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. 09-52320 10 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 11 09-52320 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.