Ecuador, 2001

I congratulate you, Sir, on your well-deserved election

as President of the General Assembly. You are a worthy

representative of the Republic of Korea, a country very

close to my own through our important ties of

friendship and cooperation. I also congratulate your

predecessor on the highly efficient and responsible way

in which he oversaw the work of the previous session

of the Assembly.

The Government of Ecuador received with

special satisfaction the news of the award of the 2001

Nobel Peace Prize to the United Nations and the

Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. We congratulate the

Secretary-General on this well-deserved recognition of

his work, which has promoted among Member States

the benefits of international association and solidarity.

This session of the Assembly began in an

atmosphere of profound distress for all members of the

international community. The tragically terrible

terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September

are shocking to the human conscience. Those whose

perverse and irrational actions took the lives of

thousands of innocent people — including many

Ecuadorians — committed a grave attack on

international peace and security.

From this rostrum, I wish to affirm to the people

and the Government of the United States of America

the profound condolences and solidarity of the people

and the Government of Ecuador following this

immense tragedy and to reiterate our strongest

condemnation of those criminal acts, which have done

violence to all peoples, as well as to universal

principles and values.

That is why Ecuador — a peace-loving country

convinced of the predominant role of the United

Nations as the key institution for decisions affecting

the world — praises the action of the General

Assembly and the Security Council in response to

terrorism, particularly the Council’s adoption of

resolution 1373 (2001), which contains the guidelines

for all Member States to work urgently and in concert

to prevent and suppress terrorist acts. Likewise, the

international community must conclude negotiations on

a comprehensive convention on international terrorism

to strengthen the relevant judicial framework with

concrete measures to prevent, sanction and combat this

scourge. Ecuador is committed at the national, regional

and international levels to the fight against terrorism in

all its forms and manifestations.

In the final years of the twentieth century, great

changes took place in the world, which led to new

international trends, especially in terms of the process

of globalization and threats to international peace and

security.

The developing countries, such as my own, began

adapting their national structures to deal with the

demands of a decidedly competitive environment.

However, it must be said that it is obvious that the

adjustments and changes those countries have made to

their policies and strategies are not enough in

themselves to achieve complete results as long as the

structural causes of the disparity between the level of

development of highly industrialized economies and

that of economies in need of capital and advanced

technology persist. That disparity continues to widen

because of financial difficulties caused by unstable

short-term capital flows, persistent external debt and

obstacles to truly international trade.

There are signs that current international

economic trends are far from providing the equilibrium

and justice needed to overcome the unfavourable

burdens inherited from the twentieth century. Poverty

has grown at alarming rates in all regions. International

organized crime has exacerbated violence and

insecurity in society. Massive international migration

towards developed regions continues to increase. These

phenomena, along with many others, result from the

lack of real, universal agreements to assist the

development of human beings.

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The problems that the world faces today respect

no national borders. They are threats demanding not

unilateral action but responses based on solidarity and

concerted action. That interdependence is what enabled

the heads of Government and State, at the Millennium

Assembly, to agree on making the United Nations, the

supreme multilateral forum, a suitable and effective

instrument to fight for the development of all peoples

of the world; to fight against poverty, ignorance and

disease; to fight against injustice, violence, terror and

crime; and to fight against the deterioration and

destruction of the planet. They also committed

themselves to freeing all people from the scourge of

war, to eradicating the dangers posed by weapons of

mass destruction and to strengthening respect for the

rule of law in national and international affairs.

Ecuador, as a country that believes in and

practices the peaceful settlement of international

disputes, regrets and condemns conflicts between

States, as well as those within States caused by civil

war, ethnic conflict or other reasons. The Government

of Ecuador is concerned by the uncontrolled violence

occurring between the peoples of Palestine and Israel,

which continues to reap a tragic harvest of death and

destruction. We recognize the right of the Palestinian

people to a free and independent State, as well as the

State of Israel’s right to exist within secure and

internationally recognized borders. Ecuador reiterates

its appeal to both parties to quickly return to peace

negotiations.

Last August, Ecuador assumed the presidency of

the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Its

leadership is guided by its profound commitment to the

cause of general and complete disarmament under

effective international control, which would make it

possible to foster peace and confidence among nations.

We are witnessing the intensification of a

phenomenon as old as humanity itself, undoubtedly

linked to the historical development of civilization. I

am referring to the enormous challenge posed by the

increase in human migration, especially from the

countries of the South towards the North.

