Ecuador hails the choice of Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
as President of the General Assembly at its sixty-fourth
session. We believe his broad experience in the
international scene augurs success in the work of this
Assembly. Ecuador wishes especially to commend the
former President, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann,
for his determination in democratizing this
Organization and for his unswerving commitment to
the poor and the voiceless of this planet.
The central theme of this general debate —
strengthening multilateralism — is the very purpose of
the United Nations. This Organization is called on to
be the expression of horizontal, democratic and
respectful relations among the countries of the world,
under the strictest observance of the principle of equal
sovereignty among States.
However, with its current structure and
operations, the Organization has not been able to
respond to the great challenges of the twenty-first
century. For that reason, it is urgent to strengthen its
structural reform. The Security Council must be more
representative, democratic and efficient. To achieve
that, we call on all Member States to make a
commitment to achieve true substantial transformation
this year in the Council’s composition and its working
methods. Likewise, our country believes that the
General Assembly, as the most democratic and
universally representative body, must fully assume the
role established for it in the United Nations Charter. It
is essential to move forward on substantial agreements
that can lead us to a real revitalization of the Assembly.
Along the same lines, Ecuador is committed to
regional integration processes as mechanisms of
coordination, cooperation and solidarity among
peoples. We therefore take on with great dedication and
enthusiasm the pro tempore presidency of the Union of
South American Nations (UNASUR), as an opportunity
to contribute to integration through a welcome
mechanism to promote democracy and collective
welfare in a coordinated and consensual manner.
Latin America and the Caribbean have
understood that the best way to face today’s challenges
is through effective multilateral action. Our region is
undergoing an intense process of integration based on
solidarity and cooperation. That process is
demonstrated in such vital regional forums as the Rio
Group, UNASUR, the Bolivian Alternative for the
Americas (ALBA) and the Caribbean Community.
Those groups engender the most diverse proposals and
initiatives designed to construct common agendas on
social, cultural, political and economic matters, in
order to build a new development strategy that is more
inclusive and less predatory.
Every integration effort requires the recognition
of the principles of equality and sovereignty of States.
Therefore my country applauds the reversal of the
unfair exclusion of our sister Republic of Cuba from
the Organization of American States (OAS). We have
settled part of Cuba’s debt, but despite repeated calls
on the part of this Assembly over the past 17 years, the
economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed
by the United States of America against that brother
country remains in place. The blockade is contrary to
the great principles of international law, and its
continuance is still severely affecting the well-being
and dignity of the Cuban people.
Latin America and the whole world have taken a
stand with the historic General Assembly
pronouncement (resolution 63/301) condemning the
coup d’état against the legitimate Government of the
Republic of Honduras. The international community
has categorically and unanimously rejected this attack
against democracy and against all the practices of
peaceful coexistence between peoples. We therefore
insist on the immediate restitution of President Zelaya,
as well as on the protection of his physical person and
an immediate end to the repression of the Honduran
people. We echo the resolutions of the United Nations,
the OAS, the Rio Group, UNASUR, the European
Union, ALBA and the many other international
organizations that have made decisive statements on
this subject.
I would also like to mention the declaration made
by the 61 heads of State and Government of South
America and Africa who met on Margarita Island,
Venezuela, on 26 and 27 September, in which we
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condemned the coup d’état in Honduras. In that
document, we also express our support for the Security
Council meeting held on 25 September 2009, which
highlighted the issue of the security of the Brazilian
embassy in Tegucigalpa, where President José Manuel
Zelaya has legitimately been taking refuge since
21 September and which has been subject to an
unjustifiable military and police barricade.
We call on the international community to act
together to adopt strong measures that guarantee the
restitution of democratic order in Honduras in order to
promote an election process of some kind and
recognize the authorities that are elected as a result of
such a process.
Today, we are facing a systemic and
multidimensional crisis that jeopardizes not only the
balance of an economic system but also the very
survival of human beings. The food crisis, the energy
crisis and the scandalous financial crisis are clear
symptoms of the fact that the system does not work and
must be re-invented.
