For
Honduras, it is a source of great satisfaction to
participate in this important session of the General
Assembly. On behalf of the Honduran people, I should
like at the outset to express our great pleasure at the
re-appointment of Mr. Ban Ki-moon for another term
as Secretary-General. I also wish to convey to the
President of the General Assembly at its sixty-fifth
session, Mr. Joseph Deiss, my greatest respect for the
contribution he made to this global forum through the
fruitful work achieved under his leadership. We also
congratulate Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser upon his
election as President of the General Assembly.
I congratulate the State of South Sudan on having
become the newest Member of the United Nations.
It is also timely to reaffirm my decisive
commitment as a leader to this Organization, which
represents the best forum for addressing and resolving
the problems facing the world in the quest for the
common welfare of humankind based on the principles
enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. I
reaffirm our commitment to the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, and in particular to the principle that
we are all free and equal in dignity and rights. This
concept includes peoples and nations alike. Over and
above geopolitical interests, the self-determination of
peoples is inviolable and inalienable. All peoples have
the right to their own territory, cultural identity and
traditions.
In this context, my Government has recognized
Palestine as a State and endorses its legitimate
aspiration to become a full member in the concert of
nations. Full security for the State of Israel and full
international recognition for Palestine are essential
conditions for a comprehensive negotiated two-State
solution providing for strong and lasting peace through
mutual understanding. If we want peace, we must
recall that peace is based on respect not only for human
rights, but also for the rights of peoples and nations.
With regard to my country, Honduras, I must say
that the political crises it suffered and the coup d’état
of 28 June 2009 led to a deterioration in the human
rights situation. Overcoming it is one of our highest
priorities. Since I took office in January 2010, my task
has been to build unity and reconciliation among the
Honduran people through peacebuilding founded on
social justice. That process of reconciliation and
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democracy-building in our country has enjoyed the
constructive support of the international community as
a whole.
I take this opportunity to express my particular
thanks for the mediation efforts of Presidents Juan
Manuel Santos Calderón of Colombia and Hugo
Chávez Frías of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
which led to the signing of the Cartagena Agreement,
which in turn facilitated the return of Honduras to the
Organization of American States.
We have demonstrated by our actions that there is
no State policy to violate human rights in Honduras; on
the contrary, we work every day to promote a culture
of respect for human rights based on ongoing dialogue
with all sectors of society, with special attention to
those sectors that have generally been deprived of the
right to participate. We are building a participatory
democracy, derived from the principle that all social
groups have the full and legitimate right to take part in
our history.
We have a secretariat for justice and human rights
to advise on relevant policies. With the participation of
civil society organizations, the secretariat is
enthusiastically working on developing our country’s
first public human rights policy and a national action
plan on human rights. It is also following the
recommendations made by the Human Rights Council
to Honduras during the Universal Periodic Review. In
line with those aspirations, in July our Truth and
Reconciliation Commission — having worked in
absolute legitimacy and transparency — completed its
fully independent mandate and presented the people of
Honduras with its report and recommendations so as to
ensure that such things never happen again and to
foment reconciliation within the Honduran family. We
are taking the necessary steps to implement those
recommendations.
At the same time, faced with the global crisis that
resulted from serious problems in developed
economies, we have met with trade unions,
entrepreneurs, workers, farmers, civil society and
political parties to reach an overall national agreement
that will enable us to face the challenges that the crisis
created in our country. Our Honduran response has
been to propose a social pact to establish conditions
propitious for economic growth, employment,
appropriate remuneration and productivity. The
national plan for the next 28 years is under way. We are
empowering our citizens. The optimum Government
we can shape is comprised of a people who themselves
want to develop within a framework of equitable
economic growth.
Alongside that overall national agreement, all
sectors and stakeholders in the field of education are
reaching agreement on wide-reaching educational
reform in Honduras to propel a dynamic education
administration guaranteeing equal opportunity for all,
especially those who have the least.
In the social sphere, we have a family assistance
programme with conditional monetary benefits. More
than 400,000 families have received such payments,
and by 2013 we hope to reach 600,000 families,
representing 50 per cent of families in Honduras. The
condition is that children go to school and that parents
attend child-nutrition programmes.
