Mali, 1995

We

are meeting on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the

United Nations in order to assess, as we do each year, the

progress made by our Organization, an institution which

was built to uphold peace and solidarity among men.

To judge by its agenda, this session very much

resembles past sessions, but clearly this year’s session has

a much deeper meaning, because it marks the passing of

50 years for the Organization, 50 years during which the

common destiny of diverse peoples has been consolidated

and advanced, despite many challenges and perils.

It is significant on the eve of this fiftieth anniversary

to see the representative of an ancient European nation

presiding over the work of the fiftieth session. Indeed, the

continent to which Portugal belongs, with its historic role,

has always been a major actor in the mechanisms of

international relations. The election of a President from

Portugal testifies to unanimous recognition by the

international community and is also a tribute to the

President’s talent and great diplomatic abilities.

I take this opportunity to address our warm

congratulations to the President’s predecessor, our brother

and friend, Amara Essy, of Côte d’Ivoire, who so ably

and with great dedication guided the work of the forty-

ninth session.

It is also significant that this symbolic session is

taking place during the mandate of Mr. Boutros Boutros-

Ghali, elected some three years ago to head this

Organization. Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali is also known as

one of the skilled negotiators who, through their foresight

and diplomatic talent, have cleared the way for peace in

the Middle East. Today, he is working tirelessly in the

noble and challenging mission of having the United

Nations live up to its noble ideals, its inviolable principles

and its central purposes.

The Republic of Mali became a Member of the

United Nations 35 years ago, on 28 September 1960, only

six days after its accession to national and international

sovereignty on 22 September 1960.

Mali, together with some 30 other African States,

thus expanded the family of independent and free nations,

bringing to the United Nations the vitality, humanism and

generosity of the peoples of Africa.

The international personality of Mali — a

personality that has been forged through the centuries —

is based first of all on the ability of its people to live in

harmony with their neighbours and on Mali’s openness to

the world, its sense of solidarity and its steadfast

commitment to defending the values of mankind.

The Republic of Mali will continue to be dedicated

to that vocation despite the set-backs and

misunderstandings that are inherent in contacts between

diverse cultures and traditions because we have the firm

conviction that ethnic and cultural diversity constitute a

source of mutual enrichment, and a powerful stimulant to

economic, social and cultural progress.

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Indeed, by its geographical position, Mali is at the

crossroads between northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

It is a nation enriched by centuries of playing the role of a

melting-pot of diverse cultures.

Today, fortunately, Mali lives in an atmosphere of

good will, ethnic pluralism, religious pluralism, political

pluralism, social and cultural pluralism.

The national problem in the northern part of our

country has been making news because of partisan,

unfounded allegations broadcast across the world by lobbies

whose sole objective is to destabilize young States. The

crisis that shook the northern part of Mali by its murderous

and destructive character is one of the harshest tests that

my country has experienced. With the restoration and

consolidation of peace and the return of Malian refugees on

a massive scale, the feelings of rejection of the State, noted

with the blockages and ensuing violent reactions, have

become an anachronism in a State that is founded on the

rule of law, a State where neither the language of arms nor

that of any other form of violence is admissible as a form

of expression of the right to representation.

The successful meeting in Timbuktu between the

Government and the development partners in northern Mali

from 15 to 18 July 1995, is not only a symbol of exemplary

international solidarity but provided an opportunity for

international opinion to take note of the firm will of all

sectors of Malian society to tackle, first and foremost, the

tasks of development.

Born after a painful confinement on 26 March 1991,

the date when a popular revolution triumphed, democracy

has become a permanent and ever-present fact in the daily

life of the people of Mali, who have had to pay a heavy

price to achieve it.

The democratic revolution which took place four years

ago in Mali is a part of a general movement throughout the

world to knock down the fortresses of oppression and

alienation of peoples. It gave rise to a young democratic

State which, despite the shortcomings inherent in any

human undertaking, does represent a successful example of

the rapid construction of a State built on the rule of law.

