Senegal, 2004

The delegation

of Senegal would like to congratulate you very warmly,

Mr. President, on your election to the presidency of the

fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly. I assure

you of our full support as you carry out your noble

work. I also wish to extend my congratulations and

encouragement to all the members of the Bureau.

I would also like to recognize the commitment of

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose tireless efforts

to make the United Nations a strong, working and

credible Organization reflects his faith in the ideals of

peace, development and concord among peoples. We

must now continue to breathe life into these ideals, so

that current and future generations will have a peaceful

and safe world, a world without absurd hatred or

gratuitous violence. This vision should lead us to re-

invigorate the values of multilateralism and universality

that are epitomized by our Organization. In other words,

the world needs now, more than ever, a United Nations

that is strong and strengthened in its legitimacy.

We welcome, therefore, the decision of the

United Nations Secretary-General to establish a panel

of eminent persons on threats, challenges and change,

whose conclusions will be presented next December. In

this respect, we recall the African position on reform of

the Security Council, which advocates among other

things, the assignment to Africa of at least two

permanent seats and two extra non-permanent seats.

Africa would choose the recipients of those seats

according to a process that has yet to be determined.

As I extol universality, I feel it is unfair that the

Republic of China on Taiwan, with its 23 million

inhabitants, its major democratic system and its

impressive economic vitality, would still be sidelined

from the work of the United Nations, whose Charter

does rightly enshrine the essential principles of justice

and universality.

This denial of justice also affects the valiant

people of Palestine, who, under the legitimate authority

of President Yasser Arafat, have been deprived of its

fundamental right to sovereignty and ongoing

existence. The defiant attitude of the occupying Power

vis-à-vis the international community, recently

illustrated by the Israeli authorities’ refusal to abide by

the opinion of the International Court of Justice

requiring Israel to immediately stop the illegal building

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of the separation wall in Palestinian territory, imperils

the foundations of international legality. I solemnly

appeal to the international community and, in

particular, to the members of the Quartet, asking them

to persevere in their efforts for an immediate

resumption of dialogue, so that we may achieve a fair,

equitable and lasting solution to this disagreement. The

peoples of Palestine and Israel, needless to recall, are

condemned by history and geography to live together.

For our part, Senegal, which chairs the United

Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable

Rights of the Palestinian People, will continue, with its

people, to unfailingly support the Palestinian people,

battered by this crisis that has lasted far too long. As a

contribution to the quest for peace, I suggested that we

conduct a special meeting, outside our regular work, on

the situation in Palestine aimed at enhancing the work

launched by the Quartet and in the spirit of the road

map, in order to establish by 2005 a sovereign and

viable Palestinian State, living side by side with the

State of Israel, within safe and internationally

recognized borders guaranteed for the two States. This

initiative, which has already been endorsed by the

Non-Aligned Movement and the African Union, will

provide an opportunity to mobilize the international

community around the effective implementation of the

road map.

In awarding me yesterday the 2004 Human

Rights Award, the International League for Human

Rights in fact honoured, through Senegal’s head of

State, all of the Senegalese people, a people attached to

freedom and to the respect of human dignity. My

Government will continue to work to promote and

protect human rights, the rule of law and good public

and private governance. In talking about human rights,

I am naturally thinking of the fundamental rights of

women, children, disabled persons, seniors and all

vulnerable people. This deep commitment to mankind

motivated my decision to submit draft legislation to the

Senegalese national assembly to abolish capital

punishment in Senegal.

Almost 60 years after the establishment of our

Organization, our world, which is so fragile, still sees

longstanding dangers such as nuclear proliferation and

the emergence of new dangers such as terrorism and

AIDS, which represent a serious threat to international

peace and security. I must remind Members here of the

need to do more to strengthen, under the leadership of

the Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee,

the mechanisms that already exist for cooperation and

technical assistance in order to provide those countries

who so wish human, technical and adequate financial

resources to combat terrorism. This initiative, of

course, must be paired with States’ increased adherence

to treaties and protocols in this key area. It is for this

purpose that the African Union adopted last July an

additional protocol to the Organization of African

Unity’s Algiers Convention on the Prevention and

Combating of Terrorism, proposed by Senegal on

17 October 2001 at the African conference on

terrorism, held in Dakar.

This collective approach should also be adopted

to tackle the difficult problem of small arms and light

weapons. Senegal supports making the moratorium on

the importation, exportation and production of small

arms and light weapons of the Economic Community

of West African States into a convention in West

Africa, since these arms are truly weapons of mass

destruction in our subregion.

There are other destructive scourges. I would like

to speak about AIDS. In accordance with the

declaration that we adopted in 2001, we must act more

quickly and more vigorously in critical areas such as

prevention and access to antiretroviral treatments if we

really do wish to stop this disease and its devastating

effects. Since antiretroviral medication is now free for

all those who are afflicted, thanks to our tenacity,

Senegal has remained a success story in combating

AIDS.

Another seemingly ignored ill is poliomyelitis,

which we have completely eliminated in Senegal.

However, this scourge remains as serious as ever in the

rest of Africa.

