Senegal, 2002

My

delegation is particularly pleased to convey to Mr. Jan

Kavan its heartfelt congratulations and fervent hopes

for success in the lofty and important task ahead of

him. His well-deserved election to the presidency of

the fifty-seventh session of the General Assembly is a

fitting tribute to the spirit of the Czech people as well

as to his outstanding intellectual and moral qualities.

I am pleased to take this opportunity to say how

much we appreciated the courtesy, the commitment and

the competence of his predecessor, Mr. Han Seung-soo,

who guided our discussions in such an outstanding

manner. We express to him our sincere and deep

gratitude for his many relevant initiatives, including

working visits to West Africa, particularly to Senegal,

which are testimony of friendship for my country and

support for the New Partnership for Africa's

Development (NEPAD).

I should like also like to express once again to

Secretary-General Kofi Annan our admiration for his

steadfast determination in serving the ideals and causes

of our Organization. Thanks to his wisdom and far-

sightedness, the United Nations has found new vigour

with which to meet the tremendous challenges

confronting humankind.

It is therefore fitting that our Organization

which more than ever needs the widest support for its

plans and projects for a better management of the

affairs of our globalized world is gaining two new

Members: Switzerland and, soon, East Timor. To the

delegations of those two friendly countries, I would

like to express Senegal's warmest congratulations and

our conviction that their contribution will undoubtedly

be enriching for our Organization, whose universal

character will thereby be reinforced.

It is precisely in the name of the principle of the

universality of the United Nations that Senegal

reiterates its fervent wish to see the Republic of China

on Taiwan join the concert of nations and assume its

full responsibilities in our Organization and its

specialized agencies. Granting that request, following

the good precedent of the World Trade Organization,

would bring justice to the 23 million inhabitants of the

Republic of China on Taiwan, who through their

exemplary conduct on the world stage have already

given proof of Taipei's attachment to the noble

objectives of the San Francisco Charter.

Last week, the United Nations and the

international community commemorated the

anniversary of the tragic events of 11 September 2001.

We express once again our sincere sentiments of

sympathy and compassion to the thousands of

American and other families in mourning. Senegal, its

head of State and its Government strongly reiterate

their steadfast determination to fight against terrorism

in all its forms and manifestations, whatever its

motivations and whoever its perpetrators and sponsors.

Senegal proclaims loudly and clearly that there is no

reason or cause sufficiently just or sufficiently good

that it could justify an act of terrorism against pregnant

women and other innocent civilians.

23

The Dakar Declaration against Terrorism, adopted

on 17 October 2001 at the initiative of President

Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, gives full expression to

our fervent wish to strengthen regional and subregional

cooperation in order to dismantle the menace of

terrorist activities on our continent. Let us remember

the heinous and unrepentant terrorist strikes against the

African people in Kenya and Tanzania. Nor do we

forget the heroic daily resistance of the Algerian people

in the face of repeated assaults by killers blinded by

their hatred and not by their faith in God, at least not in

the God of love and compassion that we Muslims

proudly call Allah.

To that end, Senegal submitted some months ago

to the African Union a draft additional protocol to the

Convention on the Prevention and Combating of

Terrorism of the Organization of African Unity and the

African Union. The draft protocol aims to strengthen

the Algiers Convention and to adapt it to the post-11-

September context. Also, my delegation welcomes the

fine initiative of the Commission of the African Union,

which recently held in Algiers a high-level

intergovernmental meeting on terrorism in Africa. In

other words, we have the common responsibility to

maintain and to strengthen the international

mobilization against terrorist networks and their

financing.

My Government welcomes the excellent work

already carried out by the Security Council Counter-

Terrorism Committee pursuant to Security Council

resolution 1373 (2001). Senegal encourages the

Committee to pursue its efforts and requests the

Working Group of the General Assembly's Sixth

Committee to do everything to hasten the adoption of a

comprehensive international convention against

terrorism.

It is a truism that the fight against terrorism is a

part of the international community's struggle to

promote international peace and security. That is the

objective that over the past months has not escaped our

Organization, which has strived to find lasting

solutions to conflicts that destroy the social and

economic fabric of numerous countries, especially in

Africa.

In that regard, Senegal keenly appreciates the

determined commitment of the Security Council,

which, more conscious than ever of its role of

guarantor of international peace and security, has

devoted a large portion of its work this year to conflicts

and tensions afflicting the African continent. Among

the numerous praiseworthy initiatives of the Security

Council, I would like to mention the convening of

special meetings devoted to the situation of Africa,

brilliantly presided over by the Ministers for Foreign

Affairs of Mauritius and Singapore during their

respective presidencies.

