Bangladesh, 2009

With your

permission, Sir, I would like to speak in Bangla, my

mother tongue.

I would like to warmly congratulate the President

on his well-deserved election to preside over the

General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session. I am

confident that his wise and able leadership will guide

the Assembly’s deliberations to a successful

conclusion. I would also like to express my deep

appreciation to His Excellency Mr. Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, President of the General Assembly at its

sixty-third session, for his sound leadership in

successfully steering the Assembly’s work during his

tenure. I should also like to pay tribute to Secretary-

General Ban Ki-moon for his tireless and dedicated

efforts to reinvigorate the United Nations.

Thirty-five years ago, the father of our nation and

my father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, in

his first address to the General Assembly from this

rostrum, expressed his gratitude to all who supported

our struggle for independence. He also declared his

commitment to democracy, good governance, human

rights and the rule of law. It is also my proud privilege

and great honour to extend the same commitment here

today on behalf of our country.

As members may know, for many years following

the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu and 18 other

members of our family, on 15 August 1975, by

misguided armed mutineers, Bangladesh was ruled by

dictators and quasi-dictators. Aside from a period in

the 1990s, the country continued to suffer from

unconstitutional rule, particularly in the most recent

years. Even I was sent into forced exile. But the will of

the people of Bangladesh and the good will of the

international community permitted my return home and

the holding of nation-wide elections on 29 December

2008.

Universally acclaimed as free, fair and credible,

and carried out under the supervision of United

Nations and international observers, the elections

heralded democracy in Bangladesh. The resounding

victory of my party, the Awami League, reflected the

people’s preference for democratic ideals, secularism

and an outright denial of all forms of extremism. The

elections included record high participation by young

voters and women.

The huge mandate given by the voters to my

Government also entrusted it with an equally huge

responsibility for delivering on people’s expectations.

Consequently, my Government has embarked on

achieving a digital Bangladesh by implementing its

Vision 2021 election manifesto. Our goal is to

transform Bangladesh into “Sonar Bangla” or “Bengal

of Gold”, as envisioned by Bangabandhu Sheikh

Mujibur Rahman.

Despite all odds, Bangladesh is making great

strides in its socio-economic development. Education,

particularly for girls, is a priority of our Government,

receiving the largest single share of our annual budget.

Our Government has pledged to ensure 100 per cent

student enrolment at the primary level by 2010.

Accordingly, primary education has been made free —

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with free books — and compulsory for all children.

Provision has been made for free education for girls up

to the twelfth grade, and stipends are provided for girls

in rural secondary schools.

As for the Millennium Development Goals,

Bangladesh has been successful in removing gender

disparities in the net enrolment of boys and girls in

primary and secondary schools. Our Government is

now planning to provide free tuition for girls up

through the secondary level.

Since children are our future, our Government

runs a food-for-education/cash-for-education programme

providing food rations to poor primary school children

in rural areas. Our aim is to achieve full literacy by

2014.

Health is another major sector where our

Government is striving to make progress. During our

last period in power, we formulated a national health

policy whose main thrust was to ensure basic health

care for all without discrimination. A national strategy

for maternal health has also been adopted, which

provides quality services for safe motherhood.

Regarding infant mortality, our plan is to reduce the

infant mortality rate from 54 per thousand live births to

15 per thousand. Our plan is also to extend child

immunization programmes to reach 100 per cent of the

population during our present term.

During our last period in power, we initiated

programmes to establish one community health-care

centre for every 6,000 people, in order to bring primary

health-care services to people’s homes. Only 4,000 of

the first phase of 18,000 could be completed during the

period we were in power prior to the changeover of

government, and the programme was terminated. We

are now reactivating the programme.

Bangladesh is often cited for its social safety

programmes. A wide range of safety nets have been put

in place, such as cash and food transfer programmes,

micro-credit and other special poverty alleviation

programmes, and special programmes for minorities,

the marginalized, the disabled, the physically

challenged and the underprivileged. In our earlier

period in power, I had introduced an old age pension, a

pension for distressed women, Shanti Nibash or old

people’s homes, a Karmasangsthan Bank to provide

earnings to unemployed youth through productive job

creation, and Ashrayan or homes on Government-

owned land for homeless people, as well as sustainable

jobs.

An innovative programme instituted by my

current Government seeks to provide employment to at

least one member of each family. Currently, over a half

of our budgetary resources are allocated to reducing

the poverty level from 45 per cent to 15 per cent by

2021.

