I should like
at the outset to congratulate you, Su, on your election
as President of the General Assembly at its sixty-third
session. I wish you every success in your mission.
I should like also to thank your predecessor,
Mr. Srgjan Kerim, for all of his efforts in the previous
session. I should further like to thank the Secretary-
General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his efforts to promote
and revitalize the role of the United Nations.
I need not remind anyone in this Hall, which
holds such a high-level assembly, that the primary goal
of this Organization and the fundamental purpose of its
Charter is to achieve and maintain world peace.
The human experience replete with hopes and
horrors reminds us all that world peace can only be
achieved by a conscious, positive act and not through
mere wishful thinking. We have sought to achieve
peace through war in which the powerful tried to
impose their will, as in the two notorious world wars of
the twentieth century.
We have sought to find peace through entente
between empires, as between Britain and France in
1904. We sought peace through coexistence between
the United States and the Soviet Union in 1971. In all
those attempts, either by war or by entente between
Powers, by agreement between empires or by
coexistence between blocs and doctrines, peace has
remained elusive.
We have all come to realize through those long
and exhausting experiences that achieving peace is a
positive act that means more than just eliminating the
threat of weapons. While it is true that humanity has
not suffered a global war in the past 60 years, it is also
true that peace in those last six decades has remained
elusive. It has been a peace beset by conflicts on all
continents and in all territories. We have also come to
the conclusion that in a world where barriers of
distance and time have come to evaporate, achieving
peace means establishing and promoting economic and
social justice among peoples. That is what constitutes
positive peace.
If the purposes and principles of the Charter have
established the political rights of nations on the basis
of international law, the right of peoples to social
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justice must be based on the idea of development. In
the past, the first generation of advocates and
supporters of national liberation movements demanded
what they called “positive neutrality”, believing that
they could thus distance themselves from the wars of
the major powers. However, the realities of today’s
world require a different approach, for peace cannot be
achieved through conflict between powers, agreement
between empires, or coexistence among blocs, and not
even through positive neutrality.
The alternative to those three options is our new
choice, namely positive peace, an era of international
law that ensures political rights and an era of
development offering parallel and equal opportunities
in one world, which cannot go into the future burdened
by the injustices of politics or blinded by the darkness
of underdevelopment.
Qatar is getting ready to host the follow-up
International Conference on Financing for
Development. My country looks forward to an
international cooperation that offers the broadest base
possible for political as well as social peace. We hope
that participation the conference will be at the highest
possible level. The goal is ambitious and the purpose is
vital for the safety and peace of the one human global
village.