On behalf of the Economic Community of West

African States (ECOWAS), of which Senegal currently

holds the chairmanship, I would like to nurture the

hope that the United Nations will stay the course in

order to forever stave off violence and wars, which

take a serious financial toll on the future of many

African countries. I am thinking of Sierra Leone, where

the current exemplary normalization of the political

and economic situation has largely been facilitated by

the holding of free, transparent, democratic and

peaceful elections.

It is urgent that the bells of peace, which have

sounded in Freetown, also be heard in Monrovia, where

the absence of political dialogue led the way to grave

socio-economic instability, whose contagious effect

could turn out to be disastrous for the Mano River

Union area. Senegal, as Chairman of ECOWAS, is

working tirelessly and hopes to be able to report to the

Assembly on its many initiatives under way, which

could very shortly lay the foundations of peace in

Liberia.

In Sierra Leone and Liberia, as in Guinea-Bissau,

where the Government of President Kumba Yal· is

attempting with courage and abnegation to lift the

country out of a financial and economic crisis

following a trying civil war, the international

community has the duty to continue more steadfastly

its valuable assistance. In that regard, I welcome the

strong signal sent by the Security Council under the

United States presidency to financial backers with

respect to granting Guinea-Bissau substantial financial

aid so that it can firmly return to the path of peace and

prosperity.

The interest in that neighbour of Senegal and in

our subregion recalls the wise and timely decision to

establish at Dakar an Office of the Special

Representative of the Secretary-General for West

Africa. That Office should promote better coordination

among the activities of the United Nations in our

subregion and their greater impact on the ground. I am

24

pleased to sincerely congratulate Secretary-General

Kofi Annan on that clear-sighted initiative. It goes

without saying that the Office will enjoy the

enthusiastic support and complete cooperation of the

Government of Senegal.

Allow me to recall the activities of President

Abdoulaye Wade in benefit of the great African people

of Madagascar. His personal and total involvement in

mediating a solution to the Madagascar crisis has, as a

great international statesman said, surely spared the

people of that great island a drift towards a civil war of

incalculable consequences. He and his African

colleagues who have taken up that issue have shown

the world that with the strong support of the

international community Africans will prove that they

are also and above all peacemakers.

Elsewhere, beyond the African continent but so

close to our hearts, we observe a growing danger in the

Middle East. This year again, the world has witnessed

unheard-of violence in the Palestinian territories, where

the occupying military Power, Israel, has decidedly

opted for State violence, which leads to concepts as

dangerous as the so-called targeted assassinations and

other preventive operations.

On the Palestinian side, that situation has caused

an increase in terrorist cells specialists in suicide

belts groups that we unequivocally and resolutely

condemn. That network has produced an erosion of

trust between Israelis and Palestinians trust that

must be restored as swiftly as possible through frank

and constructive dialogue that leads to a just and

lasting solution.

In order to achieve that, it is imperative that Tel

Aviv comply with the relevant Security Council

resolutions in particular resolutions 242 (1967), 338

(1973) and 1397 (2002) and that it also adhere to the

peace plan proposed by Saudi Arabia and to the

initiatives of the Quartet, which set out the basic

principles of land for peace and withdrawal for

normalization. The international community, in

particular the Security Council and the Quartet, has the

critical duty to formulate a bold plan to realize the

vision of two States within the 1967 borders and to

hasten what Senegal has continued to call for in all

international forums: the immediate convening of an

international conference on Palestine, leading to a

specific mechanism that would address political,

economic and security issues and having as its starting

point the creation of a sovereign Palestinian State side

by side an Israeli State, living in peace and harmony

with its neighbours.

Over the past 12 months, the international scene

has been dominated by the holding of three major

conferences that were crucial events in humanity's

collective march towards a more just and more unified

world: the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World

Trade Organization, held at Doha, Qatar; the

International Conference on Financing for

Development, held at Monterrey, Mexico; and the

World Summit on Sustainable Development, held at

Johannesburg, South Africa. Those world conferences

and the strong alliances that they created will allow

humanity to enter the third millennium on a positive

note.

