Eswatini, 2002

It is an honour for me

to address the General Assembly on behalf of the

delegation of the Kingdom of Swaziland. I bring with

me the warm greetings and best wishes of His Majesty

King Mswati III, Her Majesty the Indlovukazi, the

Government and the whole Swazi nation to all

members of the United Nations family.

The Kingdom of Swaziland joined the rest of the

world in sadness to commemorate the first anniversary

of the monstrous acts that took place in September last

year. Our hearts once again reached out to all those

who suffered on that fateful day here in New York and

elsewhere in the United States, and to all those whose

lives have been affected by subsequent events around

the world.

In the aftermath of 11 September, the world is

understandably preoccupied with the question of

security and the war against terror. The Kingdom of

Swaziland reiterates its strong commitment to do all in

its power to support the global alliance against

terrorism, and is determined to ensure that no aspect of

terrorism, including its financing and organization,

may be permitted to take root within our borders.

The progress made in some areas of Africa is part

of a general trend of optimism that is spreading among

all the countries on our continent. We cannot deny that

there remain many serious challenges to address, both

in terms of conflict situations and in terms of overall

development. We have placed our trust in the African

Union to be the vehicle for this shift away from the

underdevelopment of the past, and the Kingdom of

Swaziland looks forward to working with its fellow

members to make the new body one that will truly

address the challenges and make a real difference in the

lives of our peoples.

Of crucial importance to the success of the

African Union is the role of the developed world in

living up to its commitments to the continent and to all

in the developing world.

The Kingdom of Swaziland continues to develop

peacefully and quietly, according to the aspirations and

expectations of its people. Our relationship with the

international community remains founded on the

principles of peaceful coexistence with all, on the

resolution of all disputes through peaceful dialogue,

and on mutual respect and due regard for the

sovereignty of independent nations. We value our

membership in the United Nations and other

international, regional and subregional organizations.

Our cooperation and friendship with other countries of

the world give us an important instrument through

which we can address our national economic, social

and humanitarian concerns. Of particular importance

are our access to international markets for our goods

and the attraction of foreign direct investment: both are

central to our efforts to improve our economy and to

provide jobs for our people.

Poverty alleviation remains our number-one

priority. Sixty-six per cent of our people are living

below the internationally recognized poverty line, and

yet our classification as a lower-middle-income

country denies us many of the funds and resources that

are available to those in other categories. We will be

working with the United Nations to ensure that that

situation is corrected.

In the meantime, we are focusing all our efforts

and available resources on programmes that meet the

challenge of poverty in a sustainable and equitable

manner. Our national development strategy, which is

the result of direct consultation with the people

themselves, provides us with a blueprint for

Government action and conforms precisely to the

principles of Agenda 21.

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Despite all our best efforts and our limited

success in many areas, we are restricted in our capacity

to meet our objectives, not only by our lack of access

to development funds, but also by a multitude of

problems that are affecting us simultaneously and that

we cannot overcome on our own. As is the case with all

developing countries, we are particularly at risk in

times of global economic difficulties and are especially

vulnerable to disease and to the effects of changing

weather patterns.

Overshadowing all our development challenges,

however, is the threat posed by multiple health risks,

including malaria and tuberculosis, but especially

HIV/AIDS. AIDS continues to claim the lives of huge

numbers of Swazis, and no family in our Kingdom has

escaped the deadly touch of that disease. No sector of

development is immune from the consequences of the

very high and increasing HIV infection rates among

our people, with enormous strain placed on our

financial and human resources in the battle to cope.

We are trying our best in the light of our limited

resources. A national emergency response committee

on HIV/AIDS has been established to provide the focus

for our efforts. We are attacking the enemy on various

fronts, with priority placed on prevention, care,

counselling and treatment. Perhaps the greatest tragedy

is the effect on children who have lost their parents to

the disease. We are battling to provide those

unfortunate orphans with the means to continue normal

lives, especially with regard to food, clothing and

schooling.

We are ready to embrace approved strategies of

medical care, including those that reduce mother-to-

child transmission of the virus, and the prescription of

anti-retrovirals for those who need them. However, the

simple fact is that we cannot afford those costly drugs,

and we must rely on the sympathy and support of

others. That is why the Kingdom was encouraged by

the expressions of commitment at last year's AIDS

Summit and by the creation of the Global Fund to Fight

HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. With our hopes

high for support from the Fund, it came as a grave

disappointment to our people that our application to the

Fund earlier this year had been rejected and that the

criteria for selection of projects had become unclear.

