Guinea, 2007

I should like at the outset to convey to all members

friendly greetings from Guinea, its people and its

President, General Lansana Conté. To the President of

the General Assembly at its sixty-second session and to

the Secretary-General of our Organization, I wish to

convey the same greetings and to express our heartfelt

wishes for every success.

The agenda of the sixty-second session of the

General Assembly places before us all the essential

issues challenging the world: the maintenance of

international peace and security, the development of

Africa, the promotion of human rights, climate change,

the promotion of justice and international law,

disarmament, the fight against illicit drugs and the

fight against terrorism. Those subjects are timely today,

but they were also timely yesterday and will probably

remain so tomorrow. They are part of man’s long

attempt to meet the principal challenge facing him

since the dawn of his existence nearly 3 million years

ago: his survival.

Today more than ever before, that survival is

threatened by a serious lack of respect for the

environment. Man emerged from a hostile natural

environment, which he tamed in many ways before he

began to dangerously threaten it through his appetite

for absolute power and his desire for comfort and well-

being. Where will this tyranny end? Science has

sounded the alarm, although the mobilization consists

more of words than of deeds, more of intention than of

reality. In this very Hall, during the High-level Event

on Climate Change, we absorbed all the information

provided by scientists, who concluded that action was

urgent. It is paradoxical to note that, after having

searched desperately for life on other planets without

finding it, man does not realize that, for the time being,

he is unique in the immensity of the cosmos.

That unique existence in the Milky Way must

continue at all costs, and that is within our reach. The

determination that inspired the Organization’s founding

nations to put the world’s affairs in order and forever

banish the spectre of war should be the same

determination that leads all nations of the Earth to take

concrete and immediate measures to put an end to

environmental degradation.

Every time human beings have wanted to do

something, they have been able to do it. However, that

resolve should not contain secret vices. For example, it

should not consist of imposing restrictions on poor

countries’ use of their forest resources, as if such

restrictions were an angelic service to humanity. A

balance is possible between environmental protection

and the essential will to achieve development. A

number of great world leaders have advocated just

compensation to Africa for the exploitation of its

natural resources. Africa should be grateful for that.

But the continent’s needs go well beyond that.

Africa no longer wants to be confined to the simple

role of supplier of raw materials; it wishes to process

them in order to create more jobs and added value so as

to create more wealth. The technologies that need to be

transferred today are those that guarantee better

productivity while respecting the ecosystem.

The issues facing humanity today cannot be

addressed by any one country in isolation. The United

Nations, because it embodies our common destiny,

must be the place where our fears, our anxieties, our

visions and our proposals, but also our hopes, come

together. But if it is to play such a role, the United

Nations must be just and equitable both in its structures

and in its decision-making mechanisms.

The Second World War, which was the tragic

vehicle that fortunately led to the establishment of the

United Nations, spared no nation, race or continent.

Reform of the Security Council in particular and of

other United Nations organs in general must take

account not only of that historic reality, but also of the

inevitably universal nature of the problems besetting

us.

How can we put an end to terrorism unless we

take into account the ferment that would characterize

the dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions

and enhance mutual understanding and tolerance? How

can we overcome HIV/AIDS if profit remains the

criterion that guides the pharmaceutical laboratories?

How do we put an end to the inexorable degradation of

the environment when powerful corporations care little

for the future of the planet? How do we eradicate the

scourge of drugs when drug traffickers are irresistibly

drawn to easy money? All of those questions call for

solidarity, vision and joint action. We cannot improve

on the brilliant and poignant analyses that have already

been made here in this legendary Hall, but the

difference that we can make is to take action.

We should remember that many of the

commitments entered into on many fronts have not

been respected by the United Nations, nor by the

groups of countries represented in specific

organizations. Allow me to give you several examples.

In 1974, the most highly industrialized countries

promised to eliminate world poverty in the year 2000.

That was a mythical year, the year 2000. For that

purpose, they undertook to allocate 0.7 per cent of their

gross domestic product to official development

assistance.

In 1989, 15 years later, amidst the euphoria

arising from the fall of the Berlin Wall, the same

Powers foretold an era of universal peace by the end of

the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-

first century. They foretold that the funds previously

dedicated to the arms race would henceforth be

devoted to accelerating the eradication of poverty,

which they said would become effective in 2000.

Unfortunately, those predictions were disproved by

reality.

Poverty in the world has certainly not been

eliminated, it has increased since the beginning of the

1990s. Over 100 million people joined the ranks of the

poor in 2003 alone. In September 2000, in this same

Hall that, at the time, applauded those aborted hopes,

the heads of State and Government of the world

adopted the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration

implicitly recognized the inescapable nature of poverty,

rejecting the goals set in 1974 and admitted that it

would only be possible to halve the number of poor

people in the world by 2015.

Today, midway towards the achievement of the

goals of that Declaration, which did, however,

crystallize so many dreams and hopes for the younger

generations of the world, all the experts’ reports agree

that the Millennium Development Goals will only be

achieved if we change the strategies and rules that

shape our world today.

Instead of a new dawn of global peace, localized

wars that rip through the protective membrane of the

entrenched and now-defunct bipolar global system now

appear in successive waves in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The nuclear threat has not disappeared. Is nuclear

energy, whether put to civilian or military uses,

actually essential to the life of mankind? Nuclear

power certainly is useful when used for civilian

purposes, but will always be a threat to humankind

both for those who possess it and those who aspire to

possess it when used for military purposes. It is the

logic of rivalry between nations that has led to the

logic of the arms race and the theory of deterrence is

only a subset of that logic. The best deterrence is the

total absence of nuclear weapons.

