Benin, 2005

Allow me

first of all to pay tribute to Mr. Jean Ping, who guided

the work of the fifty-ninth session of the General

Assembly with great energy. He had the tremendous

responsibility of negotiating the United Nations

reforms adopted by our heads of State or Government

on Friday, 16 September. We commend him on his

courage, his faith in the future of the United Nations

and the wisdom and vision with which he discharged

his functions.

The tasks facing Mr. Jan Eliasson are inspiring

and crucially important. His presidency marks the

beginning of the implementation phase of the major

decisions taken by our heads of State or Government

on reform. We are grateful to him for focusing the

work of the sixtieth session on this topic.

My delegation has another good reason to be

pleased at seeing Mr. Eliasson presiding over our work:

the importance his country attaches to development

issues and its very sizeable contribution to the efforts

of the international community to eliminate poverty

throughout the world. Our two countries, Benin and

Sweden, successfully co-chaired the General

Assembly’s Open-ended Working Group on an Agenda

for Development. All of this bodes well for this

session.

The eradication of poverty tops the priority list of

the Benin Government. In this context, we negotiated

and adopted, with the Bretton Woods institutions, a

Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Its effective

implementation, jointly with our Government’s plan of

action and our national studies on long-term prospects,

entitled “Benin 2005: ALAFIA”, should set into

motion progress that will bring about the achievement

of the Millennium Development Goals. However, it

will still be necessary for the efforts carried out with

our bilateral and multilateral development partners to

converge to improve the situation in the seven critical

areas for making aid to least developed countries

effective. These are: substantially reducing the external

debt burden of least developed countries so they can

devote greater domestic resources to eliminating

poverty; strengthening institutional capacity to attract

foreign direct investment and develop free enterprise;

diversifying the destinations of foreign direct

investment; promoting public sector/private sector

partnership in least developed countries to promote

rural development; strengthening the impact of

remittances from our diaspora; the promotion of South-

South investment to improve the availability of

products on markets; and, strengthening the potential

of microcredit to eliminate poverty.

We are gratified at the decision taken in

Gleneagles, Scotland, by the Group of Eight (G-8) to

completely cancel the debt of 18 highly indebted poor

countries, 13 of which are least developed countries.

We urgently appeal to donor countries to seriously

consider the possibility of extending the benefit of this

new positive measure to all least developed countries.

The Coordinating Bureau of the Least Developed

Countries, which my country has had the honour of

chairing since 2002, will continue consulting with

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international financial institutions and development

partners in close cooperation with the High

Representative for the Least Developed Countries,

Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island

Developing States, to bring about meaningful progress

in all these areas. This is the context of the ministerial

conference of the least developed countries on

remittances from migrant workers. The conference will

be held in Cotonou, Benin, in February 2006, not in

October 2005 as originally planned. In the context of

this conference, the 50 least developed countries are

planning to set up an international monitoring body for

funds transfers by migrant workers; it will be open to

all States. We urge all United Nations Member States

to support this initiative, which is intended to

strengthen the impact of these transferred resources on

the development of recipient countries.

In addition to these considerations that directly

affect the least developed countries, there is an urgent

need to promote and give appropriate weight to the

development agenda within the context of multilateral

trade negotiations in the World Trade Organization and

to translate into deeds the firm commitments by the

countries concerned on the elimination of agricultural

subsidies, in particular those for cotton, to which my

country attaches particular importance. Such a measure

would remove a considerable handicap on developing

countries’ efforts to fully take advantage of their

comparative advantages in order to become fully

integrated into the world economy. We reaffirm that it

is indispensable that access to world markets be

coupled with measures to strengthen the supply of

products from developing countries through adequate

support for the local processing of commodities.

