I warmly
congratulate the President on his election to the
presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-third
session. Benin, my country, will make its modest
contribution to the work of this session and will strive
to promote the ideals of the Charter, to which my
country here reaffirms its full commitment. His
predecessor strove to find ideal solutions to the great
challenges facing humankind during his mandate. We
pay tribute to him for his good and faithful service to
the international community.
I also wish to commend the diligent and resolute
efforts of the Secretary-General, who has understood
the scope of the grave crises that have shaken the
world over the past year. Thanks to his bold initiatives
to promote international cooperation, he has been able
to revive the virtue of multilateralism as the best way
to manage world affairs in an inclusive and
participatory framework highlighting the uniqueness of
our world and the shared responsibility of the human
species to maintain the fundamental equilibriums on
which its survival on the Earth and the permanence of
the biosphere depend.
In 2007, responding to the alarm raised by the
scientific community, we focused our attention on
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climate change as a global problem affecting the
environment on our planet, with far-from-rosy
prospects for the future of humankind and obvious
consequences in our daily lives. The two major crises
that we have been attempting to contain for several
months are unfolding against that backdrop. The
energy and food crises, both of which are on our
agenda, are two of the world’s most serious crises in
recent history. They mark a departure from our
previous certainty as regards uninterrupted and lasting
supplies of energy and food for our peoples.
The Secretary-General has demonstrated
outstanding leadership by sounding the alarm and
warning us of the risks of hasty and non-viable
responses that could lead to panic and serve to
exacerbate the situation. The Rome Conference
organized under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations made it possible to
undertake a comprehensive assessment of the
complexity of the crisis and to develop an outline for a
comprehensive strategy. That strategy includes
immediate steps to address the emergency, as well as
several cohesive measures in the short, medium and
long term to preserve peace and stability in vulnerable
developing States. Those are the countries most
affected by the food crisis, which undermines their
efforts to combat poverty and hunger.
The response to the food crisis emergency should
not lead us to lose sight of the timetable for the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
The international community has a duty to mobilize the
necessary resources to correct the serious distortions
that are at the heart of the food crisis. Our performance
in that regard could be improved if vulnerable
countries were able to make the investments necessary
to relaunch agricultural production throughout the
world in a sustainable manner.
In addition, there is a need to maintain sustained
growth rates that can produce prosperity and
sustainable human development in the long term. We
must continue to work to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals and make them a lasting reality.
In this emergency, the United Nations should
bring to bear all its influence in order to help countries
experiencing difficulties ensure the survival of
threatened and vulnerable segments of the population,
who risk being decimated by hunger and famine if no
one comes to their aid.
The time has therefore come to give concrete
expression to the right to food. It is intolerable that
hunger continues to be a scourge afflicting humankind
in the twenty-first century. In the short term, priority
should be given to strengthening social protection
systems in least developed countries. Our efforts
should make it possible to activate the dormant
potential of local productive capacity in order to
stimulate small and medium-sized businesses.
Problems must be addressed through an integrated
approach that makes it possible to maximize
agricultural production, as well as of preserving,
bringing to market and distributing food crops in order
to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable
groups of the population, whose welfare we must
effectively ensure. In the medium and long terms, we
must rethink agricultural investment policies in order
to re-establish the balance between cash crops and food
production, so as to ensure food security for States
while taking cultural specificities into consideration.
Overall, this crisis illustrates that humankind is
not well equipped to manage the consequences of the
unfolding emergency. This proves that we are not
doing enough for the future and that we run the risk of
being subject to all sorts of ills. It is for that reason that
the proposal made by the High-Level Task Force on the
Global Food Security Crisis for an increase in the
proportion of official development assistance allocated
to agriculture from 3 to 10 per cent constitutes a
strategic approach that should be implemented with
common political will commensurate with the stakes
involved. I would like to pay tribute to the countries
that have already made firm commitments to provide
additional resources in that regard.
Benin is being seriously affected by the food
crisis, but we are resolutely committed to undertaking
the necessary reforms. To that end, in 2006, my
Government launched a national agricultural
modernization programme in order to address
heightened distortions. To date, agriculture in Benin
has been characterized by small-scale family farms and
based on the use of outdated equipment. In order to
change that situation, which has confined food
production to subsistence farming, a year ago my
Government initiated a mechanization programme to
improve the competitiveness of the agricultural sector.
Given that that mechanization alone cannot bring
about the expected results without the marshalling of
water resources, we are considering a programme for
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rational water management to better utilize that
resource while preserving it for the future. The goal is
to promote irrigation agriculture, primarily by building
irrigation dams in valleys in the north of our country as
part of an overall development plan.