While migration has been positive in that it has

contributed to fruitful exchange between various

peoples and has deepened dialogue processes and

mutual enrichment between diverse cultures, in most

cases the reason for it stems from the individual’s

desire to seek better living conditions and broader

economic prospects. We cannot think of human history

without the constant and ever present phenomenon of

migration, and the current era is no exception. In the

present age of the globalization of markets and the

possibility of a new round of multilateral trade

negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO),

the liberalization of the administration of services

through the free movement of persons must be

emphasized.

Today many developing countries of the world,

afflicted by the serious consequences of economic

crisis and the prevalence of structural failures that are

difficult to overcome, have become net producers of

migrants, men and women who feel compelled to seek

broader horizons legally. Ecuador is one of those

countries because of the most serious economic crisis

of its recorded history, exacerbated by external factors

that changed the momentum of the national

development process. Internal and external factors

merged in recent years, deepening this crisis, which we

are overcoming in a positive way at enormous

sacrifice.

While migration tends to be a positive

phenomenon in terms of historic objectives, the

consequences for individuals are painful and stir our

conscience. Because of that, my country has taken a

series of actions to protect the rights of migrants and

their families. With the support of the International

Organization for Migration, we have held several

meetings in which the State and civil society have

participated. They have enabled us, on the one hand, to

have direct testimony about the serious problems of

this group of individuals who have left their countries

voluntarily to find better opportunities and, on the

other hand, to obtain concrete commitments aimed at

protecting and defending human rights. I wish to

underline the transnational nature of the migration

problem, which requires active cooperation between

countries of origin and countries receiving immigrants,

as well as international bodies. In this context, I am

happy to point out that Ecuador and Spain signed an

agreement aimed at regulating migration, which

undoubtedly has been beneficial for migrant citizens

and signatory countries.

Ecuador appeals to all Governments and sectors

of civil society, but particularly to those of the

developed world — receivers of migrant workers - to

redouble their efforts aimed at protecting the rights of

this vulnerable sector of society in a non-

22

discriminatory way, conscious of all the positive and

fruitful aspects that the migration phenomenon brings

to the general development of countries, as

demonstrated by European history of recent centuries

and the integration of the Americas into the West.

If the twentieth century was the stage for some of

the greatest humanitarian tragedies recorded by history,

it is true that in that period we also witnessed the birth

of a new global awareness of the urgency to protect and

promote human rights and to preserve man’s home,

land and environment.

My country has fully assumed this global

challenge. We are signatories to the main instruments

on this important item at both the international and the

hemispheric level, and we have national tools that

enable us to achieve such objectives. The National Plan

on Human Rights, adopted as a State policy in June

1998 by civil society and the State, is perhaps the most

innovative and visionary instrument that has been

developed in our country. We hope that it will enable

us to promote a real culture of tolerance and respect

between the ethnic, social and cultural groups of our

society. With this plan, Ecuador also complied with the

mandate of the 1993 Vienna Declaration and

Programme of Action.

In keeping with all the above-mentioned points,

Ecuador places importance on one of the mandates of

the Carabobo Act, signed in July 2001 by the

Presidents of the Andean Community of Nations, and

has begun work on a draft Andean Charter of Human

Rights, aimed at consolidating the ideas of respect for

and the promotion of the fundamental rights and

freedoms of the individual in the specific areas of

culture and ethnic plurality characteristic of the

Andean subregion. Ecuador was a pioneer in this

important matter when, in 1980, within the subregional

framework, it spurred on the adoption of the Riobamba

Charter, which includes among its postulates the

protection of human rights as an international

obligation of all States and the condition that legitimate

joint action carried out in protecting such rights must

not violate the principle of non-intervention. Within

this same context, Ecuador signed the Rome Statute of

the International Court of Justice of July 1998, and it is

taking measures for its prompt ratification.

Turning to the WTO and the Free Trade Area of

the Americas (FTAA), there is no doubt that one of the

most important items on the foreign policy agenda of

States is international economic relations. Ecuador

wishes to express some views on this, at the moment

when the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference is taking

place in Qatar.

Ecuador deems it fundamental to pursue the

process of opening up trade, reducing tariffs and

eliminating unnecessary trade barriers. However, my

country also shares the doubts of some developing

countries about the advantages of launching a new

round of multilateral trade negotiations when the

commitments of the Uruguay Round have not yet been

fully implemented, particularly those relating to the

reduction and the elimination of agricultural subsidies

and to agreement on special and differential treatment

provisions in favour of developing countries. These are

priority items of interest for Ecuador, as is the

expansion of openness in agricultural trade.

