Somalia, 2012

I would like to congratulate

Mr. Jeremić on his election as President of the General

Assembly at its sixty-seventh session and to commend

Ambassador Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser for the

manner in which he guided the proceedings of the

Assembly last year.

Just over two weeks ago, Somalia took a bold and

decisive step away from decades of division, disorder

and conflict, and instead towards the reconstitution

of a more representative, more democratic Somali

Republic, at peace with itself, with its neighbours and

with the rest of the world. On 1 August this year, a

National Constituent Assembly adopted the new Somali

Constitution and on 20 August a new Parliament was

sworn in, which elected our new President, Hassan

Sheikh Mohamud, on 10 September. In the coming

weeks, the President will appoint a Prime Minister and

a new cabinet will be duly established.

Let me take this opportunity to convey the sincere

regrets of President Mohamud. He would have liked to

be here himself to address the Assembly on this great

occasion. However, the tremendous scale and urgency

of the challenges facing him as leader of Somalia and

the demands of his new role did not permit him to travel

here to New York to present his remarks in person. He asked me to come here to convey his warm greetings

and his vision for Somalia’s future.

For more than two decades of crisis, the Somali

people have suffered and endured, but we have not done

so alone. The United Nations has stood by us, providing

humanitarian assistance to those of our people in need,

helping us to rebuild from the ruins of war, bringing

us time and again to the negotiating table to resolve

our differences and maintaining the dignity of the

Somali nation by keeping our f lag f lying throughout

these long, dark years. As we emerge from the long,

dark days, I wish to express my personal thanks, and

those of the Somali people, to the Secretary-General

and his Special Representative, Augustine Mahiga, for

their tireless support and crucial role in helping to open

this new chapter in Somali history.

Somalia’s progress is also due in great measure

to the self less courage and sacrifice of our brothers

and sisters in the African Union, including our closest

neighbours, whose forces have fought long and hard,

with so many laying down their lives in the battle to

give our children a better future. With the support of

the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM)

and other partners, our armed forces are becoming

increasingly experienced and capable, but we will need

AMISOM’s steadfast presence and mentoring for some

time to come, and we call upon our brothers in the

African Union to renew their commitment as we move

forward to assume our own responsibilities in full. We

thank our international partners who are diligently

supporting AMISOM, especially the European Union

and the United States, among others.

The members of the League of Arab States and

the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have also

extended the hand of friendship to the Somali people

during these difficult times. We are especially grateful

to the Government and people of Turkey for their faith,

courage and leadership in ending our long isolation and

building bridges between Somalia and the rest of the

world.

But now, with all these partners standing by us we

must increasingly learn to travel our own path with our

own energies, developing the ability to stand on our

own feet and step free from reliance on our kind friends.

Already, the Somali diaspora from around the world are

returning to the country with investment and skills that

will build the future Somalia. We can also learn from

how peace and growing prosperity have developed in other parts of the country. We must build on the return

of normality in Mogadishu, and elsewhere in Somalia,

and on the growing public confidence in the future. It

is the Somali people in the villages and the nomadic

pastoralists, with their resilience, drive and dynamism,

who are best placed to lend real stability to Somalia’s

future.

The end of Somalia’s transition was brought about

by the tremendous joint efforts of the Transitional

Federal Government, Somali regional administrations,

civil society and our traditional elders. Against all

odds, within one year Somalis were able to adopt a new

provisional Constitution, create a new Parliament and

elect a new President, heralding the beginning of a new

era. This one-year experience has shown several things.

When we put our minds to it, we Somalis are capable

of overcoming tremendous obstacles and delivering

on expectations. It has shown that we can effect our

political transitions within our own country. It has

shown that Somalis are indeed ready for a new chapter

and are calling for a permanent Government that can

build on the foundations of this remarkable year.

Somalia’s transition has officially ended, but

the work of rebuilding our nation continues. The

new administration has four short years to translate

agreements and objectives made on paper into concrete,

tangible progress for our people, and to place Somalia

firmly on an irreversible path to enduring peace and

growing prosperity.

The most urgent challenge is to restore peace

and security throughout Somali territory. Our forces,

together with our African Union allies, are making

great progress in that regard. But a stable peace

cannot be achieved through military means alone. We

must practise the politics of inclusion, establishing

a credible, representative, inclusive and capable

Government — a Government by the people, for the

people, not a Government of the few, serving the

interests of the few. Initially, that Government must be

about delivering real governance and connections with

the people. It must be about the process of building

local representation, addressing community justice

and seeking to build basic services, rather than about

distant institutions of Government from Mogadishu,

or even provincial centres. Power and responsibility

must be devolved as close to the people as possible, in

accordance with the principles of federalism. It will be

important to recognize the existence of other Somali

authorities, as well as de facto political and military forces across the country, with which we will work to

establish a vibrant, prosperous and stable representative

Government democracy, firmly adhering to and

grounded in Somali and Islamic values.

We will also require a fair and independent judiciary,

one resistant to executive interference, and one that will

meet the needs and earn the trust of ordinary citizens,

while bringing an end to the culture of impunity that

has gripped our nation for the past two decades.

We have repeatedly extended an olive branch to the

Government’s adversaries, and, although this has been

repeatedly rejected, our new President will continue

to reach out and offer peace. Al-Shabaab is a complex

and heterogeneous movement. Most of its members are

ordinary citizens who have aligned themselves with

Al-Shabaab out of fear or a sense of grievance. At the

same time we must also be honest with ourselves and

admit that some of the members come from a nationalist,

conservative faction of our fractured country, which

has been disillusioned and damaged by decades of

conflict, and they have sought refuge in an extreme and

harsh source of justice and security. To them we must

prove that there is a better way. To them we have always

said and will continue to say, “Brothers and sisters, lay

down your arms and let us talk”.

