At the outset, allow me to extend my warmest congratulations to the President of the General Assembly at its seventy- sixth session on his election and my wishes for his success. My delegation stands ready to support him in fulfilling his noble mission.
Allow me also to pay a well-deserved tribute to Mr. Volkan Bozkir for the excellent manner in which he conducted the work of the seventy-fifth session, despite the constraints caused by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. I would also like to congratulate Mr. Antonio Guterres on his re-appointment as Secretary-General and commend him on his leadership in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular his call for equity and solidarity with developing countries, as well as his tireless efforts to strengthen our Organization’s capacity to meet the aspirations of our peoples for security and prosperity, within the framework of strengthened multilateralism.
This session is being held at a time when the international community faces the adverse socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the advances achieved by developing countries have been severely compromised, particularly in the context of the implementation of Agenda 2063 of the African Union and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations.
In addition, given the spread of new variants of the virus and the slow distribution of vaccines in developing countries, the prospects for recovery and growth in the short and medium terms may also be jeopardized if vigorous efforts are not made to step up measures to combat this grave pandemic. I remain convinced that mass vaccination is the only way to contain the pandemic and ensure the recovery of the global economy.
In that regard, I would like to welcome the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) mechanism, which has made it possible to collect and distribute doses of COVID-19 vaccine to developing countries. I would like to express our appreciation to all those who contributed to that initiative.
The measures taken by the Government to address the pandemic in the Niger have helped not only to control the spread of the pandemic but also to mitigate its socioeconomic impact. Therefore, despite the weakness of the economy and the persistence of other impacts, in particular with respect to security and climate, the Government took bold measures to maintain a positive growth rate of 3 per cent in 2020.
Allow me to commend the efforts of the Group of 20, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in favour of a moratorium on
the debt of the most fragile States, many of which are already at risk of debt distress. Obviously, a moratorium on debt alone will not be enough given the immensity of the challenges to be met — hence the urgent need to design and implement a new paradigm to provide for the development needs of the most fragile countries.
In the same vein, I remain convinced that the recovery of economies will also depend on the quality and dynamism of the partnerships, as well as the liberalization of trade among developing countries. We must therefore take advantage of all the potential offered by South-South and triangular cooperation in the areas of technology, culture and trade. It is for that reason and in order to meet the aspirations of the African peoples, in accordance with Agenda 2063, that the African Continental Free Trade Area was established, with my country leading the process until the launch of the operational phase on 7 July 2019 in Niamey.
Despite the delay in its entry into force owing to the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and other challenges, we are confident that the African Continental Free Trade Area will enable Africa to establish a single market, sustain economic growth and create prosperity through, among other things, the creation of jobs for young people, of whom more than 10 to 12 million join the continent’s labour market each year.
In addition to the disastrous socioeconomic consequences, the COVID-19 pandemic has also amplified the challenges facing the countries of the Sahel, namely, climate change and the security crisis. While in some regions of the world climate change has resulted in floods, forest fires and rising sea levels, in other regions, such as the Sahel region, it has resulted in extreme weather events, including recurrent droughts, the degradation of agricultural land — for example, the Niger loses 100,000 hectares per year — and floods and locust infestations.
As stated by His Excellency Mr. Mohamed Bazoum, President and Head of State of the Republic of the Niger, at the meeting of the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, held in Niamey,
“[i]f we are to win the fight against climate change, we need more political will. We must, at the strategic and operational levels, promote the implementation of synergistic and coherent actions to make our people more resilient in the face of climate shocks and emerging challenges, in the pirit of the Paris Agreement”.
In that regard, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was just published, is a call for mobilization to action. By clearly affirming that human action is an undeniable factor of climate change, the report calls on us to act immediately to meet the challenge of maintaining the level of global warming at 1.5°C.
The next conference of the parties to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 26), which will be held in Glasgow in November, should meet that requirement, in particular through the development of a common position that will enable us to overcome the remaining challenges.
Those challenges include the financing of adaptation policies, as well as technology transfers to developing countries. It is the Niger’s hope that the high-level COP26 meeting in Glasgow will serve as a platform to reaffirm political will to fight against the effects of climate change. For its part, as co-Chair, with Ireland, of the Security Council’s informal expert group on that important issue, the Niger is working to ensure that the Council adopt a resolution to that effect to reflect the importance it attaches to that issue.
It is our conviction that the fragility linked to climate change is an aggravating factor in conflicts and humanitarian crises. My country, the Niger, which is surrounded by hotbeds of instability that severely impact security, is very well aware of that correlation. Indeed, since the events of 2011 in Libya, which facilitated the proliferation of weapons in the Sahel region, our countries have been facing attacks from terrorist hordes in the Lake Chad basin in the east and in the so-called three-border region in the west.
Despite its limited resources and the size of its territory, the Niger has demonstrated resilience, safeguarding its territorial integrity and stability, thanks to the foresight of its Government and the courage and determination of its defence and security forces, as well as the invaluable support of its bilateral and multilateral partners, to whom I would like to express my sincere thanks.