We emphasize the necessary reform required by

the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding to

strengthen the implementation regime of the decisions

of the relevant ad hoc groups and the appeals body. For

example, Ecuador was never able to obtain the

compensation to which it was entitled, in spite of

having won the banana dispute in all the proceedings

before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body and an

arbitration award of $201.4 million annually, the

amount of the damages caused to my country by an

illegal import, sales and distribution scheme of that

product in Europe.

Given our own experience in this dispute, we

believe that compensation must be binding, if we are

really speaking about free markets in the full sense of

the word, and that retaliatory measures in the same

sector or in cross-sectors is not sufficient to repair the

damages caused, particularly to the economies of

developing countries. It would also be worth evaluating

other types of compensation, such as increasing

technical cooperation, as a European country is

proposing at this time with respect to Ecuador.

Progress in trade negotiations and the fulfilment

of commitments already made will make it possible for

us to have an international economic and financial

climate conducive to investment and to growth of the

world economy, which will make a positive

contribution to social and human development. These

same proposals give us hope in the negotiations of the

FTAA — the Trade Negotiations Committee of which

Ecuador is currently president. Our efforts take into

23

account the various positions of countries, as well as

their different levels of development and sizes of their

economies, since we must seek consensus on decisions

in a way that makes all the parties involved feel that

their interests are guaranteed. For least developed

countries, the establishment of a hemisphere-wide free-

trade zone poses a challenge and at the same time

offers an exceptional opportunity to be fully integrated

into world economy in this new phase.

I turn next to the question of external debt and

development financing. The enormous limitations

faced by heavily indebted developing countries such as

Ecuador, resulting from disproportionately large

external-debt servicing costs and from persistent

obstacles to marketing our exports, work against

national efforts to engender economic stability and

sustainable development. Ecuador’s total external debt

now stands at about 64 per cent of our gross domestic

product and nearly 40 per cent of our national budget;

this has a negative impact on the financing of social

development projects.

External debt is mortgaging the economic present

and future of developing countries; it has extremely

adverse effects because it devours vast resources that

would otherwise be used in the fight against poverty, in

promoting public health and education, and in meeting

many other urgent social needs. The situation thus has

an increasing negative effect on market-oriented

national policies and the political and democratic

stability of many countries. It is therefore time for the

international community to adopt effective, fair,

lasting, development-oriented measures so as to make

progress in easing this serious problem — a problem

that highly indebted medium-income countries too are

facing.

Ecuador attaches the greatest importance to the

International Conference on Financing for

Development to be held next March at Monterrey. It

will be a good opportunity to define, from the

financing perspective, a new kind of world cooperation

that will effectively support development, especially

the development of the countries of the South.

I am pleased to announce the conclusion and

signature of an agreement between the World

Meteorological Organization and the Government of

Ecuador on the establishment at Guayaquil of an

international centre for research on El Niño. I urgently

appeal to the United Nations and its specialized

agencies, to the international community and to

international and regional financial institutions for

resolute cooperation to ensure that the centre begins its

work promptly.

Finally, as an Ecuadorian, I wish to address the

question of the Colombian conflict. I wish to say that

my country is following closely the internal political

conflict in Colombia and the unfolding of a peace

process in that country. In conformity with our policy

of promoting dialogue and negotiation as the best way

to overcome problems, we have frequently stated our

unreserved political support for the Colombian

Government’s efforts to reach a negotiated peace with

armed irregular groups operating in its country.

Ecuador applauds the peace initiatives of President

Andrés Pastrana and expresses the hope that they will

be meet with a matching response from those groups.

Peace in Colombia is a top priority throughout the

Americas; it should also be a top priority for the

international community. It is in the interest of all to

help ensure that the Colombian conflict does not spread

to the rest of the subregion.

Ecuador has committed itself to a broad and

imaginative programme of development for our areas

near the Colombian border; these are aimed at

substantial improvements in the living conditions of

the inhabitants, with a view to eliminating the severe

poverty that gives rise to the violence of drug

trafficking. That programme has recently received

major backing from the international community

through the advisory group set up last month at

Brussels. I appeal to our brethren and neighbours in

Colombia to join with us in similar programmes. I

urgently appeal too to developed countries to continue

to cooperate with such initiatives, which in the final

analysis are the best way to guarantee peace and

security.

The challenges facing mankind at the outset of

the twenty-first century must be tackled by all

countries, jointly and in solidarity. This is the

beginning of a new era for major international

decisions. The world Organization is the forum in

which we can carry out a vast mission: equitably to

solve global problems and to buttress collective

security. Ecuador again commits itself to work

ceaselessly to attain those noble goals.