We Somalis have a saying — after every war comes

peace. So let us remember that we have no choice as a

nation but to live together. Let us settle our differences

through dialogue and compromise, so that there is no

longer any justification for any Somali to take up arms

against another. To those few ideological extremists in

Al-Shabaab’s ranks who remain committed to the use

of terror and the murder of innocents to achieve their

aims, we say, “There is no place in Somali society, nor

in international society, for you and your violent creed.

We will fight you until Somalia is once again a nation

founded on the peace, tolerance and management that

constitute the true spirit of the great religion of Islam”.

As we focus our energies on these immediate

challenges, we must nevertheless keep our longer-

term goals clearly in view. The new Government

understands clearly that its purpose is not to entrench

itself indefinitely in power, but to lay the foundation

for a democratic system of governance, anchored in

Islamic values and based on universal, competitive

elections, by August 2016.

The new Government has just four short years

within which to establish the states and regions of this federation, and to do so in a way that unifies our people

rather than dividing them. We must validate the new

Constitution through consultation and referendum, and

establish systems of governance that serve the interests

of the Somali people. We must design representative

electoral systems that serve to heal the divisions of our

society rather than to aggravate them.

As we move away from transitional Government

into the era of permanent Government, we must establish

a new compact for national coexistence in which the

aspirations of all Somalis, not only some, are reflected.

We recognize that the bonds of love and solidarity that

bound us together in 1960 have been heavily damaged

and sorely tested. The talks initiated earlier this year

between the Transitional Federal Government and the

Somaliland administration have begun well, and we

intend to continue them. We will not use military or

political coercion to bring out an artificial unity; we

want a genuine unity that results from negotiations,

mutual respect and mutual agreement.

The durability of our stabilization efforts will

depend in large part upon our ability to revive and

develop the Somali economy. Security and durable

peace cannot exist without jobs and food, and therefore

we must work hard to ensure that food is on the table of

the average Somali family, to create job opportunities

and to enable Somalis to work for themselves.

Our country is abundant in resources; we have the

longest coastline in Africa, 9 million acres of fertile

land, the highest per capita number of livestock in the

world. We have oil and minerals. We are strategically

located at the gateway of the Middle East and Africa,

at the conf luence of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.

Our challenge as Somalis is to use those resources to

bring our country and our people back onto the global

economic playing field.

On the topic of resources, we are committed

to strengthening the Government’s financial

accountability. Somalia is a poor country, and we

cannot afford corruption. We seek the assistance of our

international partners in establishing and strengthening

transparent systems of public financial management.

The problems of Somalia have spilled far beyond

our borders. Foreign countries have taken in hundreds

of thousands of Somalis f leeing the crisis in our country,

at considerable sacrifice to their own citizens; Somali

pirates have become the scourge of shipping far from

our shores. Extremists from across the world have used our territory as a base from which to plan and launch

attacks against foreign countries.

As Somalia reclaims its status as a full member

of the international community, we must acknowledge

our responsibility as a nation, both for the proliferation

of these problems and for their eventual resolution.

We recognize the urgency of tackling these threats

to international security, but we are also conscious of

their complexity and of the fact that lasting solutions

can be achieved only through ref lection, consultation,

the force of law and only, as a last resort, the judicious

use of force. We intend to engage with our international

partners on all of these fronts, as we strengthen our

internal capacity to address these challenges.

The road ahead is long, but we, the Somali people,

are committed, and we are ready. We have created the

guideposts, and we have chosen a new leadership to

help us move forward. We are grateful for the support

of the world community; we would not be here today

without its moral, political and financial support. Most

dear to us is the personal sacrifice made by our African

brothers and sisters who came in person to help us

protect our country and people. We cannot thank them

enough, and we hope one day to be able to repay them.

As many today have noted, the United Nations

was founded on the conviction that the nations of the

world could come together in the spirit of cooperation

to tackle their common problems for the sake of the

whole of humanity.

The world is going through a challenging

period — economic crises, religious tensions and

resource disputes. Every nation has its own challenges

and priorities. And yet we come together as the United

Nations to forge a common way forward, because we

recognize that this small Earth is all the space we

have, and we must find a way to share it and coexist

peacefully.

As Somalis, we have learned this hard lesson

through bitter experience, and we are living through

it every day, each time another young man chooses

to take his own life and the lives of others; each time

a young mother has to bury a child. Let us not forget

that in rebuilding a nation, or in steering the world to

a better place, we are dealing with the lives of human

beings, each life as precious as the next. For the future

of our children, we must work harder to make our world

peaceful and prosperous. In that context, on behalf of the Somali people, I

want to convey our condolences to the United States

and Algeria on the recent violent loss of their senior

diplomats. Diplomacy is a peaceful calling and the

foundation of the United Nations, and we must protect

diplomats for their important role in promoting dialogue

and better understanding across countries and cultures.

The members of the Assembly are not strangers

to conflict and war. Many countries have experienced

violence and destruction equal to or greater than my

own. But few other countries in modern times have

experienced such a prolonged period of statelessness:

a nation without a recognized Government, a valid

passport or a convertible currency.

But it is not just the material attributes of statehood

that we have missed. To be stateless in this world of

States is injurious to a people’s identity, to its rights and

privileges as a nation, and to its dignity. It is time for us

to reclaim Somalia’s rightful place in the community of

nations, to shoulder our duties and obligations, and to

place our country in the service of peace, security and

prosperity on this planet we share.