Suriname, 2008

Allow me to congratulate

you, Sir, on your election as President of the General

Assembly at its sixty-third session. I am pleased to see

a member of our regional group of Latin America and

the Caribbean in that high office. I am convinced that

your longstanding diplomatic experience and in-depth

knowledge of current international issues will enable

you to successfully discharge the high responsibility of

your office. I would also like to recognize the able

stewardship and valuable work of your predecessor,

Mr. Srgjan Kerim, during the Assembly’s sixty-second

session.

To the Secretary-General of the Organization, His

Excellency Ban Ki-moon, I pledge Suriname’s full

support in implementing the resolutions of the United

Nations to achieve the objectives of the United Nations

Charter for sustainable development, international

peace and security and respect for human rights and

fundamental freedoms.

We are commemorating the sixtieth anniversary

of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights this

year, while many of these rights are still under serious

pressure. New threats, such as global warming and

climate change and most recently the global food and

energy crises, are an infringement on people’s rights to

food, health, education, security and the overall

freedom to live in dignity. Those tribulations are

intertwined and universal and thus beyond the control

of any single nation. Millions of vulnerable people are

therefore looking to the international community, with

the United Nations at the helm, for effective measures

to bring some kind of relief.

The Economic and Social Council recently

recognized the seriousness and complexity of the

global food crisis and reiterated that its consequences

require a comprehensive response by national

Governments and the international community. It is

essential for us to intensify our combined efforts, and

we therefore support the emergency global partnership

plan for food, called for by Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon in his address to the General Assembly high-

level event on the global food and climate change

crises.

The financial and monetary implications of the

global crisis require substantial political and financial

commitments from us all, from national Governments,

from multilateral organizations, including international

financial institutions, and from the private sector. We

will have to change the way that we, human beings,

behave towards Mother Nature and we will have to

find a solution to policies and regulations that are

detrimental to our progress, such as protectionist

agricultural policies in developed countries that are

causing low production in the agricultural sector of

many developing countries. If we do not find lasting

solutions now, the cost of our inaction will be

unacceptably high, and the threats that we will most

likely pass on to the next generation will be

devastating.

My country, Suriname, was on the right track

towards achieving some of the Millennium

Development Goals, including poverty reduction

sustained by economic growth rates of over 5 per cent

annually in the past three years, with predictions by

renowned international financial institutions of

approximately 8 per cent growth for the coming years.

As a result of the current food and energy crises, as

well as the recent volatility of financial markets, it has

now become a challenge for us to keep up the pace and

quality of our development.

My Government has taken action and has already

put some measures in place to respond to the new

difficulties we are facing because of those external

developments. We have expanded social security to

cover the most needy, such as children, the elderly and

people with disabilities, we have put in place food

programmes for schoolchildren, and we have increased

salaries and Government pensions, which had

weakened as a result of years of inflation. The

Government has now called upon the private sector to

follow its lead and restore eroded salaries and

pensions.

Africa, the cradle of humanity, is a continent with

immense capability, endowed with indispensable

human and natural potential. Paradoxically, in many

parts of the continent, development is lagging behind

or even absent, and development perspectives are

bleak.

27 08-51839

My country commends Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon for holding the important high-level meeting

on “Africa’s development needs: state of

implementation of various commitments, challenges

and the way forward”, which took place just two days

ago. It is our genuine expectation that the outcome of

that meeting will lead to new and unique opportunities

for impacting positively on and contributing to the

development of Africa.

Suriname remains committed to the promotion

and protection of human rights. My country

underscores the principle of equality before the law

and emphasizes that everyone should be held

accountable for their actions. Against that backdrop,

Suriname acceded to the Rome Statute of the

International Criminal Court on 15 July of this year.

We thus expressed our commitment to fighting the

impunity of the perpetrators of gross human rights

violations. However, providing the Court with its full

potential to meet its mandate depends on a collective

commitment at the global level.

Environmental disturbances today are of such

magnitude that we can no longer ignore their negative

impact on the world’s resources. As a country with 90

per cent of its territory covered by forests within which

lies one of the largest stretches of pristine tropical

rainforests on earth, Suriname is aware of its value and

potential to contribute to the global mitigation of

climate change, the conservation of biodiversity and

the protection of water resources.

However, the contribution of the international

community to the preservation and protection of such

globally valuable resources is not proportionate to the

sacrifice made by the forested countries. Moreover,

forested countries like Suriname with very low

deforestation rates are forgotten in mechanisms devised

to compensate for deforestation.

Suriname recently hosted the Paramaribo

Dialogue, a country-led initiative on financing for

sustainable forest management in support of the United

Nations Forum on Forests. During that international

dialogue, multiple stakeholders from all over the world

came together to develop substantive proposals for the

establishment of an international financial framework

to assist in future sustainable forest management.

We stress the importance of new financing

mechanisms, since good management of forests and

other natural resources cannot and should not be at the

expense of the development of our own peoples, the

peoples of countries with high forest coverage and low

deforestation rates. We therefore look forward to

substantial investments to support the sustainable

development of such countries.

Suriname has supported the restructuring process

of the United Nations from the start, with the aim of

achieving a more effective and efficient Organization

that would be better equipped to adequately address

old and new challenges. In that process, we expect that

the role of the United Nations as a partner in

development will gain further relevance and achieve a

more coherent and enhanced presence in support of

capacity-building and sustainable development.

Suriname is also currently engaged in a “One

UN” policy process, through which it responds to the

need for coherent involvement of the United Nations in

its development efforts. To that end, Suriname and the

United Nations agencies signed the Country

Programme Action Plan for the period 2008-2011,

which also addresses the pursuit of the Millennium

Development Goals.

We have entered an era of growing anxieties and

concerns that go beyond national borders. The

contemporary world situation requires harmonization

of the United Nations with current international

developments. Suriname believes that the United

Nations should be given the tools and instruments to

enable the Organization to address global challenges in

support of a comprehensive and coherent development

agenda in the interest of all the nations of the world.