Dominican Republic, 1999

It is a particular

honour for me to address the Assembly on behalf of the

Government and people of the Dominican Republic and to

take this opportunity to express my warmest congratulations

to you, Sir, on your recent election as President of the fifty-

fourth session of the General Assembly.

I would also like to commend the excellent work of

that outstanding representative of our region, the Foreign

Minister of Uruguay, Mr. Didier Opertti, who so efficiently

conducted the proceedings of the fifty-third session of the

General Assembly.

Let me also wish Mr. Kofi Annan every success in

the important and delicate tasks he is carrying out as

Secretary-General of the United Nations.

This venerable institution, the United Nations, was

founded more than half a century ago with the lofty goal

of safeguarding peace among nations and the integrity of

peoples. The United Nations has made a significant

contribution to preventing armed conflict, reducing

tension, resolving differences, promoting negotiation and

agreements, and encouraging tolerance and non-violence.

But in a world that is becoming increasingly

complex in the wake of an era marked by bipolar

confrontation between two models of civilization, and

with the rise of a technological revolution that has

contributed to an accelerated sense of time, a reduction in

distances and an increase in expectations, the United

Nations must exercise renewed leadership in order to

confront this new set of circumstances which, while they

represent tremendous opportunities for the peoples of the

world, may also threaten their future.

It is no longer just a matter of preventing war and

conflict; that unavoidable task will always be expected of

the Organization. The United Nations must ensure for

every human being on this earth a dignified, hopeful and

decent existence.

Never before has the world accumulated so much

wealth. At no other time in history has humankind been

able, as it is today, to produce everything it needs in the

way of food, clothing, shelter, communications and

transportation. The level of wealth that exists today is

such that each and every day, more than a trillion dollars

circulates in international capital markets for purely

speculative purposes, producing what today is known as

a “casino economy”.

In order to give a rough idea of what that volume of

capital means, I must point out that a single day of

operations in the financial markets is equivalent to twice

the annual gross national product of all the African

countries. However, that wealth is concentrated in just a

few countries that today are identified as central

countries, and inside each of them wealth is concentrated

in a few hands that control industry, finance,

transportation and communications. The concentration of

wealth in a few countries, and the influence that those

4

countries exert in the media, leads to the dissemination of

a consumer philosophy that in turn contributes to the

adoption of artificial lifestyles and behaviour patterns that

are conducive to waste, luxury and ostentation.

Alongside all this wealth, however, the world has

never suffered so much poverty. Today, 1.3 billion people

live in extreme poverty, and most of them suffer from

hunger every day. In such a wealthy world, 3 billion people

survive on less than $2 a day, and each year 50 million

children are permanently harmed because of malnutrition.

Some 1.5 billion people have no access to drinking water,

and more than 2 billion have no access to drainage or

sewerage facilities. A large percentage have very limited

access to education, health care and housing, and hundreds

of millions are unemployed or have no secure or permanent

income.

This stark and horrifying contrast between wealth and

poverty constitutes a huge challenge for all the nations of

the world and the United Nations system as we approach

the twenty-first century. There are no magic formulas for

resolving this situation. Only the concerted efforts of all

nations, rich and poor, working to the same end in a spirit

of solidarity and a sense of humanity will make it possible

for the whole of humankind to share on a basis of equality

and social justice in the prodigious and unprecedented

creation of wealth in this era.

For some time, in various international forums, a set

of balanced and reasonable ideas have been put forward,

and if they were applied they would contribute to a

significant reduction in poverty and to the creation of

opportunities.

The world welcomed with great joy and satisfaction

the decision adopted by the countries members of the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

to use 0.7 of their gross national product to finance a

programme aimed at halving by the year 2015 the

percentage of the inhabitants of developing countries living

in extreme poverty. Despite the public commitment made

by those countries, cooperation for development fell to 0.22

of the combined product of the donor countries in 1997,

which is the lowest figure since the 1950s.

It is unfair that while there is a daily transfer of over

$1 trillion from the central or highly developed countries,

there is a tendency to decrease official development

assistance for the least developed countries.

The developing countries have watched their external

debt climb from $1.6 trillion in 1993 to $2.5 trillion in

1998. The external debt of Latin America increased from

$44.786 billion in 1980 to $669 billion in 1997 — an

almost fifteen-fold increase in 17 years. Interest payments,

which remained stable between 1980 and 1994 at a level

between $24 billion and $28 billion, increased sharply, in

1997 reaching $42 billion.

