Benin, 1997

As I

take the floor on behalf of the delegation of the Republic of

Benin, I would like first to associate myself with the words

of congratulations and deep appreciation expressed to Mr.

Hennadiy Udovenko by previous speakers. They spoke so

eloquently that I will confine myself to saying how hopeful

I am that this session will benefit from his proven

competence and his remarkable analytical mind in order to

draw from our debates constructive conclusions that

preserve a just balance between the different suggestions

and recommendations contained in the various statements.

The particular significance and nature of this session

do not reside only in the impressive gathering of leaders

from 185 Member States. That has long been customary,

and has even become ritual, during this period every year

since the establishment of the United Nations in 1945.

What confers on this fifty-second session a distinctive

character, and what promises it an excellent place in the

annals of the United Nations, is the central focus of its

agenda, which, as we all know, is devoted to structural

reform.

What is our assessment of the specific reform

provisions that are to be discussed and decided upon in the

course of these meetings? What are the ins and outs of

reform, the issues at stake and the real objectives? Are the

reforms capable of giving the Organization the means for

productive and effective action to meet the complex

problems and numerous challenges on the horizon of the

next millennium, whose effects are already strongly felt in

the everyday realities of today’s world?

These are a few of the major concerns of countries,

such as mine, that are today experiencing both hope and

doubt: hope based on the enormous potential of our Earth,

whose intelligent, rational and well-directed use should

make it possible to ensure the progress, prosperity and

development to which all peoples legitimately aspire; but

also doubt, a feeling of stubborn and profound uncertainty

constantly fuelled by misery and poverty, ignorance and

disease, technological lags, and the economic

backwardness that over 1.5 billion human beings suffer

from.

Since his election in January 1997 our Secretary-

General, Mr. Kofi Annan, has resolutely tackled, with

commendable diligence, strength and motivation, the

preparation of a programme for reform, which he himself

rightly describes as

“the most extensive and far-reaching reforms in the

fifty-two year history of this Organization.”

(A/51/950, Letter of Transmittal, first paragraph)

It is reform aimed at giving the United Nations

“the ways in which the United Nations can more

effectively and efficiently meet the challenges that

lie ahead as we enter a new century, and a new

millennium”. (ibid.)

We regard as appropriate the global approach taken

by the Secretary-General, his view of general and sectoral

problems, the thrust of the measures and solutions he

advocates, in accordance with a methodology that

combines pragmatism and the need for democratic and

more effective functioning. Therefore, the delegation of

Benin is in favour of the bulk of the proposals in the

report.

Nonetheless, I must draw attention to the following

considerations to which my country attaches great

importance.

First, Benin believes that it would not be appropriate

to eliminate the Committee for Development Planning,

which is, inter alia, entrusted with developing the

performance criteria for the least developed countries. We

believe that rather than having it replaced by groups of

experts created by the Economic and Social Council we

should consider purely and simply retaining the

Committee.

Secondly, since the situation in Africa is one of the

priorities on which the Secretary-General would like to

focus in the next five years. My country would hope that

the Office of the Special Coordinator for Africa and Least

Developed Countries might be strengthened in terms of

human and financial resources in order to be better able

to play a full role within the United Nations system.

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Thirdly, although on 20 June 1997, following over

three years of negotiations, the General Assembly adopted

the Agenda for Development, it is regrettable that the

Secretary-General’s reform programme made no mention or

explicit reference to mechanisms and means for

implementation and assessment of the Agenda. My

delegation hopes that this question will be taken into

account in the framework of measures envisaged in order

to bring about the renewal of the Organization.

Lastly, I would like to anticipate the results of our

session by saying that, both individually and collectively,

we must firmly commit ourselves to implement the

decisions and measures that will be taken in the framework

of this long-awaited reform.

Our consensus will be not a triumph for the ideas of

one State or group of States over another, but, rather, the

fruitful result of a shared political resolve to adapt our

universal Organization to the changes and developments of

this end of the century period.

Here, and with specific reference to reform of the

Security Council, Benin strongly recommends that the

following principles should be taken into account: an

increase in the membership of the Security Council truly

reflecting the political and economic configuration of

today’s world; equitable geographical representation of the

five regional groups, with the African group entitled to four

seats, two permanent and two non-permanent; and

protection of democratic and transparent functioning,

ultimately involving the elimination of the right of veto.

