Nicaragua, 2009

Thirty years after the triumph of the people’s

Sandinista Revolution and the start of a process of

popular and participatory democracy, on behalf of the

President of Nicaragua and Commander of the

Revolution, Mr. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, I salute and

congratulate you, Mr. President, on your election as

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President of this Assembly, which it is my honour to

address.

Nicaragua is a country impoverished by historical

circumstances no different from, if not identical to, the

histories and circumstances of countries of our Latin

American and Caribbean region and others around the

world. This history has been repeated over time and

space, as we will outline later. Nevertheless, Nicaragua

remains a land rich in beauty and natural resources. It

is a nation symbolic of reconciliation and of national

and international unity.

Although few may know this, our country is one

of the safest countries of this continent. Nicaragua is

engaged in an exemplary, tireless and decisive

campaign against organized and petty crime in an

exemplary fashion, as acknowledged by international

bodies and authorities. It does so not only with

coercive and punitive measures, but, more

significantly, by building an alternative model of

development that transforms the structures of poverty

and marginalization that are the breeding ground of

public security problems. Our model is based on

democratic reform expressed by the people’s will,

which we call “citizen power”.

By means of the “From Martí to Fidel” campaign,

illiteracy has been reduced to 3.16 per cent. We have

made progress in preventive medicine and have

successfully controlled pandemics, such as that of the

A (H1N1) virus. In our country, the mortality rate from

this disease is one of the two lowest in America. These

achievements have been made possible by the generous

solidarity of the fraternal people and Government of

Cuba, which has been consistent and has perpetuated

the internationalist calling of Commander Fidel Castro

Ruz.

The Government of Nicaragua has opened the

door to production credits. The Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations (FAO) selected our

school nutrition programme as one of the top four in

the world. In that spirit, President Daniel Ortega has

proposed the adoption of a Central American

agriculture policy to transform the region into a food

production zone, and in that same spirit, we welcome

and support the World Summit on Food Security

scheduled for November of this year.

Today, we have an electrical power reserve of

42.6 per cent, although barely two years ago there was

a shortfall of 3.29 per cent. This is thanks to the

solidarity of the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela

under the leadership of its President, Commander Hugo

Chávez Frías. Meanwhile, we continue to make

targeted efforts to promote the use of alternative

renewable energy sources, such as water, wind,

geothermal, solar power and, more recently, biomass.

We also support initiatives aimed at developing civilian

nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Clean drinking water has been made available to

217,000 families. We have launched programmes such

as Zero Hunger and Zero Usury, which were

highlighted in a report by the United Nations Special

Rapporteur on the right to food. In order to refute the

daily lies of certain media outlets in Nicaragua, FAO

recently issued a published notice of the positive

results of the programmes it coordinates with the

Nicaraguan Government to fight hunger and extreme

poverty.

Food security cannot continue to be subject to the

greediness of a few. There is enough food to nourish

twice the current world population, but thousands die

every minute around the world. While in some

countries automobiles are fed, millions of boys and

girls die with an empty stomach. That is simply

criminal.

We also express our profound rejection of the

discrimination and persecution of immigrants and

unequivocally support full respect for their human

rights. The Government of National Reconciliation and

Unity also seeks to reverse the exclusion to which

native peoples and communities of African descent

have been subject throughout history.

Nicaragua is the enemy of terrorism in any of its

forms, including State-sponsored terrorism. It is for

that and many other reasons that we oppose the

criminal embargo against the heroic people of Cuba,

six generations of whom have been born since the

embargo began. How many more generations must

outlive it? How many more resolutions must the

Assembly adopt on this topic? There are already

17 resolutions on this issue.

It is also rightfully of interest to this Assembly

that, while a criminal murderer of Cuban athletes

enjoys total liberty, five anti-terrorist Cubans are

imprisoned far from their families and incommunicado

for the sole crime of simply being anti-terrorists.

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Today’s Nicaragua is an active militant in favour

of solidarity, as well as a militant supporter of

gratitude. We therefore appreciate the disinterested

cooperation of the sister nations that contribute to the

economic and social development of our people. We

also embrace the just cause of Puerto Rican

independence and support the return of the Malvinas

Islands to their rightful owner, the Argentine people. In

the same manner, we endorse the struggles of the

Saharan and Cypriot peoples.

We also call on Israel to withdraw from the

occupied Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian territories.

We stand unconditionally with the Palestinian people

in their daily fight for their own sovereign State. That

is why we advocate a peaceful, just and lasting solution

that guarantees peace in that region. One year after

gaining their independence, we congratulate the

peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and affirm that

we have already established diplomatic relations with

Abkhazia.

We support the new and positive focus that

Taiwan has adopted in its relations with the People’s

Republic of China, as well as its participation in United

Nations specialized bodies and agencies.

We condemn the coup d’état in Honduras and

hereby proclaim our definitive decision not to

recognize the results of any electoral farce in that

country. By means of the coup, its perpetrators have

sought to kill the democratic hopes and initiatives of

the Honduran people, just as they sought to thwart the

fraternal process of Bolivarian Alternative for the

Americas (ALBA). Nonetheless, a change in Honduras

that supersedes a formal and hypocritical democracy is

inevitable.