The current proposal is to reduce the debt of only

the heavily indebted poor countries. It seems to us that

although this is a very significant first initiative, it is not

sufficient because it excludes a group of countries,

including the Dominican Republic, that have made

significant efforts to achieve progress and peace, yet face

a titanic struggle to overcome underdevelopment and

poverty.

Forgiving external debt, or at least reducing it

significantly, or eliminating the interest would be a just

acknowledgement of those countries that, in spite of their

internal difficulties, have adopted strict adjustment

measures that have made it possible for them scrupulously

to honour their international obligations. Forgiving

external debt, or reducing it in any other way, would be

a true gesture of international solidarity aimed at reducing

poverty. Furthermore, the resources that would be freed

as a result would greatly benefit the creditor countries and

the international commercial banking community, since

the purchasing power of poor nations would be increased,

thereby generating a new dynamism in the world

economy.

The so-called Asian crisis generated international

turbulence, led to the Russian crisis and had a similar

impact on the Brazilian economy, which in turn affected

the Southern Cone economies. In analysing that crisis, the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund agreed

that it resulted from factors generated by the international

flow of capital in the Asian stock markets. As a result of

that situation, which has been identified as the first major

crisis of the globalized economy, the economists of both

institutions have proposed the creation of a new

international financial architecture. That new architecture

would seek to stabilize the financial markets through the

adoption of a set of careful measures, both national and

international, to prevent another financial crisis in the

future.

These proposals would seem to be wise and

beneficial. However, we believe that a true new

international financial structure, as the focal point of a

5

global economy, should include the element of international

solidarity and cooperation aimed at the introduction of

measures to reduce poverty. We cannot understand why

more than $1 trillion dollars circulates in international

financial transactions every day while not a penny of those

resources goes to the world's poor. All of Haiti's problems

would be solved with only a single minute's worth of

banking transactions on the international market. The same

could be said of Nicaragua and of Honduras, and even of

our own country, the Dominican Republic.

The eradication of poverty is not an illusory goal.

With the wealth currently circulating world-wide, we could

restore a sense of dignity to each and every human being.

Determining how to achieve this is the big challenge facing

this Organization in the twenty-first century.

To meet that challenge the United Nations itself has to

go through a process of change and reform, beginning with

acceptance that all its Member States are equal, with no

differentiation between the powerful ones that possess the

right of veto and the poor ones that have been marginalized

in the very Organization that represents them. There is no

doubt that we now have a unique opportunity to reform the

Security Council. The Dominican Republic is convinced

that reform of the Security Council must be carried out in

keeping with the principles of equitable geographical

distribution and the equal sovereignty of Member States,

since no reform will be acceptable if it leads to

discriminatory treatment of developing nations by

developed nations.

It is in this spirit that the Dominican Republic aspires

to election in the near future to a seat as a non-permanent

member of the Council. Our country, although small in

size, has a pacifist tradition that it would hope to channel

into and combine with the basic principles that should guide

the Security Council.

The Dominican Republic is proud to have introduced

resolution 47/5, by which the Assembly proclaimed 1999 as

the International Year of Older Persons. Now that the Year

is drawing to a close, we are especially proud of its

international success. In the Dominican Republic, thanks to

the concerted efforts of the Government, in September

1998, our Congress approved a bill of rights for older

persons and established a national committee to oversee its

implementation. We consider this to have been our most

important contribution the Year.

As host country to the International Research and

Training Institute for the Advancement of Women

(INSTRAW), we wish once again to stress the

fundamental importance of the Institute, which is one of

only three United Nations entities headquartered in a

developing country, and the only one situated in the

region of Latin America and the Caribbean. It is as

important as it was in 1978, when it was created to

promote the advancement of women, especially in our

developing nations. We therefore appeal to all

Governments to contribute to revitalizing the Institute so

that it may continue its important work.

We are confident that this great Organization will

renew itself and will act with the visionary leadership for

which it was created for by its founders at the San

Francisco Conference, in a world that expects greater

solidarity among nations and a more just, equitable and

humane international order.

I wish to conclude by calling on States Members of

the United Nations to participate in and support the

Millennium Assembly. We believe that that important

assembly will reaffirm our commitment to the United

Nations Charter, by highlighting the mission of the United

Nations system in the twenty-first century in the light of

the problems posed by globalization and of the need to

ensure that that process will be of benefit to us all.