Botswana, 2006

Let me begin by

congratulating you, Madam, on your election to the

presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-first

session. Your election is a demonstration of the trust

and confidence placed in you and your country, the

Kingdom of Bahrain, by the international community.

I would also seize this opportunity to pay tribute

to your illustrious predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Jan

Eliasson of the Kingdom of Sweden, for his sound

leadership and achievements during the sixtieth

session.

Additionally, let me commend the Secretary-

General, His Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan, for his

decade of devoted and selfless service to humanity.

This great son of Africa, with his visionary leadership

of the United Nations, has provided, and continues to

provide, the embodiment of our collective aspirations

to achieve a more peaceful, just, equitable and

prosperous world. He is indeed Africa’s great gift to

humanity.

Within the next five days, Botswana will mark 40

years of its existence as a democratic, independent and

sovereign nation.

When the first President of Botswana, the late Sir

Seretse Khama, addressed the Assembly on

24 September 1969, he described Botswana, in part, as

a country faced with a problem of underdevelopment

of classic proportions.

Botswana had to contend with the harsh realities

of its history and geographical position. We were

completely surrounded by oppressive, aggressive and

racist white minority regimes. As a small, weak and

poor country, we had to begin the process of building

national institutions and laying the foundation for

social and economic development in a very hostile

environment. The United Nations and its Member

States served as a pillar of strength and gave us

political and diplomatic support.

Standing here today, we express our deep

gratitude for the support and assistance extended to us

over the years. It has been a 40-year journey of

determined and sustained effort to achieve human-

centred development.

It is a journey we have travelled with

development partners from all continents. This has

enabled us to achieve some measure of progress in

improving the human condition. At 40, we are an adult

nation and have assumed full ownership of and

responsibility for our own development. We have

adopted policies, legislation and practices aimed at

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creating an environment conducive to economic growth

and development.

Many milestones have been achieved in our

national development effort. Today, Botswana is a

middle-income developing country, but we still face

enormous challenges for which we need assistance. In

this regard, the decision of the 2005 World Summit

should be implemented to ensure that small middle-

income developing countries such as Botswana do not

fall back into the doldrums of poverty and

underdevelopment.

Botswana has been blessed with one of Africa’s

major natural resources: diamonds. It must be stated

that 65 per cent of the world’s diamonds, worth

$8.3 billion per year, come from African countries. I

am pleased to state that diamonds have done, and

continue to do, good in Botswana. The diamond

industry in Botswana has been at the cutting edge of

human development and is transforming lives for the

better, in all fields of human endeavour.

We continue to prudently manage the revenue

from the sale of diamonds and to effectively use such

revenue to educate our people, provide potable water

and health care and build an infrastructure network,

including roads, telephones and rural electrification.

This is the good that diamonds have done and continue

to do.

As a participant in the Kimberley Process

Certification Scheme, of which we currently hold the

chairmanship, Botswana is strongly committed to

working alongside other participating countries to

maintain the credibility of the Scheme and the

legitimate diamond trade. The Kimberley Process

Certification Scheme is one of the best examples of

global cooperation. The Scheme is the embodiment of

global consensus, unrelenting political will and the

determination of members to do the right thing,

underpinned by strong support and the resolutions of

the Security Council. That is important, because about

10 million people globally are either directly or

indirectly supported by the diamond industry. In

southern Africa, more than 28,000 people are employed

by the industry.

We are also here to reaffirm our commitment to

the Charter of the United Nations and our strong belief

in the Organization as the only vehicle by means of

which the enduring peace and prosperity of the human

race can be assured. We welcome the opportunity for

the nations of the world to meet here annually to

exchange views on matters which are central to our

common destiny.

There are many challenges which we must

address. But chief among them is ending the evil of

war. It is deeply regrettable that, although the human

species left the jungle many, many years ago, the

jungle remains in human beings. As a matter of fact, if

the beasts of the jungle acquired language, they could

actually claim some superiority over the human race.

While animals may fight and brutally kill each other,

they never spend time planning how to destroy one

another or thinking about how to produce weapons of

mass destruction.

Be that as it may, we still have hope and

confidence in the human spirit to do good. As human

beings, we have a shared destiny and we are therefore

our own saviours.

The responsibility to save the human species

from the scourge of war cannot be passed to anyone

else. It is for that reason that we consider that this

Assembly provides a rare opportunity for the

international community to move beyond platitudes

and to squarely address the critical challenges of our

time.

An atmosphere of international peace and

security is essential for human development.

Experience has repeatedly shown that we cannot

realistically hope to pursue a meaningful global

development agenda under conditions of war, conflict

and insecurity.

Conflicts in our world today should therefore be a

matter of grave concern to all of us. In 2000, at the

dawn of the new millennium, we gave an undertaking

that, above all else, the twenty-first century should be

an epoch of peace and prosperity. We consciously made

a commitment to reduce by half by 2015 the number of

the world’s poor. If we are to achieve that objective,

war should certainly be the first casualty.

Botswana is particularly concerned about

conflicts in Africa. Regrettably, Africa is the only

continent that is facing the bleak prospect of failing to

achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Can we really afford the resources for war in the midst

of poverty, disease, deprivation and

underdevelopment? The answer must obviously be a

resounding “No”.

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Today, Africa is host to the largest number of

refugees, displaced persons, global poor and people

infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. Yet, sadly,

we have the lion’s share of the world’s conflicts.

Ending conflicts is therefore as much a calling as it is a

moral and political imperative.

