Nigeria, 2000

Please allow me to share

with Mr. Holkeri the joy of his election to the

presidency of the fifty-fifth session of the General

Assembly. He can rest assured of Nigeria's support and

cooperation. May I also express the same sentiment on

behalf of the Group of 77. To his predecessor and my

colleague, His Excellency Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab of

Namibia, Nigeria and the Group of 77 wish to express

our pride in and appreciation of the most distinguished

manner in which he discharged his duties as the

President of the fifty-fourth session. We are indeed

very proud of him.

May I also commend the Secretary-General, Mr.

Kofi Annan, for the manner in which he has piloted

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and continues to manage the affairs of the United

Nations. I would also like to thank him for his

millennium report, which has identified some of the

pressing problems and challenges facing mankind.

In the past few weeks here at the United Nations

a lot of reflection and deep thinking have taken place

among world leaders, all in an attempt to more

coherently define the future. The end of one

millennium and the beginning of another warrant all

these efforts to find such a purposeful definition. Fifty-

five years ago the United Nations was formed as a

global bulwark against armed conflict on a world scale,

such as the Second World War. Over the years its

mandate of preserving international security has

broadened from strictly preventing such armed conflict

to cover also fundamental issues of socio-economic

security for humanity. For example, in many of the

developing countries the United Nations manifests its

potential more through the United Nations Children's

Fund, the World Health Organization, the United

Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization and other agencies than in Security

Council resolutions, comparatively speaking. It is also

from the activities of these United Nations agencies

that the underprivileged sectors of poor countries

benefit directly, activities from which these same

countries, including those in Africa, have come to

imbibe the idealism regarding the United Nations

ability to harmonize the totality of progress to the

benefit of all human stakeholders.

To a great extent this idealism has not been

misplaced. In fact, at no other time has the possibility

of a global family been more real than now. This

prospect must, I am sure, have been very exciting to so

many of us and must have been the basis for hailing the

United Nations system for its own role in and

contribution to these achievements. But as my

President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, aptly observed

here less than two weeks ago,

“Although the world has generally become a

safer place to live in, thanks to the contributions

of the United Nations, we must all feel deeply

worried that the message of hope which the

Organization has been spreading is yet to reach

the millions of humankind for whom it is

intended. For the vast majority of our peoples,

grinding poverty has remained a fact of their

everyday existence.” (A/55/PV.7)

This reality of grinding poverty has raised

considerable apprehension in some United Nations

Member States about their fate in the new millennium.

There is a clear basis for this apprehension, given that

the past millennium was, for most of these countries,

characterized by extreme poverty, heavy indebtedness,

wars of attrition and the resultant mass ordeal and

anguish for both their immediate and distant victims,

absolute vulnerability to epidemics such as cholera,

malaria and typhoid, the rage of the HIV/AIDS

pandemic, the scourge of natural disasters, serious

technological backwardness and a digital divide

between them and the others, and by profound

economic decline and infrastructural decay. In the last

decade in particular, whatever hopes were raised by

some initiatives aimed at mitigating African and third

world underdevelopment have dwindled to nothing as

the world emerged from the cold war into a more

problematic concept called globalization.

The globe, which is the symbol or logo of the

United Nations, depicts humanity. From the word

“globe” has been derived a phenomenon called

globalization, which explicitly connotes a world

without national borders, with particular reference to

commerce, in which humanity is one huge market.

Apart from thus unfortunately associating the noble

and emotive word “humanity” with the materialism of

commerce and the market, globalization automatically

raises other questions for three quarters of humanity

outside the orbit of industrial competence.

In a global economy all the actors in that

economy should also be stakeholders. But what stake

does Africa have in a global economy? Economically,

it is heavily indebted, some of its countries committing

up to 55 per cent of gross earnings to debt servicing

and payment. What can the little that is left do for the

domestic economy? What does an economy that

produces virtually nothing in industrial terms have to

offer, and, moreover, how can it compete in a global

economy? What is the income level of the average

African, relative to that of his or her counterparts in

many countries of the West, vis-à-vis the capacity to

patronize the goods and services which globalization

offers? How does globalization facilitate democratic

consolidation? How can the core values of liberal

democracy, such as the rule of law, the preservation of

human rights and good governance, be sustained by a

Government that lacks the resources to competently

provide a minimum of social service delivery and thus

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sustain legitimacy and regime credibility? In what

ways would a typical regime in Africa be able to

contribute its quota to democratic consolidation with

the debt overhang, the exchange and interest rate

practices in the international financial architecture, the

prices offered for raw materials relative to the prices of

industrial goods and services, the limited trade access

and the conditionalities tied to loans and aid?

As a responsible member of the international

community and as the chair of the G-77, Nigeria is

obliged to draw attention to the context of our present

situation. What is clear to me now is that the dream of

a global family cannot be attained if the present world

architecture of power and the reward system continues.

The dialogue of the Organization of African Unity, the

Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77 with the G-8

countries has so far shown that a great deal can be

achieved from that approach to the issues in question.

As President Obasanjo again said in a separate speech,

it is imperative for the world to seize this moment to

begin to get the future right, since such a solemn

moment in the history of mankind as the recent

Millennium Summit, may not always present itself. We

are talking of dialogue that takes the issues on board in

a holistic manner, as opposed to the current practice of

abstracting merely one or other manifestation of the

system — for example, in the case of wars of attrition

and the idea of international humanitarian intervention.

The debate so far has brought to the fore the

problem of the contradiction between sovereignty and

intervention. Of course, nation States, even those on

the verge of evaporation, would be sensitive to the

word “intervention”. But, more than that, discussion of

the issue has brought out the one-dimensional nature of

the treatment of some issues or problems in terms of

what we include in or exclude from the definition. In

this particular case, the debate so far has concentrated

on war situations or armed conflicts featuring massive

loss of life.

What of other situations where loss of life is also

of a serious magnitude but not as a result of war or

armed conflict? What of the silent genocide occasioned

by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, epidemics and natural

disasters such as famine, drought, flood, etc.? What

about the situation that arises when sanctions lead to

deaths on a serious scale? All these should find a place

in a proper and systematic discussion of humanitarian

intervention aimed at giving succour to those who may

be trapped in tragedies other than wars.

Similarly, is there no other way by which the

world can arrest the proliferation of small arms and

light weapons in Africa and other parts of the South?

Certainly the world knows about the nature and types

of weapons used in the prosecution of these wars,

where they are manufactured and by whom, the

processes by which they are traded and acquired and

the key facilitators of these processes, including

national governments and arms merchants. What if the

search for solutions focused on these areas?

These and many other weighty global issues were

discussed at the first ever South Summit held in

Havana last April. That Summit was a defining

moment for the Group of 77 countries which pondered

the challenges of the twenty-first century. In Havana

the South resolved to forge a new and meaningful

partnership with the industrialized nations. We

demanded equal partnership in decision-making that

affects the whole of humanity. That was the message

the leaders of the South took to the G8 Summit in

Okinawa. The outcome of that consultation vividly

demonstrates that meaningful partnership is a must for

the new century. Certainly the interests of mankind

compel a more inclusive participation of all segments

of our global community.