Benin, 2010

I bring

a message on behalf of the President of the Republic of

Benin, His Excellency Mr. Boni Yayi, who was not

able to come to New York because of scheduling

conflicts. He shares the ambition of the President of the

General Assembly at the sixty-fifth session to build a

United Nations that is strong, inclusive and open as a

guarantor of global governance. I am convinced that

the productive experience of the President of the

General Assembly at the head of the Swiss

Government, which enabled his beautiful country to

enter the United Nations, will be a valuable asset to us.

From this perspective, Benin will make its contribution

to the work of this session and, in so doing, will strive

to promote the ideals of the Charter, to which my

country reiterates here its full support.

I would also like to express to Mr. Deiss my

warm congratulations on his election as President of

the General Assembly at the sixty-fifth session. His

predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Ali Treki, who

brilliantly led the work of the General Assembly with

respect to Africa, strove to find appropriate solutions to

the great challenges facing humankind with skill and

tact throughout his mandate. We pay tribute to him for

his good and loyal service to the international

community.

I would also like to welcome the courageous and

determined action of His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon,

Secretary-General of the United Nations, and commend

him for having taken the measure of the grave crises

affecting the world and for his ongoing commitment to

the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals

by 2015. Thanks to his bold initiatives to promote

international cooperation, he has been able to revive

the virtues of multilateralism as the optimum way to

manage world affairs in an inclusive and participatory

framework that stresses the uniqueness of our world

and the common responsibility of human beings to

maintain the fundamental balances on which human

survival on Earth depends and the sustainability of the

biosphere.

The trail blazed by the founding fathers of the

United Nations in the areas of international peace and

security, the promotion of human rights and

development is that of dialogue, cooperation and a

global partnership to promote the common good of

humankind.

The raison d’être of the United Nations is not

only to provide a framework of reference and universal

convergence to coordinate national policies, but also

and above all to address interests with respect to the

parameters that define areas of tension between

aspirations and the demands of our peoples and States

in all their diversity.

If the United Nations did not exist it would have

to be created, because we cannot imagine a world

today without the United Nations. I would therefore

like to express Benin’s commitment to the

irreplaceable role of the United Nations and its funds,

agencies, programmes and various specialized

institutions, which provide an invaluable service to

humankind as a secular extension of our collective

conscience.

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The High-level Plenary Meeting on the

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) convened by

the Secretary-General defined a programme of action

to achieve the Goals by 2015. In implementing these

measures, it is important to take continuously into

account the deadlines set for the achievement of the

MDGs in the light of the additional difficulties related

to the current crises of the financial and economic

system and to previous crises.

It is the duty of the international community to

mobilize the resources necessary to address the grave

distortions that caused these crises. Vulnerable

countries must make investments to relaunch

sustainable agricultural production and maintain

sustained growth capable of generating long-term

prosperity and sustainable human development,

because the achievements of the Millennium

Development Goals must be guaranteed in perpetuity.

The United Nations must now, and with a sense

of urgency, use its full influence to provide the means

to help countries in difficulty ensure the survival of

threatened populations and vulnerable groups that

could be decimated by famine and disease if nothing is

done to help them. The time has come to give

substance to the right to food because it is

unacceptable that hunger should persist among the

causes of human suffering in the twenty-first century.

In the short term, priority focus should be on

strengthening social protection systems in low-income

countries and on reactivating dormant local production

capacity by promoting small and medium-sized

agricultural businesses in order to avoid a drastic

increase in the number of people living in extreme

poverty.

In the medium and long terms, it is necessary to

rethink policies to promote investments in agriculture

in order to re-establish the balance between cash crops

and food products and thus ensure food security in

countries, taking their cultural specificities into

account.

The international community must begin to

evaluate the effectiveness of its strategic monitoring

mechanisms in order to strengthen their ability to

foresee systemic shocks. What is predictable should be

predicted in order to define a long-term approach and

to build, on the basis of available scientific data, a

desirable future for our countries and peoples, who

must cooperate to that end.

