As the first female head of State in the
history of my country, I would like to address this
Assembly by speaking first on the issue of human
rights. Members know that, for my country, the policy
of unrestricted respect for and promotion of human
rights is one of our State policies.
In that context, I would like to urge that the
International Convention for the Protection of All
Persons from Enforced Disappearance — which was so
energetically promoted by our country and which I
co-signed, as First Lady of the Argentine Republic, in
Paris last year together with 73 other delegations — be
ratified by all countries that have signed it. Thus far,
only four countries — Argentina, Albania, Mexico and
Honduras — have ratified it. I know that the Republic
of France will soon be ratifying it, but it is
indispensable that we all strongly commit to ensuring
that the inviolability of persons be one of the guiding
principles for all States.
In this context, I would also like to put forward
the Latin American Initiative for the Identification of
Disappeared Persons. I would like to say that, together
with the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic
Anthropology, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology
Team and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team,
we are promoting this initiative to establish genetic
identity banks to enable us to report precisely on
violations of human rights and properly identify
victims.
We deem invaluable the testimony of the women
who are with us here at the Assembly today, members
of Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo — the Grandmothers
of the Plaza de Mayo — who envisioned the creation
of this genetic information bank. They have been able
to recover, from oblivion and disappearance, 95 of the
500 grandchildren who disappeared, children of those
political prisoners who disappeared under the former
dictatorship in Argentina.
The work of these women is living witness to
how, even amidst adversity and against all that State
terrorism — not just in my country but in other
republics — has meant, it is possible to overcome
death and fight for life. The recovery of these children
shows how important — how crucial — it is to support
this type of initiative and underlines the importance of
the work that has been done to identify the victims of
the Balkan wars and those of the 11 September attack
on the World Trade Center.
In the fight against impunity, which is a State
policy in the Republic of Argentina, we cannot fail to
mention an issue that, for us, is undoubtedly another
cornerstone of this inexhaustible struggle. My country,
the Republic of Argentina, suffered two attacks, in
1992 and 1994: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli
Embassy and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine
Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building.
Last year, before this very Assembly, former
President Kirchner asked INTERPOL to ratify the
arrest warrants issued by my country’s Ministry of
Justice against Iranian citizens accused of participating
in the AMIA building bombing. Days later, INTERPOL
ratified them, and international arrest warrants were
issued accordingly. I call upon the Islamic Republic of
Iran, in compliance with international law, please to
agree that the Argentine justice system can bring to
trial in public, transparent courts, and with the full
guarantees given by a democratic system, those
citizens who stand accused.
Before all the countries of the world brought
together in this Assembly, and with the conviction I
have always held that innocence must be respected
until an individual has been convicted and sentenced
by a competent judge, I would like to affirm that, in my
country, those citizens will have a fair and public trial
with their full participation, with all the guarantees
afforded by Argentine law and by the oversight of the
international community. Given the gravity of these
events, this would guarantee to the Islamic Republic of
Iran that there would be fairness, truth and justice in
that trial.
I would thus urge once again that, in compliance
with international law and because ensuring access to
justice is what truly shows how we respect truth,
justice and freedom, this request from the Argentine
justice system, accepted by INTERPOL, be respected.
That would undoubtedly contribute to providing truth
for all — not just for Argentines, but for the entire
international community — at a time when truth and
justice are elusive values internationally.
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In this Hall, as we have been doing since 2003, I
would also like to call for the reform of our
multilateral bodies — not only of the United Nations,
which includes us all, but also of the multilateral
financial institutions as well. That involves us all, and
it is necessary to recreate a multilateralism which has
been lost, leading to a far more insecure world. The
Organization needs to be reformed, not just from the
point of view of dogmatic approaches to the world, but
to meet the real need of all States to ensure the
functional, operational and results-oriented character of
the activities and interventions of the Organization.
In this context, I would modestly like to put
forward an example from our region, South America,
of how we were recently able to demonstrate that
multilateralism can be achieved, despite differences of
approach and vision that different Governments in our
region may have.
Here I am looking at the President Evo Morales —
the legitimate President of our sister Republic of
Bolivia. I would like to say that, a few days ago, the
Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) met in
support of the democratic legitimacy of that country. In
a concrete multilateral exercise, heads of State, who do
not always share the same viewpoints or interests when
we take decisions, were able to work unanimously to
forge a resolution and plan of action to help our sister
Republic of Bolivia, affected by those who do not
respect the democratic will of the people freely
expressed through elections.
That is not our only experience of
multilateralism. Previously, at the meeting of the Rio
Group in the Dominican Republic, at the time of the
incident between the sister Republics of Ecuador and
Colombia, heads of State intervened and were able to
navigate a conflict which, on the basis of history, in
other situations would surely have degenerated into an
armed conflict between two sister countries.