One of the most obvious facets of the overall
crisis is the economic and financial crisis. Although
this crisis originated in the main speculative markets of
the rich countries of the North, that is, the casino
economy, its effects have been multiplying and
expanding in developing countries.
Nevertheless, the current financial crisis is only a
symptom of a larger crisis — the crisis of a system that
favours the financial and speculative economy over the
real economy. It is also the result of an international
financial architecture that is unequal, non-inclusive and
inefficient and that must be reformed urgently. Ecuador
proposes that the crisis does not require merely
technocratic reform but a profound change of our
economic model.
For that reason, my Government strongly
supported the decision of the General Assembly to
hold, this past June, the high-level Conference on the
World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on
Development. At the Conference, Rafael Correa,
President of the Republic of Ecuador, became the main
voice of the countries of the South advocating for a
comprehensive reform of the current world economic
order, which jeopardizes the life and the well-being of
millions of people around the planet. President Correa
also proposed to democratize and redefine the
international financial architecture.
At that Conference, important steps were taken in
recognizing the fundamental role of the United Nations
in the reform of the international financial system and
architecture. We welcome the fact that the Conference
acknowledged regional and subregional agreements as
integral parts of multilateral responses to the current
crisis.
I have the honour of announcing one such
response in this forum. This past Saturday,
26 September, at the South American and African
summit that took place on Margarita Island, our
countries signed the constitutive act of the Bank of the
South, which will start out with a declared capital of
$20 billion and a subscribed capital of $7 billion. The
Bank will be a multilateral financial entity aimed at
supporting human development in South America. This
agreement was reached at the summit of South
American and African countries. This important event
was part of the proposal put forward by my country on
the creation of a new international financial
architecture based on a series of regional responses.
In addition to this achievement, we must mention
initiatives such as the creation of a common Latin
American reserve fund, the establishment of a regional
system of payments as a prelude to the creation of a
regional central bank and the consolidation of a common
monetary system that will create an electronic currency
to facilitate our trade. The good news is that we have
begun to take fundamental steps in the establishment of
the Centralized Payment Compensation System, called
SUCRE, which will soon enter into force within ALBA.
We reiterate our reservations concerning the
actions undertaken by international credit institutions
such as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, since they have collaborated actively to take
strong economic and political measures against certain
nations. We also reject, on the basis of the principle of
sovereignty, the relationship between the World Bank
and arbitration centres such as the International Centre
for Settlement of Investment Disputes, which has only
served to pass judgment on and penalize certain parties
and to benefit transnational interests over national
interests.
For our countries, the restructuring and relief of
our external debt is more urgent than ever. We cannot
continue to give higher priority to paying off external
debt than to financing a recovery in production and
development.
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We have an enormous task ahead of us with
respect to the effects of the crisis. The General
Assembly working group on the financial crisis will be
the ideal mechanism through which to follow up on the
implementation of the commitments and tasks that
arose out of the Conference last June.
This crisis has shown that capitalism as a model
for economic and social relations is not viable. It has
also highlighted the imbalances in the relationships
between society, nature and the economy. One of the
most obvious examples of this is the imbalances that
are to be found in the way that the issue of climate
change is dealt with.
This past week, a high-level Summit on Climate
Change was held in this very Hall. I must frankly state
that it was a great disappointment. Empty rhetoric
abounded, and no commitments were undertaken, with
few exceptions. As a result, our response to the issue
has been nothing more than inadequate and, at times,
irresponsible. Even worse, we heard repeatedly last
week that the major challenge is how to maintain
economic growth without affecting the environment —
that is, how to preserve the current system, with a few
cosmetic adjustments. We believe, however, that we
need to completely transform the means of production
and consumption and not simply promote further
growth without stopping to take stock of where we are.
