Guatemala, 2009

At the outset, I would like to salute Mr. Ali Treki, our

President and a distinguished diplomat. I wish him

much success in leading the deliberations of this

session. At the same time, I would like to express our

admiration and respect for Father Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, who led the Assembly at its last session.

My presence highlights our commitment to

multilateralism in general and to the United Nations in

particular. I salute Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and

reiterate to him our appreciation for his management.

Allow me to say how the Guatemalan people

appreciate and value the presence of the United

Nations. We try to reciprocate, in part with our

participation in various peacekeeping operations.

I would like to touch briefly on some topics that

are at the heart of our concerns but that at the same

time have an important international dimension.

First, like the other countries of our region,

Guatemala has been strongly impacted by the

international economic and financial crisis. This fact is

reflected in the value and volume of our exports, in the

level of family remittances and especially in the level

of economic activity, employment and tax collection.

09-52425 36

In more general terms, the crisis has made it more

difficult for us to meet the Millennium Development

Goals.

To make matters worse, our efforts to mitigate the

impact of the crisis have been partially annulled by an

irregular climatic event, as we are suffering the worst

drought in the last thirty years. This phenomenon has

affected the harvest of basic grains and has had a

serious impact on the poorest regions of our country.

Because of this, I decided to declare a state of

emergency. The disaster is not just because of the

drought, but also an historic disaster, striking the

poorest people in our country, whom our Government

is aiming to lift from extreme poverty.

This situation illustrates one of the manifold

manifestations of climate change occurring in diverse

regions, and it comes on top of the burden of the

regressive effects we experienced during the first half

of 2008, in the double crises of energy and food,

followed by the aforementioned effects of the

economic crisis. Unfortunately, the adverse effects of

this situation disproportionately affect those sectors of

the population with less capacity and less income. The

picture is complicated by the fact that the imperative of

the State to address the people’s needs is severely

restricted by fiscal considerations.

Nevertheless, we are not sitting on our hands, far

from it. We have surged forward with a dynamic and

strong social cohesion programme. Today, more than

half a million families are covered by programmes in

the poorest and most excluded regions of the country.

Today, I note with real satisfaction that in only

18 months since our Administration began, our health

indicators — all of the health indicators — have

improved to an extraordinary extent.

Education indicators have improved. For

example, this year enrolment increased by 37 per cent

in secondary education, by 9 per cent in primary

education and by 27 per cent in preschool. Now we

have the problem of schools that cannot cope with the

number of children, but we prefer that problem to not

having children in school. This means that there is an

urgent need to build more than 14,400 classrooms over

the next 14 months, but we prefer that to having

children on the streets or working.

The international cooperation that we have

received in this effort is important, and we would like

to recognize here the support of the Inter-American

Development Bank, the World Bank and the Central

American Bank for Economic Integration, which have

helped us with our efforts to build social cohesion and

to support the indigenous people who constitute our

population.

I wish to sincerely express our total conviction

with regard to the change that we all must make. It is a

change of attitude, a change of will, as President Lula

said yesterday. It is important that we see the birth of

this new international order, this new order of justice

and equity.

The drought in Guatemala exacerbated abject

poverty, but a solution to drought will not resolve the

poverty situation in the country, because it is structural

and historical, resulting from 50 years of neglect of

rural populations and our indigenous peoples.

We will follow with interest the deliberations of

the Group of 20, which is meeting this very day in

Pittsburgh. We trust that that exclusive forum will also

take into account the concerns of countries with small

and medium-sized economies. In addition, we support

the efforts being promoted within the multilateral

international financial institutions and the United

Nations to improve their capacity to help developing

countries and to address the crisis. That is why our

country is seriously promoting the capitalization of the

Inter-American Development Bank and our regional

financial organization, the Central American Bank for

Economic Integration.

I should like to mention the lack of security in

our country. Our country is being assaulted by

organized crime, and our Government, within the space

of a year and a half, has begun a merciless war against

it. In this forum, I wish to express my appreciation for

the magnificent cooperation and support that we have

received, particularly from Colombia, Panama and

Mexico, to attack and staunch the scourge of drug

trafficking and to begin a process of eliminating it.

I also wish to inform the Assembly with great

satisfaction that, in terms of seizures of cocaine alone,

we have seen a 700 per cent increase compared with

the same period under the previous Government;

seizures of marijuana have risen fifteenfold, and poppy

eradication has increased by 300 per cent during the

same period. Our efforts against drug trafficking are

definitive and resolute, but we recognize that it is a

phenomenon that must be attacked at the regional

level. That is why we are working closely with the

37 09-52425

fraternal country of Mexico and our Central American

brothers to address it directly and regionally.

The problem of drug trafficking has had a serious

impact on Guatemala. For more than eight years, the

country was handed over to organized crime —

specifically, drug trafficking — leaving territories and

trafficking corridors more unprotected than ever

before. The national army was reduced beyond the

level mandated by peace agreements, and territorial

control was suspended. The National Civilian Police

were seriously compromised by drug traffickers,

becoming corrupt and dishonest.

