Brazil, 2008

It is my great

pleasure to greet my dear friend Mr. Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, President of the General Assembly. I wish

you much success in your mission.

The present session of the General Assembly is

being held at a particularly serious time. An often

predicted economic and financial crisis is now today’s

harsh reality. Because of the responsibility of

speculators, entire peoples are suffering anguish in the

wake of successive financial disasters that threaten the

world’s economy. Indispensable interventions by State

authorities have defied market fundamentalists and

shown that this is a time for political decisions. Only

decisive action by Governments — particularly those

of countries at the epicentre of the crisis — will be able

to rein in the disorder that has spread through the

world’s financial sector, with perverse effects on the

daily lives of millions of people. The lack of rules

favours adventurers and opportunists, to the detriment

of real companies and workers.

The great Brazilian economist Celso Furtado said

that we must not always allow speculators’ profits to be

privatized while their losses are invariably socialized.

We must not allow the burden of the boundless greed

of a few to be shouldered by all. The economy is too

serious a matter to be left in the hands of speculators.

Ethics must also apply to the economy.

A crisis of such magnitude will not be overcome

through palliative measures. Mechanisms for both

prevention and control are needed to ensure full

transparency for international finance. Today’s

supranational economic institutions have neither the

authority nor the workable instruments that they need

to control the anarchy of speculation. We must rebuild

them on entirely new foundations.

The global nature of this crisis means that the

solutions we adopt must also be global and must be

decided upon in legitimate and trusted multilateral

forums, without coercion. The United Nations, as the

world’s largest multilateral arena, must call for a

vigorous response to the weighty threats that we all

face.

Yet there are other, equally serious matters facing

the world today. One of them is the food crisis, which

afflicts more than a billion human beings. The energy

crisis is also growing worse every day, as will the risks

to world trade if we fail to achieve an agreement at the

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Doha Round; another is the unrestrained degradation of

the environment, which lies behind so many natural

calamities whose victims are overwhelmingly the poor.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was expected to open

up possibilities for building a world of peace, free from

the stigmas of the cold war. However, it is sad to see

other walls going up so quickly.

Many of those who preach the free circulation of

commodities and capital continue to fight the free

movement of men and women, using nationalistic and

even racist arguments that evoke unpleasant memories

and fears of times that we thought were behind us.

A supposedly “populist nationalism”, which some

forces seek to identify and criticize in the South, is

being unabashedly promoted in the developed

countries. The financial, food, energy, environmental

and migration crises, to say nothing of threats to peace

in several regions of the world, reveal that the

multilateral system must be overhauled to meet the

challenges of the twenty-first century.

Gradually, countries are moving beyond old

conformist alignments with traditional centres. That

new attitude, however, does not imply a

confrontational stance. Simply by using direct dialogue

without intermediation by major powers, developing

countries have stepped into new roles in designing a

multipolar world, with examples such as India, Brazil

and South Africa (IBSA), the G-20, the summits

between South America and Africa and between South

America and the Arab countries and the BRIC

countries — Brazil, Russian Federation, India and

China.

A new political, economic and trade geography is

being built in today’s world. While navigators in the

past would look to the North Star, today we are trying

to find our way by looking at multiple dimensions of

our planet. Now we often find our North Star in the

South. On my continent, the Union of South American

Nations (UNASUR) was created last May, as the first

treaty — after 200 years of independence — that

brings together all South American countries. This new

political union will coordinate the region’s countries in

terms of infrastructure, energy, social policies,

complementary production mechanisms, finance and

defence.

Meeting in Santiago, Chile, just over a week ago,

the Presidents of South America demonstrated

UNASUR’s ability to respond quickly and effectively

to complex situations, such as the one in our sister

nation, Bolivia. We supported its legitimately-elected

Government, its democratic institutions and its

territorial integrity and we issued a call for dialogue as

a path to peace and prosperity for the people of

Bolivia.

