Iceland, 2006

Let me begin by

congratulating you, Madam President, on your election

to the presidency of the General Assembly at this

session. I am especially pleased to see a woman in this

important position after a break of nearly 30 years. I

join those who have expressed thanks to the Secretary-

General for his leadership and commitment in recent

years in addressing the very serious challenges facing

the international community.

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Allow me also to take this opportunity to

congratulate the Republic of Montenegro on its

accession to membership of the United Nations.

The commitment to global partnership for

development is a timely, yet sobering, theme in light of

the long road we have still to travel and the setbacks

already encountered. A major setback has been the

crisis in global trade talks. Trade can be the single most

important vehicle for global development, and we

should not let the opportunity presented to us by the

Doha Development Agenda slip from our grasp. We

must ensure that gains from trade liberalization benefit

the poor and are fairly distributed. Iceland remains

strongly committed to the Agenda.

Many developing countries, particularly in sub-

Saharan Africa, have little chance of achieving the

Millennium Development Goals by the target date,

unless significant additional resources are made

available. We welcome and support international

efforts for debt relief to the poorest countries. We also

applaud those countries that have committed to

increasing official development assistance. Iceland is

also shouldering its responsibility. Over the next three

years Iceland’s development assistance will have

almost tripled in size, and we are determined to do

even more. Beyond 2009 our assistance should

increase even further, with the ambition of reaching the

United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of gross national

income.

The global partnership rests on the principles of

transparency, accountability, good governance, equity

and commitment to poverty reduction. Iceland also

attaches special importance to the rights of women and

children. As the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner,

Shirin Ebadi, so rightly pointed out in her Nobel Peace

Prize Lecture on 10 December 2003,

“To disregard women and bar them from active

participation in political, social, economic and

cultural life would in fact be tantamount to

depriving the entire population of every society

of half its capability.”

We want to see more determined efforts by

development partners and United Nations agencies to

pursue gender equality. The work of the United Nations

Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) must be

given more weight within the United Nations. Iceland

has increased its support for the work of UNIFEM

more than tenfold over the past two years, and we will

increase our support even further.

The mission statement of the United Nations

Children’s Fund (UNICEF) correctly insists that the

survival, protection and development of children are

central to human progress. Nobody questions this

statement, yet more than 10 million children die from

preventable causes every year. Iceland will further

increase its contributions to the vital work of UNICEF.

I am proud to say that the people of Iceland have been

particularly active and make the highest contribution

per capita of national societies to UNICEF.

At least half of the eight Millennium

Development Goals relate to resource use and

environmental conservation, that is, to sustainable

development. We will not be able to eradicate extreme

poverty or hunger if we cannot safeguard the

environment, the basis of food security around the

world. We cannot hope to reduce child mortality unless

we deal with the contamination of fresh water. There is

a close relationship between the health of the earth’s

ecosystem and human welfare, security and peace.

Icelanders base their livelihood on the living resources

of the sea and abundant renewable energy. Iceland rose

from relatively recent poverty to affluence through the

application of technological innovations and by

drawing on international cooperation. We are

convinced that our success could be replicated in many

other parts of the world, given the right incentives and

an enabling environment.

In this connection, I should like to refer in

particular to two areas of sustainable development:

ocean issues and energy issues.

Ocean issues have far-reaching development

implications. Ninety-five per cent of those who make

their living from fisheries are in the developing world.

A billion people depend on fisheries for their main

intake of protein. At the same time, we are seeing a

rapid increase in pollution of the ocean and depletion

of its living resources. That is why Iceland has

prioritized this area in its development cooperation and

in the work of the fisheries department of the United

Nations University in Iceland.

Energy issues also loom large. While Icelanders

enjoy the good fortune of having clean, renewable

energy for 70 per cent of our total energy use, energy

issues are increasingly becoming one of the main

drivers of the sustainable development agenda within

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the United Nations. Two billion people lack access to

electricity. All eight Millennium Development Goals

will require greater energy consumption.

Unfortunately, more energy consumption in most

cases means greater greenhouse gas emissions. One of

our greatest challenges today is to square the

development circle, to meet our development needs

while safeguarding the environment. One way certainly

is to increase substantially the share of renewables in

world energy demand. That is why Iceland is taking an

active part in promoting renewables and new

technologies through its development cooperation and

the work of the geothermal department of the United

Nations University. Another example of our

commitment in this area is the international seminar on

hydrogen use for the developing world, to be held in

Reykjavik later this week. It will be co-hosted by

Iceland and the United Nations Department of

Economic and Social Affairs.

Much has been achieved over the past 12 months

in implementing the outcome of the World Summit. In

this connection, I join others in expressing appreciation

for the outstanding work done by Jan Eliasson as

President of the General Assembly at its sixtieth

session. We now have a Peacebuilding Commission.

The new Human Rights Council has also been

established. It is the duty of all of us to make sure that

we strengthen its credibility and turn it into a powerful

defender and reinforcer of basic human rights. Its

credibility will depend to a large extent on its even-

handedness.

Useful work has already been done on internal

reform of the United Nations. The success of these

reforms — I think in particular of the mandate

review — will affect the long-term credibility of the

United Nations. It is with great interest and high hopes

that we await the outcome of the work of the High-

level Panel on System-wide Coherence.

Peace and security is fundamental to

implementing a global partnership for development. In

the face of the crippling effects of terrorism, we

welcome the agreement on the Global Counter-

Terrorism Strategy. In the fight against terrorism,

human rights must not be compromised; otherwise, we

undermine the values that we seek to defend. Torture

cannot be justified. As we have seen recently, years of

careful development can be reversed almost overnight

by war. Conflict prevention, restraint by the parties

involved and a commitment by other actors to urge

restraint, rather than encourage conflict, are also

fundamental to the partnership.

Sixty years ago, on 19 November 1946, Iceland

became a Member of the United Nations. Iceland has

since then strongly supported the principles of the

United Nations as written in the Charter. With the full

support of the other Nordic countries — Denmark,

Finland, Norway and Sweden — Iceland decided in

1998 to present for the first time its candidature for a

seat on the Security Council for the period 2009-2010,

with elections to be held in 2008. This candidature,

which was declared within the Western European and

Others Group in April 2000, is based on our readiness

to shoulder the responsibility of serving on the United

Nations body charged with maintaining and

strengthening peace and security. As one of the almost

100 smaller States of the United Nations, Iceland

makes every endeavour to cultivate mutually beneficial

relations with all Members of the Organization and

believes itself to be favourably positioned to exercise

with fairness and firmness the role of a Security

Council member.

The task of building a global partnership for

development is not easy. But it is the only way in

which we can realistically address the challenges

facing us, whether they be challenges of poverty,

security, the environment or health. As Secretary-

General Kofi Annan has put it, “the cause of larger

freedom can only be advanced by broad, deep and

sustained global cooperation among States”.