Haiti, 2008

Just one

year ago (see A/62/PV.6), I recalled before this

Assembly that I was bringing the words of a people

who for 200 years have experienced extreme suffering

as a result of all kinds of material privation and

complete vulnerability in the face of natural risks and

disasters.

At that time, I hardly thought that I would find

myself here again one year later against the backdrop

of the image of hundreds of children, women and the

elderly swept away by floodwaters, hundreds of

thousands of citizens suddenly finding themselves

without shelter, tens of thousands of tons of

agricultural harvest destroyed in a few hours, not to

mention the incalculable damage to basic infrastructure

such as communication networks, art works, irrigation

systems, the electricity grid, the water system and other

structures.

I am pointing out that those catastrophic events

occurred just four months after the first angry

demonstrations of the population against the explosion

in food prices, reactions that would be repeated on an

almost global scale, as though to express a collective

cry of the poor regarding what was happening beyond

just a global food crisis, as the rejection of an order for

which the poor had too long been the only ones to pay

the cost.

The damage caused four consecutive hurricanes

in less than two months has set Haiti back several

years. Those hurricanes sorely test our capacity to

resist, particularly when it must be borne in mind that

all those victims, and their families, and all those

businesses, large or small, have to fend for themselves

while they wait for the State, and the State alone, to

help them to get back on their feet or return to

business. There are no adequate market insurance

systems to compensate for the losses arising from that

enormous damage.

I cannot thank the Secretary-General enough for

the great outpouring of sympathy that the United

Nations system has shown towards the people of Haiti

following those disasters. I can hardly express

sufficient thanks for the mobilization organized by the

United Nations agencies on the ground to bring help to

the most vulnerable and assist the affected families to

tackle the most urgent problems.

How can I thank the many friendly countries that

so quickly mobilized their own resources and logistics

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to come to the aid of the Haitians? How can we express

our gratitude in the light of those expressions of

compassion and the numerous initiatives of solidarity

coming from civil society and the private sector in

those same friendly countries?

Just as dark clouds have a silver lining, how

could I not recall that huge solidarity movement from

within even our country, involving civil society and

non-governmental organizations, not to forget, of

course, the millions of Haitians living abroad, in an

unprecedented mobilization, all striving to work

together in synergy with the local authorities and

specialized agencies of the central Government.

Despite the suffering that the Haitian people are

enduring today because of the cumulative effect of the

disasters that befell them, I cannot help turning my

thoughts to our neighbours, countries such as Cuba, the

Dominican Republic, Mexico, our brother nations in

the Caribbean Community and even some States on the

southern coast of the United States that have also

suffered considerable damage as a result of those first

hurricanes of the season — and I stress, the first

hurricanes of the season. How can we not remember

either the sight of the disasters that have struck India,

Bangladesh and other regions of the Asian continent?

However, beyond those calamities that we could,

quite easily, attribute to nature, how can we ignore

other disasters for which we humans are directly

responsible through war and the destruction that we

bring about with such determination in various areas of

the world? To all citizens of those countries affected by

the violence of men and by natural disasters, to their

families and their representatives here at this

Assembly, on behalf of the Haitian people I address my

best wishes for courage in their reconstruction efforts

and in their quest for peace and happiness. And I can

assure them of our feeling of solidarity and fraternity

in that effort.

While I salute that huge wave of generosity

towards my country and am grateful for that solidarity,

recognizing it was necessary for the immediate needs

of those affected, I cannot fail to draw attention to the

concerns that it raises for Haitians. I am worried

because I know how deep-rooted our problems are. I

am concerned because I am apprehensive about the

time when that solidarity, exhausted in the first wave of

humanitarian compassion, will leave us, as always,

alone — really alone — in the face of new disasters, to

see as if in a ritual, the same mobilization exercises.

I am concerned because the Haitians risk finding

themselves alone in ensuring the only real task that

needs undertaking today: that of rebuilding the country.

