This session of the General
Assembly offers further opportunity to reflect on how
best to reconcile what at times mistakenly appears to
be irreconcilable: socio-economic development and a
healthy environment. Leaders, experts and citizens the
world over ask how we can grow our economies and
spread prosperity to more of the world’s citizens, yet
not degrade our oceans, rivers and the air we breathe?
But these are also times of extraordinary
scientific, technological and business innovations that
can help address those challenges, if we have the
courage to put into proper perspective and indeed
harmonize our national, regional and global priorities.
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History is replete with illustrations of how
nations immersed in crises changed the underlying
assumptions by which they acted, created new
institutions and tools to solve problems and emerged
from the process as stronger societies. While those
innovations are always different, the challenges to
surmount the crises are always the same: forging a
shared vision, increasing the social capital required to
enhance predictability, having trustful relations
between peoples, being receptive to doing things in
new ways and adopting an explicit moral purpose in
order to achieve common goals.
We have an exceptional opportunity to
simultaneously address our environmental challenges,
improve our economies and reform our global
multilateral institutions for better global governance.
For example, the Group of Twenty (G-20) is now
playing a crucial role in restoring global economic
stability. But should we not even broaden the base to
include many nations that are most vulnerable to the
decisions of the few? All nations should be part of
those important discussions and decisions, because
they have valuable contributions to make. This is the
time to embrace true multilateralism.
We in developing nations appreciate the
corrective measures taken by the G-20 and the Group
of Eight to accelerate global economic recovery. But it
is evident that most of their proposals fall short of the
concrete steps needed to address challenges that are
specific to low-income countries.
Multilateralism has always been the key tenet in
forging a fairer international community based on
equitable global governance. The United Nations itself
is based on that very sound and tested principle, and
that should be the practice. The rise of worldwide
networks of trade, industry, prosperity and social
values, together with the creation of multilateral
institutions to guide and harmonize those processes,
has no doubt contributed to a fairer and improved
global decision-making system. That is what needs to
be rendered more inclusive.
Improving global governance has also to address
international justice. International justice should be fair
to all — rich and poor, strong or weak. We are all
pleased to note that at its sixty-third session the
General Assembly undertook to examine
comprehensively the issue of universal jurisdiction. We
look forward to the resolutions on that matter during
the Assembly’s current session.
It is also fitting that we recognize the recent
creation of a single entity within the United Nations to
advance the work on women’s rights and gender
equality. Rwanda has always made that one of its
priorities and has achieved good results.
With regard to socio-economic challenges in our
East African Community region, we are making
progress in key areas. For instance, we are preparing to
inaugurate, in January 2010, the East African Common
Market to facilitate greater trade, investment and the
free movement of almost 130 million people. We
believe that there is no better strategy for mitigating
economic difficulties than building larger regional
markets that bring about improved productivity, which
increases purchasing power and, in turn, strengthens
our societies.
With regard to the global environmental
challenge, this session of the General Assembly
provides an important platform for preparing for the
Copenhagen climate change summit. Every nation
should have co-equal status and be considered a
concerned nation at the forthcoming summit. That
implies that each nation has both rights and obligations
and should be open to burden-sharing according to its
ability. This is the time to address in a timely fashion
such key issues as how much the industrialized
countries are to reduce their emissions of greenhouse
gases, how much the developing countries are to limit
the growth of their emissions, and how to finance and
support strategies to conserve energy, mitigate risk and
build green technologies that counteract the impact of
climate change in the developing world.
We in Rwanda have been making a modest but
proportionate contribution by, among other things,
hosting African preparatory meetings for the
Copenhagen summit in order to encourage a strong and
essential African voice at that critical meeting. We
have also been actively implementing national
environmental policies for reforestation, terracing and
the rehabilitation of wetlands that supply lake and river
systems in our country, to name a few areas in which
we have had good results.
On the matter of peace and security, the world
faces a number of regional threats. The Great Lakes
region has its share of peace and security problems, but
we continue to make significant progress in
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fundamentally addressing that question. The leaders of
the region recognize that, most crucially, home-grown
solutions, beginning with a joint regional effort, can
bring about sustainable peace. It is in that context that,
together with our colleagues and neighbours in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are dealing
with the root cause of instability in our area, namely,
the negative forces that have been a menace since
1994.
If history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot
apply the same strategies to different problems and
expect satisfactory outcomes all the time. We have to
think differently on the fundamental questions,
including the urgent imperatives of, first, strengthening
the future of all nations by fostering economic growth
and development while investing in the environment.
That should be our moral purpose. Secondly, we must
improve peace and stability in all regions by learning
from, and supporting, legitimate regional actors.
Finally, we must engage and embrace the majority
world in terms of multilateralism in decision-making,
trade and prosperity.
These should be our shared vision. Future
generations will then know how leaders of nations in
the year 2009, immersed in crises, focused on the most
difficult challenges, including the global economic
crisis, climate change and greater peace and security,
and how they acted with resolve.