Like previous speakers, I
offer you, Sir, my warmest congratulations on your
election to the presidency of the General Assembly for
this session. I also wish to pay tribute to the Secretary-
General for his excellent report on the work of the
Organization (A/64/1) and for his continuing
leadership during these unprecedented and challenging
times. A testament to the Secretary-General’s
leadership has been his persistent efforts to convene
the Summit on Climate Change held earlier this week.
For those of us who are also members of the Alliance
of Small Island States, our own Summit, held
immediately beforehand, was a timely exercise in
focusing on the critical issues at stake in the run-up to
the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to be held
in December.
Climate change has taken its rightful place at the
forefront of many of the statements we have heard this
week. In the case of small island developing States like
ours, we all need to reach beyond our narrow national
interests and embrace our collective responsibility to
one another as nation States and to those most
vulnerable and least able to address the adverse effects
of climate change. At the Pacific Islands Forum, the
issue of climate change and the type of collective effort
it requires has been at the forefront of the meetings of
Pacific leaders, most recently in Cairns under the
chairmanship of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of
Australia. Such efforts resulted, earlier this year, in the
General Assembly’s adoption by consensus of
resolution 63/281, on climate change and its security
implications.
It has been heartening to hear in this Hall words
of action — a determination to move away from the
rhetoric of climate change to the reality of action:
action to mitigate the effects of climate change and
action to stop the waste of our energy resources. But
the words of Presidents and Prime Ministers are not
enough. They must be matched by action. Our
determination and our understanding of the truth of
climate change must be propelled by honest efforts to
mitigate and change the wasteful energy habits of a
lifetime into the productive energy habits of the future.
The lessons of the past year have reinforced our
support for reform of the international financial
institutions. In particular, we look forward to the
outcome of the just-concluded meeting of the Group of
20 in Pittsburgh as further crucial and concerted action
following the measures taken in Washington and
London.
Despite the uncertain global economic and
financial climate, we remain committed to making
further progress in achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), which remain a core
component of our national development planning.
Much of that progress has been reliant on our own
37 09-52586
domestic efforts, but it has also been assisted by our
development partners. In that regard, we support the
Secretary-General’s convening of a special summit on
the MDGs in 2010 as a final push towards 2015.
Further, the high-level review of the Mauritius Strategy
for the Further Implementation of the Programme of
Action for the Sustainable Development of Small
Island Developing States, to be carried out the same
year, offers us, as small island developing States, a
fresh opportunity to take stock of progress and areas
for improvement. We also welcome the renewed
interest and engagement of the United States of
America regarding the Pacific islands.
Earlier this year, my country, the Kingdom of
Tonga, in compliance with its obligations under the
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,
lodged a partial submission for the consideration of the
Commission on the Outer Limits of the Continental
Shelf. This was a significant exercise made possible
through our own efforts, with the technical assistance
of organizations such as the Commonwealth
Secretariat. As we are an island nation, the living
marine resources of our maritime zones and the
potential of non-living ones remain critical to our
future.
We continue to follow the meandering course of
the discussions on reform of the Security Council. We
maintain our support for such reform and hold the view
that there should be an expansion in both the
permanent and the non-permanent membership
categories.
Since 100 per cent of our power generation is
fuelled by imported fossil fuels, our economic potential
has been adversely affected by rising fuel prices, which
has forced us to investigate feasible renewable sources
of energy. We thus have set the target of achieving
50 per cent of our electricity generation utilizing
renewable energy sources by the year 2012.
We have reviewed donor funding provided by our
development partners to see how best we could achieve
that ambitious goal and also fulfil our wish to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. At the conclusion of the
regional Pacific Energy Ministers Meeting hosted in
Tonga earlier this year, we discussed those issues with
our development partners. It very quickly became
apparent that a new model for doing business was
needed. And so it was that the concept for the Tonga
Renewable Energy Road Map was born.
The development partners all agreed to
collaborate, under the coordination of the World Bank,
to assess the current infrastructure of on-grid and
off-grid electrification throughout the Kingdom. The
World Bank, the European Union, the Asian
Development Bank, Australia, New Zealand and Japan
readily accepted this opportunity to actively participate
in the development of our Energy Road Map. Those
efforts were recently boosted by strong support from
the Government of the United Arab Emirates and the
International Renewable Energy Agency, which was
reaffirmed at bilateral meetings held in New York this
week.
Tonga’s cultural and constitutional roots are
innately enduring. We are proud of our 134-year-old
written Constitution, which is one of the oldest in the
world and is still in force. Our Constitution enshrined
basic human rights and freedoms that today are the
subject of international treaties. The Tongan way of life
is not based solely on the rights, responsibilities,
freedoms and obligations of the individual, but
emphasizes rights, responsibilities, freedoms and
obligations attaching to the extended family and the
whole community. While the values underlying human
rights may be expressed differently from Tongan
customary and traditional values, and while both
reflect similar aspirations, Tonga’s strength lies in the
binding links of collective group values and individual
obligations and responsibilities.
Our parliament recently considered ratification of
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Parliament
voted not to ratify CEDAW, because to do so would
conflict with the cultural and social heritage that makes
up the unique Tongan way of life. We take the
ratification of international treaties very seriously. We
did not want to ratify CEDAW as a matter of
international convenience. We would rather be judged
by our actions to empower women than by a
ratification of convenience. And we make no apologies
for our stance. We admit that there are issues to be
addressed. But, rather than ratify CEDAW, we prefer to
address those specific areas of concern to women in
our own way. We maintain that our women are among
the most highly cherished, elevated and respected in
the world.
Finally, this month marks the tenth anniversary of
Tonga’s admission as a Member of the United Nations.
We reaffirm the rights and responsibilities bestowed
09-52586 38
upon us by the United Nations Charter, and we pledge
to continue to participate constructively in addressing
our common challenges. Those challenges will be
overcome by our action. Given that the United Nations
is the forum for united action and given the
commitments made by leaders to such action, we may
just awake to the fact that it is the good in the world,
not the evil, that surpasses all explanation.