Just one
year ago (see A/62/PV.6), I recalled before this
Assembly that I was bringing the words of a people
who for 200 years have experienced extreme suffering
as a result of all kinds of material privation and
complete vulnerability in the face of natural risks and
disasters.
At that time, I hardly thought that I would find
myself here again one year later against the backdrop
of the image of hundreds of children, women and the
elderly swept away by floodwaters, hundreds of
thousands of citizens suddenly finding themselves
without shelter, tens of thousands of tons of
agricultural harvest destroyed in a few hours, not to
mention the incalculable damage to basic infrastructure
such as communication networks, art works, irrigation
systems, the electricity grid, the water system and other
structures.
I am pointing out that those catastrophic events
occurred just four months after the first angry
demonstrations of the population against the explosion
in food prices, reactions that would be repeated on an
almost global scale, as though to express a collective
cry of the poor regarding what was happening beyond
just a global food crisis, as the rejection of an order for
which the poor had too long been the only ones to pay
the cost.
The damage caused four consecutive hurricanes
in less than two months has set Haiti back several
years. Those hurricanes sorely test our capacity to
resist, particularly when it must be borne in mind that
all those victims, and their families, and all those
businesses, large or small, have to fend for themselves
while they wait for the State, and the State alone, to
help them to get back on their feet or return to
business. There are no adequate market insurance
systems to compensate for the losses arising from that
enormous damage.
I cannot thank the Secretary-General enough for
the great outpouring of sympathy that the United
Nations system has shown towards the people of Haiti
following those disasters. I can hardly express
sufficient thanks for the mobilization organized by the
United Nations agencies on the ground to bring help to
the most vulnerable and assist the affected families to
tackle the most urgent problems.
How can I thank the many friendly countries that
so quickly mobilized their own resources and logistics
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to come to the aid of the Haitians? How can we express
our gratitude in the light of those expressions of
compassion and the numerous initiatives of solidarity
coming from civil society and the private sector in
those same friendly countries?
Just as dark clouds have a silver lining, how
could I not recall that huge solidarity movement from
within even our country, involving civil society and
non-governmental organizations, not to forget, of
course, the millions of Haitians living abroad, in an
unprecedented mobilization, all striving to work
together in synergy with the local authorities and
specialized agencies of the central Government.
Despite the suffering that the Haitian people are
enduring today because of the cumulative effect of the
disasters that befell them, I cannot help turning my
thoughts to our neighbours, countries such as Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, Mexico, our brother nations in
the Caribbean Community and even some States on the
southern coast of the United States that have also
suffered considerable damage as a result of those first
hurricanes of the season — and I stress, the first
hurricanes of the season. How can we not remember
either the sight of the disasters that have struck India,
Bangladesh and other regions of the Asian continent?
However, beyond those calamities that we could,
quite easily, attribute to nature, how can we ignore
other disasters for which we humans are directly
responsible through war and the destruction that we
bring about with such determination in various areas of
the world? To all citizens of those countries affected by
the violence of men and by natural disasters, to their
families and their representatives here at this
Assembly, on behalf of the Haitian people I address my
best wishes for courage in their reconstruction efforts
and in their quest for peace and happiness. And I can
assure them of our feeling of solidarity and fraternity
in that effort.
While I salute that huge wave of generosity
towards my country and am grateful for that solidarity,
recognizing it was necessary for the immediate needs
of those affected, I cannot fail to draw attention to the
concerns that it raises for Haitians. I am worried
because I know how deep-rooted our problems are. I
am concerned because I am apprehensive about the
time when that solidarity, exhausted in the first wave of
humanitarian compassion, will leave us, as always,
alone — really alone — in the face of new disasters, to
see as if in a ritual, the same mobilization exercises.
I am concerned because the Haitians risk finding
themselves alone in ensuring the only real task that
needs undertaking today: that of rebuilding the country.