Food security has always been our Government’s

prime concern. During our earlier term in power, my

Government’s agricultural programmes made

Bangladesh self-sufficient in food, for which the

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

presented us with its prestigious Ceres Award. After the

change in government, Bangladesh returned to being in

food deficit. This time around, our Government has

adopted a national food policy to ensure sustained food

security for all, enhance people’s access to food,

particularly for children, women and the elderly,

reduce food prices, increase food production by

reducing the price of fuel, fertilizer and irrigation, and

ensure supply of farm inputs.

On the international level, at the World Summit

on Food Security to be held in Rome in November

2009, Bangladesh will be seeking a global agreement

for the development of agriculture and the attainment

of food self-sufficiency in developing countries,

particularly the least developed countries (LDCs).

Substantial financial contributions from developed

countries, an agreement on sustainable agricultural

policies, the transfer of technology, equitable and fair

trade rules for food and agricultural products with

special preferential treatment for LDCs, and the

removal of agricultural subsidies in the developed

world will also be sought, in order to address the

challenges we face in ensuring the food security

critical for advancing our development agenda.

For some time now, climate change has been

adversely impacting our low-lying, deltaic, monsoonal

country. Although Bangladesh’s own contribution to

climate change is negligible, it is one of its worst

victims. Erratic floods, cyclones, droughts and

earthquakes have been disrupting our agriculture and

challenging our water resources, as well as our health,

energy and urban planning. In particular, cyclones

battering the coastal areas have taken countless lives,

and sudden floods have uprooted families by the

thousands and continue to do so every year. River bank

23 09-52586

erosion, landslides, soil degradation and deforestation

are causing millions of climate-change refugees. They

already greatly affect our densely populated cities. It is

alarming that a metre’s rise in the sea level would

inundate 18 per cent of our land mass, directly

impacting 11 per cent of our people. Scientific

estimates indicate that, of the 1 billion people expected

to be displaced worldwide by 2050 as a result of

climate-change factors, one in every 45 people in the

world and one in every seven in Bangladesh, would be

a victim.

Bangladesh has therefore decided to take some

measures immediately. Dredging all major rivers is at

the top of the agenda for adaptation to climate change.

Capital dredging projects will keep rivers in their

natural course, deepen them to hold more water,

restrict flooding, reduce flood damage, reclaim

inundated arable land and keep them navigable.

Maintenance dredging would then ensure the sustained

regulated flow of the rivers. With the rise in sea level,

the excavated silt could build, raise and fortify

embankments, increase green belts and help create

elevated flat ground for the homes of the displaced,

thereby discouraging them from moving to cities.

Meanwhile, 14,000 cyclone shelters have been

constructed, and more are on the way.

Those activities would obviously entail huge

costs. A climate-change trust fund has been established

with our own resources, but in order to implement the

projects the assistance of the international community

is imperative.

Rapid and unplanned urbanization, occupational

dislocation and lack of food, water and land security

are some of the consequences of climate change. The

affected communities would not only lose their homes.

They would also stand to lose their identity, nationality

and their very existence and, in some cases, their

countries. In December this year, we will meet in

Copenhagen for the fifteenth session of the Conference

of the Parties and, therefore, it is critical that the

outcome of the Conference reflect a commitment to

assured, adequate and easily accessible funding for

adaptation and to affordable, eco-friendly technology

transfer to developing countries, particularly to the

LDCs, as well as specific commitments to deeper cuts

in greenhouse emissions. Bangladesh would, of course,

make a strong call at the Conference to consider a new

legal regime to protect climate migrants under the

Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change that ensures the social,

cultural and economic rehabilitation of migrants

displaced through climate change.

On the vital issue of climate change, the recent

bold and courageous proposal of Prime Minister

Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom has caught the

imagination of States at the forefront of dealing with

climate change. Among his proposals, the proposed

fund to support the adaptation and mitigation

programmes of countries affected by climate change

has, in particular, won our support. It could be the

beginning of a systematic flow of funds towards

improving the adversely changing environmental

conditions around the globe. The Copenhagen

Conference should seriously consider his proposal. The

Conference must also be aware that climate-change

mitigation does not restrict the steps taken to alleviate

energy poverty, and that the post-2012 agreement

should incorporate predictable and legally binding

commitments to address the adaptation needs of low-

lying coastal States, small island countries and LDCs.

The world is caught in an economic recession, the

likes of which has not been seen since the Great

Depression of the 1930s. The economically vulnerable

countries, such as the LDCs, which are not responsible

for the crisis, have become its worst victims.

