Bangladesh, 2012

I warmly

congratulate Mr. Jeremić on his election as President of

the General Assembly at its sixty-seventh session, and I

thank Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for his excellent

leadership of the Assembly during the previous session.

I also thank Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his

efforts on behalf of the United Nations in the past year.

Our new world is experiencing popular uprisings,

intra-State conflicts, climate change disasters, global

financial crises, food and energy insecurity, human

rights violations, terrorism and so forth. These and

other experiences call for collective efforts towards

peaceful resolution at the United Nations. I therefore

commend the theme for this year’s deliberations,

namely, “Bringing about adjustment or settlement of

international disputes or situations by peaceful means”.

In that context, I would like to recall the role of

my father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the

Father of the Nation, who from this rostrum 38 years

ago espoused the principles of friendship towards

all and malice towards none, the peaceful settlement

of disputes, the renunciation of the use of force in

international relations, and contributing to global peace

and security. In essence, his policy at home and abroad

was based on justice and peace. At home, during my

last tenure as Prime Minister, in 1997, those policy

guidelines inspired me to settle a 20-year conflict that

had cost more than 20,000 lives, through the signing of

the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord. In February

2009, during my current tenure, I was able to peacefully

settle the volatile mutiny of our border guards, thus

averting a dangerous crisis.

We have also put increased emphasis on improving

external relations. I was able to resolve a 25-year-old

issue with India on sharing the water of the River

Ganges with the signing in 1996 of the 30-year Ganges

Water Sharing Treaty. Last year the 2011 Protocol to

our 1974 Land Boundary Agreement settled a border

demarcation issue that had gone unresolved for 64

years. We also addressed mutual concerns about a

dam proposed by India across a common river. With

our other neighbour, Myanmar, we reached a peaceful

settlement of a 41-year maritime boundary dispute

through the International Tribunal for the Law of the

Sea.

Our national and international commitment to peace

has also been demonstrated by our position among the

top contributors to United Nations peacekeeping and as a

founding member of the Peacebuilding Commission. As

the current Chair of the Commission, on 25 September

we held an event entitled “Peacebuilding: the way

forward towards sustainable peace and security”, in

which many here participated. As a member of the

Human Rights Council and of the Economic and Social

Council, we promote justice, peace, democracy, gender

equality, secularism, the rule of law and the rights of

minorities and vulnerable groups. As a member of the

executive bodies of the United Nations Development

Programme, the United Nations Population Fund, the

United Nations Office for Partnerships, UNESCO,

the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations, the International Maritime Organization and

the Universal Postal Union, we advocate setting global

norms and standards.

In my four decades in politics for the welfare of

the people, I have learned that peace prevails when

justice prevails, both within States and in relations

between States. Only justice can ensure peace, which

is so vital for development, and justice is possible

only through democracy, which empowers people.

The alternative — the absence of democracy — means

social injustice, poverty, inequality, deprivation and marginalization, which encourage extremism and

terrorism. We are therefore strengthening democracy

and justice by empowering people by eradicating

poverty, hunger, inequality and deprivation and

by establishing social safety nets, creating jobs,

promoting inclusiveness, sustained growth and human

development, and by countering terrorism.

The principles to which I have just referred

also encouraged me to present a model for people’s

empowerment and development at the sixty-sixth session

(see A/66/PV.22). The model encompasses six mutually

reinforcing peace multipliers: first, eradicating poverty

and hunger; secondly, reducing inequality; thirdly,

mitigating deprivation; fourthly, including excluded

persons; fifthly, accelerating human development;

and sixthly, eliminating terrorism. That model was

endorsed by the Assembly in resolution 66/224, adopted

by consensus last year. In Dhaka, on 5 and 6 August

2012, we held an international conference to discuss

the model, and the 62 participating countries supported

its consideration at the sixty-seventh session of the

General Assembly. I highly appreciate their support. I

also seek the Assembly’s support for disseminating the

model.

