First of all, let me say
how pleased I am to come before the General
Assembly and to address it on behalf of His Excellency
Mr. Bingu Wa Mutharika, President of the Republic of
Malawi. The President was unable to attend due to
other State commitments, but he sends his greetings to
you, Sir, the Secretary-General and all the peoples of
the United Nations.
At the outset, I would like to extend my sincere
congratulations to you, Sir, on your election as
President of the General Assembly. Your election is a
manifestation of the confidence that the people of the
United Nations have in your leadership. I wish you
well as you lead this body in the next several months.
Allow me also to take this opportunity to
congratulate Mr. Joseph Deiss, the President of the
General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session, for his
effective leadership during his tenure. I had the
opportunity of working with him in Istanbul, and he
was very helpful to me personally as a new participant
in those international activities. He also showed much
interest in Africa. I hope that, whatever he does in
future, he will continue to show interest in Africa.
Let me also take the opportunity to congratulate
Mr. Ban Ki-moon on his unanimous reappointment as
Secretary-General. His endorsement has demonstrated
the international community’s confidence in his
leadership. I remember his visit to Malawi this past
year, when he came to visit the Millennium Village.
The people of Mwandama village anxiously await his
return, and they have sent word through me to ask him,
whenever he has time, to come back to Malawi.
Let me take this opportunity to join other
speakers in congratulating our brothers and sisters of
South Sudan for achieving their independence. I am
particularly excited about this because, when South
Sudan gained its independence, Malawi was Chair of
the African Union and played a small part in its
emergence as an independent State. I am very excited
about that. The emergence of South Sudan is, I believe,
a good manifestation of the importance of mediation
and negotiation in the settlement of disputes by
peaceful means. There is no question in my mind that
the remaining issues that exist between South Sudan
and the Sudan will also be resolved in a peaceful
manner. I therefore wish them well.
The theme of this general debate is “The role of
mediation in the settlement of disputes by peaceful
means”. I consider this an opportune time to discuss
that particular issue because today we are faced with
new problems, including inter-State and intra-State
problems. There is a new phenomenon of people who
become divided over ethnic, linguistic, religious or
cultural differences within States. Methods must
therefore be found to resolve disputes within States.
I therefore wish to commend the United Nations
and to encourage the establishment of durable
mechanisms to ensure that disputes between and within
States are resolved in a peaceful manner. In that
context, I congratulate the African Union, regional
organizations and other international organizations for
the mediation work they have done, especially in
Africa. I would like to encourage developing countries,
especially African States, to make sure to adopt the
practice of resolving disputes in universities and to
train people at regional and local levels in dispute
settlement and resolution techniques.
There are a number of issues facing the United
Nations and the world, but my country has identified
five that I hope will be put at the forefront of the
United Nations agenda at this and future sessions. The
first issue is that of disaster relief and management.
Disasters have now become a major problem in most of
our countries. They strain the resources of the least
developed countries, particularly in Africa. We face
problems of floods, heavy rains, droughts, earthquakes,
heavy winds and hurricanes almost every day. Such
developments have the effect of turning back the
progress made with respect to the Millennium
Development Goals. Therefore, I would like to invite
the international community to set up mechanisms in
Africa and elsewhere in the developing world that can
assist us in managing disasters.
My country also attaches importance to the issue
of climate change. Climate change has become an
extremely difficult issue in Africa, where crops are
destroyed because there is either too much rain or too
little rain, too much wind or too much sunshine. All
these possibilities are due to climate change. Therefore,
I encourage the international community to come up
with mechanisms to manage climate change. I know
that countries like Malawi have not contributed to the
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incidence of climate change. Nevertheless, we feel we
do have a collective responsibility to make sure that
the issue of climate change is addressed. I hope that the
upcoming seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change, scheduled to take place in South Africa, will
address this particular problem.
The third area to which my country attaches
importance is the issue of peace and security. As we are
all aware, no matter how much development we
achieve, it will be meaningless if there is no peace and
security in our countries. Unfortunately, in our
countries, especially in Africa, we now face a lot of
challenges. There are movements of people who are
bent upon bringing about unconstitutional changes of
Government, thereby causing instability.
In the case of Malawi, we are committed to
maintaining peace and security. We are also committed
to democracy and good governance. In this regard,
Malawi has, for example, instituted a number of
bodies, such as the Malawi Human Rights
Commission, an ombudsman, an anti-corruption bureau
and the Department of the Auditor General. All these
institutions are institutions of good governance aimed
at improving the governance in our part of Africa, and
certainly in Malawi.
Another issue that is of importance to Malawi in
particular and to Africa in general is the issue of self-
determination. We still have over 2 million people in
different parts of the world living under colonial
domination. I want to urge the international community
to make sure that by the end of the Third International
Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism — from
2011 to 2021 — all the territories under colonial
domination will be free and independent. I think that
self-governance is a very important concept. The self-
determination of colonized peoples is enshrined in the
Charter of the United Nations.
Of course, there is another element of self-
determination which the United Nations obviously has
to address, namely, that of self-determination outside
the colonial context. It is an extremely complicated
problem that needs to be addressed and studied. First
of all, what does self-determination mean within the
context of non-colonial States? What are peoples
within the context of non-colonial States? It is an issue
that obviously we must address because it is an
important one.
Finally, my Government attaches great
importance to the role of the Security Council. There is
no question that the Council has played an extremely
important role since the creation of the United Nations
in 1945. However, I think it is obvious to everybody
that the structure created in 1945 is no longer
applicable to the present situation. We need therefore
to make sure that the Security Council is democratized.
We need to make sure that majority of countries,
especially those most affected by the Security Council,
like Malawi and others in Africa, are given a role to
play in the Council. I therefore would like to endorse
Africa’s common position, known as the Ezulwini
Consensus, that two permanent member seats and five
non-permanent seats in the Security Council should be
given to Africa.