Concerned with consolidating this democratic process,

the Government of Mali initiated, and successfully carried

out a year ago in the framework of a search for a general

consensus on all of the problems of the nation, wide

regional conferences followed by a national conference.

This forum allowed all of the forces of the nation to debate

in a transparent context all of the concerns of the people

and enabled the governors and the governed to develop

consensual solutions to face the challenges relating to the

future of the nation and the development of the country.

May I emphasize that democratic Mali has made it

a point of honour to respect human rights and the rights

of peoples. Thus a distinguished panel met on 10

December 1994, the anniversary of the Universal

Declaration on Human Rights, bringing together noted

international jurists who, in a completely transparent

context, held public hearings with the Government of

Mali on its human rights management. This was a bold

exercise which set a valuable example and enabled us to

demonstrate that respect for human rights and the

establishment of a State based on the rule of law have

now become a reality in Mali.

In Mali, as in many countries, history accelerated at

a dizzying pace towards the end of the 1980s.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a symbol of the end

of the division of the world into two rival ideological and

military blocs. This foreshadowed fundamental and

irreversible changes in international relations and led to a

new thinking on relations of force between great and

mid-sized Powers.

The end of this bipolar world was expected to make

the risk of a world war disappear. Mankind hoped to see

the realization of its legitimate aspirations to peace and

security. That hope quickly waned when we realized that

the period following the fall of the Berlin Wall became a

period of heart-rending conflicts throughout the world.

We have been seeing a terrible cycle of violence and

destruction shaking the very foundations of the unity,

territorial integrity and sovereignty of many countries.

Africa, it is said, is a land of fire on the belly of the

world. It remains a suffering continent. It carries within

it deep divisions and we see unbearable images of

endless lines of refugees fleeing from their own country.

The problem of refugees remains a tragedy, one which

the international community must rapidly face and

resolve.

The inter-ethnic massacres in Burundi and Rwanda

which led hundreds of thousands of victims to flee their

homes are powerful challenges to human conscience and

morality.

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The situation in Rwanda calls for a constant effort on

the part of the United Nations to restore peace and enable

hundreds of thousands of refugees to return undisturbed to

their homes.

The tragedy of Rwanda, which does dishonour to the

human race, demands for that reason that the international

community seek a way to implement solutions to ensure

that that country shall achieve harmonious and definitive

inter-ethnic coexistence. Hence, Mali, which has a military

contingent in Rwanda, suggests that Rwanda should receive

substantial assistance from the international community.

Among the armed conflicts that afflict our continent is

that of Somalia. In that country, the situation remains

chaotic as a result of the intransigence and ambition of the

warlords. The States of that region have already made

major efforts in the search for peace and we pay tribute to

them. They should, with the assistance of the international

community of course, redouble their efforts in order to

achieve solutions acceptable to all the parties.

Should they succeed, the efforts under way in Liberia

could set an example for the settlement of local conflicts

through subregional initiatives. Since the 19 August signing

of the Abuja agreement by the parties to the conflict, a

transitional Government of National Union has been

established in the capital, Monrovia, with a view to holding

free and fair elections: a sure sign of the return of peace to

Liberia.

With regard to crisis-settlement in Africa, Angola

provides a source of great satisfaction with the signing of

the Lusaka Protocol of 20 November 1994, and especially

with the meetings at Lusaka and at Cape Town between

President José Eduardo dos Santos and Mr. Jonas Savimbi.

That impetus towards peace is being consolidated with the

participation of the União Nacional para a Independência

Total de Angola (UNITA) in the exercise of power. I take

this opportunity to offer warm congratulations to all the

African Heads of State and to the Secretary-General and his

Special Representative on their remarkable contributions to

the restoration of peace in Angola.

Mali also follows with interest the question of Western

Sahara; we sincerely hope that the organization and

upcoming holding of a referendum on self-determination

will lead to permanent peace in this north-western part of

our continent.