I should like to note here that, in the light of

those statements of good intentions, the time for action

has come. We must act swiftly so that globalization, a

phenomenon that affects us all, will ultimately benefit

us all. Up to now, despite its certain virtues,

globalization seems to have caused greater

marginalization of the vast majority of the peoples of

the South. As a consequence, it is urgent that we

identify innovative mechanisms of development

financing. In fact, even if official development

assistance is still valuable for the States of the South,

its effectiveness will be limited without the addition of

concrete measures such as access for products of the

South to markets of the North, an increase in foreign

direct investment flows to developing countries,

particularly those in Africa, and the initiating role that,

we must recognize, belongs to the international and

African private sectors. Indeed, Senegal is convinced

that no country in the world has ever developed

through official development assistance. The private

sector, infrastructure and education are universally

acknowledged as the tripod of genuine sustainable

development. It is no less urgent, following the much-

appreciated appointment of a High Representative of

the Secretary-General for the Least Developed

Countries, that we all commit ourselves to

implementing the Brussels Programme of Action, in

conformity with the consensus of the 12th Ministerial

Meeting of the Group of 49, held at Cotonou from 5 to

7 August 2002.

The success of such initiatives cannot depend on

Governments alone. We need to build firm partnerships

with local communities, with civil society actors, with

25

the private sector, with non-governmental

organizations and with international organizations. It is

fitting that humanity's oldest continent should be proud

of the adoption of the New Partnership for Africa's

Development (NEPAD), a double partnership

internal and international and a linkage, on the one

hand, among Africans and, on the other, between

Africa and the rest of the international community,

which has already shown its full support for that new

initiative. As evidence, I cite the Group of Eight Africa

Action Plan and the holding of the high-level plenary

meeting of the General Assembly to consider how to

support NEPAD.

Through NEPAD, which has the merit of defining

the prerequisites for African development, of

identifying sectoral priorities and of developing a

resource mobilization strategy, African leaders

among them His Excellency Mr. Abdoulaye Wade,

President of the Republic of Senegal intend to

demonstrate that the responsibility for Africa's

development is essentially theirs. In that context, I

must mention the launching of the African Union in

July at Durban, South Africa. We hope that its Peace

and Security Council, coupled with NEPAD's Peer

Review Mechanism, will lead to strong commitments

by our heads of State, first for our people and then for

our partners, which are very concerned by the central

questions of good governance and conflict prevention

and resolution.

Our development concerns do not preclude our

demands for human rights. That is why my country

attaches great importance to the promotion and

protection of the rights of women and children. At the

initiative of the Government, a major programme is

under way to combat, in particular, violence against

women and the trafficking and exploitation of women

and children for commercial and sexual purposes. In

those areas, the strategy formulated and implemented

by Senegal is based on action plans adopted at the

special session of the General Assembly on Beijing +5

and on the follow-up to the World Summit on Children.

As is its custom, Senegal wishes to honour and

praise the great role of women in the world, in

particular their African sisters, as the foundation and

the powerful engine of African renewal. History will

take note that it is Senegal that, through its President,

has demanded and ensured that each of the five

subregions of Africa elect at least one woman in its

quota of two Commissioners to the Commission of the

African Union. Africa is thus teaching the rest of the

world a lesson in unprecedented parity, which is more

proof if it were needed that, if we seek competent

women, we will find them.

At the initiative of its President, Senegal will

organize, on 10 October at Dakar, a special summit of

heads of State or Government of ECOWAS to follow

up the results of the twenty-sixth special session of the

General Assembly, devoted to children.

The rights of women and children are integral

elements of human rights, and my country reaffirms its

attachment to the principles of the universality,

interdependence and indivisibility of human rights, of

good economic and political governance and of the rule

of law. It is that democratic imperative that has

prompted the head of State of Senegal to strengthen our

institutional arsenal by creating the position of

Commissioner of Human Rights, to which a woman

has been appointed.

As members are aware, Senegal was the first

country in the world to ratify the Rome Statute for the

establishment of the International Criminal Court

(ICC), whose entry into force on 1 July 2002 my

country welcomed. That commitment resulted in my

Government's decision to present a candidate for judge

on the ICC one of our finest magistrates and a

specialist in criminal law.

In conclusion, I should like, in recalling the

urgency of confronting humanity's numerous

challenges, to express the earnest hope that the

Organization will bolster its ability to better serve the

legitimate hopes of the world's peoples. Undoubtedly,

that path will anchor the future of a world reconciled

with itself, where justice, freedom, peace and

prosperity will be jealously preserved in justice and

freedom, in peace and prosperity, and in the dignity of

human beings all human beings.