No initiative, no measure, no activity and no

decision in the field of development can be successful

without peace. It is of particular concern that, on

essential matters such as disarmament and non-

proliferation of nuclear weapons, the United Nations

cannot forge the required consensus to secure the long-

term survival of our planet in view of the potential for

self-destruction that has built up. These questions

should be considered calmly, with the higher interests

of humankind in mind, setting aside the particular

interest of any country in pursuing some hypothetical

power that would reduce security for each and every

one of us.

Benin has no objection to the peaceful use of

nuclear power to serve the energy needs of the planet,

but it feels that any effort to divert peaceful

programmes to military programmes runs counter to a

vision of collective security based on promoting

disarmament and the non-proliferation of weapons of

mass destruction.

Our heads of State or Government decided to

confirm the Security Council’s key role as the organ

with primary responsibility for the maintenance of

international peace and security. We urge all members

of the Assembly to commit themselves to ensuring that

the Security Council is expanded to make it more

representative and better able to counter old and new

threats to international peace and security.

In the 60 years of existence of the United

Nations, the Security Council has with varying degrees

of success, worked to manage and settle armed

conflicts. It has been able to respond to breaches of

international peace and security, but it has not always

been able to take action to stop or reverse events that

have led to an explosion of violence or armed conflict.

Given the loss of human life and the massive

destruction of property as a result of current threats, it

is high time for the Security Council to attach higher

priority to conflict prevention, in the spirit of Article

34 of the Charter, which states that

“The Security Council may investigate any

dispute, or any situation which might lead to

international friction or give rise to a dispute, in

order to determine whether the continuance of the

dispute or situation is likely to endanger the

maintenance of international peace and security”.

If we look at the spirit and the letter of this

provision, the Security Council is definitely competent

to analyse and monitor situations involving the risk of

conflict or a breach of the peace anywhere in the world

and to become actively involved in managing crises

before conflict breaks out or threats materialize. It is in

that light that we must view Security Council

resolution 1625 (2005), adopted at the 14 September

2005 Council summit at the initiative of the three

African members of the Security Council, led by my

country, Benin.

In the context of Security Council reform, the

General Assembly should consider the subject of a

proactive approach and reflect on how to structure

support mechanisms in order to enable the Council to

effectively play its role in the prevention of conflicts

and of threats to international peace and security.

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Peace remains an invaluable and incalculable

good. We share the concerns expressed recently by the

Secretary-General at the launch of his Alliance of

Civilizations initiative. That constructive initiative

should be made part of the framework of activities to

counter threats to our world, including terrorism,

whose predominant religious ties lend credence to

theories of a clash of civilizations leading to certain

chaos. Benin supports the Alliance of Civilizations

initiative, which aims to restore peace in our hearts and

among religions so that weapons will fall silent and our

peoples will be able to express their aspirations for

peace.

We join the quest for peace of those peoples who

lack peace today. We express our solidarity with

peoples suffering armed conflicts in Africa, the Middle

East, Asia, Latin America and Europe. The

Organization must redouble its efforts to help them

procure national concord, understanding and cohesion.

In that context, we are pursuing a thoroughgoing

campaign against the recruitment and the use of

children in armed conflicts. Now that the Security

Council has adopted its resolution 1612 (2005), the

General Assembly, for its part, should establish an

open-ended working group to consider proposals for

actions to redefine that scourge as a crime against

humanity instead of a war crime. We are counting on

everyone’s support to make that initiative a reality.

In the Middle East, the withdrawal of the

occupying Power from the Gaza Strip and part of the

West Bank brings us closer, fortunately, to our common

vision of an independent State of Palestine living side

by side with the State of Israel within secure and

internationally recognized borders. We believe that the

Quartet’s road map can lead the Israeli and Palestinian

peoples to that goal. We call upon their leaders to

remain committed to the route of peace.

We ask the same of Iraqi leaders and urge them to

spare no effort to ensure that all Iraqi communities

participate in the transition process leading to the

restoration of peace and the strengthening of the

country’s unity. We make the same appeal to

Afghanistan, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, among others.