However, thanks to the United Nations and the

presence of the International Commission against

Impunity in Guatemala — a United Nations exercise in

Guatemala, unique in the world — we have support

and advice for our Public Ministry, and our prosecutors

and are making significant progress. For the first time

in Guatemala’s history, one of the drug-trafficking

bosses is a fugitive, and we will capture him very soon.

The notorious drug-trafficking families have never

been sent such a strong message.

We have also imprisoned 10 murder suspects

connected to the 10 May crisis. I take this opportunity

to thank this forum, the United Nations, for the

unrestricted support provided to my Government

during the crisis. I am confident that the efforts of the

International Commission against Impunity in

Guatemala will reach the masterminds of that

despicable crime and that the truth will be found and

justice done. What could have become a technical coup

d’état has become a genuine example of justice and

truth. I am sure that my Government, which has

ensured the total independence of this investigation,

will get to the heart of the matter and that the truth will

soon be found.

We have worked hard on the security of our

citizens, and I recognize that it is a long and

complicated process. Here again, the assistance of the

International Commission is essential, and we believe

that this experience will be effectively used by our

Public Ministry, which has already begun the process

of re-engineering and restructuring itself.

I should like to mention the case of Honduras,

our fraternal neighbouring country. From the very

beginning, Guatemala has supported a return to

democracy and the rule of law in Honduras. Nowhere

in the world, much less in Central America — where

democracy has cost us so many lives and where so

many deaths and, in the case of Guatemala, massacres,

have affected us — can we allow a President to be

deposed at gunpoint and fail to use democratic and

legal mechanisms. We will accept nothing less than the

return of President Zelaya to power so that the

elections in Honduras can be carried out legitimately

and our Honduran brothers can soon live in peace and

tranquillity. Our Government has been unsparing in its

support for President Zelaya, and I am sure that we will

see Central America return to its natural rhythm of

integration, democratic development and democratic

security.

I should also like to highlight our adherence to

nearly all human rights mechanisms, principles and

norms within and outside Guatemala. We are a

multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural and multilingual nation. We

have a beautiful 108,000-square-kilometre country

with 23 cultures and 23 peoples sharing the blessed

land that God gave us. That is why we are committed

to promoting the strengthening of the participation of

all the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in terms of our

daily life, development, peace and security.

We have adopted a law on free access to

information, with very few problems, which has

guaranteed free access to all State information except

that related to security matters and foreign relations.

That is why we wish to stress the need to strengthen

the mechanisms for human rights and arms control. I

believe that countries have the freedom to arm

themselves for defence, but I do not agree that our

countries should be arms-trafficking corridors. I also

believe that countries exporting armaments should be

more careful and have more controls and standards

with regard to the entire weapons trade. Our country,

my Government, has increased its seizures of illegal

weapons almost tenfold, but we still have much work

ahead of us. Meanwhile, many innocent people are

dying as a result of drug trafficking, smuggling and

organized crime.

Let us make progress in the definition of the

concept of the responsibility to protect our respective

populations from genocide and war crimes, which we

have already endured; ethnic cleansing and crimes

against humanity, from which Guatemala suffered

greatly for 36 years.

I wish to express my total conviction that the

United Nations must be constantly renewed and

09-52425 38

adapted to today’s needs. Our civilization is changing.

This is a crisis not just of energy or finance or climate;

it is a crisis of values, of principles. The financial crisis

is a crisis of values and principles, and we are paying

for it with the poverty of our people. That is why we

need better adaptation of the United Nations

mechanisms so we can really get to the bottom — al

grano, as we say in Guatemala — of the problems of

poverty and inequality, to strengthen democracy and

the rule of law.

I have the honour to be familiar with the Mayan

cosmic vision, and I am quite sure that in 2012, the

transformation of civilization it prophesied will begin.

This is a very ancient prophecy and it will be fulfilled,

just as all the others have been. We will enter an era of

great humanity and great human strength. And America

is also changing. If you look at the Americas today,

they have nothing to do with the way they were

10 years ago. Democracy, although it has problems,

has improved and been strengthened, thank heaven.

We support United Nations and Organization of

American States (OAS) resolutions with regard to

Honduras, and I am also happy to affirm that we have

made very concrete progress in honourably ending our

historical dispute with our brother nation of Belize. In

December, under the good offices of the OAS, both

Governments signed a special agreement, which, prior

to complying with the domestic ratification processes

of our Congresses, commits us to seek a juridical

settlement through the International Court of Justice.

We hope that, through these internal procedures, we

will be able to proceed to plebiscites in both countries,

in order to put an end to the dispute with our brother

country of Belize.

I would like to conclude with some very brief

reflections on our Organization and its agenda for the

future. I would like it to continue to give priority to the

poor, those with limited incomes, children, young

people living in the mountains of our countries who do

not have access to health care, education or drinking

water. The drought and the malnutrition we are seeing

among our children in Guatemala are nothing more

than the product of historical injustice. If all of us in

the United Nations share in this fight to help those who

have so little, I am sure that we will have more for

everyone. The more we support those who have less,

the more we will all have in the end. I hope that this

Assembly session reaches a fruitful conclusion.