What I want to say with this is that, for us, the
exercise of multilateralism is not simply a hackneyed
speech. It is a deeply-held conviction and a concrete
and objective policy, showing results in what are
normally called emerging regions, where we are
capable of giving examples of multilateral
collaboration in overcoming conflicts.
The other reform that we have always promoted
is that of the multilateral credit institutions, but
fundamentally the reform of an economic model that
placed the generation of wealth at the centre of the
fictional economy and of the world of finances. Recent
days show that those matters, those positions, were not
the result of an ideological bias or closed dogmas but
of objective and timely observation of what was going
on.
Today, we cannot speak of the “caipirinha effect”
or the “tequila effect” or the “rice effect”, or the effect
that always showed that the crisis moved from the
emerging countries towards the centre. Today, if we
were to give it a name, we would have to say, perhaps,
the “jazz effect”, which moves from the centre of the
first economy of the world and spreads to the rest of
the world. That situation does not make us content or
happy.
Quite the contrary, we consider this an historic
opportunity to review behaviour and policies, because
during the period of the Washington Consensus, we —
the countries of South America — were told that the
market would solve everything, that the State was not
necessary, that State intervention was something for
which groups that had not understood how the
economy had developed were nostalgic. However, now
we are seeing the most formidable State intervention in
memory from exactly the place where we had been told
that the State was not necessary, in the framework,
moreover, of an incredible fiscal and trade deficit.
My country, the Argentine Republic — which, if
it continues to grow at the rates at which it has been
growing since 2003, will this year be completing the
largest economic growth cycle of its almost 200-year
history — has always upheld the need for a State
presence, fundamentally because the market does not
assign resources to the most vulnerable sectors and
because we see the State as connecting the interests of
society and market interests.
Since 2003, an Argentina that had been in debt up
to as much as 160 per cent of its GDP has today
reduced its debt to almost 50 per cent of GDP. We have
fully paid our debt to the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and about 15 days ago we announced that we
will settle our debt with the Paris Club, which had a
cut-off date of 10 December 1983 — the very year
when the first democratic President took office, after
the dictatorship. Here in New York yesterday, in the
Council on Foreign Relations, I announced that
Argentina has received a proposal from three very
important banks that represent bond-holders who did
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not participate in the 2005 bond exchange and who are
proposing to do so in conditions more favourable for
my country, Argentina, than those of the 2005
exchange.
Thus we believe not only that our strategy has
been correct but that it is absolutely necessary for all of
us to review, with a great deal of intellectual humility,
what is happening today in the markets and see what
are the possible solutions for overcoming the situation.
We emerging countries have a great advantage in what
we do not have: no credit risk agency will come,
nobody from the IMF will come tell us what to do, a
great country that has grown on the basis of its real
economy and today really has problems on the basis of
a casino economy or a fictional economy, where it was
thought that only capitalism can produce money. I
always say that capitalism was invented in order to
earn money, but on the basis of the production of
goods, services and knowledge. Money alone does not
produce more money. It has to go through the circuit of
production, work, knowledge, services and goods so
that there can be a virtuous cycle that can generate
well-being for the whole of society.
Finally, I want to mention a matter that affects
not only my country, beyond its geographical location,
but also concerns this Assembly and also the need to
face the twenty-first century without colonial enclaves.
Here I refer to the issue of our Malvinas Islands,
where, despite the resolutions of this body, despite all
the measures taken here for the United Kingdom to
agree, in virtue of what is set out in Article 33 of the
Charter of the United Nations, to negotiate in peace
between the parties, that country resolutely refuses to
discuss with the Argentine Republic the issue of the
Malvinas Islands.
I believe that a member of the Security
Council — one that is among the principal nations of
the world in the defence of freedom, human rights and
democracy — should give concrete proof that it is not
just talk but that it is truly convinced that it is
necessary to end this shame, that of a colonial enclave
in the twenty-first century. I want to request again, as
have the different Presidents who preceded me —
because Malvinas is for Argentineans a State policy as
well — the cooperation that this body has always
provided to once again urge the United Kingdom to
agree to comply with international law and to
demonstrate that it is serious in wishing to build a
different world and a different citizenry.
Lastly, I wish to speak to all those men and
women who have institutional governmental
responsibilities in any of the branches of the State in
their respective countries to once again advocate for
the transformation of an international policy that has
its fullest expression in this House. The reform of the
instruments that we are requesting is not simply a
question of cosmetics and formulas and changes that
barely conceal that everything is continuing as it
stands. The present situation, the complexity of the
world that is coming, in terms of food and energy,
requires all of us to re-examine our behaviour and our
paradigms. We must accept with humility that it is
necessary to build a world that is different from the one
we have had to date — one in which respect for human
rights, for the will of peoples and for those who are
different, do not think as we do or who pray to a
different god is not merely a catalogue of good
intentions set out in the United Nations Charter, but a
reality that is experienced a little more concretely
every day.