
police, corrections officers and civilian personnel to
United Nations peacekeeping missions and through
regional and sub-regional arrangements. We promise to
continue to do so wherever and whenever asked. More
important, we are humbled to have had the rare
opportunity to pioneer the efforts, together with
Denmark, that lead to the creation of the Peacebuilding
Commission in 2006.
We are also proud to have had, in the 50 years of
our membership in the United Nations, the opportunity
to contribute to the decolonization of Africa and other
parts of the world. At independence, the founding
father of our nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,
said that the independence of our country was
incomplete until all countries of Africa were free.
That guided Tanzania to strongly oppose all
forms of colonialism, apartheid and racial
discrimination on the African continent and elsewhere.
It also informed our resolve to help our brothers and
sisters who were fighting for their independence and
freedom in Africa. We had the honour of hosting the
headquarters of the African Liberation Committee in
Dar-es-Salaam until colonialism, apartheid and
minority rule had been dismantled.
5 11-50865
We gave sanctuary as well as moral and material
support to almost all the liberation movements of
Southern Africa. Here at the United Nations, Tanzania
was afforded the rare honour of chairing the United
Nations Special Committee on Decolonization from
1972 to 1980. That was the critical phase in the
decolonization of Africa and in the struggle against
apartheid and minority rule. It is heart-warming indeed
to see our efforts, sacrifices and contributions being
rewarded so handsomely with the independence of all
African countries and with apartheid having been
dismantled in South Africa.
Only Western Sahara remains outstanding. I hope
the United Nations will expedite the process so that the
Saharawi people can determine their future peacefully.
We believed at independence, as we believe now
and always will believe, that all human beings are born
equal and deserve equal protection of their civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights, as
outlined in what has come to be known as the
International Bill of Rights. This guides what we are
doing at home, with regard to promoting democracy,
the rule of law, human rights, including personal
freedoms, among them the freedom of expression.
It is in this spirit also that I wish to reaffirm our
solidarity with the Palestinian people in their rightful
quest for an independent homeland. Our plea is for the
fulfilment of the vision of two States: the State of
Israel and a sovereign, independent, democratic and
viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace
and harmony. That is why we also remain in full
solidarity with the people of Cuba in demanding the
end to the embargo. It is perhaps the longest-lasting
embargo in history. The people in these three
countries — Israel, Palestine and Cuba — have
suffered for far too long. It is time their burdens are
eased.
Our other goal was and still is the attainment of
African unity. We believe in the strength of unity for us
to be able to effectively face up to and overcome the
daunting political, security and development
challenges facing our continent. It was in pursuit of
this ideal that on 26 April 1964, Zanzibar and
Tanganyika merged to form the United Republic of
Tanzania. We will never tire in our efforts towards the
realization of the dream of the founding fathers of a
United States of Africa. However, we are mindful of
the fact that this will be a gradual process and regional
economic integration and regional groupings will be its
foundation and the building blocks.
After 50 years of independence and 50 years of
our membership of the United Nations, Tanzania
remains a firm believer in the indispensability of
multilateralism. It is through multilateralism that we
can bring all nations and therefore all peoples together
to shape their common present and future and that of
the world they live in. It is through multilateralism that
peace and development will be guaranteed for all
nations, through the pursuit of common values. It is for
these reasons that I believe the United Nations is
relevant today, as it was 66 years ago. It is for the same
reasons that the world needs the other multilateral
institutions for global economic, social and political
governance.
Despite acknowledging the importance of various
multilateral institutions, Tanzania is of the view that
they need to undergo serious reforms to overcome the
serious governance deficits within them. We need
reforms that will make them more representative — in
particular, reforms that will increase the voices of the
developing countries. The original structures have
ignored us. We should not allow this to continue. It is
for this reason that Tanzania supported the calls for
reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United
Nations, the World Trade Organization and the other
multilateral institutions.
With regard to the United Nations, we should
expedite the process of reforming the Security Council,
in both categories, and in doing so include developing
countries, particularly those from Africa, Asia and
Latin America. It is sad to see that no serious progress
has been made for close to two decades. Now is the
time for us to start serious negotiations, negotiate in
earnest and conclude at the earliest possible time.