In September 2010, along with President Johnson
Toribiong of Palau, we called upon heads of State of
United Nations Member States to save sharks, stop the
traffic in shark fins and put an end to global
overfishing of the species. I repeat that plea with the
same passion today.
Although our country does not contribute much
to greenhouse gas emissions, we have signed many
international treaties and conventions that aim to
guarantee the planet’s security and climate for its
inhabitants in the context of the clean development
mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol. Beyond those
important conventions, today we will sign the
Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and
Pesticides in International Trade.
Honduras reiterates its strong approval of all
measures to protect and conserve natural resources and
the environment, based on the principles agreed upon
20 years ago. We ask the States Member of the United
Nations to renew those past commitments and to draw
up national policies so that we can build our capacities
and establish mechanisms that respond to the needs of
the population.
Although it is not enough in itself, my
Government has made significant progress in
promoting the just historical claims, rights and profile
of indigenous peoples and people of African descent.
In accordance with the Durban Declaration and Plan of
Action, we have adopted public policies to work
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towards those commitments. Among them I would
mention our ratification of the International
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, the institution of an African Heritage
Month in Honduras, and the creation and inauguration
of a Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and People of
African Descent.
I note that the United Nations, through General
Assembly resolution 64/169, proclaimed 2011 the
International Year for People of African Descent. In
that context, civil society members of African descent,
in cooperation with the Organization for Ethnic
Community Development convened and celebrated the
First World Summit of People of African Descent in
August, amply supported by my Government, other
Governments, international partners and United
Nations system bodies. One of my Government’s
aspirations is to complete our constitutional reform to
define Honduras as a multi-ethnic, multicultural
country.
My Government joins its voice to those of
millions of people of African descent in calling for the
United Nations to institute a decade for people of
African descent beginning in 2012, create a
development fund for people of African descent, and
establish a permanent forum for peoples of African
descent within the United Nations.
Before concluding, I would like to raise an issue
that is one of the greatest and most important
challenges that our region faces: citizen insecurity. The
most recent analysis carried out by the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime, the United Nations
Development Programme and the World Bank show
that Central America has become the region in the
world with the highest levels of violence and organized
crime. Their economic impact has escalated in the past
decade to reach, in the case of Honduras, a level close
to 10 per cent of our gross domestic product.
Violence and transnational organized crime,
primarily evident in the commission of crimes such as
drug trafficking, kidnapping, murder, money and asset
laundering, people trafficking, arms trafficking, the
commercial sexual exploitation of women and minors,
among other crimes, are a serious threat to our
possibilities to create well-being. Without security,
there is no economic growth or development.
The evidence shows that many of those crimes,
from the organized crime and lack of security to which
they give rise and that prevail in our societies, have
their roots in the use and trafficking of drugs. Owing to
their very nature and to the sums of money involved,
they have a serious impact on our societies and add to
the erosion of our system of values. They steal our
young people, destroy conviviality and community life
and create parallel economic systems that are true
enclaves of crime, violence and degradation.
Today, the countries of the region invest huge
amounts of money in combating the production and
trafficking of drugs. However, practically the only
instances in which the production and trafficking of
drugs significantly drop in a region occur as a result of
a change in routes or production being in other areas.
Given that demand in developing countries has not
decreased, the strategy that we follow in the region
today, in the best case scenario, has only a partial and
limited impact on the trafficking, transport and use of
drugs.
For that reason, we note that, first of all, a pilot
project that we have put to the United Nations should
be launched to strengthen the capacity for the
investigation and trial of organized crime in Honduras.
Secondly, we need to gather together all the strategies
that were discussed at the International Conference in
Support of the Central America Security Strategy on
22 and 23 June in Guatemala. We should also point out,
and it must be reaffirmed, that consumer countries
must act bravely and resolutely in order to reduce or
eliminate the use of and the trade in drugs because we
must realize that without that, it will be very difficult
for our societies to end the scourge. We must succeed
in aligning our strategies so as to end the drug scourge
and organized crime.
I would like to end by expressing my best wishes
for this sixty-sixth session to meet the expectations of
all Member States, which, I am sure, are founded on
the principle of the sovereign equality of States.