During this second trimester of 2004, the North

and West parts of Africa have witnessed the invasion

of swarms of locusts, the dreaded scourge which has

infested large agricultural areas in the region of the

Sahel and some North African countries. This threat,

which has already destroyed entire civilizations, is now

compromising the lives of tens of millions of people

right before harvest time. At the very beginning, I

personally sounded the alarm, speaking to the

international community in Rome last March. Despite

another appeal by the Director-General of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),

assistance was late in coming and is only now under

way, but in ways that are not very effective.

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Whatever the case may be, Senegal has begun to

work on this issue, and today we are succeeding in

containing this danger. Together with neighbouring

countries, the countries bordering the Sahel, we are

trying to launch an extensive campaign for the final

elimination of these locusts. In this regard, we note

with great satisfaction the involvement of African

countries, including Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, South

Africa, Libya and Egypt in this issue. Today, our

people remain concerned about the possible migration

of these locusts, carried by the wind, to other areas in

the region, in particular to the Maghreb. We are also

pleased to announce that we have received substantial

support by the World Bank, among other international

organizations. This means that we have a shared

responsibility to strengthen and mobilize the

international community against locusts and, if we

succeed in saving the crops, to completely eliminate

them, starting at their source.

The task at hand in this area should not make us

lose sight of the huge field of work that remains to be

tackled, namely combating the poverty that strikes

millions of people throughout the world, in particular

in the least developed countries so that we can achieve

the Millennium Development Goals in terms of

agriculture. I must say here that I am satisfied with the

outcome of the meeting that was held on the initiative

of President Lula, the President of Brazil.

Yet we all see and are concerned that, as has been

emphasized by the Secretary-General and others, in

spite of the relative improvement in the economic

situation in Africa since 1995, the chances of our

continent achieving the Millennium Development

Goals are still rather low given the lack of progress to

date. Implementation of those Goals is particularly at risk

even at a time when the world economy is progressing

in an encouraging way: Africa continues, mainly

because of the export subsidies of developed countries,

to be marginalized in world trade. It is a truism to say

that those subsidies help to impoverish African

producer countries and increase unemployment.

Another problem is the thorny issue of African

debt. The continent has dedicated itself to resolution of

this problem: next year we will hold a major summit

preceded by a technical meeting on ending Africa’s

indebtedness.

The Extraordinary Summit of the African Union

on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa, just

held in Ouagadougou on 8 and 9 September, illustrates

our continent’s determination to continue to devote

special attention to the fight against unemployment,

which is a key priority for development. A successful

outcome — in keeping with the outcomes of the various

summits which have given direction to the New

Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) —

requires the international community to make a

stronger commitment, alongside Africa, to help

materialize this important partnership programme. And

that is why I say that I am pleased to see the progress

we have made on NEPAD financing since the Group of

Eight (G-8) meeting in Kananaskis, Canada.

Although insufficiently highlighted, efforts for

African development made under NEPAD and the

support actions of the international community —

particularly those taken by the G-8 and the United

Nations system — are still in evidence, which pleases

me. We have made basically two proposals. The first

has to do with the convening in Senegal’s capital of an

agricultural forum, on the model of the Davos

economic forum, for the purpose, inter alia, of closing

the world agricultural gap. It will be held in February

2005 in Dakar.

The ever-growing digital divide separates the

developed countries from the developing countries. In

December 2003 in Geneva, the Secretary-General

convened The World Summit on the Information

Society. On that occasion, Africa proposed, through

myself, the idea of digital solidarity among peoples and

the establishment of a digital solidarity fund based on

volunteer efforts and not funded by any mandatory tax.

That idea was received with unanimous enthusiasm by

developing countries — Africa, Asia, Brazil, the

Middle East — and by a developed country: France.

Subsequently, the inaugural congress for the United

Cities and Local Governments organization was held in

Paris in May 2004; participants officially announced

their participation in the digital solidarity fund. To the

cities already mentioned elsewhere, I could add Rome,

Paris, Lille and Bilbao.

We are pleased that the Secretary-General has

established a task force on financing the information

society under the decision adopted at Geneva.

Providing Africa with the hardware and other computer

technology it needs is the only way to give us access to

the knowledge that accelerates development and,

which, in turn, will help to close the digital divide.

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As members can see, the challenges we face are

enormous, numerous and pressing. The time has come

to strengthen the foundations of international

cooperation and, once and for all, to exorcize the risk

of social bipolarization throughout the world where

affluence rubs elbows with the most extreme poverty

and where the values of solidarity and respect for the

sacredness of human life become vain words. That is

why I suggested that we hold an international

conference in Dakar on an Islamic-Christian dialogue,

whose objectives would be to help us better understand

one another, to strengthen peaceful coexistence

between Muslims and Christians and to promote a

dialogue among cultures.

Thus, by hosting the eleventh Islamic Summit in

2006, Senegal, which has a majority Muslim

population living in perfect harmony with their

Christian brothers, will continue its action to promote

fruitful inter-religious dialogue focused on the

sacrosanct principle of respect for the cultural and

religious identities of all peoples.