Ghana, 2000

On behalf of my delegation,

Sir, I wish to congratulate you sincerely on your

election as President of the fifty-fifth session of the

General Assembly. This session is indeed historic,

coming as it does in the wake of a Millennium Summit

that witnessed the presence of the largest-ever

gathering of political leaders of the international

community. I also wish to commend the other members

of the Bureau on their election.

May I also take this opportunity to pay a richly

deserved tribute to your predecessor, Mr. Theo-Ben

Gurirab, Foreign Minister of Namibia, whose deep

sense of duty and commitment to social justice helped

shape the United Nations agenda for the new century.

Indeed, the General Assembly gave impetus to such an

agenda when, in December 1998, it decided to hold the

Millennium events, believing strongly that the turn of

the century was a unique and symbolically compelling

moment to articulate and affirm an animating vision for

the United Nations in the new era.

Barely a fortnight ago, world leaders met here in

New York, following that commitment, to address the

challenges of the new century, reaffirm their

commitment to the Charter of the United Nations and

to demonstrate political will for the new process. The

message that emerged from the statements made by the

heads of State or Government at the Millennium

Summit was the reaffirmation of the unique role of the

United Nations in offering the best, and only, universal

framework for confronting the challenges of the

millennium.

It recognized a United Nations capable of

promoting a new development agenda that is people-

oriented and which also guarantees greater

participation of stakeholders, particularly women, the

youth, the private sector and civil society at large; a

United Nations that has been revitalized to play a more

meaningful role in helping developing countries meet

the challenges of poverty reduction, political pluralism

and the ongoing process of globalization; a United

Nations that boldly plays its role as an Organization

working for the good of all, with the confidence of the

world's people.

The conjunction of the fifty-fifth session of the

General Assembly and the beginning of a new

millennium provides a symbolic departure point for the

international community to seek to do better in all

areas of its endeavour. Today, there is no greater

challenge facing our world and no greater issue

defining this millennium than the debilitating

inhumanity of poverty, its heavy hand on wealth

creation, its fast spread across the world, the deadly

effect of economic insecurity on peace and security and

its impact on the environment. It is thus perplexing that

under the effect of globalization, deprivation and

inequality are accelerating globally with as much speed

as innovation, technological progress and integration,

although in different directions. Our collective

ingenuity, that of both developed and developing, is

called upon to produce answers that will bring us

closer than ever before to the purposes of the Charter.

We have encountered disappointments as the

international community has striven for peace, security,

development and respect for human rights. We have

also sought ways of dealing with the impact of

globalization on international trade and investment. We

should not resign ourselves to these reversals, nor

should we accept living with them. To do so would

defeat the objective of development. The way forward

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is not only to revitalize the United Nations to enable it

to strive more boldly for a more equitable global

society, but also to work together to ensure that equity,

fairness and solidarity characterize international

relations.

On the important question of maintaining

international peace and security, the role of the United

Nations has been, without doubt, that of facilitating

conditions under which countries and peoples may live

together securely and harmoniously in order to give

free rein to their creative talents. One important means

of achieving this objective in the midst of violent

conflicts that keep erupting has been to undertake

peacekeeping all over the world. Ghana has been and

will continue to be a major contributor to this effort, as

conflicts in Africa especially pose a major challenge to

the United Nations efforts to bring about global peace

and prosperity.

The situations in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo and Sierra Leone, to name only two examples,

amply demonstrate the complexities of the challenges

which the United Nations must show it can handle. In

the West African subregion, for example, we must all

cooperate in imposing a ban on the purchase of small

arms and especially on the purchase of diamonds that

are not controlled by the Certificate of Origin regime

from countries in conflict. Unless the international

community helps by implementing this aspect of

Security Council resolutions, international peace and

security will continue to be prejudiced by the greed and

ambition of individuals.

Enhancing Africa's peacekeeping capacity to

cope with challenging missions, through training,

logistics and financial support, as well as a stronger

partnership between the United Nations and the

Organization of African Unity (OAU) Mechanism for

Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution, is a

crucial goal if we are to return the continent to peace

and security. That is one of the reasons why Ghana

attaches importance to regional and subregional

peacekeeping initiatives. However, such initiatives

should not become an excuse for the United Nations or

the Security Council to shirk their primary

responsibility for the maintenance of peace and

security in Africa.