The effort to combat terrorism is another

challenge, the challenge that is played out in a

Manichean manner, evil and good opposing each other.

Although no attenuating circumstances can be granted

to those who subscribe to the philosophy of terror, the

realities on which that philosophy seems to be based

must nevertheless be eradicated: injustice in the

management of world affairs, intolerance in the

perception of differences between cultures and

cynicism expressed in the theory of natural differences

among races.

The success of human rights and worldwide

democracy is to be won at that price. Indeed, the great

Western Powers, who have guaranteed so much to their

peoples in terms of freedom, equality and respect for

the fundamental values of mankind must show greater

rigor in peacefully promoting the same principles at the

global level. They currently give us cause to believe

that they frequently choose their immediate interests

above the principles in which they believe, although

they have good reason to believe in those principles.

All of the heads of State and Government of the

African continent and of many other countries that

have come before this rostrum have eloquently

addressed the issues confronting poor countries. I

would like to only briefly touch upon them. Trapped in

a vicious circle resulting from the conjunction of bad

governance, ever-growing poverty and the Gordian

knot of irreducible external debt and unfair capital

markets, poor countries are steadily deteriorating.

Often transformed into sanctuaries for rebel armed

groups, they have become the site of civil wars, with

their trails of refugees and massive population

displacements. Those devastated societies feed

migratory flows and provide an ideal refuge for the

mafia networks of organized crime. The traffic in small

arms and light weapons knows no borders and the

weapons end up in the trained hands of child soldiers.

I do not believe in the inevitability of poverty nor

in that of war. Failures in those areas can be clearly

explained. The dominant groups of the rich countries

and the elites who are charged with governance in poor

countries are both responsible for the failure of the

fight against poverty and for not having met the

commitments taken in 1974. What is worse, they have

given preference to commercial, financial and

technological policies and strategies that have

reinforced the causes of the ongoing impoverishment

of poor populations worldwide. With respect to the

failure of the pledge for universal peace, it is due to the

concepts and political strategies put in place by the

dominant groups and leaders of the world who have

opted for reaction over prevention.

There are solutions to counter poverty and to

bring the world out of this pattern of permanent war.

Inspired by the shared destiny of mankind, our dream

of universal peace still has every chance of coming

true. It would involve promoting a global economic

system based on a series of common goods and global

public services that must be provided and overseen by

the global collective. That is certainly not out of reach.

To eradicate poverty, we must declare it illegal in

principle and unacceptable as a phenomenon.

Declaring that poverty is illegal means specifically

abolishing the legislative and administrative provisions

that sustain the mechanisms that create and maintain

poverty around the world. It is that new momentum of

commitment and collective responsibility towards the

eradication of poverty and towards guaranteed peace

that will open the way to resolving the many other

major challenges that face our time. Of course, the

question remains; is our contemporary society, replete

with its unprecedented global capacities in the area of

know-how, technologies, finance and mobilization of

human resources made up, in its essence, not of

conquerors but of builders of peace and security who

are sufficiently courageous and daring to be able to

change the current patterns that mould and forge our

world?

Let us take an example from the nineteenth

century, which was a time when the world was

successful in initiating the process of completely

eradicating the age-old practice of slavery, which had

until then been considered to be natural and immutable.

That required the courageous leaders of the time to

declare the practice illegal, at the cost of their own

lives at times. The heroic victory of the Allies during

the Second World War was due to a commitment of a

similar nature. Similarly, was it not thanks to their firm

commitment that the major leaders of the world

recently succeeded in abolishing the shameful system

of apartheid and replacing it with a democracy of

exceptional vitality?

If leaders of that calibre illuminated our past, I

am confident that there still exist today those who are

capable of changing our world to make a happy legacy

for future generations.

In January and February 2007, the Republic of

Guinea was beset by an unprecedented socio-political

crisis that threatened its social stability and the

foundations of its institutions. The cause was the

convergence of a cumulative lack of good governance,

rampant poverty and an overall economic situation in

which all of the financial and monetary indicators were

in the red. These tragic events, marked by considerable

loss of human life, led to massive destruction of public

buildings and involved a great erosion of State

authority, creating, at the same time, profound rifts in

the social fabric.

Fortunately, the outcome, although it remains

fragile, was a peaceful one and is under the auspices of

the Economic Community of West African States

(ECOWAS) and the United Nations. It is owes its

existence to the combined efforts of the presidential

authority, the unions, civil society, eminent persons and

friends of Guinea worldwide.

From this rostrum, I express the deep gratitude

and great thanks of the people and the Government of

Guinea to all those entities and individuals who were

involved to ensure that civic peace would reign in our

country.

The Government that came out of these events, a

Government that it is my privilege to lead, is doing its

utmost to try to meet the many expectations of a people

that has become impatient because it has waited far too

long. A minimum emergency plan was crafted for the

short and medium terms.

Let me conclude by saying that the initiatives

planned for by my Government, as promising as they

are, continue to be dependent upon the interest that

world leaders give to all the subjects that I raised due

to my deepest convictions. Beyond the commitment of

our elites and civil society to good governance and

democracy, the Republic of Guinea needs an effective

partnership in keeping with its specific and pressing

needs. This partnership, for which the Guinean people

wholeheartedly calls, will be more appropriate,

effective and lasting if the dominant groups of the

world agree to commit to global solidarity in the

service of humankind’s development.