Dominican Republic, 2013

At the outset, I wish to express my

congratulations to the President of the General Assembly

upon his election to preside over the Assembly at its

sixty-eighth session. I wish him the greatest of success

in his task and in his efforts to promote the initiatives

proposed for his term.

I am here as a representative of the Dominican

Republic, which was one of the signatories in 1945

of the Charter of the United Nations, which entrusts

the Organization with the monumental task of saving

succeeding generations from the scourge of war. In the

68 years since its inception, there has not been another

world war, but today we are facing a cataclysm that

is just as lethal and destructive as a war of planetary

dimensions: global poverty. It is a war with casualties

in the millions, which calls for a radical change in

the economic paradigm and for the forging of a new

culture — the culture of sustainability. As I address the

Assembly, there is no doubt in my mind that to triumph

over such a daunting challenge, all nations must make

difficult decisions, which will require the full weight of

our collective responsibility.

Allow me to refer to the extensive and detailed

document adopted at the Rio de Janeiro United Nations

Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) last

year (resolution 66/288, annex), entitled “The future

we want”. In that text, Member States renewed their

commitment to sustainable development and to the

promotion of a future that is sustainable in economic,

social and environmental terms for our planet and for

present and future generations. That declaration shows

that the leaders of the world’s nations are committed to

doing what is needed to attain that future. We therefore

have a road map with profound implications.

Let us acknowledge that we are taking on

an overwhelming responsibility, because we are

committing ourselves to building a reality that is totally

unprecedented in the modern world. Let us acknowledge

that development to date has not been sustainable in

any way. It has not been sustainable either socially

or economically. It has been even less sustainable in

environmental terms. The systems of production that

we have used to achieve economic growth have been

based on methods that have proved to be harmful to

the environment, and the systems that we have used

to distribute the wealth produced have created deep

chasms of social inequality and exclusion.

Over time, we have reached a situation that we now

consider to be intolerable: a world in which more than

1 billion people are living in a state of extreme poverty

and hunger; a world in which many millions of human

beings lack adequate health care, drinking water, good-

quality education or decent employment; and a world in

which extreme malnutrition and social exclusion prevail

to a morally unacceptable extent. If we aspire to a world

where development is sustainable, we must first accept

our shared responsibility for all parts of all societies,

and agree that it is time for actions, not words.

To translate a commitment of such a magnitude

into reality, it must be based on achievable actions and

attainable goals, and we must be prepared to take bold

action, as we are doing in the Dominican Republic,

on several unprecedented fronts. We are putting

citizens at the centre of our policies and making the

fight against poverty and inequality our top priority.

We are implementing a new development model based

on a long-term national strategy built on the pillars of

three fundamental social pacts: a fiscal pact, a pact for

education and a pact for electricity. We are building

transparency into Government actions and establishing

citizens’ groups to oversee and monitor purchasing and

contract systems. We are making support for small-

scale agricultural producers a priority. We are doubling

the budget for free and compulsory public education.

We are extending the school day, and we are putting a

permanent end to illiteracy.

Following the commitments made at the Rio+20

Conference, we have taken a few steps forward and

are moving towards an agreement on a road map that

will lead us to sustainable development and to the

eradication of extreme poverty. We have implemented

a process to determine as accurately as possible what

the sustainable development goals for the post-2015

international development agenda should be.

We are pleased to note that we all agree that the

greatest challenge the world faces is to eradicate poverty

and, for that reason, that goal has been given top priority

on the agenda of our people and our Organization.

Our countries have common problems, but our

economic, social, historical, geographical, demographic

and cultural realities are different. Each of those

dimensions plays a role in how those problems may

or may not be addressed and resolved. Moreover, our

responsibilities for the creation of or the aggravation of

those common problems, such as climate change, are

clearly differentiated.

My country, the Dominican Republic, suffers

the consequences of climate change, because of its

geographical location in the path of annual hurricanes

and tropical storms. For that reason, we are working

to strengthen and improve our preparedness for the

management of risks associated with natural disasters.

We are building a collection centre for emergency

assistance and are working on the creation of a centre

of excellence, dedicated to the education and training

of human resources for assistance in disasters, which

will serve the nations in the entire Caribbean region.

Next month, from 18 to 20 November, the

Dominican Republic will host the third International

Conference on the HOPEFOR initiative, to which all

Members of the United Nations are cordially invited.

Universal sustainable development is a goal that

requires a new vision and approach on the international

stage. In order for development to be sustainable in

our nations, we must undertake structural reforms that

will change many of our policies and our economic and

social systems, turning them inside out, the way a sock

is turned inside out. With sustainable development, we

have taken on a commitment of biblical proportions,

a universal commitment to care for our brothers and

sisters, especially for those who most need to be elevated

to the conditions required for adignified human life.

