Estonia, 2004

First of all, allow me

to congratulate you on your election to the office of the

President of the fifty-ninth session of the General

Assembly. I wish you every success and all the best in

your very important work. I would also like to thank

your predecessor, Mr. Julian Hunte, for his leadership

of the General Assembly at its fifty-eighth session.

The current session is very significant for

Estonia, since it is the first time ever that we

participate at the General Assembly as a member State

of the European Union and the NATO. We are

therefore more aware than ever before of our shared

responsibility for the world, but also of our

vulnerability to global threats.

During the last few years, we have all witnessed

new threats to world peace and security. We have also

seen how these threats are all connected to economic,

social, cultural and humanitarian problems. The fifty-

eighth session of the General Assembly focused on the

situation in Iraq. However, securing peace and stability

in the Middle East remains an ongoing concern. I hope

that all of this has only deepened our conviction that

the goals and principles of the United Nations Charter

have not really lost their topicality but rather, are even

more topical now. In today’s world of new threats and

changing global security, we need shared solutions

more than ever before. The United Nations is the only

organization established to coordinate, on a global

scale, the efforts of States in safeguarding international

stability and security. The United Nations has to be

even more decisive and efficient in order to

successfully fulfil its important responsibilities in this

new situation.

The reduction of world poverty continues to be a

central issue on the global development agenda; less

poverty would certainly mean more international

stability and security. The international community has

made a commitment to achieve the Millennium

Development Goals by the year 2015, halving poverty

in the world by that time. That is a very optimistic

promise indeed, and it assumes that all countries must

perform even more purposefully and in an even more

coordinated manner. High-level meetings in Doha,

Monterrey and Johannesburg have shown us the way;

now, we must act.

At the forthcoming 2005 summit, we will review

our progress in fulfilling the goals set out in the

Millennium Declaration. I would like to appeal to all of

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us here to work so that we would be content with the

conclusions in the interim report.

Together with other United Nations Member

States, Estonia shares responsibility for balanced

development in the world and makes its contribution

towards achieving the common goals. Only recently,

we were one of the recipient countries of international

aid. Now that we are one of the donors, we are very

much aware of how important it is that international

aid be coordinated and harmonized. We began

providing international aid in 1998. Time has shown

that the Estonian experience in building up democratic

institutions, implementing economic reforms and

involving civil society in public life and decision-

making can really help other countries where such

processes are still in their initial stage.

Despite the work that has already been done to

achieve the very challenging Millennium Development

Goals, we must admit, unfortunately, that the gap

between the rich and the poor is widening. What is

more, it is taking new forms in our changing world. In

addition to economic inequality, the information era

has brought about the so-called digital divide, a divide

between information-rich and information-poor States

and nations as well as social groups. I would like to

briefly elaborate on this topic.

In spite of the rapid development in information

technology over the last ten years, only a small group

of privileged countries and social groups have

benefited from the so-called digital revolution. For

example, let us consider access to the Internet. Many of

us cannot really imagine life without the Internet, but

four-fifths of the world population have never had any

contact with the Internet. More than a half of Internet

users live in Europe or in North America, which

together represent only 17 per cent of the world’s

population. In Africa, only 1.4 per cent of the

population uses the Internet.

The digital divide exists not only between

countries but also within countries, between different

social groups. The causes of such a divide can be age,

gender, language, education or income. The digital

divide is a reflection of technological, social and

economic backwardness, perhaps due to a lack of

infrastructure or to that infrastructure being very

expensive. At the same time, the digital divide is not

only an expression of existing socio-economic

inequality, but also amplifies it and even causes it.

Today, the social and economic value of access to

information is much higher than it was 20 years ago.

Unequal access to know-how, information networks

and opportunities to contribute to these networks, will,

in the longer term, lead to a further marginalization of

poor countries and poor social groups. Paradoxically,

the very same Internet is behind this marginalization,

although it is supposed to be the cheapest and most

efficient way to exchange information and knowledge

in the world.

Since information technology has a strong impact

on economic growth and competitiveness, there is no

doubt that it is a new factor in development policy.

That is why in recent years, more and more attention

has focused on the causes and consequences of the

digital divide. For example, the United Nations

Development Programme’s Human Development

Report 2001 concentrated on those problems and was

the centre of attention at the 2003 World Summit on

the Information Society in Geneva.

I am very pleased that Estonia has, in a relatively

short period of time, achieved a remarkable level in

several areas of information technology. We have

managed to create a favourable environment for

development in this field and have ensured that the

necessary infrastructure has been created through close

cooperation between the public sector and the private

sector, businesses and non-governmental organizations.