Next December, in the state of Bahia, Brazil will

host the first summit of all of the countries of Latin

America and the Caribbean on integration and

development. This will be a high-level meeting under

no umbrella, based on Latin America’s and the

Caribbean’s own perspectives. All these efforts in the

multilateral sphere are complemented by my country’s

solidarity initiatives with poorer nations, particularly in

Africa.

I also wish to emphasize our commitment to

Haiti, where we command troops of the United Nations

Stabilization Mission in Haiti and are helping to restore

peace. I reiterate my appeal for the solidarity of

developed countries with Haiti, since implementation

has fallen far short of the many promises.

The strength of values must prevail over the

value of strength. Only legitimate and effective

instruments can assure collective security. The United

Nations has spent 15 years discussing the reform of its

Security Council. Today’s structure has been frozen for

six decades and does not match the challenges of

today’s world. Its distorted form of representation

stands between us and the multilateral world to which

we aspire. Therefore, I am much encouraged by the

General Assembly’s decision to launch negotiations in

the near future on the reform of the Security Council.

It is multilateralism that must also guide us

toward solutions to the complex problems of global

warming, based on the principle of common but

differentiated responsibilities. Brazil has not shirked its

responsibilities. Our energy matrix is increasingly

clean. Today’s food and energy crises are deeply

intertwined. The inflation of food prices is affected not

only by climatic factors and speculation in agricultural

commodities; it is also driven by rising oil prices

which affect the prices of fertilizers and transportation.

Attempts to tie high food prices to the distribution of

biofuels do not stand up to an objective analysis of

reality.

Brazil’s experience demonstrates — and this

could be the case for countries similar to ours — that

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sugar-cane ethanol and biodiesel production reduce our

dependency on fossil fuels, create jobs, regenerate

degraded land and are fully compatible with expanding

food production. We wish to intensify all aspects of

that discussion at the world conference on energy and

biofuels which we will be holding in November 2008,

in the city of Sao Paulo.

My obsession with the hunger problem explains

my ongoing efforts, along with other world leaders, to

reach a positive conclusion to the Doha Round. We are

still pushing for an agreement to reduce scandalous

farm subsidies in rich countries. A successful Doha

Round will have a very positive impact on food

production, particularly in developing and poor

countries.

Four years ago, along with several world leaders,

I launched the Action Against Hunger and Poverty here

in New York. Our proposal, then and now, is to adopt

innovative funding mechanisms. The International

Drug Purchase Facility is one early result of that

initiative, helping to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and

malaria in several African countries. But it is not

enough. We still have a long way to go if we want

humanity to actually achieve the Millennium

Development Goals.

In December 2008, we will commemorate the

sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, paying a tribute that will go far beyond

mere formalities. That document expresses inalienable

commitments that challenge us all. As Governments,

we must do more than support the Declaration with

rhetoric. We are called upon to fight for the values

proclaimed six decades ago and to make them a reality

in each country and around the world.

Today’s Brazil is very different from what it was

in 2003, when I became President of my country and

stood for the first time before the General Assembly.

Our Government and society have taken decisive steps

to transform the lives of Brazilians, creating nearly 10

million formal jobs, distributing income and wealth,

improving public services, lifting 9 million people out

of extreme poverty, and bringing another 20 million

into the middle class. All this has occurred in an

environment of strong growth, economic stability,

lower external vulnerability and, above all, a stronger

democracy with the intense participation of our people.

In the year when we commemorate the

one-hundredth birthday of the great Brazilian Josué de

Castro — the first Director-General of the Food and

Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and a

pioneer in the studies concerning the problem of

hunger in the world — it is worthwhile to reread his

warning: “It is no longer possible to sit back and let a

region go hungry without the entire world suffering the

consequences.”

I am proud to state that Brazil is overcoming

hunger and poverty. I reiterate the optimism that I

expressed here five years ago. We are much greater

than the crises that threaten us. We have the heart, the

right-mindedness and the will to overcome any

adversity. More than ever, that is the spirit of

Brazilians.