We should all be concerned about the atrocities in

the Darfur region of the Sudan. The perpetuation of

that conflict, in defiance of the collective will of the

international community and the Charter of the United

Nations, is totally unacceptable. Worse still, the

carnage of daily killings is an affront to the sanctity of

human life. This undermines our humanity.

We call on all parties to the conflict to comply

with and respect the Darfur Peace Agreement. Those

who have not signed the Agreement must do so as a

matter of urgency. It is only through dialogue and

mutual accommodation that durable peace can be

attained. War can beget only misery and anarchy.

The United Nations has expressed its desire to

help, through the deployment of a multinational

peacekeeping force. In principle, the African Union

Peace and Security Council has welcomed the decision

of the Security Council.

Every year we come to this rostrum to call for

progress in the Middle East peace process. For

generations that region has known no peace. If there is

any lesson to be learned, it is that the only avenue to a

lasting political settlement is through dialogue,

accommodation and compromise. It is only in an

atmosphere of negotiation that reason and common

sense can prevail over extremism and war-mongering.

Israel and Palestine must coexist as sovereign

States that share, not only a border, but a desire for

peace, security and prosperity. We urge the people of

the Middle East to summon up the courage to

recognize the folly of war and accept the virtue of

dialogue. They should start building a common future

for generations that will know no violence and conflict,

but only cooperation and concord.

My delegation shares the concern about the threat

of terrorism. Terrorism pervades every crevice of our

world, much to the detriment of humanity. In this

respect, we welcome the recent adoption of the United

Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (resolution

60/288) by the General Assembly.

When the Doha Ministerial Declaration was

adopted in 2001, we had hoped for and envisaged

negotiations lasting three years. We knew then, as we

know today, that that was an ambitious and onerous

undertaking. We have already missed several important

deadlines. That should be a source of concern for all of

us. For many of our people, a fair and equitable

international trading system is not only a noble

objective, but also a development imperative. It holds

hope and promise of prosperity and the alleviation of

poverty, which is all the more reason why we must not

allow the Doha round of trade negotiations to fail.

The indefinite suspension of the Doha round of

trade negotiations on 24 July 2006 has raised questions

about our collective commitment to development. In

this respect, the major question before us today is how

we can revive the Doha round of trade negotiations. It

took eight years to complete the Uruguay round. That

goes to show that at times it is not how fast the

negotiations are concluded but the substance and

content of such negotiations. It is clear that we are

going to miss the December 2006 deadline which we

set for ourselves in 2005.

It is therefore our collective responsibility as the

United Nations to give the necessary political direction

to the World Trade Organization, not only to revive the

negotiations, but also to ensure the necessary impetus

for their timely and successful conclusion. A successful

conclusion should address the ever-growing special

development challenges of developing countries by

upholding the development dimension of the Doha

round.

During the sixtieth session of the General

Assembly, a number of key decisions were made and

were outlined in the 2005 World Summit Outcome

(resolution 60/1). Heads of State or Government called

for the establishment of institutions with a view to

making the United Nations more effective in carrying

out its mandate under the Charter and in serving

Member States better.

This session should be an implementation

session; we must commit ourselves to collective

implementation. It is important that we demonstrate in

deeds that, here at the United Nations, we make

statements to communicate thoughts, ideas and action

plans. Such ideas are not to remain on paper; they must

be translated into programmes and projects for the

common good.

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Botswana strongly supports comprehensive, wide

and deep reform of the United Nations. Regarding the

ongoing management reform, we welcome the

decision, in resolution 60/283, to allow the Secretary-

General adequate authority to deploy resources and

staff from lower to higher priority programmes. We are

convinced that as chief administrative officer, the

Secretary-General should be accorded more leverage to

command both human and financial resources so that

the Secretariat can deliver more effectively. Member

States must recognize the importance of timely and

unconditional funding of the mandates entrusted to the

Secretary-General by the legislative bodies of the

Organization. It is incumbent upon the Secretariat to

ensure accountability and the prudent management of

such resources.

Enabling the Organization to effectively deliver is

a collective responsibility of the Member States and

the Secretariat. What is essential is for Member States

to ensure that there are efficient oversight bodies to

guarantee compliance with standing rules and

regulations.

One of the major successes of the sixtieth session

was the implementation of the World Summit decision

on the establishment of the Peacebuilding Commission.

Africa expects the Peacebuilding Commission to

effectively discharge its mandate.

The establishment of the Human Rights Council

is also one of the significant achievements of the

sixtieth session. It demonstrates our collective desire to

elevate human rights to new heights of prominence and

visibility consistent with the changing times. It is our

expectation that the new body will operate on the basis

of principles of cooperation, genuine interactive

dialogue and tolerance coupled with respect for

diversity. The importance of issues of development

should not be underestimated. In developing countries,

these issues are real challenges which should not be

overlooked. The Human Rights Council must therefore

address issues of capacity building and find ways of

responding to institutional weaknesses and resource

limitations which hamper the process of translating

constitutional and statutory human rights provisions

into reality.

Let me conclude by reaffirming Botswana’s

abiding faith in the utility and universality of the

United Nations. The United Nations is nothing else but

ourselves, the Member States, put together. It should be

greater than the sum total of all of us. We must

therefore have the courage to strengthen ourselves by

following through with reforms, including the reform

of the Security Council. The reform of the Security

Council should not pose difficulties to anyone. We are

all responsible for keeping this world safe.

It is only when Member States consider their

national interests to be an integral part of the wider

interests of the international community that they can

set aside their apprehension with regard to a Security

Council enlarged in both the permanent and non-

permanent categories.