Central African Republic, 2007

On behalf of the delegation of the Central

African Republic, and in the name of our Head of

State, President of the Republic François Bozizé, I

extend warm and heartfelt congratulations to

Mr. Kerim on his election to preside over the General

Assembly at its sixty-second session. We are also

gratified to assert that his distinctive skills will

guarantee the success of our work.

I also wish to pay a warm tribute to his

predecessor, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of the

Kingdom of Bahrain. Five decades after the presidency

of Mrs. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India, she wisely led

the work of the sixty-first session of the General

Assembly, to the great satisfaction of all.

Finally, on behalf of President of the Republic

and Head of State François Bozizé, allow me to

address our sincere congratulations to Secretary-

General Ban Ki-moon on his dynamism and the

efficiency with which he has undertaken his work in

the context of current important international issues,

including the maintenance of international peace and

security, climate change, human rights, and combating

drugs and terrorism in all its forms, which remain

pressing issues that no country in the world can address

in isolation.

The conflicts afflicting the innocent civilian

populations in the Middle East, the Great Lakes region

and the Sudan, a neighbour of the Central African

Republic, with their hosts of refugees and displaced

persons, are causes of grave concern. The conflict in

Darfur and the presence of rebels, armed groups and

road-blockers cause the proliferation and unlawful

circulation of small arms in that subregion, thus

provoking widespread and continuous insecurity.

The consequences for the Central African

Republic often take the shape of recurrent crises that

chronically undermine the economic fabric and

aggravate the poverty of our people by creating

hazardous and precarious living conditions. All of this

leads to the breakdown of the social fabric, the loss of

civic spirit and, ultimately, the failure of confidence in

their institutions and, especially, in justice.

We applaud the adoption of Security Council

resolution 1778 (2007) on the deployment of the hybrid

multidimensional force to the borders of the Central

African Republic, Chad and the Sudan. We should like

to see it accompanied, however, by genuine support for

the reinforcement of institutional capacities in the

Central African Republic. In that regard, we thank and

praise France for its courageous decision and effective

participation in that peacekeeping force.

During the fifteenth session of the Commission

on Sustainable Development, held in New York from

30 April to 11 May 2007, whose chosen theme was

turning commitments into action and working together

in partnership, participants highlighted the correlation

and interdependence among the four areas of the

thematic cluster: energy for sustainable development,

industrial development, air pollution and climate

change. The Commission’s fifteenth session also

demonstrated that much significant progress remains to

be achieved: advances in those sectors are minimal and

still far from the objectives the international

community set for itself in Rio in 1992 and in

Johannesburg in 2002.

In order to meet these challenges of the

environment in particular and sustainable development

in general, a partnership endeavour, supported by

sufficient resources, is absolutely essential in order to

allow developing countries, in particular in Africa, the

Caribbean and the South Pacific, to implement these

commitments, especially since those regions, and

particularly Africa, while bearing but little

responsibility for the advent of this phenomenon, are

more vulnerable to the risks associated with climate

change.

By choosing climate change as a central topic of

this General Assembly session and organizing the high-

level dialogue “The future in our hands: Addressing the

leadership challenge of climate change”, the Assembly

President has pinpointed the growing concern

associated with global warming for a country such as

ours, the Central African Republic. Indeed, the

problems associated with climate change now lie at the

core of international debates. The moment has thus

arrived to transform good intentions into concrete

actions.

For its part, the Central African Republic hopes

that during the Bali Climate Change Conference this

December the wealthy countries will at last honour

their commitments in the area of technology transfer

and will provide assistance to strengthening the

national and regional structures required for effective

action to combat climate change. I would like to pay a

warm tribute to the Secretary-General for the interest

he has shown in these problems and for his initiative of

appointing three special envoys in the area of climate

change.

Allow me to present the specific case of my

country, the Central African Republic, which spans

three climatic zones, with great diversity in its

ecosystem, from dense humid forest in the south, to the

pre-Sahelian area in the north.

