Bangladesh

The historic Millennium Summit and the forward-looking Declaration it adopted have set a very positive tone for the Millennium Assembly, which is now continuing with this general debate. We extend our heartiest congratulations to Mr. Harri Holkeri on his well-deserved election as the President of the fifty-fifth session. His deep commitment to the values and principles of the United Nations gives us the confidence that the affairs of this Assembly are in very good hands. I should also like to congratulate Foreign Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab, my dear colleague, for his superb leadership of the fifty-fourth General Assembly. We are grateful to him for his invaluable guidance in the preparations for the Millennium Summit and its outcome. May I also express Bangladesh's sincere thanks and gratitude to Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his vision in convening the Millennium Summit and for his untiring efforts towards its success. His millennium report contains a number of good proposals and ideas, which we wholeheartedly support. I reiterate Bangladesh's full support and cooperation to the Secretary-General in his determination to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the United Nations. Let me at the very outset extend our heartiest congratulations to the people and Government of Tuvalu as the newest Member of this Organization. Twenty-six years ago this month, when Bangladesh had just become a Member of this Organization, the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, addressed this Assembly. He underscored our commitment to the Charter of the United Nations. For our people, it was a great moment. We have travelled a long way since that time and our commitment to the United Nations has only grown in strength. As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina mentioned in her speech at the Millennium Summit: “In this Organization, the powerful and the weak, the large and the small, the wealthy and the struggling come together as equals to address their problems, to forge cooperation and to further understanding. It certainly is in our interest to strive for a United Nations which can fulfil our common goal — a better world for every human being”. To the people of Bangladesh, human rights is a sacred trust, because we were victims of its abuse. And yet the very person who had championed the cause of fundamental rights was denied the most basic of all human rights, the right to life. I speak of the ghastly murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with almost his entire family and close relations, by a group of assassins on 15 August 1975. The murderers had committed a crime and human rights abuse of the worst kind. And, in what could best be described as an arrogant affront to human rights and democratic principles, the killers were granted immunity from law by the so-called Indemnity Ordinance issued by the undemocratic regime of that time. 15 The present democratic Government in Bangladesh has repealed the Indemnity Ordinance since its assumption of office. The accused have been tried and found guilty of murder, and the verdict of the court of law has been announced. Some of them, however, have managed to escape justice by finding asylum in foreign lands. If human rights is to dominate the agenda of the new century, we would urgently ask the international community for its cooperation in bringing these self-confessed killers to Bangladesh to face justice. Here I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to those countries which have been cooperating with us in this matter. To Bangladesh, a very important manifestation of human rights is the right to development, which needs further assertion by the international community. In ensuring that right, it is essential that our collective efforts focus on addressing poverty. Unless we take positive actions in this regard, globalization will be more of a challenge and less an opportunity — freedom from want will remain elusive. The challenges are particularly daunting for the least developed countries and merit priority attention. Just as globalization touches us all, marginalization of these vulnerable countries would affect us all in the global family. We would urge the international community to make every effort for the success of the third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in 2001 in Brussels. In the past decade, the international community has made tremendous progress in recognizing the challenges and adopting elaborate programmes of actions in the areas of social development, human rights, environment, population, human settlement and food security, as well as on women and children. Now the challenge before us is to fulfil the commitments we have made together. Let us resolve that the next decade will be the decade of implementation. At home, in facing the challenges of the coming decades, poverty eradication has been set as the over- arching goal of the present Government of Bangladesh, under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. We are making increasingly great investments in our people and in our social and human development. In ensuring the effectiveness of this engagement, Bangladesh has focused on the rights of women and children. Bangladesh has become party to most of the international instruments relating to the rights of those two groups. During the Millennium Summit, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the two Optional Protocols on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography and on the involvement of children in armed conflict. Adoption of the “Woman and Child Repression Prevention Act, 2000” by our national Parliament is also a major step forward in eliminating violence against women and children. Unfortunately, our efforts towards sustainable human development have been set back through calamities beyond our control. Sometimes it is natural disasters like floods, cyclones or tidal surges. Sometimes it is silent killers like dengue fever or arsenic contamination of groundwater. Today, two thirds of the Bangladesh population is at risk as the result of arsenic contamination of drinking water. The Government has responded to this crisis with urgency and determination; in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Bank, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Adequate emphasis has also been given to ensuring alternative sources of safe drinking water for the community. In her statement at the Security Council summit two weeks ago, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina emphasized that international peace and security must also be understood in terms of human security. She also emphasized that we should prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the civilian population. We believe that the establishment of the International Criminal Court can effectively deal with these crimes. We signed the Rome Statute last year and have already initiated the process for early ratification. As an elected member of the United Nations Security Council, Bangladesh remains committed to its obligations to maintain and preserve international peace and security. Bangladesh strongly supports enhanced effectiveness of the United Nations peacekeeping operations, as well as its peace-building measures. Bangladesh is proud to be one of the largest troop contributors to United Nations peacekeeping operations, in fulfilment of our commitment to global peace and security. In this context, we welcome the recommendations of the Brahimi Panel and look forward to their consideration by the relevant intergovernmental bodies and the Secretariat. Here we 16 would emphasize that the resources needed for their implementation should not in any way undermine other, already existing programmes. An area of our common concern has been United Nations sanctions, their effectiveness and their impact. It is a matter of satisfaction that the Security Council, after years of debate, has set up a Working Group under Bangladesh chairmanship to study various general issues related to sanctions. We are confident that the work of the Group will help the Council to agree on measures to streamline the sanctions regimes. To ensure peace and development, we must move ahead with an agenda for real disarmament. The nuclearization of our own region in South Asia has caused us concern. As one of the least developed regions in the world, South Asia cannot afford to get into a race for nuclear weapons. In accordance with its constitutional commitment to total and general disarmament, Bangladesh took the lead in South Asia to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, ratifying it earlier this year. We also were among the first in South Asia to sign the Ottawa Convention on anti-personnel landmines, which was also ratified by us during the Millennium Summit, along with the Convention on certain conventional weapons (CCWC) and all its Protocols. Bangladesh considers peace and development to be fundamental rights. One cannot endure without the other. The United Nations and its Member States must continue to espouse and promote a culture of peace. Bangladesh took the initiative for the international observance of this millennium year and the first decade of the twenty-first century as the International Year for the Culture of Peace and the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of the World, respectively. As we have said on earlier occasions, Bangladesh believes that the United Nations should be prepared to respond effectively to the challenges of the new century. Since United Nations reforms were initiated by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a lot has been done, but much more could be added to this. We aspire to greater democratization and transparency in the organizations of the United Nations. We also believe that involvement by non-governmental organizations and other actors of civil society can significantly enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations. A changed world needs a changed United Nations — an Organization for today's world. We need to demonstrate courage and determination in order to preserve the United Nations as the world's most universal forum. Its founding fathers spoke about the scourge of war. Today the United Nations will only live up to the global reality if it cannot only free the world's people from the scourge of war but also save succeeding generations from the scourge of poverty. May Bangladesh live forever. May the United Nations live forever.