Disarmament lies at the heart of the United

Nations efforts to ensure and sustain international

peace and security, conditions necessary for all

productive human activity. The nuclear threat of the

cold-war era still looms large over all of us and will

continue to do so until the nuclear Powers and

militarily significant countries disarm. It is therefore

reassuring that, despite the gloom that has beclouded

the United Nations disarmament machinery over past

years, positive results were achieved at the Sixth

Review Conference of the State Parties to the Treaty on

the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

The United Nations must capitalize on this

momentum and continue its search for new ways and

means to achieve nuclear disarmament and arms non-

proliferation. It must also embark on confidence-

building measures in order to enhance the process. In

this regard, the Disarmament Commission and other

relevant machinery on disarmament established by the

General Assembly should be given every opportunity

to fulfil their mandates through the demonstration by

Member States of commitment, flexibility and the

necessary political will.

Ghana would therefore use this opportunity to

reiterate its support for the proposal by the Secretary-

General of convening a major international conference

on the nuclear threat. We will also play an active part

in the preparatory process leading to the United

Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms

and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, to be held in

2001.

Ghana believes that the efforts of the United

Nations to promote and maintain international peace

and security should rest on a firm international legal

framework, hence the need to maintain support for the

useful work being done by the International Law

Commission and related institutions in the United

Nations system. We believe that the tremendous

progress made in the establishment of legal

frameworks for the pursuit of crimes against humanity,

for example, must continue if our societies are to be

maintained.

In the particular case of Africa, support for the

International Criminal Court is not only desirable; it is

a must, since censure by the international community is

now very necessary in dissuading warlords and rebels

from committing the heinous crimes that we continue

to witness in countries such as Sierra Leone, Rwanda

and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ghana

recommends, therefore, that international law should

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ensure that the perpetrators of such crimes are punished

and that they do not enjoy amnesty from any country.

The spirit of compromise which led to the

overwhelming endorsement of the Rome Treaty

establishing the International Criminal Court, must be

kept alive to achieve our objectives in this field.

The situation in the Middle East continues to

engage the serious attention of us all. Ghana

acknowledges the current propitious climate in the

Middle East as a result of the revival of contacts

between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the

highest levels. The withdrawal of Israeli Defence

Forces from Southern Lebanon has given these talks a

sense of optimism, and so have the meetings between

Chairman Arafat and Mr. Ehud Barak. While we

commend President Clinton's efforts, the two leaders of

the Middle East are urged to show flexibility and stay

the course, as the obstacles to peace cannot be removed

without compromise, painful sacrifices, diplomacy and

a strong desire for durable peace. Both sides should

remember that this is perhaps the finest hour for

reaching agreement. The negative forces in Israel,

especially, are regrouping, while the younger

generation in Palestine are growing more and more

impatient. No sacrifice should therefore be too great

for success.

In this new era we must have the boldness to end

attitudes and situations that are no longer helpful to the

process of globalization. In spite of the regular

acknowledgement by world leaders and other

influential policy makers of the need for poverty

alleviation, those in a position to do so have failed to

offer credible arrangements for debt relief, market

access and financing for development which would go

a long way in enabling developing countries to build

viable socio-economic systems capable of overcoming

the fragmentation and marginalization being suffered

as a result of globalization. On the contrary, they are

using their pre-eminent political and economic

positions to try to control and manipulate developing

countries, especially countries whose Governments

they do not support.

It seems to me that the world community is yet to

translate the traditional parochial affirmation of the

need for equity, fairness and solidarity for national

development into concrete international actions.

Furthermore, the United Nations will be able to teach

lessons of equality and justice to its members only

when it practises those norms itself.

At the end of the cold war the peoples of the

world heard a lot about the peace dividend. Only a

decade after this new concept was trumpeted from the

rooftops, it has turned out to be non-existent. But that

concept can be real if the tenor of our negotiations

reflects an awareness of our common humanity and its

highest values rather than the diplomatic stock-in-trade

of an era shaped by competitive warfare and an

unequal advantage of the rich and powerful over the

poor and militarily insignificant countries.

International cooperation for development must replace

inequity and war.

Transforming the context of international

cooperation for development depends as much on the

level of commitment of individuals and groups in our

respective countries as it does on what we do as

political leaders and policy makers. In this connection,

reinforcing and enhancing the network of linkages

between the United Nations and civil society is a

fundamental necessity. Unless our actions reflect this

strategic understanding of the nature of decision-

making in the world today, we are unlikely to benefit

from the mistakes of our past efforts.

We accordingly urge the Secretary-General to

examine ways of ensuring common, acceptable

standards for accountability and transparency, even in

the operations of non-governmental organizations with

respect to their participation in the United Nations. In

addition, a greater effort should be made to build the

capacity of non-governmental organizations in

developing countries so that non-governmental

organization participation in the United Nations could

reflect the diversity of interests across the world.