The Organization is helping to point the way with

the launch of parallel processes of study, discussion

and analysis; panels of eminent persons; consultations

with regional economic commissions; the Leadership

Council of the Sustainable Development Solutions

Network; and the open-ended working groups that are

contributing to marking the path.

We would therefore like to take the opportunity

to express our appreciation for the work done by

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in putting documents

in the hands of Member States that will serve as a guide

for our debates and our decisions. One such document,

An Action Agenda for Sustainable Development, a

report prepared for the Secretary-General in June by

the Leadership Council of the Sustainable Development

Solutions Network, is a bold and optimistic platform.

It is an exhaustive and practical plan that requires

a collective commitment that we cannot shirk. All

reports agree that we cannot continue treating the part

of the planet that each of our nations occupies as if the

resources that nature has generously put within them

were inexhaustible. The world’s forests, water supplies

and mineral resources are decreasing, and animal

species are endangered. At the same time, we continue

to use methods of cultivation that poison or impoverish

the Earth and methods of industrial production that

poison the air we breathe.

We must revise the very methods by which our

economic growth is driven. That is not a new concern

for the United Nations. We have been talking about

sustainable development for decades. What is new now

is that the situation has become a matter of urgency.

The time for words and promises is over. The time

for action is now. We must step up the pace to establish

the foundations of sustainable development, because

time is running out. We must address the purpose,

knowing that what we do or do not agree upon in

this session of the General Assembly may determine

whether the future of our peoples, or rather, the future

of humankind, will be promising or miserable. That

presumption may seem exaggerated to representatives

of larger or more highly developed nations. If so, we

invite those nations to look beyond their borders and

to consider the peoples of the nations from which

they seek cheap labour. They must look at the peoples

whose human resources they employ to produce their

goods and services. They must look at the peoples in

the countries that need the industries of the developed

countries to process their mineral exports and at the

peoples in the countries where they want to market

their products.

For many of those people, the situation is intolerable.

That is why we are pleased to note that the documents

that have already been written and which are intended

to serve as a platform for our debates and decisions

have an optimistic tone. They give us, for example, the

assurance that if we act now, the problems we face will

not become insoluble.

Universal sustainable development, which

addresses the challenges that have been so clearly

identified, will translate into social justice in the world.

It will also translate into peace, international peace,

the achievement of which is a strategic goal of the

Organization.

To speak of eradicating extreme poverty, measured

in terms of living on an income of less than $1.25 a

day, sounds like an enormous goal, especially because

it is estimated that some 1.2 billion people in the world

suffer from poverty. In reality, that is just one step in

a long journey. If those who are now below the income

level of $1.25 per day are elevated to an income level

of $2 per day, we will have eliminated what we now

call extreme poverty. However, we all know that human

beings cannot meet their basic needs on an income of

$2 per day. The difference in hardship between the one

income range and the other is not very noticeable. What

happens is that talking about poverty in statistical

terms does not allow us to visualize, much less feel, the

reality of the human misery and desolation behind the

numbers and the percentages. How can we understand

the pain of a father and mother who have suffered the

loss of their child when the words in which we are

informed about that family tragedy are that every 10

seconds a child dies from hunger-related causes in the

world?

Let us put ourselves in the place of parents of

families living in a state of extreme poverty. They

have to raise their children in extremely unsafe living

conditions, without sanitation or safe drinking water,

without sufficient resources to buy medicine or to

provide each child with food to ensure proper nutrition,

without resources, without a bed or mosquito net to

protect him from insects that transmit serious diseases.

They have to decide which of their children can go to

school and which cannot, or which of their children

have to work and which do not.

We know that a difficult road still remains ahead

before we can agree on a satisfactory arrangement for

all in regard to the post-2015 international development

agenda and the most effective ways to implement

it. Let us remember that what we need is not a new

commitment. We have had many commitments to

eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. We have had the

World Food Summit of 1996, the Millennium Summit

in 2000, another World Food Summit five years later in

2002, and the recent Rio+20 Conference in 2012. What

we need now is for those commitments to finally be

translated into political action.

Although sustainable development may sound

like an economic concept, it really is a political

concept. That is why we are discussing it here, at the

Organization, which is a forum of States and therefore a

political forum. Economists measure the dimensions or

the pillars of reality in economic terms. Economists and

other specialists can set the goals that must be reached

for a sustainable development that meets their exact

specifications. But political decisions are the driving

force. Political decisions are what ultimately determine

whether or not the goals are achieved.

We therefore have the primary responsibility. It

depends on us to put the declarations of good intentions

into action.