We must rebuild its production capacity and social
fabric and give our young people a new dream, the
poor new hope, and our citizens of all political leanings
and all social strata new confidence. We need a
reconstruction project thought out in a systematic
approach and able to count on genuine solidarity to
mobilize the necessary resources for its
implementation.
That is why we are sceptical with regard to
imported food aid and the traditional way in which it is
carried out. We have to break this paradigm of charity
in our approach to international cooperation, for
charity has never helped any country to emerge from
underdevelopment.
The Native Americans that lived in our country
and the Africans that replaced them helped a large part
of humanity to amass its current wealth. We are simple
workers who have been moulded by hard labour and
blessed with a keen sense for commerce and creating
businesses.
If the international community wants to do
something useful with Haitians, that would be to help
us use our potential. The liberalization of trade can be
beneficial to humanity, particularly to the poor, who
have the ability to produce for a greater market. But
this liberalization must be done without hypocrisy or
duping anyone. It must be carried out on the basis of
clear, transparent rules that are the same for everyone,
and the powers that promote them must begin by
respecting those rules themselves.
Setting up and maintaining genuine productive
capacities and trading under fair conditions are the
initial conditions that would enable poor people to
escape from the chains of poverty. The day when
development aid aligns itself with these criteria, the
fight against poverty and hunger will really turn a
corner in this world of ours.
We will then see that the poor are not as poor as
all that. We will see that they have available to them
assets that political parties, institutions and cooperation
programmes are not sufficiently making use of. We all
realize that the lands and the unregistered houses the
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poor possess and the informal businesses they are
involved in are also capital that can legitimately
circulate in the economy and participate in the creation
of new wealth.
This system simply has to be formalized. And we
have to give property title to those who own those
lands and those houses. We also have to formalize this
trade. I have begun discussions with some of our
partners to move quickly to a thorough evaluation of
new needs created by the damage to our infrastructure
with a view to developing a comprehensive
reconstruction plan, which will serve as the conductor
for cooperation efforts with our country.
Last Tuesday, on the occasion of the opening of
the general debate of the sixty-third session of the
General Assembly (5th meeting), I listened very
carefully to the opening statement of the President. The
creation of the United Nations was an important
conquest in the history of mankind’s struggle to find a
remedy for poverty and to build a world of peace based
on equality and respect for everyone’s rights. The
Organization remains the privileged place for debating
the problems of our world and for allowing the voices
of the poor and of those left behind to be heard. We
cannot allow its work to be hindered by its inability to
take into account the voice of the majority. We cannot
allow its agencies to exist only for themselves,
relegating to second place their primary mission of
service.
I agree with the President that our Organization
needs profound reform so that it becomes more
effective, more transparent and genuinely democratic.
If it fails to accomplish this, the United Nations risks
being resented by the small and derided by the big. We
do not need that in these difficult and uncertain days,
when our planet is being put to a severe test by a
combination of crises of all kinds, multidimensional
crises whose solution will depend on our collective
capacity to deal with them effectively, equitably and
with solidarity.
The announced high-level dialogue on the
democratization of the United Nations, if approached
with courage and determination, will put us on the road
to changing its structures and its way of functioning.
Such reforms can only be a source of inspiration and a
model for small countries, stricken like us by long-
standing difficulties, for ending institutional fragility
and arriving at political stability and a fully
functioning rule of law.
This Assembly is among those to whom fate has
entrusted the destiny of our planet. The world that is
being remoulded around us is a world in which wealth
and poverty can no longer be confined within closed
spaces, separated by impassable borders. Climate
change has no borders. Viruses and diseases are elusive
undocumented visitors. The hunger of the poor is a
threat and will continue to threaten the happiness of the
rich.
The question that we have to collectively ask
ourselves today is this: will we perish together because
we were not able to take up our mission together with
courage, or will we agree to mobilize for a new plan
for humanity under a new form of governance, one that
is responsible and based on solidarity, in order to save
our beautiful planet, and to give our children the
opportunity to build a better world?