In this respect, the proposal to increase the

agricultural share of official development assistance from

3 per cent to 10 per cent is a strategic approach that

should be implemented with common political will

commensurate to the challenge. Here, I pay tribute to

countries that have already made concrete commitments

to providing additional resources to that end.

Benin is an agricultural country, and agriculture

must serve as a springboard for its development. In that

regard, the Government of Benin is working to promote

synergistic growth and the fight against poverty in order

to align democracy and new-found freedoms with shared

prosperity by carrying out the social transformations

necessary to ensure the effective participation of all

sectors in national development efforts.

The Government of Benin is working to promote

agricultural mechanization, but given that the latter

cannot have the desired impact without water

management, we are also planning for rational

management of that resource in order to maximize its

use and ensure its sustainability. These investments

will allow us to make the work of farmers less difficult

and to limit post-harvest losses in order to ensure that

agricultural production covers national needs and

generates surplus for export.

In the framework of efforts to diversify

agricultural production, the Government of Benin is

also working to promote crops for marginal farming

land to produce biofuel. The goal is to reduce

dependence on and the rising cost of hydrocarbons,

which have been exacerbated by the drastic drop in

hydroelectric power caused by climate change, which

has also seriously affected the country’s economic

activity in recent years.

West Africa has been deeply affected by soil

degradation, coastal erosion and the effects of frequent

floods due to climate change. Here, we express our

appreciation for the awareness-raising undertaken by

the secretariat of the United Nations Convention to

Combat Desertification. It is important to devote more

resources to implementing the Convention in the

framework of fighting climate change.

Adaptation and mitigation measures should be

implemented with a sense of heightened urgency in

order to help regions affected. Financial and

development institutions should pay special attention

to programmes to revitalize soil and to promote

irrigation farming and reforestation, using species that

51 10-54833

can increase food availability. We reaffirm our

sympathy for countries that have been struck this year

by natural disasters, in particular earthquakes, and

Haiti in particular, with which we share close lineage

and cultural ties.

My country, Benin, will hold presidential and

legislative elections in March 2011. After 20 years of

democracy during which elections have been organized

on the basis of manually recorded lists, my country’s

Government, in collaboration with the United Nations

and its development partners, has finally decided to

create a computerized permanent electoral list that will

ensure transparent elections and significantly reduce

complaints and other post-electoral difficulties. The

political class of Benin agrees unanimously on the

need for such a computerized list, but differences

remain with respect to the process, the timing of its

implementation and its use for the presidential and

legislative elections in March 2011.

I am confident that, through dialogue and Benin’s

creative genius, which ensured the outstanding success

of the national conference of political stakeholders in

February 1990, Benin will be able to meet this

challenge and once again surprise the world. I call on

the United Nations and the international community to

continue to support the efforts of the Government of

Benin to work successfully to address the major

challenges of today and the future.

We must maintain international peace and

security. This is the first of the major tasks assigned to

the United Nations. In spite of the tireless efforts of the

Organization alongside regional organizations,

humankind continues to suffer as a result of ongoing

armed conflicts, the destructiveness of which leads to

unimaginable suffering for affected populations.

Terrorism, which we condemn without

reservation in all its forms and manifestations, also

continues to indiscriminately afflict innocent civilian

populations, including humanitarian workers and

United Nations personnel despite the specific

international protection they enjoy.

We are concerned by these serious infringements

of the humanitarian principles relevant to conflict

situations. We must work to strengthen the authority of

international humanitarian law and the multilateral

international justice institutions in order to increase

their deterrence capacity with respect to serious crimes.

Here my country reiterates the importance it

assigns to the responsibility to protect, and we will

spare no effort to ensure its operationalization in

accordance with the fundamental principles of the

Charter of the United Nations.

