Argentina, 2008

As the first female head of State in the

history of my country, I would like to address this

Assembly by speaking first on the issue of human

rights. Members know that, for my country, the policy

of unrestricted respect for and promotion of human

rights is one of our State policies.

In that context, I would like to urge that the

International Convention for the Protection of All

Persons from Enforced Disappearance — which was so

energetically promoted by our country and which I

co-signed, as First Lady of the Argentine Republic, in

Paris last year together with 73 other delegations — be

ratified by all countries that have signed it. Thus far,

only four countries — Argentina, Albania, Mexico and

Honduras — have ratified it. I know that the Republic

of France will soon be ratifying it, but it is

indispensable that we all strongly commit to ensuring

that the inviolability of persons be one of the guiding

principles for all States.

In this context, I would also like to put forward

the Latin American Initiative for the Identification of

Disappeared Persons. I would like to say that, together

with the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic

Anthropology, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology

Team and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team,

we are promoting this initiative to establish genetic

identity banks to enable us to report precisely on

violations of human rights and properly identify

victims.

We deem invaluable the testimony of the women

who are with us here at the Assembly today, members

of Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo — the Grandmothers

of the Plaza de Mayo — who envisioned the creation

of this genetic information bank. They have been able

to recover, from oblivion and disappearance, 95 of the

500 grandchildren who disappeared, children of those

political prisoners who disappeared under the former

dictatorship in Argentina.

The work of these women is living witness to

how, even amidst adversity and against all that State

terrorism — not just in my country but in other

republics — has meant, it is possible to overcome

death and fight for life. The recovery of these children

shows how important — how crucial — it is to support

this type of initiative and underlines the importance of

the work that has been done to identify the victims of

the Balkan wars and those of the 11 September attack

on the World Trade Center.

In the fight against impunity, which is a State

policy in the Republic of Argentina, we cannot fail to

mention an issue that, for us, is undoubtedly another

cornerstone of this inexhaustible struggle. My country,

the Republic of Argentina, suffered two attacks, in

1992 and 1994: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli

Embassy and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine

Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building.

Last year, before this very Assembly, former

President Kirchner asked INTERPOL to ratify the

arrest warrants issued by my country’s Ministry of

Justice against Iranian citizens accused of participating

in the AMIA building bombing. Days later, INTERPOL

ratified them, and international arrest warrants were

issued accordingly. I call upon the Islamic Republic of

Iran, in compliance with international law, please to

agree that the Argentine justice system can bring to

trial in public, transparent courts, and with the full

guarantees given by a democratic system, those

citizens who stand accused.

Before all the countries of the world brought

together in this Assembly, and with the conviction I

have always held that innocence must be respected

until an individual has been convicted and sentenced

by a competent judge, I would like to affirm that, in my

country, those citizens will have a fair and public trial

with their full participation, with all the guarantees

afforded by Argentine law and by the oversight of the

international community. Given the gravity of these

events, this would guarantee to the Islamic Republic of

Iran that there would be fairness, truth and justice in

that trial.

I would thus urge once again that, in compliance

with international law and because ensuring access to

justice is what truly shows how we respect truth,

justice and freedom, this request from the Argentine

justice system, accepted by INTERPOL, be respected.

That would undoubtedly contribute to providing truth

for all — not just for Argentines, but for the entire

international community — at a time when truth and

justice are elusive values internationally.

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In this Hall, as we have been doing since 2003, I

would also like to call for the reform of our

multilateral bodies — not only of the United Nations,

which includes us all, but also of the multilateral

financial institutions as well. That involves us all, and

it is necessary to recreate a multilateralism which has

been lost, leading to a far more insecure world. The

Organization needs to be reformed, not just from the

point of view of dogmatic approaches to the world, but

to meet the real need of all States to ensure the

functional, operational and results-oriented character of

the activities and interventions of the Organization.

In this context, I would modestly like to put

forward an example from our region, South America,

of how we were recently able to demonstrate that

multilateralism can be achieved, despite differences of

approach and vision that different Governments in our

region may have.

Here I am looking at the President Evo Morales —

the legitimate President of our sister Republic of

Bolivia. I would like to say that, a few days ago, the

Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) met in

support of the democratic legitimacy of that country. In

a concrete multilateral exercise, heads of State, who do

not always share the same viewpoints or interests when

we take decisions, were able to work unanimously to

forge a resolution and plan of action to help our sister

Republic of Bolivia, affected by those who do not

respect the democratic will of the people freely

expressed through elections.

That is not our only experience of

multilateralism. Previously, at the meeting of the Rio

Group in the Dominican Republic, at the time of the

incident between the sister Republics of Ecuador and

Colombia, heads of State intervened and were able to

navigate a conflict which, on the basis of history, in

other situations would surely have degenerated into an

armed conflict between two sister countries.

