Guatemala, 2010

Our President, Mr. Álvaro Colom Caballeros,

participated in the High-level Plenary Meeting on the

Millennium Development Goals (see A/65/PV.3) but

had to return to Guatemala owing to commitments

related to his high office. Similarly, our Minister for

Foreign Affairs, who unexpectedly had to leave New

York yesterday. It is for this reason that I have the high

honour of presenting this message, which was prepared

to be presented today by the Minister.

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Before proceeding, I should like to express our

profound gratitude to Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki for his

outstanding performance in heading the General

Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. Likewise, Mr. Deiss,

we wish you every success as President for the current

session. We have no doubt that with your vast

experience you will guide our deliberations and

enhance the work of the General Assembly as the main

policymaking organ of the United Nations.

We have just concluded our review of the

implementation of the Millennium Development Goals,

adopted 10 years ago in an international environment

that was perhaps more encouraging than today’s. As

has been highlighted in recent days, the results reflect

both light and shadow, with some countries showing

impressive gains, and others even suffering setbacks.

The majority have made progress on some of the Goals

but not in others, or have made advances whose

benefits have been distributed very unequally among

different segments of the population.

In addition, today’s international environment is

far less encouraging than that of 10 years ago. The

previous decade began with the attack on the twin

towers in this very city, placing counter-terrorism

squarely as a priority on the international agenda. It

continued with a military confrontation that was not

sanctioned by the Security Council, with all its

consequences, and concluded with three simultaneous

crises — food, energy and, especially, financial and

economic — from whose effects we have yet to recover.

Further, after building up a cumulative body of

scientific evidence that no longer allows any room for

doubt, we have confirmed that the very effects of

technological progress have brought with them

devastating consequences for our common habitat —

this planet — and that the destruction wrought by

climate change is palpable and dramatic. On another

matter, in the current decade we have witnessed very

clearly that organized crime does not recognize borders

and tends to spread to those countries with the least

capacity to confront its considerable resources.

My own country has been a victim of some of

these phenomena, which nullify or at least mitigate the

considerable efforts we have deployed, especially since

the Administration of President Colom took office

early in 2008, to stimulate development, achieve higher

levels of well-being for the disadvantaged sectors of our

population, and strengthen our democratic institutions.

Here again we see both light and shadow: in spite of an

unfavourable international environment and as President

Colom noted in this very Hall on 20 September, we have

achieved progress is addressing some of the pressing

problems faced by the our country’s most vulnerable.

But the shadow is still present. Its origin lies in

phenomena that are totally or partially out of our

control. I highlight three of them. First, the financial

and economic crisis had a sharp adverse impact on our

economic performance. Gross national product grew

less than 1 per cent in 2009, with declining exports,

shrinking family remittances and collapsing foreign

direct investment. This had an extremely negative

impact on our tax revenues, in spite of the many

Government initiatives to raise tax rates to deal with

increasing demands for social services and public

security. Although we have seen a modest recovery this

year, its strength will depend to a large degree on

uncertain developments in the international economy.

In other words, the international economic environment

has not been very conducive to meeting our economic

growth goals, in spite of the official cooperation that

we have received, which we sincerely appreciate.

Secondly, in the last decade a array of unlawful

activities related to organized crime have taken root in

our country. Trafficking in persons, arms and narcotics,

and money laundering have expanded to a worrisome

extent, given the dual abilities of organized criminal

groups to co-opt and intimidate. Above all, drug

trafficking has undermined our democratic institutions.

In response, we have associated ourselves with the

United Nations and friendly countries, through both

bilateral and multilateral cooperation. This can be seen

mostly clearly in the International Commission against

Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), to which I will return

later. Furthermore, recognizing that the struggle against

illegal activities and organized crime — a basic

responsibility of all States — has today assumed a

clearly transnational character, we have joined our

neighbours in Central America and Mexico in

combating regional criminal networks.