We appeal to all peoples and to all citizens of the

world to respect the value of human life and to work in

a spirit of peaceful coexistence and good-neighbourliness

to resolve their disputes through cooperation, exchange

and seeking mutual understanding, promoting a culture of

peace and dialogue among religions for the common good

of all humankind, at peace with itself.

To this end, we must pay greater attention to

efforts to eradicate the underlying causes of conflict

and in particular to put an end to the illicit trade in

small arms and light weapons that leads to their

proliferation and thus to lawlessness and insecurity in

our towns and countryside.

Respect for human rights and civil liberties

means that human beings must be placed at the centre

of sustainable development efforts, and it is the duty of

the international community to ensure this. It is

essential that respecting human rights become a way of

life and the essential standard that validates human

behaviour on a daily basis so as to promote mutual

respect, equal opportunities in life and the full

realization of the potential of every individual.

In this context, I would like to highlight the

important role young people and women have to play

in the development of our countries. In declaring the

year that began 12 August 2010 as the International

Year of Youth, the General Assembly highlighted the

contribution that young people make to society. We

urge all Member States to give concrete substance to

the International Year of Youth, in line with the

situation in their countries.

The theme of the Year, “Dialogue and Mutual

Understanding”, aims, moreover, to foster alliances

among the generations. The Government of Benin is

determined to make its modest contribution by

supporting the effective holding of the United Nations

Conference on Youth, which is currently being

prepared, to mark the Year.

With a view to ensuring that the potential of

women, who represent more than half of the population

of my country, is fully realized, the Government has set

up a National Institute for the Promotion of Women. A

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microcredit programme for the poorest women was also

launched to ensure the promotion of their economic

activities. To date, this programme has helped to

empower almost 600,000 women by providing income-

generating activities. The programme should be

expanded, which will require additional financial support

from the international community and, in particular, from

technical and financial partners.

Promoting the rule of law at the international

level requires the effective participation of all peoples

in the management of world affairs in the interest of

current and future generations. In particular, the

representation of developing countries should be

strengthened in the decision-making bodies of the

international financial institutions, as should their

accountability. Their institutional mandates should be

redefined so that they better help to mobilize resources

in support of the development of the least developed

countries, while ensuring the stability of the

international financial system.

The Security Council is an essential instrument

for global governance. Its long-awaited reform cannot

be postponed indefinitely. Reform efforts are being

held hostage by the inherent contradictions in today’s

international relations and remain hopelessly at a

standstill despite the crucial importance we all

recognize them to have for the effectiveness of the

Organization. The ongoing negotiations towards reform

must be carried out in good faith and with a keen sense

of responsibility in order to preserve the credibility of

the Organization, which has been beset by heavy

liabilities.

Let us avoid trite formulations that evade the very

essence of reform, which is to ensure the equitable

representation of States in both categories of membership

and to guarantee that the Council’s decisions have the

transparency, legitimacy and authority necessary for it

more effectively to uphold its primary responsibility for

the maintenance of international peace and security.

In this respect, Benin reaffirms, from this

rostrum, Africa’s legitimate aspirations. The

democratization of the United Nations also means a

stronger commitment to respect for national and

international law on the part of Member States.

Here Benin renews its firm commitment to

continuing to contribute to the ongoing adaptation

efforts of the Organization, which is solidly anchored

in its main principles of the sovereign equality of

States, respect for human dignity, the promotion of

development cooperation and the search for the best

solutions to the world’s problems.

In this spirit, I should like to conclude by making

an urgent appeal for the strengthening of international

cooperation. International cooperation is neither a form

of social assistance nor an organized hybrid system of

begging and deception. It should be based on

legitimate mutual interests — a joint effort towards a

contract of solidarity, which would enable us together

to attain the means to forge conditions for humanity to

live in greater dignity and with ever-greater creativity.

This is the thought that inspires us in this year when

we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the

independence of 17 African countries.