What I want to say with this is that, for us, the

exercise of multilateralism is not simply a hackneyed

speech. It is a deeply-held conviction and a concrete

and objective policy, showing results in what are

normally called emerging regions, where we are

capable of giving examples of multilateral

collaboration in overcoming conflicts.

The other reform that we have always promoted

is that of the multilateral credit institutions, but

fundamentally the reform of an economic model that

placed the generation of wealth at the centre of the

fictional economy and of the world of finances. Recent

days show that those matters, those positions, were not

the result of an ideological bias or closed dogmas but

of objective and timely observation of what was going

on.

Today, we cannot speak of the “caipirinha effect”

or the “tequila effect” or the “rice effect”, or the effect

that always showed that the crisis moved from the

emerging countries towards the centre. Today, if we

were to give it a name, we would have to say, perhaps,

the “jazz effect”, which moves from the centre of the

first economy of the world and spreads to the rest of

the world. That situation does not make us content or

happy.

Quite the contrary, we consider this an historic

opportunity to review behaviour and policies, because

during the period of the Washington Consensus, we —

the countries of South America — were told that the

market would solve everything, that the State was not

necessary, that State intervention was something for

which groups that had not understood how the

economy had developed were nostalgic. However, now

we are seeing the most formidable State intervention in

memory from exactly the place where we had been told

that the State was not necessary, in the framework,

moreover, of an incredible fiscal and trade deficit.

My country, the Argentine Republic — which, if

it continues to grow at the rates at which it has been

growing since 2003, will this year be completing the

largest economic growth cycle of its almost 200-year

history — has always upheld the need for a State

presence, fundamentally because the market does not

assign resources to the most vulnerable sectors and

because we see the State as connecting the interests of

society and market interests.

Since 2003, an Argentina that had been in debt up

to as much as 160 per cent of its GDP has today

reduced its debt to almost 50 per cent of GDP. We have

fully paid our debt to the International Monetary Fund

(IMF), and about 15 days ago we announced that we

will settle our debt with the Paris Club, which had a

cut-off date of 10 December 1983 — the very year

when the first democratic President took office, after

the dictatorship. Here in New York yesterday, in the

Council on Foreign Relations, I announced that

Argentina has received a proposal from three very

important banks that represent bond-holders who did

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not participate in the 2005 bond exchange and who are

proposing to do so in conditions more favourable for

my country, Argentina, than those of the 2005

exchange.

Thus we believe not only that our strategy has

been correct but that it is absolutely necessary for all of

us to review, with a great deal of intellectual humility,

what is happening today in the markets and see what

are the possible solutions for overcoming the situation.

We emerging countries have a great advantage in what

we do not have: no credit risk agency will come,

nobody from the IMF will come tell us what to do, a

great country that has grown on the basis of its real

economy and today really has problems on the basis of

a casino economy or a fictional economy, where it was

thought that only capitalism can produce money. I

always say that capitalism was invented in order to

earn money, but on the basis of the production of

goods, services and knowledge. Money alone does not

produce more money. It has to go through the circuit of

production, work, knowledge, services and goods so

that there can be a virtuous cycle that can generate

well-being for the whole of society.

Finally, I want to mention a matter that affects

not only my country, beyond its geographical location,

but also concerns this Assembly and also the need to

face the twenty-first century without colonial enclaves.

Here I refer to the issue of our Malvinas Islands,

where, despite the resolutions of this body, despite all

the measures taken here for the United Kingdom to

agree, in virtue of what is set out in Article 33 of the

Charter of the United Nations, to negotiate in peace

between the parties, that country resolutely refuses to

discuss with the Argentine Republic the issue of the

Malvinas Islands.

I believe that a member of the Security

Council — one that is among the principal nations of

the world in the defence of freedom, human rights and

democracy — should give concrete proof that it is not

just talk but that it is truly convinced that it is

necessary to end this shame, that of a colonial enclave

in the twenty-first century. I want to request again, as

have the different Presidents who preceded me —

because Malvinas is for Argentineans a State policy as

well — the cooperation that this body has always

provided to once again urge the United Kingdom to

agree to comply with international law and to

demonstrate that it is serious in wishing to build a

different world and a different citizenry.

Lastly, I wish to speak to all those men and

women who have institutional governmental

responsibilities in any of the branches of the State in

their respective countries to once again advocate for

the transformation of an international policy that has

its fullest expression in this House. The reform of the

instruments that we are requesting is not simply a

question of cosmetics and formulas and changes that

barely conceal that everything is continuing as it

stands. The present situation, the complexity of the

world that is coming, in terms of food and energy,

requires all of us to re-examine our behaviour and our

paradigms. We must accept with humility that it is

necessary to build a world that is different from the one

we have had to date — one in which respect for human

rights, for the will of peoples and for those who are

different, do not think as we do or who pray to a

different god is not merely a catalogue of good

intentions set out in the United Nations Charter, but a

reality that is experienced a little more concretely

every day.