Thirdly, as if what I have already said were not

enough, we have also fallen victim to natural disasters

with an unusual frequency, which highlights the

extreme vulnerability of Guatemala to the effects of

climate change, given its location in a tropical area. We

had not even begun to recover from the effects of

tropical storm Stan of late 2005 when we were hit by a

serious drought in 2009 and, over the past few months,

41 10-55276

the eruption of the Pacaya Volcano, which caused

extensive damage to agriculture, followed by tropical

storm Agatha in June, which affected some 330,000

persons, killed approximately 100 and caused material

damage totalling an estimated $1 billion. These

estimates in human suffering and material losses have

continued to grow with the unprecedented levels of

rainfall during the past month, which has contributed

even more human victims and material damage.

The Government has done all within its power to

address the situation and has appealed for international

assistance. I commend the fact that the United Nations

was among the first to respond to our call, and I

therefore express our appreciation to the Office for the

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the

Administrator of the United Nations Development

Programme.

To date, we have been focused on the emergency

phase, but it is imperative that we move on to

reconstruction and recovery as soon as possible. The

Government has drawn up a detailed plan to address

those goals, and we will convene an international

conference to present the plan to our partners in

Antigua in Guatemala on 11 and 12 October.

I shall now make some brief remarks on our

Organization and its agenda in the immediate future. I

begin by reiterating our support for multilateralism in

general and for the United Nations in particular. We

have enjoyed strong, continuous support from the

Organization, in supporting our peace process,

facilitating development cooperation and providing

assistance when we have faced emergencies, as at the

present time.

The latest example of that fruitful and innovative

cooperation is the International Commission against

Impunity in Guatemala. In only three years, the

Commission has shown that it is indeed possible to

combat impunity and strengthen the rule of law. We

value this cooperative effort between the Government

of Guatemala and the United Nations, and we will

continue to support it.

We also value the work of our Organization in the

area of peacekeeping. We have participated in several

operations, principally in Haiti and the Democratic

Republic of the Congo. We support the work of the

United Nations in the area of peacebuilding, and we

hope to participate in the Peacebuilding Commission as

a full member as of next January.

We welcome the decision of the General

Assembly to establish the United Nations Entity for

Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and

we are pleased that its first leader will be Ms. Michelle

Bachelet. We also commit ourselves to continue

supporting initiatives aimed at achieving greater

system-wide coherence.

At the same time, we harbour the hope that, in the

coming year, some tangible progress will be made in

the long-delayed reform of the Security Council. We

believe that it is crucial to provide greater legitimacy to

that body, which would benefit all of the main bodies

and the Organization overall. In the meantime, we have

announced our candidature for one of the seats

allocated to our region in the Security Council for the

biennium 2012-2013, in the hope of continuing to

contribute to its work.

We reiterate our profound commitment to

achieving significant progress during the next

Conference of the Parties of the United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held

in Cancún. We have participated actively in the

preparatory work, based on the understanding that

rarely has humanity faced a larger challenge that

affects all countries and communities on the planet.

In rejoining the Human Rights Council, we

reiterate our commitment to the full respect of human

rights in all their aspects, including the responsibility

to protect our respective populations from genocide,

war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against

humanity.

It is commonly held that without peace there can

be no development. Promising signs have been seen in

various parts of the world, which, we hope, may lead to

the resolution of long-standing tensions. We trust that

the direct negotiations recently begun in the Middle

East will be fruitful and lead to a Palestinian State that

can coexist with Israel in peace and harmony, within

borders that are secure for both parties.

We also applaud the engagement and growing

climate of cooperation being generated between the

parties separated by the Taiwan Straits.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that we have

achieved a major step forward in addressing the

International Court of Justice, together with Belize, to

seek a juridical solution to the age-old territorial

dispute between us. That step required the approval by

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our Congress of the Special Agreement signed with

Belize in December 2008, which cleared the path for a

popular referendum, as provided for under that

Agreement. We hope that the Belizean Parliament will

also authorize as soon as possible the referendum to be

held simultaneously in both countries, as the final step

that allows both parties to present themselves to the

Court.