Tanzania, 2009

It is indeed an honour and a

pleasure for me to extend my very warm

congratulations to Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki on his

well-deserved election to the presidency at the sixty-

fourth session of the General Assembly. I hope that

during his presidency he will help advance the

revitalization of the General Assembly, reinforce

multilateralism and promote dialogue among

civilizations. I promise Mr. Treki my personal

cooperation as well as that of the Tanzanian delegation

in the discharge of his responsibilities.

Allow me also to use this opportunity to pay

tribute to his predecessor, His Excellency Father

Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, for a job very well done.

I thank him for the honour he recently bestowed upon

the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, the founder President

and Father of the Tanzanian nation.

Our deep appreciation also goes to our illustrious

Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his diligent

service to the United Nations and to humankind. His

exemplary leadership and commitment to action in

addressing the global challenges we are facing are

appreciated by many of us. We wish him and his entire

team great success in the future.

For over five years now, a number of countries in

Eastern Africa, including Tanzania, have been

experiencing unprecedented drought. We have never

seen anything like this before. Maybe the effects of

climate change are taking a toll. As a result of this,

agricultural production has been affected severely

causing acute food shortages. There is an acute

shortage of pasture and water for our livestock and

wildlife in the game parks that is resulting in the deaths

of many of our animals. Rivers have been drying up

frequently thus causing interruptions in hydropower

generation.

The effects of the drought are threatening to

reach catastrophic proportions if the shortage of rain

continues for the next few years. It is important for the

United Nations to be aware of this growing danger and

to look into ways of assisting us. We should not wait to

act until graphic pictures of emaciated and dying

children dominate TV screens and newspapers.

History has taught us that the greatest successes

in the development of nations began with agriculture.

No doubt, therefore, the low levels of development in

Africa today are indicative of the underdevelopment of

our agriculture. Indeed, African agriculture is

backward and productivity is low. It needs to be

transformed, it needs to be modernized. The African

green revolution has taken too long to happen.

Concerted efforts by African Governments and

Africa’s development partners are required.

Unfortunately, there is not as much interest on the part

of our development partners to support agricultural

transformation in Africa as there is for other sectors.

This is an unfortunate omission which needs to be

corrected. We look to the United Nations to take the

lead in this regard.

Allow me to pay tribute to President Barack

Obama for demonstrating keen interest in assisting the

transformation and modernization of Africa’s

agriculture. African leaders were humbled by his

commitment at the meeting he held with leaders from

sub-Saharan Africa on 22 September of this year. I

appeal to other leaders to emulate his example.

Another issue that I would like to raise for

discussion and action is the problem of youth

unemployment in Africa. Africa faces one of the

biggest unemployment challenges on the planet.

African youth make up 37 per cent of the working age

population in Africa, but they are 60 per cent of the

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unemployed. In some nations youth unemployment is

up to 80 per cent. Africa has the fastest-growing and

most youthful population in the world. Over 20 per

cent of Africa’s population is between the ages of 15

and 24. As a result, a constantly rising number of

young Africans has been entering, and will continue to

enter, a labour market that has not been fast-growing.

Beyond economic costs, high rates of youth

unemployment have had negative consequences in our

continent. We have seen how some youths with no job

prospects, and little hope of getting any, have become

the fuel being added to the raging fires of conflict in

many parts of our continent. They simply fall prey to

the machinations of war lords, criminal gangs and

political manipulators, to the detriment of peace and

stability in their countries.

Creating job opportunities for Africa’s youth is an

enormous task that Governments of our poor

economies cannot carry out alone. Friends of Africa in

the international community, both from Government

and the private sector, have an important role to play in

that regard. Allow me to commend the Danish

Government for showing the way. In April 2008, it

formed the Danish Commission for Africa to address

youth unemployment challenges on the continent. The

Commission, on which I was fortunate to serve, came

up with five bold initiatives that I believe, if strong

international partnership can be forged to implement

them, can turn the large youth unemployment problem

from a challenge into an opportunity. I humbly ask this

body for the opportunity for the Commission’s report

to be presented to the General Assembly. At the same

time, I propose that the Assembly consider declaring a

decade to focus on youth employment in Africa,

possibly 2011 to 2020.

Two days ago, we held the fruitful high-level

Climate Change Summit. I would like to thank

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and commend him for

his leadership on this important and challenging issue

of our time. The event will go a long way towards

paving the way for a comprehensive agreement in

Copenhagen in December 2009.

It was heart-warming indeed to hear President

Barack Obama assure this world body that the United

States will join other nations in the joint endeavour to

save our common planet. We are also happy that, under

the leadership of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the

United Kingdom, consensus has been emerging on

making additional resources available to assist

developing nations in their efforts at adaptation,

mitigation and the pursuit of clean development.

Allow me now to talk about three side events that

have taken place during this session of the General

Assembly.