It is also thanks to the recent successes we have achieved in fighting terrorist armed groups
that we have begun the resettlement of persons displaced by the violence perpetrated by those armed groups. In that regard, I would like to inform the Assembly that, last June, approximately 5,935 people from the locality of Baroua, in Diffa, and 19 other surrounding villages returned to the lands that they had left in 2015. They did so thanks to a pilot programme that will also eventually repatriate approximately 130,000 displaced persons from the Diffa region in the east and Borno state in western Nigeria. The same programme is being implemented in the Tillabery region.
In leading our fight for peace and security, we are not giving up our fight for the development of our country. We remain convinced that terrorism and organized crime are only the consequences of multiple challenges that must be overcome, in particular those of poverty and inequality. Ultimately, it is not only military action that will allow us to definitively defeat terrorism but also our ability to implement development programmes to meet the basic needs of our people. The redeployment of the State administration and public services in the affected areas is an essential follow-up to military action.
In that light, we must duly take into account the gender and youth dimensions in the different processes of restoring peace. In fact, in conflict areas, women and children are the first victims of terrorist groups, who deliberately target civilians and schools, as is the case in the central Sahel region, where villages are frequently attacked and thousands of children are deprived of education as a result.
Therefore, since 2017, nearly 5,000 schools have been closed due to terrorist attacks, disrupting the education of more than 700,000 children and preventing more than 20,000 teachers from practicing their profession. As a result, it is crucial that we fulfil our collective responsibility to build a world of peace and security in which all children can flourish.
Given the gravity of the situation, the Niger calls for concrete action to protect schools. To that end, Security Council presidential statement S/PRST/2020/8, on the protection of schools against attacks, which was adopted in September 2020 when my country held the presidency of the Security Council, deserves to receive greater attention from the international community. I would also like to commend all the initiatives undertaken by other Member States on that issue.
While 2021 continues to be marked by the pandemic and security challenges, it has been a decisive turning point for the strengthening of democracy in the Niger. Indeed, thanks to the maturity of the people of the Niger and their commitment to democracy, the Niger was able to achieve the first peaceful political transfer of power in its history, from one democratically elected president to another democratically elected president.
Therefore, in his programme, also known as Programme Renaissance Act III, the new President of the Republic, His Excellency Mr. Mohamed Bazoum, is committed to consolidating all the achievements made during the two mandates of his predecessors and making the necessary adjustments, based on the lessons learned and the imperatives of the moment.
One of the priorities of the President’s programme is the education sector, based on the conviction that the development of human capital remains the key to building a prosperous that is committed to the values of peace, democracy and the rule of law.
That is why the President of the Republic has made a commitment to all the people of the Niger to personally ensure that the education sector is at the centre of all the government’s actions during the next five years, with technical and other support from all the schools’ partners, whether national or international.
The Government has already launched a project entitled “Improving learning for performance in the education sector”, with the support of the World Bank at a cost of $140 million. The implementation of that project will lay the groundwork for a qualitative transformation of our national educational system, while adapting it to our specific development needs.
Last year, in the midst of a health crisis, we celebrated the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations. It was a moment of reflection but also of taking stock. While the United Nations has been able to avoid large-scale conflicts during the past seven decades, it is clear that the central instrument of global governance that it represents must reform and adapt to the new realities and challenges of the twenty-first century.
In that respect, one of the main lessons we must learn from the current pandemic remains, without question, the need to revisit our way of seeing the world, our way of working and our way of organizing ourselves. More than ever, we need a more inclusive multilateralism that is nourished by cooperation and
sharing and that takes into account the diversities that make up the richness of humankind.
Therefore, the revitalization of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the Security Council, as well as of the international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, must be pursued tirelessly and to completion in order to respond to the imperatives of the contemporary world.
With regard to the reform of the Security Council, the Niger reiterates its commitment to the African common position as expressed in the Sirte Declaration and the Ezulwini Consensus.
As a member of the Security Council since January 2020, my country has endeavoured to make its contribution to the building of a peaceful world. With regard to African issues, which are numerous on the Council’s agenda, including the situation in the Sahel and the situations in the Middle East and Palestine, Syria, Libya, Myanmar and Afghanistan, our priority has always been to take into account the urgent needs of civilian populations, in particular women and children, who are the first victims of conflicts and humanitarian disasters that have unfortunately become recurrent.
In conclusion, my country is of the view that the time has come for the international community to take into account the new challenges that our world and that threaten international peace and security. Just as we have done in the fight against the pandemic, we must resolutely tackle the challenges of climate change — that other pandemic with devastating effects; the fight against terrorism and cybercrime; and many other problems specific to our century.
In the Niger, we believe that our commitment to defending the ideals of the Charter of the United Nations and the values of peace and solidarity that it embodies will allow us to successfully pursue that fight to build a world of peace, justice and prosperity.