The principle of shared but differentiated
responsibilities, as contained in the Framework
Convention on Climate Change, recognizes that rich
nations and the elites who consume too much are the
major causes of this scourge and that they must
therefore assume a large proportion of the costs of
reducing emissions. Wealthy countries must make
additional efforts to decrease their greenhouse gas
emissions, beyond the reductions already brought
about by the economic crisis.
Reducing emissions is urgent but not sufficient.
Adaptation measures must be identified, in particular
in vulnerable countries and countries that lack the
economic resources to deal with the impacts of climate
change. We are not speaking about donations or credit
being offered for adaptation efforts. Reparations must
be made that recognize the ecological debt and take
into account the historic responsibility for the
excessive emissions of the past several decades, when
the greenhouse effect was already recognized. Serious
studies on the subject estimate that this would amount
to at least $50 billion dollars a year over 20 or
30 years.
We demand that the countries of the North
comply with and strengthen the commitments they
undertook in the context of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change and Kyoto
Protocol regarding measures for adaptation and
mitigation, the development and transfer of
technologies and their financing. However, we
recognize that we have a shared responsibility to
provide responses to the climate crisis. For this reason,
Ecuador has offered significant proof of its
commitment to this issue. I would like to briefly
mention four initiatives that my country has
undertaken.
The first initiative, and the one that provides the
guidelines and foundation for Ecuador’s international
environmental policy, is the Yasuni Ishpingo-
Tambococha-Tiputini (Yasuni ITT) initiative, an
innovative project that was introduced by President
Rafael Correa at the 2007 United Nations Climate
Change Conference and that breaks with traditional
discredited approaches. Ecuador has decided to keep a
considerable amount of its proven oil reserves
underground — about 850 million barrels of crude —
in order to pursue three important goals. The first goal
is to prevent the pollution that would result from the
emission of 410 million tons of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. The second is to protect the indigenous
peoples who live in the Yasuni National Park, the
Taromenane and Tagaeri peoples. The third goal is to
preserve biodiversity. In that connection, an
international trust fund will be established in the
coming weeks as a financial mechanism to enable us to
receive international contributions and invest them in
conservation and sustainable development initiatives
for the country, in line with the development goals laid
out in our national development plan.
The second initiative is the Forest Partners
Programme, which is an initiative that provides
economic incentives to indigenous peoples and rural
farmers to protect our forest. This will enable us to
protect 20 per cent of our total forest areas until the
year 2015.
The third initiative is a programme to transform
the energy grid, aimed at ensuring that the main
sources of energy used in the country are renewable
and sustainable. One of the projects undertaken under
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this programme is being carried out in the Galapagos
Islands, a world heritage site for humankind, with the
goal of achieving 100 per cent clean energy sources on
the archipelago by 2015.
Our fourth initiative would take place in the
context of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) and proposes the introduction of an
eco-tax of approximately 3 per cent on oil prices, in
order to bring about a decrease in demand and thereby
a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. This proposal
was first put forward by Herman Daly, an
environmental economist, and subsequently taken up
and presented to OPEC by President Rafael Correa.
The revenue from the proposed eco-tax would
facilitate, under the administration of a body such as
the United Nations, projects to facilitate the conversion
of the energy grid to using renewable energy.
Ecuador believes that this time of crisis
represents an opportunity to make radical changes that
will allow us to transform our societies from their
current model, which is based on competition and on
irrational and unsustainable habits of consumption that
prioritize merchandise over people, into societies based
on human beings living in harmony with themselves,
with their fellow human beings and with nature.
For us, land, nature and the physical environment
are essential components of the fundamental principle
of our constitutional ordering of well-being, or “sumak
kawsay”. This principle of well-being implies living
with dignity according to our cultural values and in
harmony with nature and is the basis for the
economical and social policies that my Government is
embracing in order to overcome social inequalities.
We would also like to highlight, once again, the
gravity of the food crisis. In an era where the
technology to produce sufficient food exists, there is
hunger in the world. This is due to the fact that access
to food is dominated by the large transnational
agricultural companies that control the global market.