Soil degradation, coastal erosion and the
combined effects of frequent flooding due to climate
change that seriously affect all of West Africa are
among the underlying factors contributing to the drop
in local food production. In that connection, I should
like to express our great appreciation for the
awareness-raising efforts of the secretariat for the
Convention to Combat Desertification.
Financing mechanisms, including the World
Bank’s Adaptation Fund, must function with a
heightened sense of the urgent need for aid to affected
regions. They should promote the implementation of
soil regeneration projects, irrigation agriculture and
reforestation with species that will increase the
availability of basic foodstuffs.
As part of efforts to promote diversification in the
agriculture sector, my Government also intends to
encourage the cultivation of crops suitable for biofuels
on marginally arable lands. The goal is to reduce
dependence on hydrocarbons, which has become more
acute following the dramatic drop in the generating
capacity of hydropower plants as a result of climate
change, whose impact has seriously affected economic
activity in my country over the past two years. These
difficulties have been exacerbated by the dizzying rise
in oil prices.
The tax cuts and import subsidies to which my
country has resorted in order to protect the buying
power of taxpayers have had a negative impact on
public finances. Those stop-gap measures are simply
not sustainable in the long-run.
This year we are commemorating the sixtieth
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Benin initiated resolution 62/171, which the
General Assembly adopted to proclaim the
International Year of Human Rights Learning, which
will begin on 10 December 2008. My country proposed
that new approach in order to once again place the
human person at the very centre of sustainable human
development efforts. Human rights learning leads to
increased demands for human rights, which society is
supposed to provide. It is the duty of the international
community to guarantee them. We call upon all
Member States to give real effect to the International
Year, in line with their national specificities, as well as
to take all the steps they believe necessary to promote
ownership and the effective enjoyment of human rights
by all individuals on their territory.
The activities that will take place during the
International Year of Human Rights Learning will
provide additional impetus to the efforts we have
undertaken to ensure that all citizens subscribe to the
Millennium Development Goals, especially in Africa,
where the risk of not meeting the Goals by the
established deadline is the greatest.
We welcome the recommendations of the
Steering Group for achieving the MDGs in Africa.
Benin is honoured to be one of the 10 pilot countries
chosen. Benin has begun to integrate the concept of
“united in action” within the framework of its
cooperation with the United Nations system and
eagerly awaits its inclusion in the second group of test
countries for the implementation of the
recommendations of the High-level Panel on System-
wide Coherence. This will enable us to develop
synergies to accelerate the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals.
At the national level, we have integrated the
achievement of the MDGs into our national
development strategies, which are based on attaining
those Goals as part of a sustainable development
process focused on and sustained by our nation and
aimed at supporting economic growth, which will
enable us to achieve lasting success.
We welcome the ongoing consideration of ways
to enhance the effectiveness of development assistance,
and we hope that this will enable us to develop a
consensus vision on the best possible way to revitalize
the global partnership for development, with the
ultimate objective, in our view, of reducing the
scandalous inequalities which still afflict humankind.
It is clear that democratization of the United
Nations and the promotion of the rule of law at an
international level are endeavours which will
contribute to the effective and efficient participation of
all peoples in managing world affairs, for the benefit of
present and succeeding generations. The promotion of
the rule of law at the international level requires the
increased representation of developing States in the
decision-making bodies of the international financial
institutions, as well as a redefinition of their
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institutional mandates to ensure that better use is made
of them to mobilize resources for the development of
the least developed countries, while preserving the
stability of the international financial system.
The democratization of the United Nations also
includes the long-awaited reform of the Security
Council. As a hostage of the inherent contradictions of
today’s international relations, it has remained
hopelessly stuck, even though it is recognized as being
of cardinal importance to the effectiveness of the
Organization. The negotiations to that end should be
carried out with a heightened sense of responsibility.
We must ensure equitable representation of Member
States within the Security Council. I reiterate here the
legitimate demands of Africa, as expressed in the
Ezulwini Consensus, within the framework of reform
aimed at ensuring transparency, legitimacy and
increased effectiveness of the Council’s decisions as it
discharges its primary role in maintaining international
peace and security. The democratization of the United
Nations also means a firmer commitment by Member
States to respect international and national legality.
In conclusion, I wish to make an urgent appeal to
all parties to the armed conflicts that continue in
various hotspots throughout the world, whether they be
in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America or Africa, to
choose the path of peace and dialogue and to respect
democratic values.