Thirty years after the triumph of the people’s
Sandinista Revolution and the start of a process of
popular and participatory democracy, on behalf of the
President of Nicaragua and Commander of the
Revolution, Mr. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, I salute and
congratulate you, Mr. President, on your election as
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President of this Assembly, which it is my honour to
address.
Nicaragua is a country impoverished by historical
circumstances no different from, if not identical to, the
histories and circumstances of countries of our Latin
American and Caribbean region and others around the
world. This history has been repeated over time and
space, as we will outline later. Nevertheless, Nicaragua
remains a land rich in beauty and natural resources. It
is a nation symbolic of reconciliation and of national
and international unity.
Although few may know this, our country is one
of the safest countries of this continent. Nicaragua is
engaged in an exemplary, tireless and decisive
campaign against organized and petty crime in an
exemplary fashion, as acknowledged by international
bodies and authorities. It does so not only with
coercive and punitive measures, but, more
significantly, by building an alternative model of
development that transforms the structures of poverty
and marginalization that are the breeding ground of
public security problems. Our model is based on
democratic reform expressed by the people’s will,
which we call “citizen power”.
By means of the “From Martí to Fidel” campaign,
illiteracy has been reduced to 3.16 per cent. We have
made progress in preventive medicine and have
successfully controlled pandemics, such as that of the
A (H1N1) virus. In our country, the mortality rate from
this disease is one of the two lowest in America. These
achievements have been made possible by the generous
solidarity of the fraternal people and Government of
Cuba, which has been consistent and has perpetuated
the internationalist calling of Commander Fidel Castro
Ruz.
The Government of Nicaragua has opened the
door to production credits. The Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) selected our
school nutrition programme as one of the top four in
the world. In that spirit, President Daniel Ortega has
proposed the adoption of a Central American
agriculture policy to transform the region into a food
production zone, and in that same spirit, we welcome
and support the World Summit on Food Security
scheduled for November of this year.
Today, we have an electrical power reserve of
42.6 per cent, although barely two years ago there was
a shortfall of 3.29 per cent. This is thanks to the
solidarity of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela
under the leadership of its President, Commander Hugo
Chávez Frías. Meanwhile, we continue to make
targeted efforts to promote the use of alternative
renewable energy sources, such as water, wind,
geothermal, solar power and, more recently, biomass.
We also support initiatives aimed at developing civilian
nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Clean drinking water has been made available to
217,000 families. We have launched programmes such
as Zero Hunger and Zero Usury, which were
highlighted in a report by the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the right to food. In order to refute the
daily lies of certain media outlets in Nicaragua, FAO
recently issued a published notice of the positive
results of the programmes it coordinates with the
Nicaraguan Government to fight hunger and extreme
poverty.
Food security cannot continue to be subject to the
greediness of a few. There is enough food to nourish
twice the current world population, but thousands die
every minute around the world. While in some
countries automobiles are fed, millions of boys and
girls die with an empty stomach. That is simply
criminal.
We also express our profound rejection of the
discrimination and persecution of immigrants and
unequivocally support full respect for their human
rights. The Government of National Reconciliation and
Unity also seeks to reverse the exclusion to which
native peoples and communities of African descent
have been subject throughout history.
Nicaragua is the enemy of terrorism in any of its
forms, including State-sponsored terrorism. It is for
that and many other reasons that we oppose the
criminal embargo against the heroic people of Cuba,
six generations of whom have been born since the
embargo began. How many more generations must
outlive it? How many more resolutions must the
Assembly adopt on this topic? There are already
17 resolutions on this issue.
It is also rightfully of interest to this Assembly
that, while a criminal murderer of Cuban athletes
enjoys total liberty, five anti-terrorist Cubans are
imprisoned far from their families and incommunicado
for the sole crime of simply being anti-terrorists.
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Today’s Nicaragua is an active militant in favour
of solidarity, as well as a militant supporter of
gratitude. We therefore appreciate the disinterested
cooperation of the sister nations that contribute to the
economic and social development of our people. We
also embrace the just cause of Puerto Rican
independence and support the return of the Malvinas
Islands to their rightful owner, the Argentine people. In
the same manner, we endorse the struggles of the
Saharan and Cypriot peoples.
We also call on Israel to withdraw from the
occupied Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian territories.
We stand unconditionally with the Palestinian people
in their daily fight for their own sovereign State. That
is why we advocate a peaceful, just and lasting solution
that guarantees peace in that region. One year after
gaining their independence, we congratulate the
peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and affirm that
we have already established diplomatic relations with
Abkhazia.
We support the new and positive focus that
Taiwan has adopted in its relations with the People’s
Republic of China, as well as its participation in United
Nations specialized bodies and agencies.
We condemn the coup d’état in Honduras and
hereby proclaim our definitive decision not to
recognize the results of any electoral farce in that
country. By means of the coup, its perpetrators have
sought to kill the democratic hopes and initiatives of
the Honduran people, just as they sought to thwart the
fraternal process of Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas (ALBA). Nonetheless, a change in Honduras
that supersedes a formal and hypocritical democracy is
inevitable.
