El Salvador, 2003

Before addressing the pressing issues before the

international community and expressing our position

on the issues that have been discussed here, I would

like to begin by referring to the concrete example of

my own country.

On 6 January 2003, the people and Government

of El Salvador received an official communication

from the Secretary-General informing us of the

completion of the verification function of the United

Nations vis-à-vis the Peace Agreement that ended 13

years of war in our country. Eleven years have elapsed

since that historic Peace Agreement put an end to an

armed conflict that had been destroying our country for

over a decade.

Before the war we were a poor country. Sixty-per

cent of our fellow citizens lived under the poverty line.

Our country has also been dealt a harsh blow by nature.

Every generation of Salvadorans has had to rebuild

their lives due to the fact that, throughout our history,

there has never been a twenty-five-year period without

the occurrence of a natural disaster of enormous

proportions. We are also an overpopulated country,

with over 6 million inhabitants sharing 21,000 square

kilometres. That makes us one of the most densely

populated countries of the American continent. Being

completely dependant on agriculture, fluctuations in

the prices of coffee and sugar have always determined

our prospects for development.

A little over a decade ago we stood no chance of

meeting our financial commitments. Our debts far

exceeded our ability to pay. Poor, small, overpopulated,

indebted, dependent upon agriculture, afflicted by

natural disasters and immersed in a widespread armed

conflict, El Salvador appeared not to have a future

barely 12 years ago. Violence, coupled with the harsh

realities of underdevelopment, appeared to have

doomed us to a vicious circle devoid of hope.

We are a different country today. We view the

future with confidence, for we have discovered our

capacities. In just 12 years we have reduced poverty by

half, from 60 per cent of our population, in 1991, to 33

per cent today. Over 30 per cent of our population had

been living in extreme poverty. Today only half as

many, 15 per cent, live in that distressing situation. Our

efforts have had a direct impact on the standard of

living of all of our citizens. Twelve years ago 25 per

cent of Salvadorans did not know how to read or write.

That figure is only 13 per cent today. The child

mortality rate, which had been at 45 per thousand

births, stands at 25 per thousand today.

We have accomplished all that by dedicating

ourselves to the most pressing needs of our people. In

order to connect our most isolated towns, we have built

one kilometre of road every day for the last four years.

We have also built three schools every day in the same

period, so as to educate our poorest children. Similarly,

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we have built 106 houses every day for low-income

families. And every five days we have built a new

health centre.

Having once been completely dependent on

agriculture, today we rank number 3, out of 24 Latin

American countries, in terms of export growth. During

the difficult decade of the 1990s we managed to grow

at a much faster rate than our region at large. We have

now become the second-ranking country in Latin

America in economic growth.

Despite the immense burden posed by

reconstruction after the earthquakes of 2001, year after

year we have reduced our budget deficit, bringing it to

under 1 per cent in 2004. This has allowed us to control

inflation, lowering it from 30 per cent to 2 per cent this

year, and thus to avoid a decline in family income. We

have zero risk of devaluation and today, after having

seen interest rates of 30 per cent, we have the lowest

bank interest rates of our region — 6.8 per cent. For 11

years now, we have had no fluctuation in exchange

rates, allowing us to acquire a rate of investment that is

matched in Latin America only by Chile, Mexico and

my country.

The living conditions of Salvadorans have

changed considerably. Rates of unemployment have

fallen from 13 per cent to 6.8 per cent. Having had

only 250,000 telephone lines in 1992, we now have 1.6

million. It is less expensive to make a telephone call

from El Salvador to United Nations Headquarters than

it is from Headquarters to El Salvador. In just over a

decade, the number of automobiles has grown by a

factor of four. We have managed to increase the supply

of drinking water and electrification in rural areas by

50 per cent. We have achieved peace. We have devoted

our energies to economic development and our

resources to the poorest among us.

I have elaborated on developments in my country

in recent years because it seems to me that we in El

Salvador have discovered an effective way not only of

resolving violent conflict, but also of combating

poverty. Such means, which the international

community is seeking to confront the complexities of

our world, are based on universally valid principles.

Thus, to understand the case of El Salvador is to

understand new possibilities for other nations and

solutions to other problems.

The two most important challenges for a nation

are learning how to live and understanding why we are

alive. The former is an entirely practical matter,

requiring knowledge of the workings of the modern

world — how it works and what opportunities are

available to a poor country in a world that is rapidly

evolving. The second is an entirely abstract matter, but

it is all the more important for that, because only when

we are clear about the meaning of our shared lives can

we develop a sense of purpose that allows us to

channel the energies of a community towards a national

objective.

It is a paradox rich in significance that we

Salvadorans, in order to find our commitment to the

future, had to delve into the traditions that gave us our

identity in the past. When we found ourselves in the

dead end of war, we had to rethink our destiny. In spite

of our suffering, we had all the resources we needed to

move ahead: talent, energy, experience, faith and will.

We had the prudence to avoid future dangers and the

courage to confront present challenges.

The basic principle on which we have built our

country is that every Salvadoran has access to the truth.

In every part of our land, it is possible for every

Salvadoran to speak out, to express himself or herself

without any constraint based on status. It is on the basis

of the views of our compatriots that we have built the

new El Salvador. We decided that, if this were to

become a reality, three principles were needed:

freedom, justice and the inalienable right to life. The

concrete manifestations of these values are democracy,

economic freedom and the rule of law. This applies not

only to El Salvador and Salvadorans, but equally to all

the inhabitants of our world. Every human being has

access to the truth. It is in the human capacity for

reason that we find our moral potential. That is why we

must be free.

At a time when we wonder about the role of the

United Nations, we must recall that the Organization

was born to ensure those fundamental rights. This

forum cannot be paralysed in debates when freeing a

nation from tyranny is at issue. We must all act in the

face of oppression. Terrorism is a negation of all the

values we share. We need a consensus on the values

that unite us and a renewed will for action.

We can debate interminably here the issue of Iraq

and the current circumstances of the Iraqi people, but

what brooks no debate is the fact that this forum has

not acted in a way commensurate with the demands of

an increasingly complex world. The United Nations

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must be rethought and restructured so that it can meet

the objectives for which it was created.

We Salvadorans speak with the solidity that we

have gained from having fully shouldered our

responsibilities towards the international community.

We are participants in the reconstruction of Iraq. We

speak with the legitimacy of having been ourselves the

battleground of the last conflict of the cold war and we

understand how the mediation of the international

community can help to find a solution to a conflict and

give hope to a desperate nation.

In conclusion, we wish to express our sorrow at

the death of United Nations staff members in Baghdad.

We reaffirm the right of all nations to have a voice in

this forum. The absence of the Republic of China in the

deliberations of this forum represents a rejection of the

legitimate aspirations of a nation that should speak in

its own voice, just as we do, in this body and the

community of nations.

The liberator of the Americas summarized, in

words far more eloquent than mine, the values that

must inspire this forum and our discussions here. He

said:

“Peoples, no one can take possession of

your sovereignty, unless it be violently and

illegitimately. Flee that country where one person

alone seeks to exercise all powers. That will be a

country of slaves.”