By formulating the 15 priority objectives of his reform

programme as a series of profound changes of major scope

which should enable the United Nations to embark

resolutely on a course of radical reform, the Secretary-

General produced a document of undeniably high quality,

whose title — “Renewing the United Nations” — is

significant in more than one respect.

Given the noble and legitimate aspirations of the entire

international community for the future of the planet, the

Organization certainly needs to be renewed in order to

confront effectively and successfully the exciting yet

disturbing challenges posed by globalization. Renewing the

United Nations requires a new vision of the world, new

conceptions and approaches to partnership among nations,

and new methods for the Organization and for handling

relations among States in a new world. That is the real

problem. Those are the real stakes at a time when we are

inexorably approaching a new millennium. Globalization is

both a phenomenon and a process; it has become the

recurrent and omnipresent theme of all debates and of all

concerns.

Like other members, I noted with particular interest

that President Clinton — first at the Waldorf Astoria hotel

on the evening of 21 September, then the following day

in this Hall — forcefully and germanely stressed the need

for the United Nations to ensure that the globalization of

the economy does not create deep disparities between rich

and poor and that it establishes innovative partnerships

between the private sector, non-governmental

organizations and international financial institutions.

As the representative of a least developed country,

Benin, I cannot but welcome this great and noble idea,

imbued with generosity, pragmatism and a spirit of

solidarity. But, looking the facts in the face, what do we

see?

When on 18 December 1991 the General Assembly

adopted the United Nations New Agenda for the

Development of Africa in the 1990s, it created a new

political covenant, one of whose vital features was the

principle of shared responsibility and the international

community’s full and complete involvement with Africa

with a view to achieving development objectives

including a real growth rate of at least 6 per cent per

annum in gross domestic product, and a minimum net

total of $30 billion in official development assistance for

1992, with an annual increase averaging 4 per cent

beginning in 1993.

Today, six years after the adoption of the New

Agenda, in spite of all the efforts of African countries to

make better use of official development assistance, and in

spite of the express intention of a number of developed

countries to support the development of Africa, the total

volume of official development assistance to Africa has

declined considerably: by about one third compared with

the forecast of $30 billion.

It was in this context of the decline in official

development assistance that the famous United Nations

System-wide Special Initiative for Africa was launched in

March 1996 in order to lend fresh momentum to the New

Agenda. But it is obvious that this great initiative can be

successful only with the support of the international

community, through a massive mobilization of financial

resources to carry out the programmes and projects that

have been set up. While, to be sure, it is first and

foremost up to the African countries to make the greater

26

part of the effort, the excessively restrictive procedures and

conditionalities for the granting of loans, and the lukewarm

reaction of certain creditors to the idea of simply cancelling

the foreign debt of poor countries, are obstacles to the

effective mobilization of the expected financial resources.

In a publication issued at Washington just a few

months ago, in May 1997, the International Monetary Fund

defined globalization as

“the growing economic interdependence of the entire

world caused by an increase in the volume and variety

of transborder transactions in goods and services, and

in international capital flows, along with the rapid and

broad dissemination of modern technology”.

Welcomed by some, feared by others, globalization

has become an unavoidable economic reality for all nations.

For most experts and other analysts, this process marks the

success of the global spread of an economic liberalization

that began in Europe half a century ago with the Marshall

Plan. In their view, it brings unprecedented possibilities to

billions of people all over the world.

For us in Africa, that optimistic vision needs to be

tempered, for possibilities are not realities. So that it can

become a reality, the harmonious pursuit of the

globalization process, in the context of real development for

all those billions of people throughout the world, especially

in Africa, necessarily presupposes a new international

programme of solidarity and cooperation for the poor

countries, without which globalization will very soon

transform their regions into a poor and marginalized

periphery of a hyper-rich and hyper-developed world.

In fact, the developed countries are already doing a

great deal for Africa, if we consider the sum total of the

loans made to the continent through bilateral and

multilateral assistance. And yet, contrary to what statistics,

curves, graphs and growth rates would have us believe,

African populations have not yet felt any tangible

improvement of their standard of living in their daily lives.

In spite of all this, for the immense majority of Africans

the will to survive is stronger than despair, and hope

prevails over resignation.