We earnestly hope that our second application will

meet with approval and that international support from

that resource, and from those of all who pledged their

solemn commitments, may at last be forthcoming to

help us in this national disaster.

In the meantime, we look to our own resources to

fight the battle. One answer lies in the rediscovery of

practices that are within our own traditions and culture.

We have resurrected the rites of chastity and respect for

self that served our people well for many generations

in the past, and these are finding increasing acceptance

in our nation, especially among the younger generation.

As we announced last year, His Majesty has also

reached out to the international entertainment

community for support, and we have been

overwhelmed by the positive and heart-warming

response. Next month will see the release of an album

of music from international artists, entitled “Songs for

Life”, whose proceeds will go entirely to HIV/AIDS

programmes in southern Africa. We look forward with

great confidence to the success of the album, with its

aims of promoting global awareness of the crisis in

many countries and of raising funds on a scale that will

help those of us most affected to cope with its dreadful

consequences.

At precisely this moment of maximum

disadvantage, the Kingdom of Swaziland and others in

the southern African region have been hit hard by food

shortages that are affecting 21 per cent of our people,

largely as a result of lack of rain. We have been warned

that the situation will deteriorate further next season

with the likely advent of the El Niño effect.

Furthermore, the food security situation has been

exacerbated by other problems, such as the lack of

clean drinking water in rural areas and the prevalence

of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses and deaths, which leave

families with severely diminished resources to meet

their basic needs.

Using our scarce resources, we are making every

effort to help our people, and we have made one of our

top priorities the construction of dams throughout the

rural areas, where the crisis is the most serious. The

Kingdom of Swaziland is grateful to the Secretary-

General and to the United Nations agencies for their

efforts to address those problems through the launching

of a United Nations Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal

in response to the humanitarian crisis in southern

Africa. We are grateful for the response to the Appeal,

and we hope for increased support as the famine

tightens its grip on us.

We appreciate the direct involvement of the

Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on the

humanitarian crisis in our region, Mr. James Morris,

and we look forward to working with him, and with all

our international friends and partners, who have

already been so generous with emergency food aid, to

make it through this latest crisis for the Swazi nation.

The review of the Kingdom's constitution

continues, and the drafting stage is almost complete.

The next phase will be the people's review of the draft

document to ensure that their wishes have been met.

That will be the final stage before the document is

formally adopted. We trust that the international

community will respect the fact that this final

document, the product of extensive consultation with

the whole nation, will be the true expression of the

wishes of the people themselves, and will serve the

Kingdom of Swaziland well for many generations to

come. We are grateful to all who have supported us in

this nation-building exercise.

The Kingdom of Swaziland would like to extend

a warm welcome to the United Nations newest

Member, Switzerland, and soon-to-be Member East

Timor. There now remains just one group of people

that is denied the opportunity to participate in the

activities of the United Nations and its associated

agencies. I refer here to the 23 million inhabitants of

the Republic of China on Taiwan, a sovereign State and

a constructive member of the international community.

These 23 million people have shown time and

again that they are willing and able to contribute to the

international community. At this critical time in the

history of the world, which is faced with the challenges

of instability, under-development and economic

difficulties, we cannot afford to exclude from our joint

efforts the resources and skills of the Republic of

China on Taiwan. As a democratic, prosperous and

peace-loving nation, Taiwan has displayed her

readiness to assist the development challenges of her

friends and partners, and has intervened in

humanitarian crises across the globe. Taiwan needs the

United Nations, and the United Nations needs Taiwan.

We therefore appeal once more to our fellow Members

to recognize the right of the 23 million people of the

Republic of China on Taiwan to representation in the

United Nations system, and to take the appropriate

measures to achieve this objective.

We are living in dangerous times. Global tension

and the possibility of wide-scale conflict threaten all

the hopes for a century of peace, stability and

sustainable development that were expressed at our

Millennium Summit just two short years ago.

Our strength as an Organization depends on

consultation and consensus among all Member States

in matters that affect the whole world. The summits

and special sessions that we all attend at great cost are

valuable only insofar as we carry through the

resolutions we arrive at and the commitments we make.

The Kingdom of Swaziland believes that the

fundamental principles on which the United Nations

was founded still present the best and only chance for

humankind to live and work in harmony with one

another.

The Kingdom of Swaziland here reaffirms her

full commitment to the founding Charter of our

Organization and offers her fullest support to all its

activities that have as their aim to make this world of

ours safer, more equal and healthier for all its people.

We look forward to working with the United Nations

and her associated agencies in the coming year, to help

us to meet the development challenges of our people.