Sierra Leone, 2010

Once again, it is a great

honour and pleasure for me to address this

distinguished Assembly. Let me start by congratulating

Mr. Joseph Deiss on his assumption of the presidency

at the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly and

assuring him of my delegation’s full support and

cooperation. I would also like to convey my sincere

appreciation to his predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Ali

Abdussalam Treki, for his efficient and effective

conduct of the previous session. My gratitude also goes

to the Secretary-General for his comprehensive account

of the work of the United Nations and his analysis of

the challenges facing our global community.

In my statement I would like to talk both about

the successes that my country has achieved with the

help of the international community and about the

reforms we now need to make in the way we interact

and govern ourselves globally. My Government is

sincerely grateful for the international community’s

engagement with Sierra Leone’s efforts to put the

country on a path to sustained economic growth and

development. Building on this engagement, our

country has significantly improved our international

standing in many areas.

The Global Peace Index now ranks Sierra Leone

as the fifty-third most peaceful country in the world.

The Mo Ibrahim Index records that we are one of the

five crisis-affected countries that have made a

significant leap forward in democratic governance. A

recent International Monetary Fund review shows

improvement in our public finances, with our 4 per

cent annual economic growth rate higher than the

average rate of 2 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa. We

have also made steady progress in our rankings on

doing business, corruption perception and democracy.

In addition, earlier this year I was the proud recipient

on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone of a peace prize

awarded by ACCORD, the African Centre for the

Constructive Resolution of Disputes. And only last

week my country received a Millennium Development

Goal Award for showing outstanding leadership in the

fight against HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

My Government has also continued to emphasize

the protection of the basic rights of the people of Sierra

Leone. We have put in place comprehensive justice

sector reforms in response to both national and global

demands, to ensure that the rights of citizens are

preserved, and that they have access to justice for all.

And the Human Rights Commission of Sierra Leone

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has assumed a lead role in advising my Government on

building a culture of human rights. It ensures that the

Government ratifies international treaties and protocols

and fulfils its reporting obligations. A case in point is

our recent validation of the common core document

that forms the basis for all reporting on international

treaties.

Sierra Leone is among the few countries

emerging from conflict that have formulated a

comprehensive action plan for Security Council

resolutions 1325 (2000) and 1820 (2008). My

Government is determined to ensure effective

implementation of the action plan, particularly in

addressing gender-based violence as well as enhancing

women’s participation in politics and the public sector.

My Government’s commitment to free media is

equally strong. No journalist has been imprisoned in

my country since I assumed office. We have transformed

the Government-owned broadcasting services into what is

only the second independent public service broadcaster in

Africa, the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon witnessed the launch of

this historic, groundbreaking initiative in June. It is the

beginning of a new era of access to independent, unbiased

and impartial information in our country.

My Government is also delivering results on the

key priorities in my Agenda for Change to improve the

lives of all Sierra Leoneans. We have launched free

health care for pregnant and lactating women, as well

as children under five, for the first time in our history,

improving access to around 300,000 women and more

than a million children. We have also begun the serious

commercialization of agriculture, the mainstay of our

economy, particularly through smallholder farmers, for

whom we are facilitating improved mechanization,

irrigation and the establishment of farming

cooperatives. We have successfully made significant

progress on road construction and the rehabilitation of

electricity supply in key provincial cities and towns, to

generate economic activity across the country. We have

made great strides in attracting large-scale private

sector investors from international companies,

following the Sierra Leone Trade and Investment

Forum in London last year. Furthermore, to maintain

macroeconomic stability and make those achievements

sustainable, my Government also remains firmly

committed to the fight against corruption.

Despite that progress, many challenges remain. I

am proud of what Sierra Leone has achieved so far. But

we need to further enhance our capacity to promote

and protect human rights, establish good governance

and managerial capacity across the whole public sector

and fight corruption and trafficking in narcotic drugs.

For all that, our country will need further technical

assistance and cooperation, private capital investments

and technology transfer.

Most importantly, we are not oblivious to the

imperative of consolidating peace through enhanced

political dialogue, tolerance and ensuring a free and

fair electoral process. With those elements and our

political resolve, we will make further progress

towards peace, security and a stable and open

democracy.

I shall now turn to the theme of the Assembly’s

sixty-fifth session: reaffirming the central role of the

United Nations in global governance. It could not have

been better timed, at a moment when the global

community is grappling with myriad challenges facing

the international system. The end of the cold war,

together with an explosion in information and

communication technologies, gave rise to a new

paradigm of flexible or loose functional coalitions

involving State and non-State actors. A new

configuration of interdependent relationships,

economic, social, political and ethnic in nature, has

emerged from those historic circumstances.

There are fears that globalization nurtures the

dominance of power politics, a growing disparity

between the North and the South, intolerance of

different values, a tendency to resort to force to solve

international conflicts, and neglect of the environment.

At the same time, globalization has led to a multilevel

system of governance that is beginning to address

global issues ranging from economic interdependence,

migration, financial crises and drug trafficking to the

pandemics of tuberculosis, avian flu, HIV/AIDS and

malaria.

It is in recognition of the imperative to promote

multilateralism and build synergies with both State and

non-State actors that I commend the choice of theme.

We support the United Nations more than any other

organization as a centre of global governance. It has

the unique characteristics of a global mandate and

universal membership. Those characteristics make it an

indispensable and neutral catalyst for the achievement

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of international cooperation in solving international

problems of an economic, social, cultural or

humanitarian character. The centrality of the role of the

United Nations in global governance cannot be

overemphasized.

The recently concluded High-level Meeting on

the Millennium Development Goals revealed that

progress has been uneven and that developing

countries, particularly those in Africa, continue to be

most vulnerable to the effects of globalization. The

prevailing global recession resulting from the

economic and financial crisis that struck developed

economies has further compounded that challenge. In

this context, my Government believes that the United

Nations remains the crucial hub for norm-setting and

harmonizing the actions of nations for the maintenance

of international peace and security and for the

attainment of our development goals.

The Assembly, meeting at the turn of the

millennium, decided that reforming the Security

Council and making it more accessible, transparent,

equitably representative and accountable was long

overdue. That brings me to the crucial issue that has

led us in Africa to consistently reiterate that there can

be no meaningful reform of the Council without

allocating permanent seats to the continent.

No one continent should have an exclusive

monopoly over membership of the Security Council.

There is no justification for a discriminatory allocation

of seats, nor can we debate endlessly and ignore the

realities of our rapidly changing global circumstances.

While the fifth round of talks has not truly led to

a compromise-oriented solution, distilling all positions

into a single negotiating document has been a

significant step in the right direction. We in Africa look

forward to and support a process that will allow the

text to evolve during the next session of the General

Assembly in an open, inclusive and balanced manner,

towards a solution that can garner the widest possible

political acceptance by Member States. We urge all

delegations to muster the political will required for

progress.

I wish to conclude my statement by saying that

the moment has come for us to address the historical

injustice inflicted on Africa by allocating the continent

no less than two seats, with all their attributes and

privileges, and two additional seats in both the

non-permanent and permanent categories of the

Council. I do not need to emphasize that at the

inception of the United Nations, most of Africa was not

represented and that as a result Africa remains to this

day the only continent without a permanent seat in the

Council. To ensure greater relevance of the Security

Council within a revamped United Nations system,

Africa demands permanent representation on the

Security Council, with all the requisite attributes.