In addition, subsidies and other distortions on trade
have a serious impact on agriculture in countries of the
South.
We firmly support the convening of the World
Summit on Food Security, which will take place in
Rome during the sixty-fourth session of the General
Assembly and is aimed at reaching agreements on
assigning priority to the right to food security and
sovereignty over the pursuit of profit and the drive to
maximize gains.
In order to achieve the targets defined by the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the
minimum required for survival and well-being, those
Goals must be complemented by decisive support from
the countries of the North aimed at increasing official
development assistance and international cooperation
without imposing any kind of conditions.
Review of the progress made in achieving the
MDGs will take place in the year 2010, as mandated by
the Assembly, and must serve to lay the foundation for
efforts to correct the errors and omissions of these
Goals. They include, in particular, the failure to
consider the structural causes of the problems, the lack
of attention paid to human rights, the absence of any
goal dealing with the generation of valuable
employment, the exclusion of our ancestral peoples
from the process of drawing up public policies and the
absence of a multicultural approach in defining the
Goals.
At this session, the General Assembly will be
taking important strategic decisions regarding Ecuador.
We are sure that all Member States will strive to make
the Organization’s efforts more effective in the
promotion and defence of the rights of differently
abled persons, the recognition and implementation of
the rights of indigenous peoples, gender equality, and
efforts to combat human trafficking, among other
important issues.
I would like to refer in particular here to my
country’s commitment to combating the scourge of
illegal human trafficking. We firmly support the need
for a global plan of action, and we offer to the
Organization our national experience in terms of legal
and control issues.
Another subject we consider essential for the
agenda of this Assembly is that of international
migration. In the current Ecuadorian Constitution, one
of our most transformative principles is based on the
recognition of universal citizenship. We do not impose
any restrictions on the freedom of movement of people
around the world. We believe we are all citizens of the
world. There is no such thing as illegal human beings.
There are, however, such things as illegal and immoral
practices of exclusion and exploitation. In this twenty-
first century, merchandise and capital are not bound by
any borders, but walls are being built to restrict the
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movement of human beings. Ecuador will continue to
work towards a constructive multilateral dialogue on
migration and the adoption of a comprehensive
approach on the issue of the human rights of migrants
and their families, in accordance with the mandate set
by the heads of State in the 2005 World Summit
Outcome.
As a country that prioritizes respect for and the
guarantee of all human rights, Ecuador currently
receives more refugees than any other country in the
Western Hemisphere. Without belittling the support
that we receive from the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, we must stress that we
have allocated significant economic resources to assist
people who are in need of international protection. We
have implemented pioneering measures and policies
with respect to the protection of refugees. We have one
of the most advanced programmes in terms of refugee
management, namely, the Expanded Registration
programme.
Ecuador, as a founding member of the United
Nations, accords priority to dialogue and international
cooperation in the resolution of conflicts and believes
that military action alone cannot bring about lasting
and sustainable peace in any conflict zone in the world.
The commitment of Ecuador to the stabilization
process in the brotherly Republic of Haiti is
internationally recognized. Because of this, since the
beginning of the Haitian crisis in February of 2004, we
have actively participated in the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti, in terms of a mostly
civil contingent. This endeavour was undertaken in
accordance with our foreign policy of complete support
for and attention to humanitarian crises and the
peaceful resolution of conflicts.
I cannot conclude this statement without
mentioning Ecuador’s satisfaction at having renounced,
a few days ago, any solution that is not in accordance
with international law. We hope to achieve very shortly
a normalization of diplomatic relations with the
brotherly Republic of Colombia, which will be of great
benefit for both of our peoples. This was made possible
thanks to the opportunity for dialogue and meetings
offered by the General Assembly each year.
Finally, I extend once again the affectionate and
hope-filled greetings of the Ecuadorian people, the
revolutionary citizenry of my country, and my
President, Rafael Correa, to the rest of the world’s
people and to their representatives here.