As the President of the Republic of Mali, Mr. Alpha

Oumar Konaré, has always stressed, Mali earnestly

encourages the creation of an African-run central

machinery to prevent, manage and settle conflicts in

Africa. We invite the international community to support

this initiative. The world must understand that the

prevention of conflicts costs mankind less than dealing

with their consequences. The Organization of African

Unity (OAU) and the United Nations must grow

increasingly involved in anticipating conflicts and less

dependent on seeking remedies after the illness has taken

hold.

A major political development of the 1990s has

certainly been the gradual return of peace to the Middle

East with the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement

in 1993. We earnestly hope that talks on the Golan

between Israel and Syria and the new agreement on

extending Palestinian autonomy to the West Bank will put

the final seal on a comprehensive peace in the region. In

the Middle East as elsewhere in the world, Mali continues

to make its modest contribution to the quest for

international peace and security.

Within the United Nations, the Non-Aligned

Movement, the OAU and all other regional and

subregional groups, my country quickly saw the need for

a new, broader vision of international relations, the only

credible alternative to the division of the world into two

rival blocs, whose bitter competition could have led

mankind into catastrophe. The end of the bipolar world

confirms the correctness and relevance of that political

perception. That is why, consistent with our convictions,

we think that for developing countries the United Nations

remains the most appropriate framework to plumb the true

aspirations of mankind: the inevitable needs of

development and the establishment of relations of greater

solidarity between countries of the North and of the

South. We must understand that growing poverty and

destitution are at the root of violence and armed conflict.

Hence, development questions remain in the

forefront of the concerns of all countries. Today,

economic performance is a criterion for assessing the

power of a State in the community of nations. Here,

unfortunately, Africa remains on the sidelines. Indeed,

despite the resumption early last year of world economic

growth after several years of stagnation, the situation of

Africa, resulting from its marginalization, continues to be

of great concern.

The efforts of Africa’s developing countries through

economic reform, structural adjustment and

encouragement of the private sector have been wiped out

42

by fluctuations in commodity prices and by excessive costs

of debt service. At the same time, direct foreign investment

in the continent remains weak. Moreover, Africa’s

burdensome debt is constantly growing, now consuming

25 per cent of our export earnings. The tragedy of this

situation lies in its concurrence with a resurgence of natural

disasters and the persistence or exacerbation of illnesses

such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and,

especially, malaria.

“An Agenda for Development” recognizes the right of

developing countries — especially the least developed

countries — to development; it must reorient the objectives

and priorities of the United Nations system towards

socio-economic programmes and activities aimed at

eliminating poverty and developing human resources

through education, training, social integration and the

creation of productive jobs.

Unfortunately, the United Nations New Agenda for the

Development of Africa in the 1990s remains no more than

a devout wish. The only initiative under that programme —

the establishment of a diversification fund for African

commodities — has not succeeded owing to the clear

reticence of some developed countries. This proves, if proof

were needed, the scant interest in Africa’s legitimate claims

for reinvigorating the continent’s growth and development.

International trade relations have been marked by the

conclusion of the Uruguay Round of negotiations and the

establishment of the World Trade Organization. Developing

countries expect complete implementation of the Final Act

of the Uruguay Round, especially with respect to

compensatory mechanisms for the least developed countries,

for net food importers and for those which will experience

negative effects from the elimination of the generalized

system of preferences.

According to concurring estimates by the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and

the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

(UNCTAD), the overall result of the eighth negotiating

cycle will benefit the industrialized countries only. To take

the example of Africa, OECD studies project losses

exceeding $2 billion by the year 2002. In this connection,

the World Trade Organization should offer bold decisions

and recommendations in favour of Africa.

Environmental questions are of major concern, for the

very survival of mankind depends on a balanced ecology.

We fervently hope that the decisions and recommendations

of the United Nations Conference on Environment and

Development will be quickly implemented in order to

save our planet from dangerous, fatal deterioration. My

country, which has experienced the effects of drought and

desertification and which must still address their

consequences, attaches great value to the United Nations

Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries

Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification,

Particularly in Africa, concluded at Paris on

17 June 1994.

Among the priority challenges facing the

international community are social questions, including

overpopulation, the production, trafficking and use of

drugs, unemployment, violence, social disintegration and

the role of women in economic and social development.

