It is my
great pleasure, Sir, to convey to you the heartfelt
congratulations of the delegation of Mali upon your
election to the presidency of the sixty-third session of
the General Assembly, and to assure you of our full
support. I should like also to hail Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon for his devotion and commitment to our
Organization.
The sixty-third session of the General Assembly
is opening with the timely theme of the impact of the
global food crisis on poverty and hunger throughout
the world. Indeed, it takes place in a difficult
international context, one marked by the conjunction of
food and energy crises. This situation is of concern to
my delegation, as it is a potential source of generalized
social and political instability.
What can we do? In Mali, we have granted the
highest priority to the fight against poverty and the
high cost of living. In this respect, the Government has
undertaken a series of measures to stem the effects of
the present crisis through, inter alia, a temporary
suspension of import duties and taxes on basic
foodstuffs, such as rice, wheat flour, oil and milk, as
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well as subsidizing gas, hydrocarbons and agricultural
inputs.
My country, Mali, is firmly determined to achieve
food self-sufficiency and to become, in the medium
term, an agricultural Power. To that end, we have made
agriculture the principal tool to attain accelerated
growth. Accordingly, an agricultural framework law
has been adopted, and its progressive implementation
has included the following measures.
First and foremost, the new law contains a
measure to launch the rice initiative, which was
designed as a proactive and structural response to the
dizzying increase in price of grain products on global
markets. Next, the law includes the setting up of a
national agricultural development fund and a fund for
emergencies and disasters. It also involves the setting
up of land commissions and a programme to develop
low-lying lands within the framework of local
irrigation works. Finally, it involves the setting up of a
high council for agriculture. In addition, we will soon
adopt guidelines for the marketing of grain products,
including rice, and a mechanism for supplying
agricultural inputs.
Along these same lines, the Government of Mali
has prepared and implemented a national strategy to
fight poverty, a strategic framework for fighting
poverty and a strategic framework for growth and
poverty reduction for the period 2007-2011.
In addition, our Social and Economic
Development Project has been conceived by the
President of the Republic, Mr. Amadou Toumani Touré.
It should enable Mali to increase its production and
fairly share the fruits of growth, invest in the future
and build a State of good governance and the rule of
law.
The fight against corruption is another aspect of
this overall project. The national convention that will
be organized to address this issue in October 2008
should enable the Malian nation to seek through broad
consultation a comprehensive understanding of the
phenomenon in order to define a plan of action against
the scourge.
Seeking to promote transparent and effective
management of its public finances, Mali, which has
joined the African Union’s African Peer Review
Mechanism, has submitted its governance to that
evaluation process. This exercise, which will be
concluded in January 2009, will take stock of the
situation, including in the field of political governance,
business governance and governance of socio-
economic development. It will result in
recommendations for improvements in those areas.
In the same vein, the human rights situation in
Mali has been considered within the framework of the
new universal periodic review mechanism set up within
the context of the Human Rights Council. From this
rostrum, laden as it is with symbolism, I would like to
reiterate the commitment of the Government of Mali to
take concrete action on the relevant recommendations
that we are committed to following at the outcome of
this process.
Mali remains convinced that the prevention and
peaceful settlement of conflicts is the best possible
guarantee of international peace and security. Backed
by that belief, my country firmly made the choice of
dialogue aimed at finding a lasting solution to the
situation of insecurity that has prevailed in the north-
east of our country. In this respect, the Algiers peace
agreement of 4 July 2006 remains relevant, as it
preserves our territorial integrity and our national
unity, by enabling the various strands of the Malian
nation to fully participate in the national construction
endeavour.
Aware that security in the Sahelo-Saharan region
is closely linked to that of States and peoples sharing
the space and that conflicts affecting one country can
rapidly spread throughout the region, the Government
of Mali, in October 2008, will organize in Bamako a
conference on peace, security and development in the
Sahelo-Saharan region.
The conference will provide a useful opportunity
for the States of the region to jointly reaffirm our
commitment to turn our shared space into a zone of
peace and security, a centre of stability, growth and
development. It will also provide us with responses
adapted to the problems and challenges we face:
insecurity, transborder banditry, terrorism and
trafficking of all types, including trafficking in drugs,
arms and human beings.
Here, Mali considers that it is the duty of the
international community to take vigorous action to
maintain and build international peace and security. In
this respect, we welcome and encourage progress
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achieved in the resolution of conflicts and crises that
rack the African continent, including those in Côte
d’Ivoire, the Sudan, Somalia and the Great Lakes
region.
Mali calls for the resumption of the negotiating
process in the Middle East and reaffirms its
unswerving support for the creation of a sovereign and
independent Palestinian State.
There are many other serious challenges facing
the international community to which we will have to
respond appropriately to build a better world together.
First and foremost, there is the problem of climate
change. Today more than ever before, the very survival
of our planet is threatened by climate change, which
has a serious impact on living conditions in developing
countries such as mine through, inter alia,
desertification, the silting up of rivers, the deterioration
of the environment, a reduction of the length of the
winter periods, floods and poor rainfall patterns. We
should, therefore, urgently undertake measures which
are commensurate with the pressing nature of the
problem. In this respect, the conclusions of the high-
level event on climate change in 2007 and those of the
Bali Climate Change Conference in the same year are
still relevant and are worthy of being implemented in a
diligent way. Mali, which is a party to the Kyoto
Protocol, is eager to make a useful contribution to the
fifteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference,
to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.
The second major challenge to which we must
devote particular attention is the HIV/AIDS pandemic,
which poses one of the most serious threats to
sustainable development. We must redouble our efforts
and our resolve to implement the 2001 Declaration of
Commitment, as well as the outcomes of the high-level
meetings on AIDS and the seventeenth International
AIDS Conference, held in Mexico last August. All of
these forums have highlighted the severity of the
situation and stressed the urgent need to act and to
mobilize resources to fight the pandemic.
The third significant challenge for the
international community is the situation of landlocked
developing countries, which, as a result of their
isolation and their great distance from the world’s main
markets, are confronted with serious handicaps. I
congratulate the Secretary-General for having taken the
initiative to convene, following the general debate, a
high-level plenary meeting devoted to the midterm
review of the Almaty Programme of Action. Mali will
actively participate in that meeting and will work to
ensure that leads to operational conclusions that can
contribute to the comprehensive, rapid, and effective
implementation of the Almaty Programme of Action.
The fourth challenge is institutional reform of the
United Nations. This issue remains important as the
continuation of the establishment of the Peacebuilding
Commission and the Human Rights Council and of the
strengthening the Economic and Social Council. Thus,
the expansion of the Security Council is clearly a
pressing necessity, particularly to redress the historic
injustice committed against Africa, namely, that it does
not have a permanent seat. That is something which is
underscored in the joint African position on the issue.
All these challenges which we currently face
require a collective global response. Only a reformed
and democratized United Nations may serve as a
genuine crucible for universal collective conscience
capable of best discharging its primary mission,
namely, to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war and destruction. Mali will do its full
part in this fight.