Benin, 2008

I warmly

congratulate the President on his election to the

presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-third

session. Benin, my country, will make its modest

contribution to the work of this session and will strive

to promote the ideals of the Charter, to which my

country here reaffirms its full commitment. His

predecessor strove to find ideal solutions to the great

challenges facing humankind during his mandate. We

pay tribute to him for his good and faithful service to

the international community.

I also wish to commend the diligent and resolute

efforts of the Secretary-General, who has understood

the scope of the grave crises that have shaken the

world over the past year. Thanks to his bold initiatives

to promote international cooperation, he has been able

to revive the virtue of multilateralism as the best way

to manage world affairs in an inclusive and

participatory framework highlighting the uniqueness of

our world and the shared responsibility of the human

species to maintain the fundamental equilibriums on

which its survival on the Earth and the permanence of

the biosphere depend.

In 2007, responding to the alarm raised by the

scientific community, we focused our attention on

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climate change as a global problem affecting the

environment on our planet, with far-from-rosy

prospects for the future of humankind and obvious

consequences in our daily lives. The two major crises

that we have been attempting to contain for several

months are unfolding against that backdrop. The

energy and food crises, both of which are on our

agenda, are two of the world’s most serious crises in

recent history. They mark a departure from our

previous certainty as regards uninterrupted and lasting

supplies of energy and food for our peoples.

The Secretary-General has demonstrated

outstanding leadership by sounding the alarm and

warning us of the risks of hasty and non-viable

responses that could lead to panic and serve to

exacerbate the situation. The Rome Conference

organized under the aegis of the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations made it possible to

undertake a comprehensive assessment of the

complexity of the crisis and to develop an outline for a

comprehensive strategy. That strategy includes

immediate steps to address the emergency, as well as

several cohesive measures in the short, medium and

long term to preserve peace and stability in vulnerable

developing States. Those are the countries most

affected by the food crisis, which undermines their

efforts to combat poverty and hunger.

The response to the food crisis emergency should

not lead us to lose sight of the timetable for the

achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The international community has a duty to mobilize the

necessary resources to correct the serious distortions

that are at the heart of the food crisis. Our performance

in that regard could be improved if vulnerable

countries were able to make the investments necessary

to relaunch agricultural production throughout the

world in a sustainable manner.

In addition, there is a need to maintain sustained

growth rates that can produce prosperity and

sustainable human development in the long term. We

must continue to work to achieve the Millennium

Development Goals and make them a lasting reality.

In this emergency, the United Nations should

bring to bear all its influence in order to help countries

experiencing difficulties ensure the survival of

threatened and vulnerable segments of the population,

who risk being decimated by hunger and famine if no

one comes to their aid.

The time has therefore come to give concrete

expression to the right to food. It is intolerable that

hunger continues to be a scourge afflicting humankind

in the twenty-first century. In the short term, priority

should be given to strengthening social protection

systems in least developed countries. Our efforts

should make it possible to activate the dormant

potential of local productive capacity in order to

stimulate small and medium-sized businesses.

Problems must be addressed through an integrated

approach that makes it possible to maximize

agricultural production, as well as of preserving,

bringing to market and distributing food crops in order

to improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable

groups of the population, whose welfare we must

effectively ensure. In the medium and long terms, we

must rethink agricultural investment policies in order

to re-establish the balance between cash crops and food

production, so as to ensure food security for States

while taking cultural specificities into consideration.

Overall, this crisis illustrates that humankind is

not well equipped to manage the consequences of the

unfolding emergency. This proves that we are not

doing enough for the future and that we run the risk of

being subject to all sorts of ills. It is for that reason that

the proposal made by the High-Level Task Force on the

Global Food Security Crisis for an increase in the

proportion of official development assistance allocated

to agriculture from 3 to 10 per cent constitutes a

strategic approach that should be implemented with

common political will commensurate with the stakes

involved. I would like to pay tribute to the countries

that have already made firm commitments to provide

additional resources in that regard.

Benin is being seriously affected by the food

crisis, but we are resolutely committed to undertaking

the necessary reforms. To that end, in 2006, my

Government launched a national agricultural

modernization programme in order to address

heightened distortions. To date, agriculture in Benin

has been characterized by small-scale family farms and

based on the use of outdated equipment. In order to

change that situation, which has confined food

production to subsistence farming, a year ago my

Government initiated a mechanization programme to

improve the competitiveness of the agricultural sector.

Given that that mechanization alone cannot bring

about the expected results without the marshalling of

water resources, we are considering a programme for

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rational water management to better utilize that

resource while preserving it for the future. The goal is

to promote irrigation agriculture, primarily by building

irrigation dams in valleys in the north of our country as

part of an overall development plan.