As a result of this, Estonian citizens of limited means

now have access to several information society

services. According to “The Economist”, as of 2004,

Estonia ranks 26th in the world in e-readiness and

holds a leading position among Central and Eastern

European countries. More than half the Estonian

population regularly uses the Internet; 38 per cent own

computers; 80 per cent own mobile phones; 62 per cent

use Internet banking; and 59 per cent fill out their tax

returns electronically. Estonians can communicate with

both the central Government and local governments

over the Internet and are able to use legally binding

digital signatures. All those indicators are in line with

European Union averages even though Estonia’s gross

domestic product remains considerably lower than the

European average.

I believe that, as a former country in transition,

Estonia has experiences which could be very useful for

developing countries with respect to the promotion of

information and communication technologies. Estonia

is in a position to provide development assistance, first

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and foremost in the form of know-how. We have

already taken steps in that direction: in the summer of

2002 the Government of Estonia, the United Nations

Development Programme and the Information

Programme of the Open Society Institute jointly set up

the Estonian e-Governance Academy. The purpose of

that unique Academy is to improve the public-private

cooperation in the information and communication

technologies. The initial beneficiaries of the project are

Central and Eastern European countries, countries of

the Commonwealth of Independent States and Asian

countries, but we already have future plans for African

countries as well. The e-Governance Academy has

already held training courses for officials from

Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Albania, Kazakhstan and other

countries.

The year 2004 is the final year of the

International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People.

I am an Estonian, and as an Estonian I have a specific

reason to talk about indigenous peoples: we are a

nation that knows how important it is to preserve and

develop our culture and language. Therefore, I am very

happy that recent decades have seen increased

momentum in the activities of the United Nations and

its agencies to protect the rights of indigenous peoples.

But the approaching end of the International

Decade of the World’s Indigenous People must not

mean diminished attention to the situation of

indigenous peoples. The rights of indigenous peoples

must be codified in international law without further

delay. Estonia firmly supports the speedy formulation

and adoption of a declaration on the rights of

indigenous peoples. Regardless of the progress that has

been made locally, many of the world’s peoples remain

uncertain about the preservation of their cultures and

languages. Restrictions on the rights of indigenous

peoples are one of the reasons behind the emergence of

hot spots and crises.

Scientists enter endangered species into a Red

Book in order to help save them from extinction. But

we do not yet have a Red Book of peoples. When a

species of wildlife disappears, nature becomes poorer

and the ecological balance can be damaged. By the

same token, the extinction of a people means that the

whole world becomes intellectually and culturally

poorer.

Anthropologists have used the concept of the

“fourth world” to refer to the ever increasing

marginalization of indigenous peoples and the

deterioration of their living conditions. The living

conditions of Finno-Ugric peoples in their historic

homelands provide a worrying example. The Council

of Europe Parliamentary Assembly has expressed its

concerns in that respect. In August this year, the fourth

World Congress of the Finno-Ugric Peoples took place

in Estonia under the motto “Youth is our future.” The

final document of the Congress expressed concern

about the ongoing loss of national identity by Finno-

Ugric peoples and called on the international

community to devote greater attention to the protection

of human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples

and national minorities.

I would like finally to touch upon the future of

the United Nations. The United Nations needs to be

strengthened and improved: it needs to be reorganized

so that it can better respond to new challenges.

Reorganization and increased efficiency would make

the Organization more reliable and provide it with

greater authority. Here, all Member States share a

common goal: to ensure the steady development of the

United Nations and to effect reforms that would

enhance its effectiveness as a multilateral organization.

Estonia firmly supports that process.

I believe that greater attention should be devoted

to the prevention of crises and conflicts. We await the

publication on 1 December of the report of the High-

Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which

could provide essential guidelines for making the

United Nations function more efficiently in the

changed global framework.

Thanks to the efforts of Secretary-General Kofi

Annan and the President of the fifty-eighth session,

Julian Hunte, and thanks to the cooperation of Member

States, discussions on revitalization of the work of the

General Assembly have yielded concrete and desirable

results, reflected in resolution 58/316, adopted on

1 July. That resolution is an essential landmark in the

process of changing and modernizing the General

Assembly to keep pace with developments in world

events. At the fifty-ninth session, under the presidency

of Mr. Jean Ping, we must continue and intensify our

efforts in that direction.

Finally, it is also high time that we moved

forward with reform of the Security Council, which

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would enable the United Nations to participate more

effectively in resolving world problems and crises.