This central position at the crossroads of different

African ecosystems from the Sudan-Sahelian areas

in the north to the dense humid forest in the south

gives it great ecological potential. It has many assets:

rich and fertile soil, mineral and forest wealth,

diversified fauna and varied agriculture, with the latter

being the country’s economic base.

The Central African Republic understands the

wealth of its natural resources, but also the threats

involved. That is why we have built environmental

concerns into the constitution of our country, notably

in its preamble and its article 9 where the collective

consciousness is called upon to respect the principle of

good environmental governance.

Despite these resources, the economic reality of

the country shows that the Central African Republic is

among the least developed countries, where the

population lives on less than a dollar a day. In recent

years, the rate of economic growth has fallen below the

average predictions. Structurally, the country comes up

against many obstacles in its development efforts. For

instance, its domestic market is tiny, and it is isolated

domestically and externally because of its distance

from maritime ports. The economic situation may be

summed up as follows: lack of individual income,

limited State resources, inequality between men and

women and the rate of illiteracy.

Our economy is largely dependent on

environmental resources. Aware of the difficulties it

faces, the Government has opted for regional and

international cooperation by participating in many

initiatives concerning the environment and sustainable

forestry management, such as the Central African

Forest Commission, the Network of Protected Areas of

Central Africa, the Sangha Tri-National Landscape and

the Congo Basin Forest Partnership.

Generally speaking, the implementation of most

of these initiatives has not met expectations: the

initiatives were ambitious, but the capacities for

implementation and the financial resources were

inadequate. The enterprises exploiting these resources

impose binding environmental rules on us while the

population does not reap any benefit.

We need to halt and eliminate poverty with the

participation of all. Poverty creates injustice. Here I

wish to cite President Sarkozy, the printed text of

whose recent statement observed that justice meant the

same chances for success for each poor child in the

world as for each rich one. In this very Hall, President

Sarkozy said:

Justice means that a developing country on

which we wish to impose environmental rules,

even though its inhabitants have barely enough to

eat, can be helped to put such rules in place.

Justice means that we cannot tap a country's

resources without paying a fair price for them.

I solemnly appeal to the United Nations to

concern itself with the issue of fairer distribution

of wealth and of the income derived from

commodities and technology.

The Central African Republic is ready to open its

borders to developed nations and to public and private

investors in order to increase its resources. The Central

African Republic applauds the great nations - France,

the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Britain and

Russia and certain emerging countries of the South

for their willingness to cooperate in order to slow the

deterioration of the environment.

We thank the European Union and the African

Development Bank for their assistance and, in

particular, the International Monetary Fund and the

World Bank for having allowed the Central African

Republic to reach the decision point under the

enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.

We praise the actions of those international financial

institutions, and we ask them to open a new chapter on

the environment and the economies of poor countries.

We call on all for a continuing effort to reduce

inequality between men and women, because in Africa,

women are very often heads of families in the most

remote regions. They play a very important role. In that

way, the support of the international community in

eliminating inequality will provide a solution in terms

of sustainable development.

We cannot achieve a healthy environment without

wiping out illiteracy. We hope that the developed

countries of the South and the North will help poor

countries to create the right conditions in terms of

informing and training their populations in order to

show them that they have an interest in preserving the

environment.

Our country is rich. It wishes to exploit the

wealth of its subsoil in order to protect its

environment. With assistance, we can hope to bring

ourselves closer to the Millennium Development Goals

by 2015.

In his opening statement, the President stated,

Keep your mind level. If the mind is level, the whole

world will be level.

The President of the Central African Republic,

Mr. Francois Bozize often teaches us about the mind of

the spirit:

Infinite spirit is all. All is one. All is all.

And all is the Universe. The Universe is calm. If

we have understood this, let the world follow the

example of the wise by avoiding the errors of the

semi-wise who perish because of their

foolishness”.

I would like to hope that this message will be

favourably received by our partners, both bilateral and

multilateral.