From this rostrum, we denounce the massacre of

the Honduran people and point in no uncertain terms to

the assassination plot against President Zalaya. We

must heed this now, because later it will be said that he

committed suicide. From this very moment, we

unconditionally support and endorse the proposal made

last night in this same forum by the Foreign Minister of

Honduras, Patricia Rodas, to the Secretary-General and

the General Assembly.

The time has come to make the General Assembly

a forum in which substantive, irreversible decisions are

taken. We cannot continue to have a Security Council

with an abusive veto privilege.

The time has also come for cooperation without

humiliating preconditions, the construction of the most

beautiful dream of Bolívar and Sandino, and the dawn

of a realistic and coherent solidarity. I speak of the

Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, composed of

the peoples of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, the

Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines, Venezuela, and Honduras

in its resistance. ALBA is the basis for cross-cutting

and inclusive cooperation between our peoples. Its

membership increases day by day.

I cannot fail to note with profound concern that

we are meeting today under economic circumstances

that are similar to or worse than those of a year ago,

when the worst world economic depression of modern

times arose to exacerbate the existing food, energy and

environmental crises. Unfortunately, these world crises

have met with a decrease in official development

assistance, which remains conditional thanks to the

international financial institutions, and with the

reluctance of developed countries to replace the current

model with one that is more just and respectful of

Mother Nature.

The United Nations Conference on the World

Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on

Development demonstrated that the Group of 192, as it

has been called by my brother, Father Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, has a voice in world economic matters. It

is within the most representative institution that

economic policies affecting millions should be

decided, and not within exclusive groups, such as the

Group of Eight or the Group of 20, defenders of the

model of domination by the few over the majority. In

that regard, we welcome establishment of the ad hoc

open-ended working group that will follow up on the

outcome of the Conference.

For some years now, climate change has become

not a threat of the future, but rather a very present

threat. We believe that the United Nations Climate

Change Conference, to take place in December in

Copenhagen, should be a debate not on the need to act,

but rather on the need for the developed countries to

fulfil their historic obligation under the Kyoto Protocol

and to end their attempts to repudiate the principle of

common but differentiated responsibility.

It is time for attitudes and actions to reflect a true

commitment to counteracting the harmful effects of

global warming. We firmly believe that it is the

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exclusive responsibility of the General Assembly —

and in no case of the Security Council — to seek the

consensus and commitments necessary for us to move

forward in this struggle, which is a struggle for the

survival of all humankind.

It is not possible to democratize selfishness,

exclusion or the manipulation of truth. It is not possible

to put a kind face on perversion or arrogance. That is the

essence of the prevailing economic system — the

exploitation of one human being by another, the

subjugation of nations, and the hoarding of wealth by

the few.

This is why we are in crisis; it is not because of a

lack of resources, but because of the concentration of

resources in the hands of a few, because of disregard

for our environment, because of the rejection of moral

values, because of human arrogance towards other

species and, worst of all, because of disdain for human

life itself.

We are optimistic. It is necessary to replace and

find alternatives to the current socio-economic and

political model, which has led to unjustified

interventions such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan,

and to that now being committed against our region

with the establishment of military bases in Colombia

under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.

We cannot fail to be struck by the fact that,

despite the $7,558,000,000 invested, the flow of drugs

out of Colombia continues to grow. In 1999, at the

beginning of Plan Colombia, the drug traffic to the

United States and Europe was an annual 600 metric

tons. Today, in 2009, that traffic has more than doubled

to 1,450 metric tons. In other words, the strategy of

militarizing Colombia has failed, absolute proof of

which are the numbers I have cited. The true objective

of installing these “seven daggers in the heart of

America”, as they are called by Commander Fidel

Castro, is to salvage the moribund economic and

political system with which capitalism flaunts its

power by controlling the hemisphere’s water, oil and

biodiversity.

We believe in the strengthening of energetic and

progressive positions in the defence of peace and

respect for the sovereignty of the countries of our

region. We are sure that it will ultimately serve to

further advance the Latin American unity dreamt by

Bolívar, Morazán, Martí and Sandino.

Today, the solidarity practices of Fidel Castro and

revolutionary Cuba have grown and spread like never

before. The wide world of Latin America has ceased to

be foreign, and as Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann said

during his particularly outstanding presidency of the

General Assembly, the current scenario is not a tragedy

but a crisis. Crisis purifies. The pain we now feel is not

the death rattle of a dying man but the pain of a new

birth.

Finally, I wish to inform the General Assembly

that Nicaragua, respectful of international law, has

abided by the ruling of the International Court of

Justice in its decision of 13 July 2009, and has issued a

presidential decree to regulate navigation in the San

Juan River, over which Nicaragua has full, absolute

and unquestionable sovereignty, as was recognized by

the ruling.

I send greetings to all on behalf of our President,

Daniel Ortega Saavedra, and of all Nicaraguans who

sing in praise of Darío and who proudly carry on

Sandino’s legacy in order to defend ourselves today

with peace and dignity. Nicaragua is proud of its

devotion to peace, honour, solidarity and the relentless

struggle against injustice.