Botswana, 2014

It is a singular honour

and privilege for me to address this gathering of the

international community. Allow me, on behalf of His

Excellency the President of the Republic of Botswana,

Lieutenant General Seretse Khama Ian Khama, to

join other delegations in extending our warmest

congratulations to the President on his election to the

presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth

session. We are confident that his vast experience and

dedicated service to the Government and people of

Uganda will contribute significantly to the successful

conclusion of this session. My delegation and I wish him

every success as he embarks on this new responsibility

of steering the work of the sixty-ninth session of the

General Assembly. We also extend fitting tribute to his

predecessor, His Excellency Ambassador John Ashe,

for his sterling leadership of the sixty-eighth session of

the General Assembly. We commend him for his tireless

efforts to overcome many of the challenges confronting

the international community today.

My delegation welcomes the theme that the President

has chosen for the current general debate, namely,

“Delivering on and implementing a transformative

post-2015 development agenda”. We consider it both

pertinent and timely, especially as it coincides with

ongoing efforts by Member States to formulate a new

global development agenda to succeed the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs). We shall tirelessly work

with the President and the international community

as we define the post-2015 development agenda. The

priorities that the President has laid out for this session

of the Assembly, that is, the issues of climate change,

poverty eradication, the empowerment of women and

gender equality, the rule of law and international peace

and security, are among the most critical and central to

the success and sustainability of a global development

agenda.

As we draw the curtain on the Millennium

Development Goals, it is important that we reflect on

our successes and failures in order to draw vital lessons

from our experience. The global community, most

notably in the developing world, has faced significant

challenges in fully realizing the MDGs. That has

resulted in many of our countries failing to deliver

tangible development achievements to their citizens, as

cogently set out in the MDGs, despite their best efforts

and intentions. We continue to witness intolerable

levels of poverty, disease, economic stagnation and

environmental degradation, as well as other drawbacks,

precipitated in large part by natural disasters and severe

resource and capacity constraints.

While Botswana has made impressive gains in the

implementation of the MDGs, it has not been without

enormous challenges, chief among which were resource

and capacity constraints. The Botswana Government has

strived to achieve the MDGs and improve the quality of

life of its citizens by allocating a substantial percentage

of the national budget to the sectors with significant

bearing on the country’s development, including

education, health, infrastructure, the development of

human capital, and women and youth empowerment.

Botswana continues to make every effort, in the

remaining time before the target 2015 completion date,

to finish the unfinished business remaining from the

MDGs, especially Goals 4 and 5, relating to infant and

maternal mortality.

The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus disease,

evolving, as it did, into a public health catastrophe, is

a serious setback to the achievement of the MDGs. We

therefore implore the Assembly to call on all partners

and organizations of goodwill to spare no effort in

rescuing the West African region from that scourge.

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable

Development of 2012 mapped a clear and strategic path

for the achievement of global sustainable development,

calling for an inclusive and transformative agenda that

integrates the three pillars of sustainable development,

namely, economic, social and environmental protection.

Botswana has keenly followed the work of the

Open Working Group on Sustainable Development

Goals, which has had as its primary objective the

formulation of a single, transformative and global

development agenda, as mandated by the Rio+20

outcome document. We are highly encouraged by

the spirit of consultation and the collective will and

commitment of the international community to craft an

ambitious yet inclusive, measurable and sustainable set

of goals, which should inspire and challenge us all to

excel in our quest for the attainment of the future we

want. I commend the co-Chairs of the Open Working

Group on Sustainable Development Goals for their

exceptional performance in driving the negotiation

process to its logical conclusion. We look forward to

the intergovernmental negotiations on the broader post-

2015 development framework, which will begin during

this session of the General Assembly. I assure the

Assembly of our fullest cooperation and constructive

engagement in those deliberations.

My delegation will actively participate in all

deliberations on the key development priorities outlined

by the Secretary-General, in particular the elaboration

of the post-2015 development agenda. However, there

are issues of major strategic importance to Botswana.

They include climate change, landlocked developing

countries, middle-income countries, countries in

special situations and issues of peace and security and

the advancement of human rights.

On climate change, Botswana knows only too well

the devastating effects of that phenomenon, which

continues to cause extreme temperatures, changes in the

patterns of rainfall, land degradation, desertification

and persistent droughts. In that regard, we believe

that addressing those problems should be a primary

consideration in the current deliberations on the post-

2015 sustainable development agenda. We therefore

look forward to the twentieth Conference of the Parties

to the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change, to be held in Lima this year, which

is supposed to lay the foundation for a legally binding

agreement for adoption at the next Conference of the

Parties in Paris. We commend the Secretary-General

for his initiative in convening the recently concluded

Climate Change Summit, which successfully injected

much-needed political momentum into the process as

we move towards 2015.