We are convinced that the International Conference

on Population and Development, held at Cairo, marked

the beginning of a new process with respect to population

and development strategy. Likewise, the recommendations

of the World Summit for Social Development, held last

March at Copenhagen, should help ease the fate of the

most severely disadvantaged. The Fourth World

Conference on Women, held at Beijing from 4 to

15 September 1995, constituted a praiseworthy concrete

initiative to take true account of the role of women in

economic and social activities.

Like most other African States, Mali remains a poor

country faced with major problems — structural and

related to our circumstances — of economic development.

The implementation of our programme of action for the

1990s is founded on strategies scrupulously based on

agreements with the Bretton Woods institutions on

economic and financial policies for the decade. Besides

stemming from our national will, our country’s basic

guidelines are in perfect keeping with a strategy for

sustainable development and with the United Nations

Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries

for the 1990s.

The Republic of Mali is working tirelessly to resume

dialogue on strengthening international economic

cooperation for development through partnership. In Mali

this has been reflected in round tables with our

development partners in key sectors of the national

economy.

On population policy, our country’s activities include

the establishment of a decentralized institutional

coordinating machinery for the implementation of

population policy throughout the country, and work in

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various areas of economic and social development.

Moreover, the United Nations Population Fund programme

with Mali has been adapted to the content and policies of

the Programme of Action adopted at the International

Conference on Population and Development.

We in Mali think that the implementation of these

various United Nations programmes and activities, based

first and foremost on an increasingly sustained national

effort, requires more vigorous mobilization of both

multilateral and bilateral assistance. Thus, it is increasingly

urgent for rich and industrialized countries to provide the

United Nations and its specialized agencies with the

resources they need to properly implement the various plans

and programmes of action adopted since the beginning of

the 1990s. That is the only way in which the twenty-first

century can see a widespread economic takeoff and shared

prosperity for all.

The Republic of Mali is unreservedly committed to

more open international cooperation based on solidarity.

Stronger still is our readiness to work towards economic

integration within Africa, most of whose States cannot

achieve sustainable and balanced development on their own.

Working through regional groupings, African countries

must carry out an economic policy of complementarity with

respect to their national production, and must limit all

competition that is harmful and that gives rise to the serious

problem of negative resource flows. These economic

entities, established by interdependent States, must enjoy all

necessary support from development partners.

The United Nations, born in the wake of the greatest

trauma mankind has ever known, set as its goal the building

of a new world through law. A powerful mechanism in the

service of peace, solidarity and development had been

created. Never before has the world produced such an

impressive arsenal of texts, conventions, declarations and

programmes of action, all aimed at defining the rules of

international conduct, preventing war and conflict,

guaranteeing peaceful coexistence and promoting

development. With the United Nations, a new international

ethic was born. The victorious Powers of the Second World

War, which retain the formidable right of veto, had a moral

duty to make that ethic a permanent one.

Having been conceived through relationships of force,

the United Nations unfortunately grew fragile owing to bloc

and Power rivalries. Hence, the Security Council, which is

none the less the main body responsible for the

maintenance of international peace and security, was often

paralysed in carrying out its basic mandate. In the course of

this half-century, several serious conflicts nearly led to a

third world confrontation. While the world has seen a

period of non-war at the global level, people themselves

have been afflicted by the balance of terror imposed by

the nuclear Powers.

The new international political context that has

prevailed since the end of the 1980s is increasingly fertile

ground for an international consensus favouring a needed

rehabilitation of the United Nations and a restoration of

its authority in carrying out its basic mandates. There

remains an urgent need to undertake the restructuring and

revitalization of United Nations structures to make them

more effective: to take more rapid, fairer decisions and to

be better able to monitor, respond and sanction wherever

and whenever necessary in the interests of the

international community.