We must rebuild its production capacity and social

fabric and give our young people a new dream, the

poor new hope, and our citizens of all political leanings

and all social strata new confidence. We need a

reconstruction project thought out in a systematic

approach and able to count on genuine solidarity to

mobilize the necessary resources for its

implementation.

That is why we are sceptical with regard to

imported food aid and the traditional way in which it is

carried out. We have to break this paradigm of charity

in our approach to international cooperation, for

charity has never helped any country to emerge from

underdevelopment.

The Native Americans that lived in our country

and the Africans that replaced them helped a large part

of humanity to amass its current wealth. We are simple

workers who have been moulded by hard labour and

blessed with a keen sense for commerce and creating

businesses.

If the international community wants to do

something useful with Haitians, that would be to help

us use our potential. The liberalization of trade can be

beneficial to humanity, particularly to the poor, who

have the ability to produce for a greater market. But

this liberalization must be done without hypocrisy or

duping anyone. It must be carried out on the basis of

clear, transparent rules that are the same for everyone,

and the powers that promote them must begin by

respecting those rules themselves.

Setting up and maintaining genuine productive

capacities and trading under fair conditions are the

initial conditions that would enable poor people to

escape from the chains of poverty. The day when

development aid aligns itself with these criteria, the

fight against poverty and hunger will really turn a

corner in this world of ours.

We will then see that the poor are not as poor as

all that. We will see that they have available to them

assets that political parties, institutions and cooperation

programmes are not sufficiently making use of. We all

realize that the lands and the unregistered houses the

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poor possess and the informal businesses they are

involved in are also capital that can legitimately

circulate in the economy and participate in the creation

of new wealth.

This system simply has to be formalized. And we

have to give property title to those who own those

lands and those houses. We also have to formalize this

trade. I have begun discussions with some of our

partners to move quickly to a thorough evaluation of

new needs created by the damage to our infrastructure

with a view to developing a comprehensive

reconstruction plan, which will serve as the conductor

for cooperation efforts with our country.

Last Tuesday, on the occasion of the opening of

the general debate of the sixty-third session of the

General Assembly (5th meeting), I listened very

carefully to the opening statement of the President. The

creation of the United Nations was an important

conquest in the history of mankind’s struggle to find a

remedy for poverty and to build a world of peace based

on equality and respect for everyone’s rights. The

Organization remains the privileged place for debating

the problems of our world and for allowing the voices

of the poor and of those left behind to be heard. We

cannot allow its work to be hindered by its inability to

take into account the voice of the majority. We cannot

allow its agencies to exist only for themselves,

relegating to second place their primary mission of

service.

I agree with the President that our Organization

needs profound reform so that it becomes more

effective, more transparent and genuinely democratic.

If it fails to accomplish this, the United Nations risks

being resented by the small and derided by the big. We

do not need that in these difficult and uncertain days,

when our planet is being put to a severe test by a

combination of crises of all kinds, multidimensional

crises whose solution will depend on our collective

capacity to deal with them effectively, equitably and

with solidarity.

The announced high-level dialogue on the

democratization of the United Nations, if approached

with courage and determination, will put us on the road

to changing its structures and its way of functioning.

Such reforms can only be a source of inspiration and a

model for small countries, stricken like us by long-

standing difficulties, for ending institutional fragility

and arriving at political stability and a fully

functioning rule of law.

This Assembly is among those to whom fate has

entrusted the destiny of our planet. The world that is

being remoulded around us is a world in which wealth

and poverty can no longer be confined within closed

spaces, separated by impassable borders. Climate

change has no borders. Viruses and diseases are elusive

undocumented visitors. The hunger of the poor is a

threat and will continue to threaten the happiness of the

rich.

The question that we have to collectively ask

ourselves today is this: will we perish together because

we were not able to take up our mission together with

courage, or will we agree to mobilize for a new plan

for humanity under a new form of governance, one that

is responsible and based on solidarity, in order to save

our beautiful planet, and to give our children the

opportunity to build a better world?