Bangladesh, 2000

The

historic Millennium Summit and the forward-looking

Declaration it adopted have set a very positive tone for

the Millennium Assembly, which is now continuing

with this general debate.

We extend our heartiest congratulations to

Mr. Harri Holkeri on his well-deserved election as the

President of the fifty-fifth session. His deep

commitment to the values and principles of the United

Nations gives us the confidence that the affairs of this

Assembly are in very good hands.

I should also like to congratulate Foreign

Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab, my dear colleague, for his

superb leadership of the fifty-fourth General Assembly.

We are grateful to him for his invaluable guidance in

the preparations for the Millennium Summit and its

outcome.

May I also express Bangladesh's sincere thanks

and gratitude to Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his

vision in convening the Millennium Summit and for his

untiring efforts towards its success. His millennium

report contains a number of good proposals and ideas,

which we wholeheartedly support. I reiterate

Bangladesh's full support and cooperation to the

Secretary-General in his determination to enhance the

efficiency and effectiveness of the United Nations.

Let me at the very outset extend our heartiest

congratulations to the people and Government of

Tuvalu as the newest Member of this Organization.

Twenty-six years ago this month, when

Bangladesh had just become a Member of this

Organization, the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, addressed this Assembly. He

underscored our commitment to the Charter of the

United Nations. For our people, it was a great moment.

We have travelled a long way since that time and our

commitment to the United Nations has only grown in

strength.

As Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina mentioned in

her speech at the Millennium Summit:

“In this Organization, the powerful and the

weak, the large and the small, the wealthy and the

struggling come together as equals to address

their problems, to forge cooperation and to

further understanding. It certainly is in our

interest to strive for a United Nations which can

fulfil our common goal — a better world for

every human being”.

To the people of Bangladesh, human rights is a

sacred trust, because we were victims of its abuse. And

yet the very person who had championed the cause of

fundamental rights was denied the most basic of all

human rights, the right to life. I speak of the ghastly

murder of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,

along with almost his entire family and close relations,

by a group of assassins on 15 August 1975. The

murderers had committed a crime and human rights

abuse of the worst kind. And, in what could best be

described as an arrogant affront to human rights and

democratic principles, the killers were granted

immunity from law by the so-called Indemnity

Ordinance issued by the undemocratic regime of that

time.

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The present democratic Government in

Bangladesh has repealed the Indemnity Ordinance

since its assumption of office. The accused have been

tried and found guilty of murder, and the verdict of the

court of law has been announced. Some of them,

however, have managed to escape justice by finding

asylum in foreign lands. If human rights is to dominate

the agenda of the new century, we would urgently ask

the international community for its cooperation in

bringing these self-confessed killers to Bangladesh to

face justice. Here I would like to express my

appreciation and gratitude to those countries which

have been cooperating with us in this matter.

To Bangladesh, a very important manifestation of

human rights is the right to development, which needs

further assertion by the international community. In

ensuring that right, it is essential that our collective

efforts focus on addressing poverty. Unless we take

positive actions in this regard, globalization will be

more of a challenge and less an opportunity — freedom

from want will remain elusive. The challenges are

particularly daunting for the least developed countries

and merit priority attention.

Just as globalization touches us all,

marginalization of these vulnerable countries would

affect us all in the global family. We would urge the

international community to make every effort for the

success of the third United Nations Conference on the

Least Developed Countries in 2001 in Brussels.

In the past decade, the international community

has made tremendous progress in recognizing the

challenges and adopting elaborate programmes of

actions in the areas of social development, human

rights, environment, population, human settlement and

food security, as well as on women and children. Now

the challenge before us is to fulfil the commitments we

have made together. Let us resolve that the next decade

will be the decade of implementation.

At home, in facing the challenges of the coming

decades, poverty eradication has been set as the over-

arching goal of the present Government of Bangladesh,

under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

We are making increasingly great investments in our

people and in our social and human development.

