It is a
great honour and pleasure to speak here on behalf of
my delegation and to take part in this important
gathering, where all the Member States of our
Organization will consider today’s most pressing
issues.
I wish to express to the President, on behalf of
my delegation and in my own name, our warmest
congratulations on her election. We also congratulate
Mr. Jan Eliasson on the effective way in which he led
the work of the previous session.
We also take this opportunity to express once
again my country’s support for, and appreciation of, the
excellent work of the Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi
Annan, who has led our Organization with courage,
lucidity and determination during his term of office.
Burundi is taking part in the sixty-first session of
the General Assembly a year after the setting up of
democratic institutions. It was a historic event in
Burundi for us to have democratically elected
institutions, which have just reached the end of their
first year in office, the first time this has happened
since we gained independence.
This is a good time for us to report to the
Assembly on the political, social and economic
situation in our country and the efforts that have been
made to meet the many challenges that the people of
Burundi face. It is also an opportunity for us to address
some of the issues of current concern at the regional
and global levels.
In the post-conflict situation that my country is
going through, the first concern was to re-establish
peace and security throughout the country. Carrying
out this task was made possible thanks to the
deployment in Burundi of a United Nations force and
the training of a new national defence force, in
accordance with the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation
Agreement for Burundi and the Comprehensive
Ceasefire Agreement of Pretoria. So far, this
integration has proceeded uneventfully, and we thank
God for this.
The signing of a comprehensive ceasefire on
7 September 2006 by the Government and the last rebel
movement, the Palipehutu-FNL movement, encourages
us to accelerate the programme for disarming civilians
in order to establish peace and security throughout the
country. Over the last three months the people have
begun to voluntarily hand in to the authorities weapons
they acquired during Burundi’s crisis. So far about
5,000 weapons have been handed over. The agreement
represents a very important stage in the life of our
country, which is now going through its reconstruction
phase.
The enjoyment of political liberties has become a
reality in Burundi, whether in terms of political parties,
civil society or the media. With regard to the media, a
law has just been passed to create more diverse and
more professional press institutions.
We have also just passed an anti-corruption law.
Measures to implement it include an anti-corruption
court and a force to deal with corruption. We are
convinced that they will allow us to work with more
transparency in the management of public resources
and in our fight against corruption. State income is
increasing by nearly 20 per cent each month; we are
already enjoying the benefits of this policy.
06-52988 16
With regard to promoting the rule of law and the
rights of the individual, we are making progress
through the reforms taking place in the justice sector
and with regard to human rights, national solidarity and
gender equality. The Burundi Government’s
programme has placed promoting the rights of women
and gender equality amongst its priorities. We urge the
United Nations to give particular attention to this issue
during its reform process. The Government also
appeals for, and supports, a specific structure to ensure
that women emerge from poverty and thus have
genuine equality.
Still with regard to the rule of law, in addition to
the 5,000 or more political prisoners already freed, on
the occasion of the celebration of the forty-fourth
anniversary of national independence on 1 July this
year, we decided to release undocumented detainees
being held under irregular circumstances. Similarly, the
Government has started to improve conditions for
prisoners who have been properly sentenced. However,
we are aware that much more needs to be done in this
area, with the support of the international community.
Establishing the rule of law and peacebuilding
also depend on the peaceful settlement of the issue of
land ownership. This was behind the Government’s
creation of the national commission dealing with land
and other assets, whose task it is to settle disputes over
the ownership or recovery of land and other assets that
have changed hands during the various social and
political conflicts in our history. Its work is an essential
complement to that of the truth and reconciliation
commission, with regard to which the Government of
Burundi hopes agreement will soon be reached with the
United Nations, because we are convinced that it will
contribute to combating the fallout from genocide, as
well as impunity in our country, and enhance the
national reconciliation process.
With regard to national reconciliation, we firmly
believe that sport is a very important factor in
peacebuilding and reconstruction and in achieving the
Millennium Development Goals. In Burundi we have
taken measures in this area, and we hope that other
countries going through a post-conflict period will
follow our example.
The Government of Burundi continues to have to
deal with a significant number of vulnerable people.
We have today nearly 400,000 refugees, 120,000
internally displaced persons and thousands of others
who need to be cared for, including persons with
disabilities, orphans, widows, widowers and old people
unsettled by the war. Our Government needs help to
deal with this situation. Since the recent ceasefire
agreement, refugees have started to return to Burundi
en masse.
The Government of Burundi has also sought to
improve the country’s socio-economic situation. Aware
of the general impoverishment of our people due to a
decade of war, we prepared an emergency programme
for the current year, and submitted it to donors for
funding on 28 February. The programme covers in
particular free primary education for all children of
school age, counteracting hunger, access to health care,
job creation, rehabilitation of the communication
infrastructure, improving prison conditions and
improving the management of public finances.
In order to ensure the proper management of
funds provided by donors within the framework of
cooperation with Burundi, the Government has
established a national committee to coordinate aid.
With the same desire for efficiency, we have created a
national committee to monitor and manage Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries funds, budgetary support and
debt.