In our efforts to achieve people’s empowerment,

parliamentary standing committees were established

during the first session of the Parliament that was

constituted immediately after the general elections of

2008. There are 50 such committees, and many are

chaired by members of Parliament from the opposition

bench. We also introduced the Prime Minister’s question

time and strengthened commissions on anti-corruption,

human rights and information. We ensured an

independent, proactive judiciary, strengthened the rule

of law and established human rights, accountability,

secularism and rights of minorities. We proceeded

with regional multimodal connectivity to empower

all people. We modernized education in madrasas. We

entrenched the election commission and democratic

institutions for holding 5,182 elections in a completely

free and credible atmosphere. We freed and expanded

the media, with 24 private television channels, 7 news

agencies, 11 FM and 14 community radio stations, 320

daily newspapers and 151 periodicals.

Since justice is the basis for empowering people for

peace and development, women should have an equal

role. To expedite the process of their empowerment,

girls are provided free education up to higher secondary

school under our new education policy. Women are also

encouraged to be active in our national life. Women’s

leadership has been developed from the grass-roots

level to the national level. Their participation in politics

has been increased since the general elections in 2008.

So far, 12,838 women have been elected to local

Government bodies, and 69 women are members of the

Parliament, constituting 20 per cent of the total number

of members of Parliament. Besides my being the Prime

Minister and Leader of the House, other women include

the Opposition Leader, the Deputy Leader of the

House, five Cabinet ministers and a Whip. Of general

Government posts, 30 per cent are reserved for women,

some of whom serve in very senior positions in the

judicial, administrative and diplomatic fields, as well

as in the armed and law enforcement services and as

United Nations peacekeepers.

Our efforts to empower people in my present

tenure have so far helped in reducing poverty by 10 per

cent, attaining a gross domestic product growth rate of

6.5 per cent and enhancing per capita income by 34.6 per

cent. They have helped to reduce overall inflation

from double digits to 4.97 per cent, with food inflation

declining from 13 per cent in 2008 to 2.25 per cent at

present. Our efforts have assisted in the employment of

7.5 million in the private sector and half a million in the

public sector. Exports have increased annually by 19 per

cent over 2009 figures to $24.3 billion in 2011-2012. We

have helped to arrange overseas jobs for 1.87 million

nationals, increasing annual inward remittances by

10 per cent over 2009 to $12 billion in 2011-2012.

We have maintained macroeconomic stability. We

have expanded information and communications

technology facilities among the lowest tier of local

Government to ensure the availability of e-services to

rural people. Nearly 100 per cent of school-age children

are enrolled in in primary schools. We have achieved

gender parity in primary and secondary education and

have established 12,000 community clinics to ensure

nutrition and health care for rural people, especially

mothers and children. A climate change trust fund has

been set up to implement adaptation and mitigation

programmes. All those undertakings have helped in

achieving Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

3, 4 and 5, on gender parity and infant and maternal

mortality, ahead of 2015.

Our achievements have earned us global recognition

through MDG, South-South and Food and Agriculture

Organization awards. Importantly, the Secretary-

General has acknowledged those achievements by including me as a member of the Scaling Up Nutrition

Lead Group and as a champion for the Education First

initiative. We welcome his high-level panel on the

post-2015 development agenda, which should consider

coherence with the sustainable development goals and

should prioritize poverty, hunger, nutrition, global

food and energy security, climate change and global

partnership for sustainable development.

I hope that the high-level panel will also consider

formulating a position on the painful plight of autistic

and disadvantaged children, who constitute about

1 per cent of the world’s population. At home, we have

put in place 55 special-needs schools and a centre for

neurodevelopment and autism in children. In July 2011,

with the collaboration of the World Health Organization

and Autism Speaks, we launched a global autism public

health initiative. At the current Assembly session we

will submit a draft resolution on the autism spectrum

disorder, which I hope will receive the Assembly’s

support.

Our efforts are hindered by unjust developments

resulting from climate change, such as increasing

poverty, property loss, human displacement and the

consequent terrorism. The inevitable sea-level rise will

create mass movements of displaced migrants. A new

legal regime ensuring social, cultural and economic

rehabilitation of climate migrants — which I called for

at the Assembly’s sixty-fourth session — must be put

in place.