The first one was the panel discussion on

accelerating the implementation of the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs), which was organized by

Ms. Helen Clark, the new Administrator of the United

Nations Development Programme, together with

Mr. Douglas Alexander, the United Kingdom’s Secretary

for International Development. At that meeting,

important impressions were made about successes and

shortcomings with regard to the implementation of the

MDGs to date. The meeting was a curtain-raiser for

next year’s MDG summit. I hope all of us will take

seriously the observations and conclusions that were

made, so that there will be no default come 2015.

The second was the meeting on maternal and

child health convened by Prime Minister Gordon

Brown with the support of Secretary-General Ban

Ki-moon and World Bank President Robert Zoellick.

The meeting was a great success. I was impressed and

encouraged by the commitment made by Prime

Minister Brown and by the support of the World Bank

to save the lives of millions of innocent mothers and

children who die of causes that can be prevented.

While I applaud and thank Prime Minister Brown for

his leadership, I appeal for unqualified support for the

outcome of the meeting, for the sake of saving the lives

of many women and children in Africa and elsewhere

in the developing world.

The third was yesterday’s launch of the African

Leaders Malaria Alliance. That was a landmark event

at which African leaders made an unequivocal

declaration of commitment to end malaria in their

respective countries. The Alliance provides the

mechanism for advocacy, collective action and follow-

up on measures to build capacities to eliminate the

number one killer disease in Africa. Malaria can be

prevented, cured, controlled and eliminated in Africa.

Many countries in the world have done so; why not us

in Africa? I would like the General Assembly to

acknowledge that historic event and render support to

the work of the African Leaders Alliance against

malaria. Once again, I would like to thank Mr. Ray

Chambers, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for

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Malaria, for successfully organizing that event. I would

also like to thank all African leaders for their support

and commitment.

The gains made in the area of development can

easily be eroded if the foundations of peace and

stability are threatened. It is a matter of great comfort

and pride that peace reigns in most parts of Africa,

except for one or two hot spots — Somalia in

particular and, to some extent, Darfur. There is calm in

the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the

Congo. Burundi is enjoying peace after many years of

civil war and instability, which has facilitated the

return of many Burundi refugees from Tanzania.

However, there are more than 160,000 Burundi

refugees who have chosen to remain in Tanzania and

are applying to become Tanzanian citizens.

We have in principle accepted their request and

are now finalizing the procedures to grant them

citizenship. However, I want this body to know that my

Government has decided that, if accepted, they will be

moved from the refugee camps in which they reside at

the moment and will be resettled in various places in

the country. We do not want them to remain with the

refugee mentality. We also do not want Tanzanians to

continue to consider them refugees. That is going to be

a very expensive exercise for which the support of the

United Nations and other friends will be necessary.

Tanzania remains committed to contribute to

peace in Africa and the world. I promise that we will

continue to play that historic role to the best of our

ability. In that regard, we are making good progress on

our promise to scale up our participation in United

Nations peacekeeping operations. We have

peacekeepers in the United Nations mission in

Lebanon, and we are ready to increase their number.

We are also in the final preparations of deploying a

battalion of peacekeepers in Darfur. We are going to

honour the request made by the United Nations to work

with the United Nations Organization Mission in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) in the

training of the armed forces of that country, under the

Mission’s security sector reforms for the country. My

message today is that we are ready to do more

whenever requested.

Let me add my voice in support of the two-State

solution for an Israel and a Palestine living together

side by side at peace with one another. Tanzania is of

the strong opinion that that is the best way to

sustainable peace in the Middle East.

With regard to Western Sahara, we call upon the

Security Council to expedite the process of giving the

people of Western Sahara the opportunity to decide on

their future status. That matter has dragged on for too

long, namely, since 1975. The time has come to end the

impasse.

I would like to reiterate that the reform of the

United Nations will be incomplete without the

structural reform of the Security Council. That reform

should include Africa’s attainment of two permanent

seats in the Council. Giving seats to Africa is not a

matter of favour; it is a matter of correcting the

historical injustice against the continent and its people.

Let me conclude by echoing Africa’s appeal to

the United Nations and the international community to

support Africa’s position with regard to unconstitutional

changes of Government in Africa. In recent years, the

ghosts of unconstitutional changes of Government have

again haunted Africa — through military coups and

so-called mass action instigated by insatiable

demagogic politicians. There are people who want to

get into leadership by using undemocratic shortcuts.

The African Union has taken a strong position, which

is enshrined in its Constitutive Act, not to recognize

such Governments and to suspend them from

membership of the organization until democracy is

restored.

Such decisions of the African Union would

benefit so much from, and actually would be

strengthened by, the support of the international

community and in particular the United Nations. Africa

has young polities, and its democracy is still fragile.

What the African Union is trying to do is to entrench a

culture of democratic values and governance. The

support of the United Nations and the international

community is very critical in that regard. A decision to

the contrary would undermine the African Union’s

good intentions. Africa needs the United Nations to

support that historic position.