From this rostrum, we denounce the massacre of
the Honduran people and point in no uncertain terms to
the assassination plot against President Zalaya. We
must heed this now, because later it will be said that he
committed suicide. From this very moment, we
unconditionally support and endorse the proposal made
last night in this same forum by the Foreign Minister of
Honduras, Patricia Rodas, to the Secretary-General and
the General Assembly.
The time has come to make the General Assembly
a forum in which substantive, irreversible decisions are
taken. We cannot continue to have a Security Council
with an abusive veto privilege.
The time has also come for cooperation without
humiliating preconditions, the construction of the most
beautiful dream of Bolívar and Sandino, and the dawn
of a realistic and coherent solidarity. I speak of the
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, composed of
the peoples of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, the
Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines, Venezuela, and Honduras
in its resistance. ALBA is the basis for cross-cutting
and inclusive cooperation between our peoples. Its
membership increases day by day.
I cannot fail to note with profound concern that
we are meeting today under economic circumstances
that are similar to or worse than those of a year ago,
when the worst world economic depression of modern
times arose to exacerbate the existing food, energy and
environmental crises. Unfortunately, these world crises
have met with a decrease in official development
assistance, which remains conditional thanks to the
international financial institutions, and with the
reluctance of developed countries to replace the current
model with one that is more just and respectful of
Mother Nature.
The United Nations Conference on the World
Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on
Development demonstrated that the Group of 192, as it
has been called by my brother, Father Miguel d’Escoto
Brockmann, has a voice in world economic matters. It
is within the most representative institution that
economic policies affecting millions should be
decided, and not within exclusive groups, such as the
Group of Eight or the Group of 20, defenders of the
model of domination by the few over the majority. In
that regard, we welcome establishment of the ad hoc
open-ended working group that will follow up on the
outcome of the Conference.
For some years now, climate change has become
not a threat of the future, but rather a very present
threat. We believe that the United Nations Climate
Change Conference, to take place in December in
Copenhagen, should be a debate not on the need to act,
but rather on the need for the developed countries to
fulfil their historic obligation under the Kyoto Protocol
and to end their attempts to repudiate the principle of
common but differentiated responsibility.
It is time for attitudes and actions to reflect a true
commitment to counteracting the harmful effects of
global warming. We firmly believe that it is the
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exclusive responsibility of the General Assembly —
and in no case of the Security Council — to seek the
consensus and commitments necessary for us to move
forward in this struggle, which is a struggle for the
survival of all humankind.
It is not possible to democratize selfishness,
exclusion or the manipulation of truth. It is not possible
to put a kind face on perversion or arrogance. That is the
essence of the prevailing economic system — the
exploitation of one human being by another, the
subjugation of nations, and the hoarding of wealth by
the few.
This is why we are in crisis; it is not because of a
lack of resources, but because of the concentration of
resources in the hands of a few, because of disregard
for our environment, because of the rejection of moral
values, because of human arrogance towards other
species and, worst of all, because of disdain for human
life itself.
We are optimistic. It is necessary to replace and
find alternatives to the current socio-economic and
political model, which has led to unjustified
interventions such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and to that now being committed against our region
with the establishment of military bases in Colombia
under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.
We cannot fail to be struck by the fact that,
despite the $7,558,000,000 invested, the flow of drugs
out of Colombia continues to grow. In 1999, at the
beginning of Plan Colombia, the drug traffic to the
United States and Europe was an annual 600 metric
tons. Today, in 2009, that traffic has more than doubled
to 1,450 metric tons. In other words, the strategy of
militarizing Colombia has failed, absolute proof of
which are the numbers I have cited. The true objective
of installing these “seven daggers in the heart of
America”, as they are called by Commander Fidel
Castro, is to salvage the moribund economic and
political system with which capitalism flaunts its
power by controlling the hemisphere’s water, oil and
biodiversity.
We believe in the strengthening of energetic and
progressive positions in the defence of peace and
respect for the sovereignty of the countries of our
region. We are sure that it will ultimately serve to
further advance the Latin American unity dreamt by
Bolívar, Morazán, Martí and Sandino.
Today, the solidarity practices of Fidel Castro and
revolutionary Cuba have grown and spread like never
before. The wide world of Latin America has ceased to
be foreign, and as Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said
during his particularly outstanding presidency of the
General Assembly, the current scenario is not a tragedy
but a crisis. Crisis purifies. The pain we now feel is not
the death rattle of a dying man but the pain of a new
birth.
Finally, I wish to inform the General Assembly
that Nicaragua, respectful of international law, has
abided by the ruling of the International Court of
Justice in its decision of 13 July 2009, and has issued a
presidential decree to regulate navigation in the San
Juan River, over which Nicaragua has full, absolute
and unquestionable sovereignty, as was recognized by
the ruling.
I send greetings to all on behalf of our President,
Daniel Ortega Saavedra, and of all Nicaraguans who
sing in praise of Darío and who proudly carry on
Sandino’s legacy in order to defend ourselves today
with peace and dignity. Nicaragua is proud of its
devotion to peace, honour, solidarity and the relentless
struggle against injustice.