Rwanda, 2007

May I start by expressing to

you, Mr. President, my Government’s congratulations

on your election as the President of the General

Assembly at its sixty-second session.

Let me also use this occasion to thank the

outgoing President, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa,

for the excellent manner in which she presided over the

General Assembly at its sixty-first session.

Every year the General Assembly provides the

world’s leaders with an excellent opportunity to focus

our attention on the challenges we commonly face.

While some of the challenges can be addressed

nationally, the most critical are often not confined to

national borders and therefore require a concerted

global effort. Hence the centrality of the United

Nations in providing the leadership and platform to

address global challenges.

That is why it is vital that the United Nations

continues to undergo comprehensive reforms to render

it more versatile, effective and efficient. As the

Secretary-General correctly observed in his report on

this subject, the United Nations is “not optimally

configured.

Some of the ongoing reforms such as the

implementation of “one programme, one budgetary

framework and one office” at the country level is a

good start for rendering this international body more

responsive. We are pleased that Rwanda was selected

as one of the eight first pilot countries for this reform.

In the same context of the ongoing reforms, the

proposal to restructure the gender portfolio is most

welcome. We agree with the findings of the High-level

Panel that the United Nations contributions to gender

issues have been incoherent, under-resourced and

fragmented. The proposed reforms will assist in

overcoming those shortcomings.

However, we still eagerly await the reform of the

Security Council to render it more representative of the

world community and more transparent in its

operations and decision-making processes. We believe

that this would equip the United Nations with greater

legitimacy and capacity to maintain world peace and

security.

Let me briefly touch on a number of pressing

challenges the global community currently faces.

While our continent has been consolidating peace and

security, there are persistent problem areas that need

attention. Today in the Great Lakes region, those who

committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994 continue their

destructive activities. Almost 14 years after their deeds

in our country, they are still sowing mayhem in the

region. They rape, murder, terrorize and plunder with

impunity. Their leaders are active in Africa, Europe,

America and other places, where they continue to

promote the ideology of genocide. There can be no

doubt that those terror groups constitute a threat to

international peace and security. The presence of the

costly United Nations peacekeeping mission in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo has not diminished

their activities.

I once again call upon the international

community, in collaboration with the Government of

the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to end the

threat posed by those negative forces once and for all.

Rwandans and the region as a whole need peace and

stability so that we can concentrate on the business of

economic growth and development.

For our part, we pledge renewed commitment to

making our contribution to the restoration of peace and

stability in the Great Lakes region and in other parts of

our continent. In that respect, we express our solidarity

with the long-suffering people of Darfur and commit

ourselves to contributing to peace efforts in that part of

the world, in close cooperation with the Government of

the Sudan, the African Union (AU) and the United

Nations. Rwanda welcomes Security Council

resolution 1769 (2007) authorizing the creation of the

United Nations-AU hybrid peacekeeping force in

Darfur, and calls for its speedy deployment. In the

same spirit, we urge the international community to

support peacebuilding efforts in Somalia. It is critical

that resources be made available on an urgent basis to

enable the deployment of the pledged peacekeeping

forces by African countries.

Through the United Nations, we express our

collective determination to promote socioeconomic

transformation for greater and more rapid wealth

creation, which in turn will permit improved lives. On

that note, we also join the many other countries that are

putting forward the suggestion of a moratorium on the

death penalty as a way of improving those lives and

valuing them. That challenge remains daunting in the

developing world, where extreme poverty still affects

millions of people.

The solutions include increased productive

capacities on the part of the developing world, side by

side with the opening of global markets to the

developed world to permit greater trade and

investment. A fair global trading system is central to

wealth creation. Improving the quality of development

aid would supplement that effort, based on a shared

understanding that aid is most effective when it is

aligned with national development priorities.

Our ultimate goal of improving lives globally

cannot be realized if the challenge of climate change

and the associated widespread environmental

degradation is not sufficiently tackled. Rwanda

appreciates the convening of the high-level meeting on

climate change by the Secretary-General earlier this

week. We also look forward to the United Nations

climate change conference scheduled to take place in

Bali, Indonesia, this December, which should provide a

clear road map of how we are to consolidate our gains

and gather pace in protecting our environment.

The global challenges of poverty, ignorance,

terrorism, conflict and climate change require us to act

collectively in a manner that the founders of this

Organization captured eloquently in the words We the

peoples of the United Nations. As we begin this sixty-

second session of the General Assembly, let us

recommit to our common aspirations and

responsibilities for realizing peace, prosperity and

freedom above any narrow interests. Only then can we

hope to realize the ideals contained in the Charter of

the United Nations “to save succeeding generations

from the scourge of war” and to “promote social

progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.