Soil degradation, coastal erosion and the

combined effects of frequent flooding due to climate

change that seriously affect all of West Africa are

among the underlying factors contributing to the drop

in local food production. In that connection, I should

like to express our great appreciation for the

awareness-raising efforts of the secretariat for the

Convention to Combat Desertification.

Financing mechanisms, including the World

Bank’s Adaptation Fund, must function with a

heightened sense of the urgent need for aid to affected

regions. They should promote the implementation of

soil regeneration projects, irrigation agriculture and

reforestation with species that will increase the

availability of basic foodstuffs.

As part of efforts to promote diversification in the

agriculture sector, my Government also intends to

encourage the cultivation of crops suitable for biofuels

on marginally arable lands. The goal is to reduce

dependence on hydrocarbons, which has become more

acute following the dramatic drop in the generating

capacity of hydropower plants as a result of climate

change, whose impact has seriously affected economic

activity in my country over the past two years. These

difficulties have been exacerbated by the dizzying rise

in oil prices.

The tax cuts and import subsidies to which my

country has resorted in order to protect the buying

power of taxpayers have had a negative impact on

public finances. Those stop-gap measures are simply

not sustainable in the long-run.

This year we are commemorating the sixtieth

anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights. Benin initiated resolution 62/171, which the

General Assembly adopted to proclaim the

International Year of Human Rights Learning, which

will begin on 10 December 2008. My country proposed

that new approach in order to once again place the

human person at the very centre of sustainable human

development efforts. Human rights learning leads to

increased demands for human rights, which society is

supposed to provide. It is the duty of the international

community to guarantee them. We call upon all

Member States to give real effect to the International

Year, in line with their national specificities, as well as

to take all the steps they believe necessary to promote

ownership and the effective enjoyment of human rights

by all individuals on their territory.

The activities that will take place during the

International Year of Human Rights Learning will

provide additional impetus to the efforts we have

undertaken to ensure that all citizens subscribe to the

Millennium Development Goals, especially in Africa,

where the risk of not meeting the Goals by the

established deadline is the greatest.

We welcome the recommendations of the

Steering Group for achieving the MDGs in Africa.

Benin is honoured to be one of the 10 pilot countries

chosen. Benin has begun to integrate the concept of

“united in action” within the framework of its

cooperation with the United Nations system and

eagerly awaits its inclusion in the second group of test

countries for the implementation of the

recommendations of the High-level Panel on System-

wide Coherence. This will enable us to develop

synergies to accelerate the achievement of the

Millennium Development Goals.

At the national level, we have integrated the

achievement of the MDGs into our national

development strategies, which are based on attaining

those Goals as part of a sustainable development

process focused on and sustained by our nation and

aimed at supporting economic growth, which will

enable us to achieve lasting success.

We welcome the ongoing consideration of ways

to enhance the effectiveness of development assistance,

and we hope that this will enable us to develop a

consensus vision on the best possible way to revitalize

the global partnership for development, with the

ultimate objective, in our view, of reducing the

scandalous inequalities which still afflict humankind.

It is clear that democratization of the United

Nations and the promotion of the rule of law at an

international level are endeavours which will

contribute to the effective and efficient participation of

all peoples in managing world affairs, for the benefit of

present and succeeding generations. The promotion of

the rule of law at the international level requires the

increased representation of developing States in the

decision-making bodies of the international financial

institutions, as well as a redefinition of their

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institutional mandates to ensure that better use is made

of them to mobilize resources for the development of

the least developed countries, while preserving the

stability of the international financial system.

The democratization of the United Nations also

includes the long-awaited reform of the Security

Council. As a hostage of the inherent contradictions of

today’s international relations, it has remained

hopelessly stuck, even though it is recognized as being

of cardinal importance to the effectiveness of the

Organization. The negotiations to that end should be

carried out with a heightened sense of responsibility.

We must ensure equitable representation of Member

States within the Security Council. I reiterate here the

legitimate demands of Africa, as expressed in the

Ezulwini Consensus, within the framework of reform

aimed at ensuring transparency, legitimacy and

increased effectiveness of the Council’s decisions as it

discharges its primary role in maintaining international

peace and security. The democratization of the United

Nations also means a firmer commitment by Member

States to respect international and national legality.

In conclusion, I wish to make an urgent appeal to

all parties to the armed conflicts that continue in

various hotspots throughout the world, whether they be

in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America or Africa, to

choose the path of peace and dialogue and to respect

democratic values.