Mali, 2008

It is my

great pleasure, Sir, to convey to you the heartfelt

congratulations of the delegation of Mali upon your

election to the presidency of the sixty-third session of

the General Assembly, and to assure you of our full

support. I should like also to hail Secretary-General

Ban Ki-moon for his devotion and commitment to our

Organization.

The sixty-third session of the General Assembly

is opening with the timely theme of the impact of the

global food crisis on poverty and hunger throughout

the world. Indeed, it takes place in a difficult

international context, one marked by the conjunction of

food and energy crises. This situation is of concern to

my delegation, as it is a potential source of generalized

social and political instability.

What can we do? In Mali, we have granted the

highest priority to the fight against poverty and the

high cost of living. In this respect, the Government has

undertaken a series of measures to stem the effects of

the present crisis through, inter alia, a temporary

suspension of import duties and taxes on basic

foodstuffs, such as rice, wheat flour, oil and milk, as

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well as subsidizing gas, hydrocarbons and agricultural

inputs.

My country, Mali, is firmly determined to achieve

food self-sufficiency and to become, in the medium

term, an agricultural Power. To that end, we have made

agriculture the principal tool to attain accelerated

growth. Accordingly, an agricultural framework law

has been adopted, and its progressive implementation

has included the following measures.

First and foremost, the new law contains a

measure to launch the rice initiative, which was

designed as a proactive and structural response to the

dizzying increase in price of grain products on global

markets. Next, the law includes the setting up of a

national agricultural development fund and a fund for

emergencies and disasters. It also involves the setting

up of land commissions and a programme to develop

low-lying lands within the framework of local

irrigation works. Finally, it involves the setting up of a

high council for agriculture. In addition, we will soon

adopt guidelines for the marketing of grain products,

including rice, and a mechanism for supplying

agricultural inputs.

Along these same lines, the Government of Mali

has prepared and implemented a national strategy to

fight poverty, a strategic framework for fighting

poverty and a strategic framework for growth and

poverty reduction for the period 2007-2011.

In addition, our Social and Economic

Development Project has been conceived by the

President of the Republic, Mr. Amadou Toumani Touré.

It should enable Mali to increase its production and

fairly share the fruits of growth, invest in the future

and build a State of good governance and the rule of

law.

The fight against corruption is another aspect of

this overall project. The national convention that will

be organized to address this issue in October 2008

should enable the Malian nation to seek through broad

consultation a comprehensive understanding of the

phenomenon in order to define a plan of action against

the scourge.

Seeking to promote transparent and effective

management of its public finances, Mali, which has

joined the African Union’s African Peer Review

Mechanism, has submitted its governance to that

evaluation process. This exercise, which will be

concluded in January 2009, will take stock of the

situation, including in the field of political governance,

business governance and governance of socio-

economic development. It will result in

recommendations for improvements in those areas.

In the same vein, the human rights situation in

Mali has been considered within the framework of the

new universal periodic review mechanism set up within

the context of the Human Rights Council. From this

rostrum, laden as it is with symbolism, I would like to

reiterate the commitment of the Government of Mali to

take concrete action on the relevant recommendations

that we are committed to following at the outcome of

this process.

Mali remains convinced that the prevention and

peaceful settlement of conflicts is the best possible

guarantee of international peace and security. Backed

by that belief, my country firmly made the choice of

dialogue aimed at finding a lasting solution to the

situation of insecurity that has prevailed in the north-

east of our country. In this respect, the Algiers peace

agreement of 4 July 2006 remains relevant, as it

preserves our territorial integrity and our national

unity, by enabling the various strands of the Malian

nation to fully participate in the national construction

endeavour.

Aware that security in the Sahelo-Saharan region

is closely linked to that of States and peoples sharing

the space and that conflicts affecting one country can

rapidly spread throughout the region, the Government

of Mali, in October 2008, will organize in Bamako a

conference on peace, security and development in the

Sahelo-Saharan region.

The conference will provide a useful opportunity

for the States of the region to jointly reaffirm our

commitment to turn our shared space into a zone of

peace and security, a centre of stability, growth and

development. It will also provide us with responses

adapted to the problems and challenges we face:

insecurity, transborder banditry, terrorism and

trafficking of all types, including trafficking in drugs,

arms and human beings.

Here, Mali considers that it is the duty of the

international community to take vigorous action to

maintain and build international peace and security. In

this respect, we welcome and encourage progress

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08-53122 12

achieved in the resolution of conflicts and crises that

rack the African continent, including those in Côte

d’Ivoire, the Sudan, Somalia and the Great Lakes

region.

Mali calls for the resumption of the negotiating

process in the Middle East and reaffirms its

unswerving support for the creation of a sovereign and

independent Palestinian State.

There are many other serious challenges facing

the international community to which we will have to

respond appropriately to build a better world together.

First and foremost, there is the problem of climate

change. Today more than ever before, the very survival

of our planet is threatened by climate change, which

has a serious impact on living conditions in developing

countries such as mine through, inter alia,

desertification, the silting up of rivers, the deterioration

of the environment, a reduction of the length of the

winter periods, floods and poor rainfall patterns. We

should, therefore, urgently undertake measures which

are commensurate with the pressing nature of the

problem. In this respect, the conclusions of the high-

level event on climate change in 2007 and those of the

Bali Climate Change Conference in the same year are

still relevant and are worthy of being implemented in a

diligent way. Mali, which is a party to the Kyoto

Protocol, is eager to make a useful contribution to the

fifteenth United Nations Climate Change Conference,

to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The second major challenge to which we must

devote particular attention is the HIV/AIDS pandemic,

which poses one of the most serious threats to

sustainable development. We must redouble our efforts

and our resolve to implement the 2001 Declaration of

Commitment, as well as the outcomes of the high-level

meetings on AIDS and the seventeenth International

AIDS Conference, held in Mexico last August. All of

these forums have highlighted the severity of the

situation and stressed the urgent need to act and to

mobilize resources to fight the pandemic.

The third significant challenge for the

international community is the situation of landlocked

developing countries, which, as a result of their

isolation and their great distance from the world’s main

markets, are confronted with serious handicaps. I

congratulate the Secretary-General for having taken the

initiative to convene, following the general debate, a

high-level plenary meeting devoted to the midterm

review of the Almaty Programme of Action. Mali will

actively participate in that meeting and will work to

ensure that leads to operational conclusions that can

contribute to the comprehensive, rapid, and effective

implementation of the Almaty Programme of Action.

The fourth challenge is institutional reform of the

United Nations. This issue remains important as the

continuation of the establishment of the Peacebuilding

Commission and the Human Rights Council and of the

strengthening the Economic and Social Council. Thus,

the expansion of the Security Council is clearly a

pressing necessity, particularly to redress the historic

injustice committed against Africa, namely, that it does

not have a permanent seat. That is something which is

underscored in the joint African position on the issue.

All these challenges which we currently face

require a collective global response. Only a reformed

and democratized United Nations may serve as a

genuine crucible for universal collective conscience

capable of best discharging its primary mission,

namely, to save succeeding generations from the

scourge of war and destruction. Mali will do its full

part in this fight.