Promoting development, particularly shared
growth, has been one of the core functions of the
United Nations. It is pleasing to note that the United
Nations has remained steadfast in its discharge of this
function through its agencies and through a number of
initiatives undertaken by the United Nations
Headquarters itself. United Nations leadership has
always been noticeable in all the major socio-economic
challenges facing the world: sustainable development,
health care, maternal and child health, poverty, food
security, education, and so on. This involvement and
leadership underscores the relevance of the United
11-50865 6
Nations today and the United Nations tomorrow and
the day after tomorrow.
However, the good intentions of the United
Nations have not been fully realized. Some of the
developed countries have not met their commitments of
allocating 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product
to official development assistance. Let me use this
opportunity to join all those who have spoken before
me in repeating our appeal to developed countries to
honour their commitments.
I believe that if this had been done, we would
have been on target with the implementation of the
Millennium Development Goals and many other
important global matters. I would also like to use this
opportunity to thank and commend those few
developed countries that have kept their promise. May
the examples of these countries inform and encourage
the others to do the same.
We meet at a time of great uncertainties over the
global economy. Economies are still weak,
characterized by low growth in many major economies,
high levels of inflation, unemployment, increasing
food and fuel prices and nervous financial markets. In
a globalized world, ripples of economic and financial
crises in the developed economies affect all of us in the
world. And for us from poor developing countries,
matter get even more complicated.
As we all call for concerted global action to
maintain economic stability and ensure that we do not
head into another global recession, I appeal to the
United Nations to remain seized of the situation and
exercise its traditional leadership over global issues.
This is a matter of great concern to us in Africa, a
continent that has experienced extremely challenging
economic, social and political situations, but a
continent that is now poised to go to the next level:
from despair to hope and from lost decades to decades
full of opportunities.
Democracy is steadily on the march in Africa and
the Arab Spring has capped it all. Peace is reigning
almost all over the continent. There are no serious
conflict situations except for Somalia, where the
serious involvement of the United Nations, the African
Union and the world community is still needed. All
that Africa needs now is continued support to build the
institutions of democracy and governance, to build our
economies and to overcome social challenges.
Among the challenges demanding the serious
attention of this body and the international community
at large is the continued drought in the Horn of Africa
and some countries of East Africa. The problem has not
abated and its consequences are momentous, as
exemplified by the ongoing famine in Somalia. It is
high time for more attention to be given to the situation
in this part of Africa, for there is every indication and
every reason to believe that the problem is escalating
and involving more countries. Tanzania is already
feeling the pressure of the crisis.
Piracy is the second problem in our part of the
continent that I would like to mention here today. The
problem of piracy still lingers on and it is, in fact,
expanding. We are now witnessing more and more
attacks taking place further to the south of Somalia.
They used to take place in the Gulf of Aden, but now
the attacks are moving southward, as far as Tanzania,
Mozambique, the Comoros and Madagascar. Since last
year, when piracy activity moved to our territorial
waters, 13 ships have been attacked and five of them
were successfully hijacked. These attacks have caused
an increase in the cost of shipping to our ports. If we
do not succeed in stopping them, they may disrupt
shipping services and impact negatively on our
economy. We need the support of the international
community to help us build capacity to fight piracy. We
welcome the Assembly’s readiness to assist us to
improve our courts and prisons to try and punish the
pirates. But if a similar gesture were extended to us to
build capacity to prevent attacks, there would be fewer
pirates to bother us.
Controversies continue to prevent progress on the
draft comprehensive convention on international
terrorism. The more we delay, the more sophisticated
international terrorism becomes in its strategies and
tactics. We recently witnessed events in Abuja in which
the United Nations was attacked. Tanzania condemns
these cruel acts in the strongest terms possible and
expresses solidarity with the people of Nigeria and the
United Nations. It is clear that the struggle against
terrorism must remain a high priority for the United
Nations.
I would be remiss if I concluded my statement
without acknowledging and thanking the Secretary-
General for the honour he accorded me and my
country, Tanzania, last year when he formed a
Commission on Information and Accountability for
Women’s and Children’s Health. He appointed me and
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Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada to co-chair
the Commission. It was an honour to serve on the
Commission, and I hope that the recommendations we
made will help to advance the cause of the noble work
that we are all doing to save the lives of millions of
innocent women and children who are dying from
causes that can be prevented.
I end as I began, by reaffirming our faith in the
United Nations, a true embodiment of humanity. We
dedicate ourselves to respect the values and principles
enshrined in our Charter and we shall continue to
play — as we have always have done during our first
50 years as an independent State — a full, honest and
constructive part in the work of the United Nations.