In the same spirit of dialogue, we welcome the

significant progress made in resolving the conflicts of

West Africa through the cooperation between the

United Nations and the Economic Community of West

African States aimed at promoting dynamic

peacebuilding processes for the gradual return of

normality in the countries affected by conflict and for

preventing the spread of conflict, through an

integrated, regional approach.

We invite all Ivorian parties to overcome their

differences of view and give peace and stability a

chance in the West African subregion. The holding of

the International Conference on the Great Lakes

Region and the remarkable success achieved by the

transition processes in the Central African Republic

and Burundi have restored the prospects of the entire

region. We encourage the countries concerned to reach

a regional agreement for peace, security, good

governance and development in the framework of the

second regional summit, to be held in Nairobi, and to

scrupulously implement that agreement in order to

promote peace, stability and prosperity in the region.

Those regional initiatives require enhanced

assistance from the international community if the

transition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is

to be a success. In that context, Benin intends to pursue

its policy of active participation in peacekeeping

operations. Our country stands ready to increase its

contribution to the international community’s efforts in

the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to

support the democratic transition process under way.

In East Africa, the United Nations and the

African Union have formed an unprecedented

partnership to restore peace in the Sudan and put an

end to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, in the spirit of

Chapter VIII of the Charter. Such a partnership is

essential also in Somalia. In that context, it is in the

interest of the United Nations to assist the African

Union in establishing and organizing its peacekeeping

capacities, in particular by strengthening the structures

for planning and for training national and subregional

contingents of the African standby force.

Another essential element to which we attach

great importance, and which we hope to see realized

promptly, relates to the decision taken by our heads of

State or Government on the establishment of a standing

police force. The establishment of such a force should

take into consideration the need for linguistic balance

in accordance with short-term and medium-term

deployment needs. The modalities of the force’s

composition should be defined promptly. To that end,

we propose carrying out a rapid evaluation of present

worldwide human resources and of Member States’

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capacity to train police officers. A rational process in

that area would consist of taking best advantage of

those capacities and giving all Member States an equal

opportunity for participation in the new force.

Beyond peacemaking action, the need to help

countries emerging from armed conflict remain on the

path of peace and overcome the risk of relapse

constitutes a real challenge to which we have

adequately responded through our reflections on the

role of the United Nations. That is the reason behind

the Peacebuilding Commission. The consensus on this

question does honour to the Organization. The

Commission must become operational as soon as

possible to strengthen action to assist countries that

have undertaken particularly difficult democratic

transitions, such as Burundi, the Central African

Republic and Guinea-Bissau, if their Governments

request such assistance.

Countries facing an ongoing state of social

emergency can improve their chances for lasting

stability only if the international community mobilizes

the necessary resources to help restore a minimum of

normality by ensuring that those States can exercise

their sovereign rights in the areas of security and the

provision of essential social services such as health

care, child education, transport and access to financial

resources.

The success of disarmament, demobilization and

reintegration programmes in all their aspects is

decisive for making a peace process irreversible and

for guarding against the risk of the spread of conflict

caused by the dispersion of former combatants that

have not successfully reintegrated into productive civil

society. The international community must ensure that

the reintegration component of those programmes also

receives adequate financing.

In the same context, the Human Rights Council

must take its place in the machinery of the United

Nations. Its mandate, size, structure and operational

procedures must take into account the requirements of

representativity, credibility and effectiveness by

drawing all lessons from the experience and the

practices of the Commission on Human Rights, which

it is intended to replace. In that regard, the new

Council must become the preferred instrument for

identifying cases in which the international community

should exercise its responsibility to protect

populations. In that regard, the Human Rights Council

also has a crucial role to play as an early-warning

structure within the United Nations system and as a

key element of its conflict-prevention machinery.

We cannot conclude without underlining our full

support for the excellent idea of the Government of

Sweden to create a network of heads of State and other

world leaders to monitor effective implementation of

United Nations reform.