Bangladesh is faced with a sharp reduction in exports,

falling prices for primary commodities, declining

remittances and a severe credit crunch, leading to the

contraction of our economic growth, rising

unemployment and poverty.

The crisis is due to years of neglect of equity and

justice, including a fundamentally unfair international

financial structure that never changed with the needs of

the times. The need of the hour is the immediate

restructuring of the global financial and economic

system. The Bretton Woods institutions, namely, the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, must

accommodate a stronger presence of developing

countries, especially the LDCs. Indeed, a voting weight

proportionate to share capital has proved unsuited to

the Bretton Woods system.

Surely, fiscal stimulus packages would help

support global demand and aid recovery. However,

liberal trade concessions by developed countries, such

as duty- and quota-free market access and trade

capacity-building for developing countries, particularly

LDCs, would rescue them from dire straits. The early

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conclusion of the Doha Development Round of the

World Trade Organization trade negotiations would be

an important collective stimulus package for our

economies.

It is also the time for the countries of the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development to fulfil their official development

assistance commitments to contribute 0.7 per cent of

their gross national income to developing countries and

0.2 per cent specifically to the least developed

countries by 2010, as reaffirmed in the Brussels

Programme of Action.

The economic turmoil has adversely affected

employment at the national level and worldwide. The

worst affected are the LDCs, both domestically and in

terms of employment abroad. Remittances constitute a

significant part of their gross domestic income.

However, recent restrictions on new admissions of

migrant workers and, even worse, their repatriation to

their home countries have resulted in socio-economic

instability in many countries. Therefore, recovery

measures should be designed in such a manner so as

not to adversely affect employment opportunities of

immigrant workers from developing countries.

Bangladesh is proud of its outstanding role as a

major troop-contributing country serving the United

Nations in maintaining peace and security worldwide.

Since 1988, Bangladesh has been involved in

32 United Nations peacekeeping operations in

24 different countries, contributing approximately

83,000 personnel. Today, Bangladesh is ranked second

with 9,567 peacekeepers serving in various United

Nations missions.

With pride I say that, throughout the years, 84 of

our valiant peacekeepers have laid down their lives for

the cause of peace under the auspices of the United

Nations. Sadly, despite our contributions and

sacrifices, Bangladesh does not have proportionate

representation in the Department of Peacekeeping

Operations, nor does it have a say in the planning and

strategy design of peacekeeping missions. Indeed, this

situation calls for rectification on the basis of

proportional representation in all fairness.

As a peaceful nation involved in United Nations

peacekeeping efforts, Bangladesh is naturally opposed

to terrorism. Bangladesh is a party to all terrorism-

related United Nations Conventions, which is a

testament to our commitment to fighting that scourge.

We categorically reject the claims of those who cloak

themselves in the rhetoric of Islam or any other faith to

justify violence. Nationwide, we have taken stern

measures against militant groups and their leaders. We

are firmly opposed to violence and terrorism; instead,

we promote peace across the world. Bangladesh, in

sessions of the General Assembly, has spearheaded the

flagship resolution on the culture of peace. At last

year’s session of the General Assembly, the resolution

was sponsored by 124 nations.

The International Mother Language Day was

adopted by UNESCO, at the initiative of Bangladesh,

in recognition of 21 February 1952, when language

martyrs died for their mother tongue Bangla. Now

every year on that day UNESCO celebrates all

languages of the world. The Bangla language is spoken

by over 250 million people worldwide, primarily in

Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. The

Bangladesh Parliament therefore recently adopted a

resolution requesting the United Nations to declare

Bangla as one of its official languages. Given the rich

heritage of the Bangla language and its singular place

as a symbol of people’s faith in the power of languages

to sustain cultures and indeed the identity of nations, I

seek the support of the membership of the United

Nations General Assembly for its acceptance as an

official language of the United Nations.

At present we are witnessing a rapidly changing

world as a result of climate change, economic turmoil

and terrorism. It is crystal clear to those who wish to

open their eyes that we all belong to a global village

where we must live and work together. I therefore call

upon all States to discard short-sighted discords and

adopt a common resolve in facing today’s grim

challenges. Let us share each other’s responsibilities,

burdens and prosperity. After all, at stake is our

common and shared future. In reaching out to one

another, we will leave a harmonious world for our

children and future generations thereafter.

May Bangladesh live forever! Long live the

United Nations!

The Acting President: On behalf of the General

Assembly, I wish to thank the Prime Minister of the

People’s Republic of Bangladesh for the statement she

has just made.