The Government’s efforts to alleviate poverty
include measures such as reducing the price of most
essential commodities, the abolition of some taxes, free
health care for children under the age of five and for
mothers who give birth in state clinics, and the fight
against AIDS. A new status for civil servants and a 15
per cent increase in their salary from 1 July this year
are intended to give them more motivation and halt the
decline in their standard of living.
However, our country’s reconstruction, efforts to
counteract poverty and the relaunching of Burundi’s
economy require more than an emergency programme.
The preparation of a strategic framework for growth
and counteracting poverty, covering a period of three
years, meets this concern. We plan to organize next
November a donors’ round table on the basis of this
strategic framework. We rely on the active
participation of Burundi’s partners, both long-standing
partners and new ones, in order to help Burundi
respond positively to the many priority expectations of
our people, who are impatient to enjoy the dividends of
peace at last.
17 06-52988
At the same time, we are pursuing or launching
other measures aimed at creating a favourable
economic environment that is conducive to prosperity.
They include liberalizing the coffee sector, simplifying
customs procedures, liberalizing the circulation of
currency through private financial institutions,
constructing new communication routes and improving
the road network. Furthermore, the investment code
has been revised in order to encourage investment in
Burundi.
The Government’s adoption of the five-year plan
for 2006-2010 and the launching of a study for the
period to 2025 are part of this medium- and long-term
strategy for our socio-economic and political
development. We have thus sought to establish for our
society a plan based on a minimum number of common
objectives and a shared vision of the future of Burundi
and its people.
We welcome the decision by the American
Administration to put Burundi on the list of countries
that benefit from the facilities offered in the framework
of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. We have
invited businessmen to organize themselves in order to
take advantage of this new opportunity for our
economy.
Burundi attaches great importance to regional
integration initiatives. We take this opportunity to
welcome the electoral process taking place in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is now in its
final stages. We hope that it will be successful and that
it will result in the democratic establishment of
legitimate institutions. Similarly, we welcome the
signing of a ceasefire between the Government of
Uganda and the LRA, which we sincerely hope will
quickly lead to lasting peace.
We continue to be concerned over the continuing
armed conflict in the Horn of Africa, Darfur and the
Middle East, as well as by the deadlock in the peace
process in Côte d’Ivoire. As Members of the United
Nations, we must work tirelessly to end these sad
situations.
Terrorism is a further harsh reality that the world
still confronts. Far from being discouraged, we must
step up our vigilance and consider new initiatives to
counteract this scourge and evil, and to deal with its
underlying causes.
Globalization is one of the major challenges of
the twenty-first century, but we also see it as an
opportunity for developing countries to benefit from
the considerable progress and advantages that it offers,
provided it is combined with openness and autonomy.
For our part, we will spare no effort to make our
contribution to building peace and prosperity. The
election of Burundi to the Peacebuilding Commission
is a source of pride and additional motivation to work
to strengthen peace in our country and throughout the
world. Unfortunately, changes in anti-democratic
thinking and behaviour do not take place automatically
in countries emerging from crisis, such as Burundi.
However, we welcome the successes already achieved
and our increased capacity to control the situation.
Our Organization is going through a critical
period. Although the United Nations was set up “to
save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”,
certain conflict situations have been haunting it for
many years. It must therefore be made into an
instrument at the service of all, able to inspire hope,
dispel concerns and restore respect for order and
international law. This mission must be fulfilled in full
cooperation with regional organizations, whose
effectiveness in conflict prevention and rapid
intervention has already been proved, despite
insufficient resources.
The General Assembly’s agenda must reflect the
main concerns of the day. These include, in particular,
nuclear disarmament, which continues to poison
international relations. Other concerns are combating
the illegal trade in small arms, poverty and epidemics
that kill on a large scale, such as AIDS and malaria. We
commend the international drug purchasing facility
(UNITAID) initiative, which gives hope to those
suffering from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. It
proves that a partnership between the North and the
South can change the lives of millions of people
throughout the world.
The new millennium was warmly welcomed.
World leaders place great hopes in this new time, as
shown by the Millennium Development Goals adopted
in 2000, which were reaffirmed in the declaration of
the summit of heads of State and Government in
September 2005. Those Goals represent a platform that
is particularly important for developing countries,
landlocked countries and small island developing
States in their efforts to combat hunger and poverty
06-52988 18
and to promote health and education, to mention just a
few subjects.
Other commitments were made in Paris and at the
G-8 summit in Gleneagles, particularly for improved
aid coordination and further aid and debt relief.
Before closing, I would like to express our deep
gratitude to Mr. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General,
and to all the members of the Security Council, the
European Union and the African Union, as well as to
all the members of the Regional Initiative that have
supported our peacemaking and peacebuilding efforts,
which have resulted in the achievements already seen.
We think in particular of certain countries of the
region, such as Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa,
which were tireless godfathers in facilitating our peace
process. To all those partners, we again say a big
“Thank you” for the remarkable success that my
country has just witnessed with the signing of the
ceasefire with the Palipehutu-FNL.