The ministerial meeting of the Security Council

devoted to Africa, held on the commendable initiative of

the United States last 25 September, led to a fruitful

exchange of views that showed us a real will on the part of

the international community to become more actively, more

significantly and more concretely involved in a new type of

partnership with Africa in order to contribute to its

development.

The signs of this real readiness on the part of the

developed countries have proliferated in recent years, as

we can see, inter alia, from the resolutions of the G-7

adopted in Lyon and in Denver, assistance programmes of

the eighth European Development Fund, President

Clinton’s initiative for a partnership for economic growth

and opportunity and the Tokyo International Conference

on African Development (TICAD I), and so on.

All in all, it can be said that the will exists to help

Africa emerge from poverty and underdevelopment, that

concrete actions are being undertaken in this direction and

that new commitments are being made. Nevertheless,

there still remain, unfortunately, enormous problems, and

Africa continues to present to the world the desolate

spectacle of endemic poverty, aggravated by crises and

fratricidal conflicts.

In order to put an end to this distressing situation,

Africa’s development partners should envisage a

comprehensive and integrated mechanism for flexible,

operational and effective financing, free of bureaucratic

impediments and red tape, with the aim of establishing a

centralized funding entity to receive resources from all

sources to be devoted to economic and social

development.

The end of the cold war, the process of economic

globalization and the progressive realization of the

concept of sustainable development offer the opportunity

for profound change, calling into question some of the

traditional solutions and conventional answers to

development problems.

In the dark centuries of the slave trade, Africa

contributed blood, sweat and the toil of its strongest arms

to the building of the bases of the economy of the New

World. The collective memory of humankind must not

forget this important historical fact. Today the developed

countries have the moral duty to be as concerned as

Africans themselves about the destiny of Africa, not to

abandon Africa along the roadside of globalization and to

make available to it part of their enormous material,

technological and financial strength, in order to support

Africa’s efforts in the struggle to emerge from

underdevelopment and to enter the modern age.

In order that the implementation of the United

Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in

27

the 1990s (UN-NADAF), the United Nations System-wide

Special Initiative on Africa, Agenda 21 and other

programmes of action can be truly successful, it will be

necessary to establish a global system of operations and

financing for Africa, like the Marshall Plan, which

contributed greatly to the reconstruction and economic and

social recovery of Europe after the Second World War. The

establishment of this mechanism before the year 2000 will

make it possible for Africa to stride confidently, not slouch,

into the twenty-first century.

Shortly before the statement that was made on 5 June

1947 at Harvard University by General George Marshall to

define the foundations of his well-known European

Recovery Programme, President Harry Truman stated:

“Our duty is to help free peoples to fashion their own

destiny in their own way. I believe that our assistance

must be first of all economic and financial, because

this is essential to economic stability and political

order.”

Fifty years later, this magnificent and noble spirit of

solidarity, displayed voluntarily by the great American

people and its Government, still retains all its validity and

all its historical meaning.

There are cases in which, because of the requirements

of its own unfolding, history repeats itself. Here at the end

of a century, we are experiencing one such case: it is

necessary to meet the urgent need for a new Marshall Plan

for Africa. And the upcoming second Tokyo International

Conference on African Development (TICAD II) could

provide one of the best opportunities to do so.

If the international community works resolutely in this

direction, we will have laid the solid and indestructible

foundations for a road on which we will all be able to

march triumphantly into the third millennium.

For its part the Government of Benin, while awaiting

the fulfilment of that hope, has developed the concept of a

shared social minimum level in order methodically and

effectively to take actions and measures aimed at

eliminating poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy,

providing adequate housing, guaranteeing productive

employment, improving standards and conditions of living

and ensuring the sustainable use of natural resources. This

concept was the subject of an international symposium,

supported by the United Nations system, which was held in

Cotonou from 4 to 6 August 1997.

The consolidation of our process of democratic

renewal, which began after the historic National

Conference of the Active Forces of the Nation in

February 1990, necessitates immediate and short-term

social and economic successes. That is why we are

endeavouring, with our limited resources, to take

multifaceted actions to improve the living and working

conditions of our rural and urban populations. However,

we know that we can rely on international cooperation,

founded not only on solidarity, but on mutual interest and

partnership, to overcome the difficulties confronting us, to

support our efforts at economic and social recovery, to

build a State genuinely based on the rule of law and to

construct a free, democratic, modern and prosperous

nation.