It is indeed an honour and a
pleasure for me to extend my very warm
congratulations to Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki on his
well-deserved election to the presidency at the sixty-
fourth session of the General Assembly. I hope that
during his presidency he will help advance the
revitalization of the General Assembly, reinforce
multilateralism and promote dialogue among
civilizations. I promise Mr. Treki my personal
cooperation as well as that of the Tanzanian delegation
in the discharge of his responsibilities.
Allow me also to use this opportunity to pay
tribute to his predecessor, His Excellency Father
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, for a job very well done.
I thank him for the honour he recently bestowed upon
the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the founder President
and Father of the Tanzanian nation.
Our deep appreciation also goes to our illustrious
Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his diligent
service to the United Nations and to humankind. His
exemplary leadership and commitment to action in
addressing the global challenges we are facing are
appreciated by many of us. We wish him and his entire
team great success in the future.
For over five years now, a number of countries in
Eastern Africa, including Tanzania, have been
experiencing unprecedented drought. We have never
seen anything like this before. Maybe the effects of
climate change are taking a toll. As a result of this,
agricultural production has been affected severely
causing acute food shortages. There is an acute
shortage of pasture and water for our livestock and
wildlife in the game parks that is resulting in the deaths
of many of our animals. Rivers have been drying up
frequently thus causing interruptions in hydropower
generation.
The effects of the drought are threatening to
reach catastrophic proportions if the shortage of rain
continues for the next few years. It is important for the
United Nations to be aware of this growing danger and
to look into ways of assisting us. We should not wait to
act until graphic pictures of emaciated and dying
children dominate TV screens and newspapers.
History has taught us that the greatest successes
in the development of nations began with agriculture.
No doubt, therefore, the low levels of development in
Africa today are indicative of the underdevelopment of
our agriculture. Indeed, African agriculture is
backward and productivity is low. It needs to be
transformed, it needs to be modernized. The African
green revolution has taken too long to happen.
Concerted efforts by African Governments and
Africa’s development partners are required.
Unfortunately, there is not as much interest on the part
of our development partners to support agricultural
transformation in Africa as there is for other sectors.
This is an unfortunate omission which needs to be
corrected. We look to the United Nations to take the
lead in this regard.
Allow me to pay tribute to President Barack
Obama for demonstrating keen interest in assisting the
transformation and modernization of Africa’s
agriculture. African leaders were humbled by his
commitment at the meeting he held with leaders from
sub-Saharan Africa on 22 September of this year. I
appeal to other leaders to emulate his example.
Another issue that I would like to raise for
discussion and action is the problem of youth
unemployment in Africa. Africa faces one of the
biggest unemployment challenges on the planet.
African youth make up 37 per cent of the working age
population in Africa, but they are 60 per cent of the
09-52425 18
unemployed. In some nations youth unemployment is
up to 80 per cent. Africa has the fastest-growing and
most youthful population in the world. Over 20 per
cent of Africa’s population is between the ages of 15
and 24. As a result, a constantly rising number of
young Africans has been entering, and will continue to
enter, a labour market that has not been fast-growing.
Beyond economic costs, high rates of youth
unemployment have had negative consequences in our
continent. We have seen how some youths with no job
prospects, and little hope of getting any, have become
the fuel being added to the raging fires of conflict in
many parts of our continent. They simply fall prey to
the machinations of war lords, criminal gangs and
political manipulators, to the detriment of peace and
stability in their countries.
Creating job opportunities for Africa’s youth is an
enormous task that Governments of our poor
economies cannot carry out alone. Friends of Africa in
the international community, both from Government
and the private sector, have an important role to play in
that regard. Allow me to commend the Danish
Government for showing the way. In April 2008, it
formed the Danish Commission for Africa to address
youth unemployment challenges on the continent. The
Commission, on which I was fortunate to serve, came
up with five bold initiatives that I believe, if strong
international partnership can be forged to implement
them, can turn the large youth unemployment problem
from a challenge into an opportunity. I humbly ask this
body for the opportunity for the Commission’s report
to be presented to the General Assembly. At the same
time, I propose that the Assembly consider declaring a
decade to focus on youth employment in Africa,
possibly 2011 to 2020.
Two days ago, we held the fruitful high-level
Climate Change Summit. I would like to thank
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and commend him for
his leadership on this important and challenging issue
of our time. The event will go a long way towards
paving the way for a comprehensive agreement in
Copenhagen in December 2009.
It was heart-warming indeed to hear President
Barack Obama assure this world body that the United
States will join other nations in the joint endeavour to
save our common planet. We are also happy that, under
the leadership of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the
United Kingdom, consensus has been emerging on
making additional resources available to assist
developing nations in their efforts at adaptation,
mitigation and the pursuit of clean development.
Allow me now to talk about three side events that
have taken place during this session of the General
Assembly.
