Haiti, 2007

Allow me at

the outset to congratulate Mr. Kerim on his assumption

of the presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-

second session. There is no doubt that his deep

familiarity with the academic world, tied to his

experience in the political world and in business, is a

major asset that will help him to lead us confidently in

the Assembly’s work. I sincerely hope that our debates

will be fruitful and lead to the adoption of relevant

resolutions.

Allow me also to welcome our new Secretary-

General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who recently honoured us

with his first visit to Haiti in August. We are firmly

convinced that the new Secretary-General will rapidly

bring to bear his experience of the United Nations

system, his vast learning and his broad open-

mindedness in carrying out the reforms that most

Members of our Organization know to be necessary.

Despite its difficulties, our Organization remains

the principal forum offering all States, large and small,

the same space for dialogue to address the fundamental

issues surrounding our coexistence and future on this

planet. May the Secretary-General be assured of the

support of the Haitians in his efforts to increase the

effectiveness of the United Nations and to enable it to

achieve its full potential.

I am speaking here on behalf of a people that has

endured great suffering over the past 200 years:

material deprivation of all sorts, vulnerability to

natural threats and disasters, poor access to health care

and education, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of

children from malnutrition, and a very young

population 65 per cent below the age of 25

denied any true opportunity for employment.

I speak on behalf of a people that seems to be

depopulating itself as its most competent professionals

forsake a life of difficulties to the benefit of other

countries or businesses, and as its children, women and

senior citizens, weary of living what seems to be a

hopeless existence, take to the open seas on makeshift

boats, seeking a better life under other skies.

I speak on behalf of a State whose neighbours,

including the most powerful among them, sometimes

portray it as a threat to regional security because Haiti

appears too frequently on the agenda of the General

Assembly or the Security Council, with a burdensome

array of problems of insecurity or political unrest.

I speak on behalf of a country that analyses

somewhat prematurely describe as a failed State

because it has trouble making its institutions

operational and organizing a way of life appropriate to

the majority of its citizens, and because the State itself,

unfortunately, often finds itself waging an endless war

against its own children.

Haiti is on the way to bidding farewell to that

State slowly, patiently, yet resolutely. The organized

armed gangs responsible for violence against innocent

people have been dismantled and there is no longer any

forbidden zone for peaceful citizens anywhere on our

territory.

The management of our economy has improved

considerably. We have stopped printing money. That

has reduced the inflation rate which had run

rampant for several years and which just a few months

ago reached 40 per cent to less than 10 per cent. Our

gross domestic product has seen moderate but

sustained growth, after having been negative for more

than 10 years.

We have worked patiently to establish an

atmosphere of calm and collegiality within the political

class, which is a condition essential for enabling the

political forces to put an end to their perpetual

factional disputes and to mobilize around genuine

national reconstruction plans.

The Security Council will soon extend the

mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in

Haiti (MINUSTAH) for another year. Such an

extension would be most appropriate. This reminds us

that our victory over insecurity, the holding of

democratic elections, the improvement of governance

in the country and the strengthening of our judicial

system were possible thanks in large part to the efforts

of United Nations forces within the framework of the

Organization’s peacekeeping programme. Certainly, the

members of our national police, although young,

inexperienced and underequipped, have proved to be

courageous and determined in the fight against

insecurity, but MINUSTAH’s support at their side has

been greatly appreciated. Let me take this opportunity

to express once again our thanks to the Organization,

to the Security Council and to the friendly countries

that mobilized their own resources and citizens to

come to the assistance of Haitians at this difficult time

in their history.

Haitians, recalling that they belong to a people

who fought for their freedom and carried the torch of

liberty to many other shores of the continent, continue

to see the presence of foreign armed forces on their soil

as a wound to their national sovereignty. Practically

speaking, however, that is the only realistic formula

currently available that is enabling Haitians to regain

freedom and live in peace.

It is now up to Haitians to benefit from this

period of calm by pulling themselves together,

reconsidering their fate with a positive vision of the

future and returning to daily life as a disciplined,

hardworking and law-abiding people while our State

strengthens its internal cohesion, modernizes its

judicial system and improves its governance and its

capacity to intervene, so that it can create and maintain

an environment conducive to economic recovery and

genuine sustainable development.

The adoption of the Millennium Development

Goals (MDGs) was an act of awareness. Nevertheless,

halfway towards the deadline set for achievement of

the Goals, it seems clear that many of us including

my country will not meet the 2015 targets, despite

the considerable progress made in various areas.

Mobilizing resources to support the pursuit of the

MDGs is a difficult but essential task. It is not only

necessary for ethical reasons or because the

international community must honour its commitments.

Problems that cannot be resolved in a poor State will

spill over to richer States, which will thus be forced to

revisit problems that they had already overcome by

themselves at the national level.

The General Assembly has included in the agenda

for the present session an item relating to cooperation

in combating the activities of transnational organized

crime. In that connection, I should like to highlight my

country’s efforts to fight against corruption and illicit

drug trafficking. In Haiti, we are currently developing

ways to deal with corruption. We have begun to work

to strengthen State structures and to plan legal and

regulatory reforms to be established to ensure that that

endemic evil disappears from our institutional

practices, both in politics and in business.

But the fight against drug trafficking is of another

scale entirely, because it sets us squarely against

sophisticated and well-organized adversaries who have

access to powerful international networks in both drug-

producing and drug-consuming countries. We are

sensitive to the human suffering and social upheaval

attributable to drug abuse, and we are aware of the

efforts being made to treat and rehabilitate addicts,

primarily in the major drug-consuming countries.

However, trafficking also has harmful effects on the

economic, social and political structures of small States

such as mine and poses a serious threat to their

sovereignty and security, even if they are only transit

States. The approach that has emerged from various

international conferences focuses on prevention and

demand-reduction in consumer countries first and then

to reduce supply in producing countries and suppress

trafficking networks.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the

trade route of one of the most intense flows between

the producer countries of South America and the

consumer countries of North America. We are firmly

committed to helping the countries of the North

eliminate the drugs that arrive in their countries by way

of our territory as a place of transit. But we cannot deal

with this scourge alone, and our efforts to improve the

monitoring of our land, sea and air borders and

strengthen our institutions come up against the power

of the networks put in place by the traffickers.

The solutions developed to deal with these

problems will clearly yield no results if we do not

urgently address the issue of economic development,

because, as has been eloquently stated in reports of the

Secretary-General, development is another name for

peace.

It follows from that observation that we need a

new culture of international solidarity based on a

comprehensive and coordinated approach in which the

fight against poverty goes hand in hand with

sustainable development. It is an approach in which

development assistance and the fight against insecurity

are supported by the efforts of more developed

countries to open up their markets, to encourage flows

of foreign direct investment and technology transfers

and to support the private sector and entrepreneurial

initiatives: a comprehensive approach in which rich

and poor understand that they are co-owners of this

planet and that its fate is in all our hands.