Indonesia, 2011

Allow me, Sir, to

congratulate His Excellency Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz

Al-Nasser on his election to preside over the Assembly

at the sixty-sixth session. Let me also commend his

predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Joseph Deiss, for his

leadership in guiding us over the Assembly’s sixth-fifth

session. May I take this opportunity to congratulate

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his reappointment.

Indonesia would also like to welcome South

Sudan as a Member of the United Nations.

Our world continues to be full of challenges,

political and military tensions and conflicts, as well as

threats of nuclear weapons and of acts of piracy and

terrorism. There is the financial and economic crisis.

Worse and more fundamental still, in many corners of

the world there is abject poverty and hunger,

environmental threats and natural disasters, energy and

food insecurity, intolerance and discrimination. There

are authoritarian regimes bent on suppressing the

clamour for democracy and respect for human rights.

We believe that in convening in this historic Hall,

as we do every year, we must seek more than simply to

review the past year, to lament opportunities lost and to

congratulate ourselves on the gains made. Rather, we

must ensure that, moving forward, as nations we stand

united — United Nations — in addressing and

anticipating the challenges ahead.

In particular, we must stand united in

transforming challenges into opportunities for nations

to forge mutually beneficial partnerships, anchored in

the principles of the United Nations Charter. We must

change challenges into opportunities to promote a new

kind of international relations that accentuates

partnership rather than confrontation, and that places

primacy on the building of bridges rather than the

deepening of fault lines and divisions, and on nations

aggressively waging peace and development.

Waging peace and development in the Middle

East must, first and foremost, entail correcting the

historic injustice to the Palestinian people that has been

allowed for too long. Indonesia’s support for the

legitimate aspirations and rights of the people of

Palestine to live in freedom, peace, justice and dignity

in their own homeland has been steadfast and will

continue unabated.

Indonesia therefore strongly supports Palestine’s

present quest for full membership in the United

Nations. Such membership is consistent with the vision

of the two-State solution and of a just and

comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Indeed, the

recent heightened worldwide focus on the issue of

Palestine can, and must, be channelled in a

constructive way towards the promotion of an inclusive

partnership among nations that leads to the fulfilment

of the historic responsibilities shouldered by our

United Nations.

The continued denial of the most basic rights of

the Palestinian people becomes all the more glaring in

the face of the welcome democratic transformation that

is under way in parts of North Africa and the Middle

East. Like many, Indonesia has been deeply concerned

by the untold losses and casualties suffered by innocent

civilians. The bloodshed and use of force must be

brought to an immediate end, for, ultimately, political

solutions must be found. That means that conditions

conducive for people to shape their own future must be

promoted. Thus in Libya, for example, Indonesia

11-51390 28

supports the National Transitional Council in its efforts

to promote a peaceful and democratic transition.

A decade or so ago now, Indonesia too went

through a tumultuous process of democratic change.

Today, as the third largest democracy, Indonesia is

reaping the democratic dividends of such change. That

is why we believe that political development and

democratization should constitute a priority item on

our agenda, to allow States to share lessons learned and

experiences in their unique paths towards

democratization. That is why we took the initiative of

launching the Bali Democracy Forum — the only

intergovernmental forum for the sharing of experience

and cooperation on political development in Asia. It is

a forum for partnership in the promotion of democracy.

Global partnership is particularly key in

addressing the challenges of development in order to

achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to

prevent the recurrence of famine, which we are

currently witnessing in the Horn of Africa. Thus we

must act in concert and in a focused and sustainable

way to ensure food security for the most vulnerable.

That means increased investment in the agricultural

research and development sector and increased

production and productivity.

I wish to highlight one particular driver of

economic growth and development. An enhanced role

for women in the economy is not only right, but also

smart, leading to both increased growth and more

balanced, sustainable and equitable growth.

Achieving food security also requires that we

confront the reality of climate change. The

international community must find the political

commitment to generate momentum for climate

change, towards a new climate regime after 2012. The

forthcoming seventeenth Conference of the Parties to

the Climate Change Convention in Durban and the

Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in

Brazil next year must deliver.