The first one was the panel discussion on
accelerating the implementation of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), which was organized by
Ms. Helen Clark, the new Administrator of the United
Nations Development Programme, together with
Mr. Douglas Alexander, the United Kingdom’s Secretary
for International Development. At that meeting,
important impressions were made about successes and
shortcomings with regard to the implementation of the
MDGs to date. The meeting was a curtain-raiser for
next year’s MDG summit. I hope all of us will take
seriously the observations and conclusions that were
made, so that there will be no default come 2015.
The second was the meeting on maternal and
child health convened by Prime Minister Gordon
Brown with the support of Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon and World Bank President Robert Zoellick.
The meeting was a great success. I was impressed and
encouraged by the commitment made by Prime
Minister Brown and by the support of the World Bank
to save the lives of millions of innocent mothers and
children who die of causes that can be prevented.
While I applaud and thank Prime Minister Brown for
his leadership, I appeal for unqualified support for the
outcome of the meeting, for the sake of saving the lives
of many women and children in Africa and elsewhere
in the developing world.
The third was yesterday’s launch of the African
Leaders Malaria Alliance. That was a landmark event
at which African leaders made an unequivocal
declaration of commitment to end malaria in their
respective countries. The Alliance provides the
mechanism for advocacy, collective action and follow-
up on measures to build capacities to eliminate the
number one killer disease in Africa. Malaria can be
prevented, cured, controlled and eliminated in Africa.
Many countries in the world have done so; why not us
in Africa? I would like the General Assembly to
acknowledge that historic event and render support to
the work of the African Leaders Alliance against
malaria. Once again, I would like to thank Mr. Ray
Chambers, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for
19 09-52425
Malaria, for successfully organizing that event. I would
also like to thank all African leaders for their support
and commitment.
The gains made in the area of development can
easily be eroded if the foundations of peace and
stability are threatened. It is a matter of great comfort
and pride that peace reigns in most parts of Africa,
except for one or two hot spots — Somalia in
particular and, to some extent, Darfur. There is calm in
the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. Burundi is enjoying peace after many years of
civil war and instability, which has facilitated the
return of many Burundi refugees from Tanzania.
However, there are more than 160,000 Burundi
refugees who have chosen to remain in Tanzania and
are applying to become Tanzanian citizens.
We have in principle accepted their request and
are now finalizing the procedures to grant them
citizenship. However, I want this body to know that my
Government has decided that, if accepted, they will be
moved from the refugee camps in which they reside at
the moment and will be resettled in various places in
the country. We do not want them to remain with the
refugee mentality. We also do not want Tanzanians to
continue to consider them refugees. That is going to be
a very expensive exercise for which the support of the
United Nations and other friends will be necessary.
Tanzania remains committed to contribute to
peace in Africa and the world. I promise that we will
continue to play that historic role to the best of our
ability. In that regard, we are making good progress on
our promise to scale up our participation in United
Nations peacekeeping operations. We have
peacekeepers in the United Nations mission in
Lebanon, and we are ready to increase their number.
We are also in the final preparations of deploying a
battalion of peacekeepers in Darfur. We are going to
honour the request made by the United Nations to work
with the United Nations Organization Mission in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) in the
training of the armed forces of that country, under the
Mission’s security sector reforms for the country. My
message today is that we are ready to do more
whenever requested.
Let me add my voice in support of the two-State
solution for an Israel and a Palestine living together
side by side at peace with one another. Tanzania is of
the strong opinion that that is the best way to
sustainable peace in the Middle East.
With regard to Western Sahara, we call upon the
Security Council to expedite the process of giving the
people of Western Sahara the opportunity to decide on
their future status. That matter has dragged on for too
long, namely, since 1975. The time has come to end the
impasse.
I would like to reiterate that the reform of the
United Nations will be incomplete without the
structural reform of the Security Council. That reform
should include Africa’s attainment of two permanent
seats in the Council. Giving seats to Africa is not a
matter of favour; it is a matter of correcting the
historical injustice against the continent and its people.
Let me conclude by echoing Africa’s appeal to
the United Nations and the international community to
support Africa’s position with regard to unconstitutional
changes of Government in Africa. In recent years, the
ghosts of unconstitutional changes of Government have
again haunted Africa — through military coups and
so-called mass action instigated by insatiable
demagogic politicians. There are people who want to
get into leadership by using undemocratic shortcuts.
The African Union has taken a strong position, which
is enshrined in its Constitutive Act, not to recognize
such Governments and to suspend them from
membership of the organization until democracy is
restored.
Such decisions of the African Union would
benefit so much from, and actually would be
strengthened by, the support of the international
community and in particular the United Nations. Africa
has young polities, and its democracy is still fragile.
What the African Union is trying to do is to entrench a
culture of democratic values and governance. The
support of the United Nations and the international
community is very critical in that regard. A decision to
the contrary would undermine the African Union’s
good intentions. Africa needs the United Nations to
support that historic position.