As a middle-income, landlocked developing

country with particular vulnerabilities, we also strongly

hope for a comprehensive account of those issues in

the post-2015 development agenda. We welcome the

10-year review of the Almaty Programme of Action,

to be held in November in Vienna, which will broadly

consider effective mechanisms for addressing the

vulnerabilities of landlocked developing countries. We

hope that, during the review, special attention will also

be given to countries with ever-increasing elephant

populations, whose numbers not only give rise to

serious animal-human conflict, but also devastate the

very environment that the elephants depend on for their

survival. Botswana has the largest elephant population

in Africa.

On issues of social development, I am delighted to

inform the Assembly that Botswana is making steady

progress in eradicating abject poverty, as a result of

the implementation of the national poverty eradication

strategy that was launched in 2010. Furthermore, we

have been able to achieve universal primary education

and access to HIV/AIDS treatment, care and support

services. However, challenges remain on the issues of

maintaining quality in education and general services.

Financial support, technology transfer and

capacity-building must invariably be factored into the

post-2015 development agenda discussions. Failing

that, our efforts towards poverty eradication and

sustainable development will be rendered futile. We

keenly await the adoption of the new development

agenda, which will, we trust, support our individual

and collective efforts to deliver our shared aspirations

of a safe, secure and prosperous world for both present

and future generations.

Threats to international peace and security

continue to be among the greatest challenges to human

development. Botswana is gravely concerned about the

increasing trend of instability, insecurity and violent

conflict in various parts of the world. We are currently

witnessing unimaginable levels of human suffering,

with thousands of innocent lives being lost and the

world hurtling precipitously towards calamitous levels

of humanitarian crises.

The Palestine/Israel conflict and the protracted

brutal war in Syria defy human imagination. In Africa,

the frequent eruption of violent conflicts in certain

parts of our continent, now particularly in South Sudan

and the Central African Republic, are distressing.

Regrettably, Iraq is also under siege by the Islamic

State in Iraq and the Levant and the Nusra Front.

Those terrorist groups threaten not only the stability

and security of the Middle East, but the maintenance of

international peace and security at large.

Not only are we failing as nation States to exercise

our duty and responsibility to protect populations from

war crimes and crimes against humanity, we in effect

inadvertently acquiesce in the annihilation of future

generations. Last June, Botswana and the Netherlands

co-hosted the fourth meeting of the Global Network

of Focal Points on the Responsibility to Protect, in an

effort to further consolidate that fundamental principle,

which promotes our individual and collective sense of

responsibility towards our citizens.

While such efforts may be effective in terms of

awareness-raising, swift and decisive action remains the

domain of the Security Council. It is therefore incumbent

upon members of the Security Council to demonstrate

exemplary leadership and a genuine regard for their

Charter responsibilities to maintain international peace

and security, as mandated by Article 24 of the Charter.

Botswana is deeply disappointed and concerned that

some permanent members of the Security Council

consistently thwart any efforts to find lasting solutions

to conflict situations. Surely, responsible members of

the international community would not, and should

not, abdicate their solemn responsibility and allow

the Council to be seemingly impelled into a state of

grim paralysis as the world burns towards extinction.

Just this past May, the Council failed to adopt a draft

resolution seeking to refer the situation in Syria to the

International Criminal Court (ICC). Needless to say,

that was nothing short of a travesty of international

criminal justice.

Botswana’s commitment to an effective international

criminal justice system remains steadfast. To that

end, we continue to support the independence and

credibility of the ICC as the only existing international

judicial mechanism available for the investigation and

prosecution of genocide, war crimes, crimes against

humanity and the crime of aggression. However, the

role of the Security Council in facilitating the work of

the ICC cannot be over-emphasized. It is our sincere

hope that, going forward, reason and basic human

compassion will prevail in Council decisions aimed

at eliminating threats to international peace and

security and at fostering a global culture of judicial

accountability, inclusive governance, the rule of law

and respect for human rights. In that regard, Botswana

welcomes the French initiative regarding voluntary

restraint on the use of the veto by the permanent

members of the Security Council in situations of mass

atrocities.

Botswana also commends those countries, human

rights defenders and humanitarian organizations that

have valiantly contributed to efforts to relieve human

suffering wherever it occurred around the world. We

especially applaud Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

for his unwavering commitment to the pursuit of

international peace and security, including addressing

the plight of vulnerable groups in society, such as

women and children.

Let me conclude by reiterating and reaffirming

Botswana’s commitment to the principles and ideals

of the United Nations as enshrined in the Charter. We

remain steadfast and resolute in our obligation as a

member of the international community to contribute,

in our own small way, to the creation of a peaceful,

secure and prosperous world for all.