That, indeed, is the mission of the United Nations,

which has established peace-keeping operations since

1948. It is the duty of all States to provide these peace-

keeping operations with sufficient human and material

resources, so that no one can doubt the Organization’s

credibility.

Wherever they are deployed, such operations must

also face serious attacks on human rights and the rights of

peoples. In that connection, the tragic situation in Bosnia

and Herzegovina merits the full attention of the General

Assembly. In accordance with United Nations resolutions,

the international community must restore the sovereignty

of the Bosnian people and the territorial integrity of their

Republic. The delegation of Mali, which also endorses the

relevant resolutions of the Organization of the Islamic

Conference, considers that the challenge to the

international community in this former Yugoslav republic

must be addressed with determination to stop it from

becoming a dangerous precedent in international relations.

A world based on law must be supported by the

ideal of a world of justice. The need to provide

assistance, so often invoked by the United Nations and by

regional organizations, has relativized the principle of

non-interference in the internal affairs of a State when the

international community finds in that State flagrant

violations of human rights and the rights of peoples.

The United Nations has thus carried out an act of

justice and law in reestablishing republican institutions in

Haiti. It is also in the name of law and justice that Mali

calls for the lifting of international sanctions against

Libya and Iraq, whose peoples want nothing more than

44

happiness, well-being and peace. Maintaining these

sanctions, which affect only the Libyan and Iraqi peoples,

runs frankly counter to morality and to our duty to assist

and show solidarity with those peoples.

The twentieth century will have been a century of

enormous progress in all spheres, in the course of which

mankind will have demonstrated its impressive creative

capacity. It is an important symbol that it was during this

century, just a few months ago, that the international

community reaffirmed its determination to ban forever the

proliferation and use of nuclear weapons by the indefinite

extension of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear

Weapons (NPT). The rejection of the nuclear weapon marks

an irreversible choice by the world’s peoples: in favour of

peace and development.

It is surprising that nuclear-weapon States have not

understood the extraordinary trust that the rest of the

international community has shown in them by its

overwhelming accession to the Treaty on the

Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; that trust requires

responsibility on the part of nuclear-weapon States. Those

States must meet the challenge of peace by putting a

complete and immediate end to real and simulated testing

and by gradually destroying their nuclear arsenals.

As we come to the end of the second millennium, we

see a world-wide movement for democracy and freedom.

The Organization has everywhere encouraged the quest for

justice and the free expression of peoples. To consolidate

its gains and to become permanent, this vast movement

must be accompanied by the democratization of

international relations. But unfortunately, that

democratization is late in coming. The President of the

Republic of Mali has described the situation in this way:

“Present inequalities among individuals, among

communities and among States unmistakably raise the

question of justice, linked at the national level with

order and morality ... The world is composed of

ongoing disparities, which give rise to conflict and

violence. We must all understand the peril we incur by

failing to reorder present structures that are

unfavourable to the less well off and that benefit the

more powerful. We need a world of greater solidarity;

a less selfish and more humane world”.

It is, indeed, sad to note that international relations

continue to be governed from the standpoint of carving the

world up into spheres of influence and spheres of interests,

even though new political and economic changes in

developing countries demand new behaviour by our

development partners, specifically the industrialized

countries. It is increasingly clear that on the whole

international cooperation is being fueled by economic

criteria alone, to the detriment of the values of solidarity

and justice. Yet the challenges facing mankind are

common challenges. They include environmental

degradation, pollution, toxic waste, sickness, hunger,

poverty and malnutrition. The balance of the planet and

the survival of mankind depend on the collective solutions

we find to these serious problems.

It cannot be overstressed that only international

relations based on solidarity, fairness and justice can

enable us to face the challenge; and these are within our

grasp. The maintenance of peace in the coming

millennium will depend on the international community’s

ability to foster development for all. Hence, it is urgent to

restore the values of solidarity, justice and democracy in

international relations in order to save succeeding

generations.