Ghana, 2008

Let me take this opportunity

to congratulate you, Mr. President, on your very

inspiring statement yesterday (see ). Its

13 08-51749

vision and compassion should provide a framework for

the deliberations of the General Assembly into the

future.

I should also like to thank the Secretary-General

for his unequivocal resolve to use his tenure to provide

accountable leadership to this global institution. His

call for increased support from all Members in

restructuring and streamlining the Secretariat he leads

to ensure more flexible, efficient and effective tackling

of the many global challenges confronting humankind

is timely and must be heeded.

The unmistakable fact of our time is that the

world is in a state of flux with unmatched challenges

aptly described yesterday by you, Mr. President, as a

confluence of large-scale interrelated crises. That is

befuddling all nations, strong and weak, rich and poor;

but, as you and others have also observed, there are

tremendous opportunities as well. Examples of the

challenges that practically all previous speakers have

alluded to include the phenomenon of climate change

and its attendant snow-melts, tsunamis, floods and

droughts; the difficult-to-explain turbulence in the

crude oil market; the soaring prices of food; the

upheavals in the world financial market; the massive

trafficking in drugs and weapons; and the spate of

harrowing acts of terrorism in many parts of the world.

While some of those problems are natural, many of

them are man-made.

On the other hand, the advent of information and

communication technologies is effecting magical

changes in awareness and making time, space and

boundaries virtually irrelevant to human interactivity

around the world. Discoveries in medicine are

improving the quality of life and life expectancy. Fast

transportation, dramatic feats in engineering and

bioscience technologies with the promise of turning

even deserts into productive land are unleashing

unimaginable wealth among nations and individuals.

Collectively, those opportunities are diffusing power

around the world, to such an extent as to negate any

idea of a few nations having hegemonic sway in human

affairs.

Indeed, the era of the explosion of knowledge can

be said to be fulfilling the biblical saying that

humankind has been created in the image of God.

Humankind is increasingly showing limitless creativity,

which inspires a vision that it is indeed capable of

overcoming the challenges of our time. However, the

problem is one of whether we will curb our self-

centredness, greed, bigotry and petty inhumanities to

allow for the sharing of the outcomes of that creativity.

Left to our individual nations, the peoples of the world

will not be high-minded enough. The main challenge

then becomes how the various peoples of the world

will accept their common humanity as the centrepiece

of their endeavours.

There must be leadership, for which the

Organization seems to have been created. The founding

fathers must have instinctively believed that, with time,

the Organization would evolve into a global

Government. For even as there were marked

geopolitical considerations in the establishment of the

United Nations, the Organization was also imbued with

a powerful streak of morality. With time, the moral

streak has been steadily overcoming the geopolitical

dimension. That perception is what must drive the

entire membership to accept the call for reform of this

global institution and its agencies so as to make them

accountable to Members and, in turn, make Members

accept their authority and direction.

Indeed, the United Nations is the only

Organization in the world with the potential to

command respect across the board. Under its auspices,

strong and rich nations alike are showing increasing

tendencies to share knowledge and finance resources

with the weak and poor. Fellow-feeling in international

relations is also deepening. It is my belief that it is

through the Organization that the world will eventually

achieve peace, stability and prosperity, following the

menacing flux that engulfs all of us now.

It is the same moral streak embedded in the

United Nations that is propelling the development of

the various regional blocs around the world. In the case

of Africa, dramatic improvements have been made in

the last decade and a half. The African Union’s Peer

Review Mechanism demonstrates the great resolve of

African nations to adhere to the rule of law and good

governance. It is noteworthy that, as of now, close to a

majority of the membership of the Union has signed up

for review. It is also significant that many more African

leaders are today acceding to power through the ballot

box.

Meanwhile, under the auspices of the New

Partnership for Africa’s Development, Africa is trying

to pool resources among its members, in partnership

with others outside the continent, to exploit its huge

08-51749 14

potential and to develop its markets and its energy,

telecommunication, transportation and agriculture

sectors, among others. That is the way to solve the

many problems of poverty, illiteracy, disease,

ignorance and conflict. It is Africa’s initiative to

mainstream itself into globalization, and is receiving

the support of the international community. Evidence

of that includes the many joint conferences held with

Japan, China, Brazil and India, as well as Africa’s old

allies in Europe and North America.

While we appreciate the support from our

development partners, I must say that there is still

room for improvement, especially as regards the

continent’s efforts to achieve the Millennium

Development Goals. The various existing forms of

assistance are uncoordinated and insufficiently

substantial to achieve the Goals by the target date of

2015. In that regard, the Secretary-General’s call for

review and quick delivery of support is timely. As

observed in the Accra Accord of the twelfth United

Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the

whole idea of aid is to empower beneficiary countries

to stand on their own feet and to become effective

partners in the global market, from which neither rich

nor poor countries can abstain, given the increasing

interdependence of the world.

In January 2001, I was sworn into office as

President of Ghana on a liberal democratic

Constitution with the same strong streak of morality

that I see in the Charter of the United Nations. The

Constitution acknowledges the centrality of humankind

in all endeavours; hence the provisions for respect for

human rights, the rule of law, gender balance,

accountability and transparency in governance.

But, in 2001 the national economy was in bad

shape and Ghana had to sign up for the Heavily

Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative (HIPC) in

order to access funds for various reconstruction

projects for which credit lines were difficult to come

by. With national determination and great discipline,

the HIPC completion point was achieved in record time

to earn debt forgiveness of about $8 billion from

bilateral and multilateral creditors. That success has led

to increased inflows of domestic and foreign

investment that have enabled the Government to

launch, among other social services, a free and

compulsory universal basic education programme and

substantial developments in both the second-cycle and

tertiary levels education.

In the health sector, the first-ever national health

insurance scheme, including free maternal care, has

also begun in Ghana. Concurrently, heavy investments

are being made in infrastructure in the transportation,

energy and telecommunications sectors in anticipation

of accelerated growth in the economy. Meanwhile, a

process to modernize the country’s agriculture through

mechanization has begun to improve the welfare of the

more than 60 per cent of society that is rural and

depends on the sector for its livelihood.

By those policies, among others, the nation is

now in sight of attaining its ambitious vision of middle

income status by 2015, which is also the target date for

the Millennium Development Goals. Those

developments have been crowned by the discovery of

oil in commercial quantities, which the Government is

determined to make a blessing for the whole nation of

Ghana, rather than a curse.

That is the Ghana story as my term of office

comes to a close at the end of this year. The moral I

glean from the story is that development in freedom is

possible. In other words, accelerated national

development and good governance, including respect

for fundamental human rights, are not mutually

exclusive. Indeed, good governance should hasten

development.