However, let us not wait. In Indonesia, we are

committed to being proactive and to being part of the

global solution to climate change. Through the REDD-

plus programme — Reducing Emissions from

Deforestation and Forest Degradation — we are using

our natural rainforests as an important part of our

mitigation efforts.

Our commitment to work in partnership in

addressing climate change must not founder before the

looming and renewed threat of the global financial and

economic crisis. In the face of that challenge, we must

take bold measures. The reform of international

financial and economic governance must be expedited.

Enhanced coordination of national economic policies is

essential. We must learn to step out of our comfort

zone and address those critical needs in concert. As

emerging economies are now an important engine of

global economic growth, they must have a greater

opportunity to contribute to promoting solutions.

The challenges confronting us are persistent and

formidable, but we have the opportunity and the

capacity to address them and, most of all, to turn

challenges into opportunities. For a start, since those

challenges defy national solutions, they can at the same

time motivate countries to strike partnerships and build

cooperation. In that regard, allow me to highlight two

basic points.

First, we need to strengthen multilateralism in

order to address global challenges. That means the

central role of the United Nations. To be able to

address new and emerging challenges, and, not least, to

identify new opportunities, full support for and reform

of the United Nations are key. That is the only way that

the United Nations can remain relevant and to ensure

that multilateralism flourishes.

Through reform, we must ensure that the United

Nations and its decision-making processes are more

effective, efficient, transparent and inclusive. We must

persevere in strengthening the General Assembly, the

Economic and Social Council and their subsidiary

organs, as well as the Human Rights Council. We must

support the Peacebuilding Commission as it helps

countries emerging from conflict.

The Security Council must better reflect the

current world situation. It should become more

representative, more transparent and, thus, more

effective. All key issues of United Nations reform

should be addressed as integral parts of a

comprehensive package.

Secondly, cooperation and partnership between

the United Nations and regional organizations are key

to addressing today’s global challenges. Thus, there

should be synergy between global and regional efforts.

That is particularly true in conflict prevention and

resolution, linked to the theme of this year’s General

29 11-51390

Assembly session, “The role of mediation in the

settlement of disputes by peaceful means”.

In South-East Asia, as Chair of the Association of

Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesia has

worked ceaselessly to develop the region’s capacity to

prevent and to manage potential conflicts, and to

resolve them. Our efforts have been focused not only

on the further development of ASEAN’s conflict

prevention and resolution mechanisms, but also on

developing and nurturing the necessary comfort level

among ASEAN member States to resort to such

mechanisms.

As a result, we expect South-East Asia to remain

a net contributor to international peace and security, as

well as to economic development and prosperity.

Beyond its own subregion, anchored in a strong

ASEAN Community, we are indeed set to attain those

achievements by 2015. ASEAN continues to be the

driving force in promoting a regional architecture

throughout Asia-Pacific that is conducive to the

maintenance of regional peace and stability, which is

precisely the kind of conditions that have enabled

countries in the region to pursue a development path

uninterrupted by wars and conflicts.

In the current regional setting, in Indonesia we

describe that as conditions that are marked by a

dynamic equilibrium, where dominant power is absent

owing to a lack of the promotion of block politics and

often self-fulfilling geopolitical fault lines. Rather,

there exists a new kind of international relations, with

its emphasis on common security, common prosperity

and common stability.

This November, a revamped East Asia Summit

will convene in Bali, Indonesia, with the participation

of the Russian Federation and the United States for the

first time. That will be part of an important regional

architecture.

As ASEAN builds its Community and continues

its central role in maintaining a stable and peaceful

environment in the Asia-Pacific region, it sets a new

challenge and a new vision for itself, that is, to develop

greater cohesion and a common platform on global

issues - an ASEAN that is a net contributor to the

solution of many of the world’s ills and challenges.

That is in keeping with ASEAN’s theme for 2011,

“ASEAN Community in a Global Community of

Nations”.

To conclude, I wish to assure Members of the

United Nations that Indonesia will be relentless and

unceasing in promoting the ideals embodied in the

Charter of the United Nations in promoting peace.