Ghana welcomes the contribution of non-

governmental organizations to the work of the United

Nations and individual countries, but must at the same

time caution against replacing the genuine and

democratic voice of a people with those of externally

controlled non-governmental organizations and the

private sector. Non-governmental organizations and the

private sector are vital agents of change in developing

countries, but they should not replace the voice of a

people, if democracy is to retain credibility.

In an age of globalization and of our increasingly

knowledge-based society, we feel that the United

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Nations has a major responsibility to support the

development efforts of the developing countries, and

that the international community should provide the

necessary resources for it to do so. We therefore call

once again on all Member States to fulfil their financial

obligations under the Charter in full and on time.

The challenges facing the international

community, such as the growing income and

technology gaps between the North and the South,

poverty and deprivation, point to the need for stronger

cooperation between the developed and developing

countries. A concerted effort will be required to

promote a systematic dialogue between the two groups

to find solutions to these problems.

It must be the vocation — indeed, the

commitment — of the North-South partnership to

ensure that in the new millennium governance,

nationally and globally, rests on the recognition that the

wealth of some must not lead to the impoverishment of

others, and that every person on this earth must have

access to certain basic social services, such as health

care, education, food and safe water, no matter which

corner of the earth he or she inhabits. Thus the rich

countries have an indispensable role to play by further

opening their markets, by providing larger and faster

debt relief and by giving more and better focused

development assistance, which would enable poorer

countries to sustain a meaningful level of development.

It is only fitting that as a developing economy,

Ghana identifies itself with the cause of the least

developed countries, most of which are in Africa. In

this connection, we fully subscribe to the preparatory

work for the Third United Nations Conference on the

Least Developed Countries. We expect consensus to be

reached on the accessibility of products of least

developed countries to the developed markets.

Our comments on this occasion would be

incomplete without touching upon the crucial question

of the empowerment of women and the attainment of

gender balance. We also wish to express concern about

the persistence of discrimination against women in

most parts of the world in spite of the progress

achieved since the Fourth World Conference on

Women, held in 1995. The challenges to the

achievement of gender balance can be eliminated

through a renewed commitment to the implementation

of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women. We therefore call on all

countries which have not yet ratified the Convention to

take steps to do so, and urge prompt implementation of

the provisions of the Convention. We also urge those

who have entered reservations incompatible with the

purpose of the Convention to reconsider their stance, in

the interest of advancing the cause of women.

The promotion and protection of the rights of

children are of equal concern to my delegation. They

are the compelling reasons for our co-hosting jointly

with the Government of Canada a workshop on

children in armed conflicts. It is our expectation that

Member States will endeavour to ratify the Optional

Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child

before the General Assembly's special session in 2001

that will review the implementation of the World

Declaration on the Survival, Protection and

Development of Children and of the Plan of Action. It

is also our hope that the positive outcome of the just

ended International Conference on War-affected

Children, held in Winnipeg, Canada, will be fully

implemented to ensure the worldwide protection of

children during conflicts.

I now turn to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, whose

impact has been greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where

it is estimated to have affected the modest gains in

social development. Statistics released during the XIII

International AIDS Conference in South Africa in July

this year showed that almost a third of all people with

HIV/AIDS are between the ages of 15 and 24 years.

Every minute six people under the age of 25 catch HIV,

with girls more than 50 per cent more likely to contract

the virus than boys. Based on this data, the United

Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has emphasized

that to defeat the disease, Governments must commit

themselves to “the largest mobilization of resources in

their history” and organize themselves as if they were

fighting “a full-blown war of liberation”, with young

people in the forefront.

This staggering situation must prick the

conscience of the entire international community into

rendering full support for efforts to control and

minimize the spread of the disease. Ghana supports the

Secretary-General's proposal for the adoption of 2005

and 2010 respectively as deadlines by which to reduce

the rate of infection of young persons through the

assurance by the developed partners and their

pharmaceutical industries of the easy availability of

inexpensive vaccines. To reach that goal, we must also

invest in education, publicity, open discussions and

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moral counselling of our youth, in particular. They

must understand that it is indeed possible to avoid the

disease by exercising care, since this fatal disease is

transmitted in a very limited number of ways. We

appeal to our developed partners for their full

cooperation.

Finally, there is no doubt that the United Nations

remains the only instrument for confronting the

challenges of this millennium. However, it can

surmount these challenges only by sustaining the good

will and credibility it enjoys among Member States and

this can be achieved only by expediting the

democratization of the Organization. May the new

vision which our leaders have charted for the

Organization in this new century spur us all to concrete

action to free our peoples, whose faith and trust reside

in us, from fear, want and exclusion.