Mexico, 2011

It

is an honour for me to participate in this session of the

General Assembly. We have heard extremely

significant speeches, which have, deservedly, captured

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the attention of the Assembly. However, as I speak in

this lofty forum of the international community, I

would like to lay out Mexico’s views, a country that, as

one of the founding States of the United Nations, has

actively contributed to ensuring that the Organization

once again plays its role in promoting peace, justice,

security, equity and sustainable development among

nations.

The world faces major challenges, about which

we have spoken today. We have talked about terrorism,

war, peace, climate change and poverty. We know that

we are afflicted by other problems, such as the global

economic crisis. I would like to refer to just a few of

them now, as I am aware that our duty is to strengthen

the United Nations, to make it less bureaucratic and to

once again turn this into an Organization that is able to

tackle the pressing challenges of our time. Faced with

this reality, Mexico is shouldering its international

responsibilities firmly and with determination.

I would now like to refer to the problem that I

think today most afflicts the poorest people in the

world. More than 1 billion people, on every continent,

are living on less than $1.25 a day. This is the problem

of poverty. Over the past five years, the price of food

has risen by more than 50 per cent. Over the past

12 months, the average increase has been 26 per cent.

This means that the poorest families, who allocate most

of their income to food, have sunk even deeper into

poverty.

This is why poverty has increased around the

world. This is why we once again see famine in the

Horn of Africa, in various nations on that continent, in

Asia and in Latin America. This is why, in addition to

the democratic awakening of certain nations, we have

seen many people suffering from hunger who have

taken to the streets. Hunger is what has, in many cases,

awakened their awareness of democracy.

Why the hike in food prices? That is the first

question we must ask ourselves. It is partly because

developing countries have grown rapidly, and that is a

good thing. China, India and many others have reached

growth rates that allow their people to have greater

access to food. What is left to do is to develop the

necessary technology to increase our capacity to

produce food.

Secondly, drought and climate change have been

other contributing factors. We have not truly realized

that climate change is a serious threat to humankind as

a whole. In particular, climate change is behind the

drought that has restricted food production in recent

years.

Thirdly, there is financial speculation and

speculation on the financial markets. Let me point to

one bit of data. In 1987, financial agents and

companies bought just 7 per cent of food on the world

markets. Today, more than 30 per cent of sales of corn

and wheat in the world are made by financial

companies. Why do they want corn and wheat? Is it to

trade them on various markets or to distribute them to

certain regions? Of course not. Trade companies and

distributors buy 70 per cent of wheat and corn, but the

remaining 30 per cent is bought by financial firms with

one specific purpose in mind, namely, speculation. We

see how they buy and sell the rights to food with the

sole intent of driving up market prices, when thousands

of children are dying of hunger across the various

continents.

I am someone who believes in markets, economic

freedom and enterprise. But I also know that the time

has come for restrictions to be imposed on unbridled

markets, which are also behind world hunger.

The second challenge that I would like to refer to

is drug trafficking and international organized crime.

Everyone is surprised by the dozens, hundreds and

even thousands of deaths caused by repressive

authoritarian regimes, and of course, we also repudiate

these. However, we also have to be aware that

organized crime today is killing more people — and

more young people — than all of the current dictatorial

regimes put together. Today, thousands of people —

tens of thousands of people in Latin America, in

particular between Mexico and the Andes — are dying

because of criminals. I greet with affection and respect

my colleagues from Central and Latin America who are

here today.

Today, the world faces the challenge of

unscrupulous criminals who have no respect for

borders and who do grave harm to the citizens of many

nations. The power of crime is stronger than many

Governments, although assuredly not ours. This stems

from two fundamental factors, namely, the exorbitant

profits that flow from drug trafficking and unlimited

access to the purchase of powerful weapons.

With respect to weapons, why do criminals have

unrestricted access to AK-47s, R-15s and grenade

launchers? In my view, having fiercely fought

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criminals and having seized 120,000 weapons in five

years, the answer can be summed up in a single word,

profits — the runaway profits of an arms industry that

sees in every war, whether a civil war in some distant

country or a battle among criminals, an opportunity to

sell ever more weapons.

It is urgent for us to put in place serious controls

in countries that produce and sell high-power

weaponry, so as to prevent them from filling the

arsenals of organized crime. The United Nations has its

work cut out for it in that regard. The United Nations

must continue to promote the draft international arms

trade treaty and to prevent weapons from being

diverted towards activities that are banned by

international law.

Moreover, organized crime feeds off the

astronomical profits produced by the illegal sale of

drugs around the world. Unfortunately, the demand for

drugs in those markets continues to increase. We must

recognize that so long as there are drug consumers

prepared to pay tens of billions of dollars to maintain

their addictions or preferences, that market will remain

the primary financial support for criminal activity.

Mexico is doing its part to energetically fight

crime in all its manifestations. Today more than ever,

however, drug-consuming countries must undertake

effective efforts to radically reduce demand. It may be

argued that this is impossible and that the demand for

drugs is continuing to rise, as is the case here in the

United States, where nearly 30 per cent of young

people use drugs, and in other parts of the world.

What is the solution? I can honestly say that even

if those countries are unable or unwilling to reduce

their demand for drugs, or if they are resigned to the

fact that it will continue to rise, they still have a moral

obligation to reduce the huge profits that drug

traffickers obtain from that black market.