It was also emphasized at the Dhaka meeting in

2011 of the Climate Vulnerable Forum that an alliance of

countries most vulnerable to climate change and rising

sea levels has to be forged. As the current Chair of the

Forum, Bangladesh launched the second edition of the

Climate Vulnerability Monitor yesterday in New York.

I also reiterate my call for an international agreement

limiting greenhouse-gas emissions on the principle of

common and differentiated responsibilities, on early

operationalization of the Green Climate Fund for, inter

alia, adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer.

Closely linked to climate change is global food

and energy security. The increase of food and energy

prices due to climate change can be very disturbing

indeed. It has dangerous implications for least

developed countries, which is why they need greater

international support for socioeconomic security, for

duty-free and quota-free access of their products to

all markets, for the fulfilment of official development

assistance commitments, for an equal voice in Bretton

Woods institutions and other international financial

institutions, and for free movement of labour to all

countries. In fact, we should immediately implement

Mode IV of the General Agreement on Trade in Services

to benefit both sending and receiving countries.

We should also ensure documentation, safe

migration and the protection of the rights of migrant

workers, especially women and children, as a shared

responsibility of sending and receiving States in the

World Trade Organization.

The blatant injustice perpetrated against, and

murder, torture and humiliation of the Palestinian

people by Israel marks a shameful chapter in human

history. Deep frustrations at the injustice in Palestine

and in other places also fuel terrorism. It is vital to

resolve the Palestine and similar burning questions

through justice and the establishment of democratic

rights.

In Bangladesh, from 2001 to 2006, an environment of

terrorism prevailed. Under the patronage of the previous

BNP-Jamaat Government, such internationally banned

terrorist outfits as Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh,

Harkatul Jihad, Hizb ut-Tahrir and Lashkar-e-Toiba,

among others, carried out bomb and grenade attacks

with impunity, every other day, to eliminate the secular

and progressive parties. Prominent instances were the

bomb attacks on four cinemas killing 19 people on

5 December 2002; the grenade attack on the British

High Commissioner on 21 May 2004; bomb blasts at

500 places in 63 out of 64 districts within a span of half

an hour on 17 August 2005; grenade and firearm attacks

that killed former Finance Minister and Executive

Director of the Economic and Social Commission

for Asia and the Pacific Mr. S.A.M.S. Kibria, MP,

Mr. Ahsanullah Master, MP, Mr. Mumtazuddin, MP,

and two popular judges inside the court premises.

I was myself a target of a grenade attack at a public

meeting on 21 August 2004, which left 24 people dead

and nearly 500 injured. Somehow, I miraculously

survived. Another heinous kind of terrorism that we

experienced in Bangladesh was the brutal assassination

of my father and the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and 18 members of our family

on 15 August 1975 by some misguided army personnel

seeking to usurp State power. At that time, I was abroad

with my sister, Sheikh Rehana, and thus escaped

death. In view of our nation’s tragic experiences with terrorism, my Government has adopted a firm policy of

zero tolerance of terrorism and all forms of extremism.

I conclude by joining the vast majority of United

Nations Members in stressing once again the urgent

need to reform the United Nations, the Bretton Woods

Institutions and other international financial institutions.

Their structures and decision making processes reflect

a balance of power that is 60 years old, serving the

interests of a privileged few and ignoring the large

majority. The new millennium, with its large number

of independent sovereign States and globalization,

has ushered in a new world order. Today, we speak

boldly of justice, equality, democracy, freedom, human

rights, environment and the adverse impact of climate

change, among other things. These are the priorities of

our time, which we must acknowledge in place of the

bitter experiences of the past. The new world order of

nations has to be based on justice, mutual respect and

sovereign equality if we are to evolve towards the world

of peace and hope that we wish to leave to our future

generations.

May Bangladesh live forever! Long live the United

Nations!