Paraguay, 2004

Today our continent is experiencing a time of great

opportunity, yet it is also beset by serious threats,

including a falling standard of living for the masses,

radical adjustment measures, the globalization of

financial capital and a lack of access to markets in

developed countries - all of which have not

contributed to generating sustained economic growth,

and even less to reducing poverty and inequality. The

great challenge before us is to redouble our efforts

daily to eradicate this cancer by strengthening public

institutions and forging a new social ethic, as well as a

new international order with multilateral bodies that

truly contribute to peace throughout the world, human

development and the sharp reduction of poverty, social

inequalities and the exploitation of man by man and

nation by nation.

The United Nations, this noble institution, must

not lose sight of its historic memory, its raison díÍtre

and the objectives that led to its creation, if its efforts

currently under way are to result in healthy attitude

changes and a greater political capacity to institute

regulatory frameworks that can put a stop to economic

Darwinism and conflicts throughout the world.

Today, more than ever, the possibility of building

a more just world, free from such painful

contradictions, depends upon the inclusion of the less

developed countries in the globalized economy and the

political will to overcome pure market forces. The

industrialization of the United States, Germany and

Japan in the nineteenth century could be described in

similar terms, as could their emergence from their

relative backwardness compared with Great Britain,

the pioneer nation of that time.

The failure throughout almost all of Latin

America to overcome its backwardness, poverty and

dependency is frequently due to selfishness and

historic impediments to advantageous connections

between our national economies and the worldwide

market. If this seems to be a recurrent condition, then

we should constantly keep in mind the message of the

Consensus of Brazil: we must govern globalization if

we are to turn it into a source of opportunity for all, if

globalization is not to be what it has become ó a force

synonymous with marginalization, exclusion or

conquest, dependent on markets and cheap labour,

which leads to a form of semi-slavery in many

countries.

I wish to propose to the General Assembly joint

action that can be taken in four areas.

First, social investment throughout the continent

must reach levels that will make it possible to attain

the Millennium Development Goals. To that end, the

poorest countries, which clearly cannot obtain such

levels of investment, could have recourse to a

counterpart fund for social equity with soft financing

coming from international organizations and unilateral

contributions.

Secondly, we realize that not everything can be

solved with money. Money, when it is misused,

weakens and corrupts. Accordingly, we must also

commit ourselves to carrying out the necessary

institutional reforms to ensure the proper formulation,

implementation and assessment of social policies. And

we must be ready to ensure that access to the

aforementioned funds will lead to wide-reaching

innovations in the management of public

administration, demonstrable by means of indices on

efficiency and transparency.

Thirdly, international organizations must

increasingly realize that economic and social reform

must flow from the experience and wisdom of those

countries themselves, with their own formulas that are

in keeping with their cultural standards and that

involve all the representatives of civil society.

Fourthly, with growing levels of poverty it is

impossible to meet the burden of external debt

servicing. There must be a new, realistic policy that

will put forward rational terms on future payment of

debt, terms that will make it possible to lay the basis

for sustained and equitable development, terms which

allow us to meet our commitments without pushing our

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people into irreversible poverty. It is important to place

the needs of the poor and dispossessed over the

repayment of the debt.

That is why we must imaginatively and skilfully

devise alternative financing mechanisms for the fight

against hunger and extreme poverty. That task requires

greater intellectual resources and technical expertise

and a new and fair financial architecture, not the

accumulation of wealth, worship of the market or the

promotion of globalization that does not allow the just

distribution of the wealth produced by all of us

throughout the world. We need a new financial

architecture that enables us to reduce poverty and to

work for the stability of the worldís emerging

democracies.

One year ago, my Government inherited a

situation characterized by economic stagnation,

recession and spreading poverty and by weak and

unreliable public institutions, resulting in timid social

policies that could hardly tackle the Millennium

Development Goals.

Two major challenges face my country. First, the

indigenous population - which in Paraguay is not

large, totalling no more than 100,000 - lacks access to

its most vital needs and faces the disintegration of

much of its natural lands owing to the historical rule of

indolent landowners, and most recently to a type of

agrarian modernization that was insensitive to human

dignity.

Secondly, the unconscionable face of extreme

poverty in my country is that of the peasants. Today,

two out of three Paraguayans continue to belong to that

social sector. Likewise, one of the most significant

causes of that critical national problem is the very

unjust distribution of land that has existed for many

years in Paraguay. That is not only an urgent and very

shocking social problem, but also a political and

ethical problem that is manifested in a repeated and

increasingly grave struggle for land.

In the light of that situation, we propose a State

with social, fiscal and environmental responsibility:

social responsibility in the sense of guaranteeing

health, education and basic services and avoiding

concentration of profit and wealth; fiscal responsibility

to avoid a deficit and chronic indebtedness, which

ultimately punish social investment; and environmental

responsibility to preserve natureís reproductive

capacity and to ensure for future generations the right

to enjoy resources not created by man.

We also propose the implementation of a national

anti-poverty strategy that will channel the domestic and

external resources necessary to meet the Millennium

Development Goals. The national Government has

defined as a top budget priority an increase in social

spending to resolutely address the problems of poverty,

destitution and inequality, with the objective of

reaching 40 per cent of the central administrationís

total public spending for next year, 2005.

For development, cooperation is not enough;

there must also be access to markets on preferential

terms, liberalization of the agricultural product markets

and special treatment for the landlocked least

developed countries, such as Paraguay, punished by

history and geopolitics, which make our foreign trade

more expensive and significantly reduce our

competitiveness. There needs to be a compensatory

framework to place my country, Paraguay, on an equal

footing with other nations in terms of international

trade.

In the international context, we join in the appeal

for a more just and humanized international order in

which the least developed are not always condemned to

discrimination, indifference and backwardness. With

that objective, we must move towards an inclusive

multilateralism that will offer equality, rationality and

justice in international relations.

Similarly ó and in keeping with Paraguayís

position on Taiwan in the United Nations ó we once

more reaffirm our conviction that the brotherly

Republic of China, Taiwan, should become a full-

fledged Member of the Organization, in accordance

with the principle of universality and with norms of

international law.

Today we have heard more of the same things we

hear every year in the Assembly. But we hope that this

time we can return to our countries and share with our

peoples the news that finally, in New York, the worldís

leaders have taken important steps forward in

alleviating - even if just a little - the pain, sorrow

and hopelessness of the millions of human beings who

live on Earth. I am confident that God will give us the

wisdom and the strength necessary to lead our

countries on the path of freedom, peace, development

and justice.