Allow me to congratulate
you, Sir, on your election as President of the General
Assembly at its sixty-third session. I am pleased to see
a member of our regional group of Latin America and
the Caribbean in that high office. I am convinced that
your longstanding diplomatic experience and in-depth
knowledge of current international issues will enable
you to successfully discharge the high responsibility of
your office. I would also like to recognize the able
stewardship and valuable work of your predecessor,
Mr. Srgjan Kerim, during the Assembly’s sixty-second
session.
To the Secretary-General of the Organization, His
Excellency Ban Ki-moon, I pledge Suriname’s full
support in implementing the resolutions of the United
Nations to achieve the objectives of the United Nations
Charter for sustainable development, international
peace and security and respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms.
We are commemorating the sixtieth anniversary
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this
year, while many of these rights are still under serious
pressure. New threats, such as global warming and
climate change and most recently the global food and
energy crises, are an infringement on people’s rights to
food, health, education, security and the overall
freedom to live in dignity. Those tribulations are
intertwined and universal and thus beyond the control
of any single nation. Millions of vulnerable people are
therefore looking to the international community, with
the United Nations at the helm, for effective measures
to bring some kind of relief.
The Economic and Social Council recently
recognized the seriousness and complexity of the
global food crisis and reiterated that its consequences
require a comprehensive response by national
Governments and the international community. It is
essential for us to intensify our combined efforts, and
we therefore support the emergency global partnership
plan for food, called for by Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon in his address to the General Assembly high-
level event on the global food and climate change
crises.
The financial and monetary implications of the
global crisis require substantial political and financial
commitments from us all, from national Governments,
from multilateral organizations, including international
financial institutions, and from the private sector. We
will have to change the way that we, human beings,
behave towards Mother Nature and we will have to
find a solution to policies and regulations that are
detrimental to our progress, such as protectionist
agricultural policies in developed countries that are
causing low production in the agricultural sector of
many developing countries. If we do not find lasting
solutions now, the cost of our inaction will be
unacceptably high, and the threats that we will most
likely pass on to the next generation will be
devastating.
My country, Suriname, was on the right track
towards achieving some of the Millennium
Development Goals, including poverty reduction
sustained by economic growth rates of over 5 per cent
annually in the past three years, with predictions by
renowned international financial institutions of
approximately 8 per cent growth for the coming years.
As a result of the current food and energy crises, as
well as the recent volatility of financial markets, it has
now become a challenge for us to keep up the pace and
quality of our development.
My Government has taken action and has already
put some measures in place to respond to the new
difficulties we are facing because of those external
developments. We have expanded social security to
cover the most needy, such as children, the elderly and
people with disabilities, we have put in place food
programmes for schoolchildren, and we have increased
salaries and Government pensions, which had
weakened as a result of years of inflation. The
Government has now called upon the private sector to
follow its lead and restore eroded salaries and
pensions.
Africa, the cradle of humanity, is a continent with
immense capability, endowed with indispensable
human and natural potential. Paradoxically, in many
parts of the continent, development is lagging behind
or even absent, and development perspectives are
bleak.
27 08-51839
My country commends Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon for holding the important high-level meeting
on “Africa’s development needs: state of
implementation of various commitments, challenges
and the way forward”, which took place just two days
ago. It is our genuine expectation that the outcome of
that meeting will lead to new and unique opportunities
for impacting positively on and contributing to the
development of Africa.
Suriname remains committed to the promotion
and protection of human rights. My country
underscores the principle of equality before the law
and emphasizes that everyone should be held
accountable for their actions. Against that backdrop,
Suriname acceded to the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court on 15 July of this year.
We thus expressed our commitment to fighting the
impunity of the perpetrators of gross human rights
violations. However, providing the Court with its full
potential to meet its mandate depends on a collective
commitment at the global level.
Environmental disturbances today are of such
magnitude that we can no longer ignore their negative
impact on the world’s resources. As a country with 90
per cent of its territory covered by forests within which
lies one of the largest stretches of pristine tropical
rainforests on earth, Suriname is aware of its value and
potential to contribute to the global mitigation of
climate change, the conservation of biodiversity and
the protection of water resources.
However, the contribution of the international
community to the preservation and protection of such
globally valuable resources is not proportionate to the
sacrifice made by the forested countries. Moreover,
forested countries like Suriname with very low
deforestation rates are forgotten in mechanisms devised
to compensate for deforestation.
Suriname recently hosted the Paramaribo
Dialogue, a country-led initiative on financing for
sustainable forest management in support of the United
Nations Forum on Forests. During that international
dialogue, multiple stakeholders from all over the world
came together to develop substantive proposals for the
establishment of an international financial framework
to assist in future sustainable forest management.
We stress the importance of new financing
mechanisms, since good management of forests and
other natural resources cannot and should not be at the
expense of the development of our own peoples, the
peoples of countries with high forest coverage and low
deforestation rates. We therefore look forward to
substantial investments to support the sustainable
development of such countries.
Suriname has supported the restructuring process
of the United Nations from the start, with the aim of
achieving a more effective and efficient Organization
that would be better equipped to adequately address
old and new challenges. In that process, we expect that
the role of the United Nations as a partner in
development will gain further relevance and achieve a
more coherent and enhanced presence in support of
capacity-building and sustainable development.
Suriname is also currently engaged in a “One
UN” policy process, through which it responds to the
need for coherent involvement of the United Nations in
its development efforts. To that end, Suriname and the
United Nations agencies signed the Country
Programme Action Plan for the period 2008-2011,
which also addresses the pursuit of the Millennium
Development Goals.
We have entered an era of growing anxieties and
concerns that go beyond national borders. The
contemporary world situation requires harmonization
of the United Nations with current international
developments. Suriname believes that the United
Nations should be given the tools and instruments to
enable the Organization to address global challenges in
support of a comprehensive and coherent development
agenda in the interest of all the nations of the world.