It would be best to reduce demand, but failing

that, reduce profits. Drug-consuming nations have the

obligation to find a way to cut that source of endless

economic gain, and to seek every possible solution,

including alternative markets that would prevent drug

trafficking from being the source of violence and

death, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean

and various African countries.

The third challenge to which I would like to refer

is climate change. Along with Mexico, my Central

American and Caribbean colleagues are experiencing

ever more violent hurricanes that destroy the homes of

the poor and cut short many lives. Ironically, just a few

weeks ago, one of those tropical hurricanes that was

headed for our Caribbean coast landed instead on the

streets of Manhattan. There are still some who are

surprised that there are hurricanes in New York,

unprecedented droughts in Texas and never before seen

floods in Pakistan or Mexico or Colombia or

Guatemala. Even with all this, they still do not accept

the fact of global warming.

I can proudly state that we have made progress

and that Mexico has done its part in moving towards a

solution to this problem. We organized the sixteenth

Conference of the Parties to the United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Cancún,

where important agreements were reached. For

example, for the first time, nations agreed within the

framework of a binding United Nations instrument to

establish a global limit on the rise in temperature of

our planet — of no more than 2° centigrade by the end

of this century.

We also agreed to establish the Green Fund, to

support developing countries in their mitigation and

adaptation efforts.

In addition, we created a mechanism for

technology transfer that incorporates methods for

reducing emissions caused by deforestation and soil

degradation, which will allow the poorest countries to

contribute to reducing global warming by preserving

their forests and jungles. In Mexico, more than

12 million people in indigenous communities, who

make their living from jungles and forests and who

have had no choice but to destroy them, today use their

woodlands in a sustainable way and are paid by the rest

of society for the environmental service that their trees

provide.

With the approach of the seventeenth Conference

of the Parties, in Durban, we fear that without

sufficient political leadership and commitment to its

own Convention by the United Nations, we may lose

part of what we have achieved in the battle against

climate change. We must advance within the Kyoto

Protocol, keeping in mind that the provisions of annex 1

expire next year. What will happen with our

environmental obligations in the light of the failure of

the most relevant nations to take action?

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The best way to fight climate change is to break

with the false argument that we must choose between

economic growth and combating climate change. They

are in fact perfectly compatible. Through actions that

build sustainable development, we can simultaneously

reduce poverty and climate change.

Finally, another challenge is the social basis for

reducing poverty and marginalization. In Mexico we

established a programme for transferring money to the

poorest of our population, with incentives for mothers

who take their children to school or health clinics. The

programme offers an average of $80 monthly to the

bottom fourth of Mexico’s poorest families, benefiting

more than 30 million people and reducing extreme

poverty in our country by nearly 50 per cent between

1995 and 2010.

Recently, we have focused on guaranteeing the

health of all Mexicans. In five years, we have added

2,000 new hospitals and clinics, reconstructed

2,000 more and introduced a national health policy that

already covers more than 100,000 people. This allows

Mexico to proudly state today in the United Nations

that this year we will achieve universal health

insurance, covering doctors, medicines, treatment and

hospitalization for any Mexican who needs them. That

achievement, of which we are proud, confirms the fact

that Mexico has already achieved almost all the

Millennium Development Goals to which it committed

itself.

Finally, I should now like to discuss a crucial

issue that has to do with the transformation and

modernization of the United Nations. The conflict in

the Middle East is a matter that has clearly tested the

capacity of the Organization. We are particularly

concerned about the stalemate in negotiations between

Israel and the Palestinian National Authority. The

United Nations bears the responsibility for making a

constructive contribution to the peaceful resolution of

this conflict — one that makes possible the existence

of two States, reaffirms the recognition of Israel’s right

to exist and makes the establishment of a Palestinian

State a reality. Of course, we must bear in mind that

this must be a genuine, viable and negotiated solution

in which legitimate and balanced mediation plays a

fundamental role. Such a solution must also be

politically and economically viable and enable Israel

and Palestine to truly exist side by side in peace, so

that new generations of Israelis and Palestinians can

truly know what it is to live together without hatred or

violence.

We should also remember that no solution can be

found while either of the sides, explicitly or implicitly,

desires the annihilation of the other. In addition, we

must make progress on compliance with United

Nations resolutions in order to put an end to policies

that we all know are contrary to international law.

It is also vital that we move forward together in

transforming and modernizing the Organization. It is

an excellent thing that the United Nations building is

being renovated; now we need to modernize the

Organization at its core. It must not fail in its

commitment to history and humankind. It is time that

all Member States play our parts in ensuring that the

Organization has the strength and viability that it

needs, and that it lacks. There have been many

occasions, for instance, when the United Nations has

been paralysed by the tyranny of consensus, where a

minority is able to defeat a large majority. Consensus

must no longer be seen as the veto power of the

obstinate; rather it should be understood as the

possibility of building shared and genuinely legitimate

solutions that reflect the will of the majority.

Keeping the United Nations relevant also

necessarily implies the reform of the Security Council,

whose rules of participation have not been revised in

more than 40 years. Mexico seeks a total reform that

improves representation for all Council members while

at the same time preserving the Council’s capacity to

take action and promoting its members’ accountability.

We cannot allow the chief supranational body to

become a decision-making centre for the few.

Mexico reaffirms its confidence in the United

Nations as a forum that represents the diversity and

plurality of human beings. Mexico also reiterates that it

will continue to be a strategic ally of the Organization

in the struggle for peace, the war against hunger and

the struggle for security and the progress of all peoples

of the world.