In ensuring the effectiveness of this engagement,

Bangladesh has focused on the rights of women and

children. Bangladesh has become party to most of the

international instruments relating to the rights of those

two groups. During the Millennium Summit, Prime

Minister Sheikh Hasina ratified the Optional Protocol

to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women and the two Optional

Protocols on the sale of children, child prostitution and

child pornography and on the involvement of children

in armed conflict. Adoption of the “Woman and Child

Repression Prevention Act, 2000” by our national

Parliament is also a major step forward in eliminating

violence against women and children.

Unfortunately, our efforts towards sustainable

human development have been set back through

calamities beyond our control. Sometimes it is natural

disasters like floods, cyclones or tidal surges.

Sometimes it is silent killers like dengue fever or

arsenic contamination of groundwater. Today, two

thirds of the Bangladesh population is at risk as the

result of arsenic contamination of drinking water. The

Government has responded to this crisis with urgency

and determination; in collaboration with international

agencies such as the World Bank, the United Nations

Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health

Organization (WHO), as well as non-governmental

organizations (NGOs). Adequate emphasis has also

been given to ensuring alternative sources of safe

drinking water for the community.

In her statement at the Security Council summit

two weeks ago, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina

emphasized that international peace and security must

also be understood in terms of human security. She also

emphasized that we should prevent war crimes, crimes

against humanity and genocide against the civilian

population. We believe that the establishment of the

International Criminal Court can effectively deal with

these crimes. We signed the Rome Statute last year and

have already initiated the process for early ratification.

As an elected member of the United Nations

Security Council, Bangladesh remains committed to its

obligations to maintain and preserve international

peace and security. Bangladesh strongly supports

enhanced effectiveness of the United Nations

peacekeeping operations, as well as its peace-building

measures. Bangladesh is proud to be one of the largest

troop contributors to United Nations peacekeeping

operations, in fulfilment of our commitment to global

peace and security. In this context, we welcome the

recommendations of the Brahimi Panel and look

forward to their consideration by the relevant

intergovernmental bodies and the Secretariat. Here we

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would emphasize that the resources needed for their

implementation should not in any way undermine

other, already existing programmes.

An area of our common concern has been United

Nations sanctions, their effectiveness and their impact.

It is a matter of satisfaction that the Security Council,

after years of debate, has set up a Working Group

under Bangladesh chairmanship to study various

general issues related to sanctions. We are confident

that the work of the Group will help the Council to

agree on measures to streamline the sanctions regimes.

To ensure peace and development, we must move

ahead with an agenda for real disarmament. The

nuclearization of our own region in South Asia has

caused us concern. As one of the least developed

regions in the world, South Asia cannot afford to get

into a race for nuclear weapons. In accordance with its

constitutional commitment to total and general

disarmament, Bangladesh took the lead in South Asia

to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty

(CTBT) in 1996, ratifying it earlier this year. We also

were among the first in South Asia to sign the Ottawa

Convention on anti-personnel landmines, which was

also ratified by us during the Millennium Summit,

along with the Convention on certain conventional

weapons (CCWC) and all its Protocols.

Bangladesh considers peace and development to

be fundamental rights. One cannot endure without the

other. The United Nations and its Member States must

continue to espouse and promote a culture of peace.

Bangladesh took the initiative for the international

observance of this millennium year and the first decade

of the twenty-first century as the International Year for

the Culture of Peace and the International Decade for a

Culture of Peace and Non-violence for the Children of

the World, respectively.

As we have said on earlier occasions, Bangladesh

believes that the United Nations should be prepared to

respond effectively to the challenges of the new

century. Since United Nations reforms were initiated

by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a lot has been done,

but much more could be added to this. We aspire to

greater democratization and transparency in the

organizations of the United Nations. We also believe

that involvement by non-governmental organizations

and other actors of civil society can significantly

enhance the effectiveness of the United Nations.

A changed world needs a changed United

Nations — an Organization for today's world. We need

to demonstrate courage and determination in order to

preserve the United Nations as the world's most

universal forum. Its founding fathers spoke about the

scourge of war. Today the United Nations will only live

up to the global reality if it cannot only free the world's

people from the scourge of war but also save

succeeding generations from the scourge of poverty.

May Bangladesh live forever.

May the United Nations live forever.