Rwanda, 2009

This session of the General

Assembly offers further opportunity to reflect on how

best to reconcile what at times mistakenly appears to

be irreconcilable: socio-economic development and a

healthy environment. Leaders, experts and citizens the

world over ask how we can grow our economies and

spread prosperity to more of the world’s citizens, yet

not degrade our oceans, rivers and the air we breathe?

But these are also times of extraordinary

scientific, technological and business innovations that

can help address those challenges, if we have the

courage to put into proper perspective and indeed

harmonize our national, regional and global priorities.

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History is replete with illustrations of how

nations immersed in crises changed the underlying

assumptions by which they acted, created new

institutions and tools to solve problems and emerged

from the process as stronger societies. While those

innovations are always different, the challenges to

surmount the crises are always the same: forging a

shared vision, increasing the social capital required to

enhance predictability, having trustful relations

between peoples, being receptive to doing things in

new ways and adopting an explicit moral purpose in

order to achieve common goals.

We have an exceptional opportunity to

simultaneously address our environmental challenges,

improve our economies and reform our global

multilateral institutions for better global governance.

For example, the Group of Twenty (G-20) is now

playing a crucial role in restoring global economic

stability. But should we not even broaden the base to

include many nations that are most vulnerable to the

decisions of the few? All nations should be part of

those important discussions and decisions, because

they have valuable contributions to make. This is the

time to embrace true multilateralism.

We in developing nations appreciate the

corrective measures taken by the G-20 and the Group

of Eight to accelerate global economic recovery. But it

is evident that most of their proposals fall short of the

concrete steps needed to address challenges that are

specific to low-income countries.

Multilateralism has always been the key tenet in

forging a fairer international community based on

equitable global governance. The United Nations itself

is based on that very sound and tested principle, and

that should be the practice. The rise of worldwide

networks of trade, industry, prosperity and social

values, together with the creation of multilateral

institutions to guide and harmonize those processes,

has no doubt contributed to a fairer and improved

global decision-making system. That is what needs to

be rendered more inclusive.

Improving global governance has also to address

international justice. International justice should be fair

to all — rich and poor, strong or weak. We are all

pleased to note that at its sixty-third session the

General Assembly undertook to examine

comprehensively the issue of universal jurisdiction. We

look forward to the resolutions on that matter during

the Assembly’s current session.

It is also fitting that we recognize the recent

creation of a single entity within the United Nations to

advance the work on women’s rights and gender

equality. Rwanda has always made that one of its

priorities and has achieved good results.

With regard to socio-economic challenges in our

East African Community region, we are making

progress in key areas. For instance, we are preparing to

inaugurate, in January 2010, the East African Common

Market to facilitate greater trade, investment and the

free movement of almost 130 million people. We

believe that there is no better strategy for mitigating

economic difficulties than building larger regional

markets that bring about improved productivity, which

increases purchasing power and, in turn, strengthens

our societies.

With regard to the global environmental

challenge, this session of the General Assembly

provides an important platform for preparing for the

Copenhagen climate change summit. Every nation

should have co-equal status and be considered a

concerned nation at the forthcoming summit. That

implies that each nation has both rights and obligations

and should be open to burden-sharing according to its

ability. This is the time to address in a timely fashion

such key issues as how much the industrialized

countries are to reduce their emissions of greenhouse

gases, how much the developing countries are to limit

the growth of their emissions, and how to finance and

support strategies to conserve energy, mitigate risk and

build green technologies that counteract the impact of

climate change in the developing world.

We in Rwanda have been making a modest but

proportionate contribution by, among other things,

hosting African preparatory meetings for the

Copenhagen summit in order to encourage a strong and

essential African voice at that critical meeting. We

have also been actively implementing national

environmental policies for reforestation, terracing and

the rehabilitation of wetlands that supply lake and river

systems in our country, to name a few areas in which

we have had good results.

On the matter of peace and security, the world

faces a number of regional threats. The Great Lakes

region has its share of peace and security problems, but

we continue to make significant progress in

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fundamentally addressing that question. The leaders of

the region recognize that, most crucially, home-grown

solutions, beginning with a joint regional effort, can

bring about sustainable peace. It is in that context that,

together with our colleagues and neighbours in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, we are dealing

with the root cause of instability in our area, namely,

the negative forces that have been a menace since

1994.

If history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot

apply the same strategies to different problems and

expect satisfactory outcomes all the time. We have to

think differently on the fundamental questions,

including the urgent imperatives of, first, strengthening

the future of all nations by fostering economic growth

and development while investing in the environment.

That should be our moral purpose. Secondly, we must

improve peace and stability in all regions by learning

from, and supporting, legitimate regional actors.

Finally, we must engage and embrace the majority

world in terms of multilateralism in decision-making,

trade and prosperity.

These should be our shared vision. Future

generations will then know how leaders of nations in

the year 2009, immersed in crises, focused on the most

difficult challenges, including the global economic

crisis, climate change and greater peace and security,

and how they acted with resolve.