Haiti, 2010

My first

words will be to pay tribute to the memory of hundreds

of thousands of Haitians and those who came to

help — including about 100 United Nations staff, in

particular Mr. Hédi Annabi, Special Representative of

the Secretary-General — who all lost their lives during

the earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January.

But every tragedy offers some solace in terms of

human solidarity. Therefore once again on behalf of the

Haitian people and on my personal behalf I would like

to thank all the people and Governments across the

world, ranging from the Dominican Republic, our

closely attached neighbour, to those at the far corners

of the globe, that rushed to our assistance. That

assistance was crucially important to us, in particular

during the first few weeks when the need was so

urgent.

Allow me to also thank those Haitians living

abroad, in New York, Miami, Chicago, Montreal, Paris,

Santo Domingo, the French West Indies and many

other parts of the world, who joined the great

international solidarity movement and, in their

commitment, endeavoured for the most part to

establish structures that would help our country

rebuild.

I would be remiss were I not to pay special

tribute here, publicly, to the people of Haiti

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themselves, a people who have been deprived of

everything and yet who have demonstrated the

immeasurable wealth of their humanity. Towns that had

been destroyed did not become the scenes of

widespread looting. The people showed such dignity

and kindness, such exemplary stamina in their

suffering, such boldness, devotion and courage, such

solidarity, spirit of self-sacrifice and love for others.

Those are the words that come to mind and I think that

is how we must describe the acts of heroism of the

Haitian people. Let us show our respect for them.

My country has lived a unique history since its

birth immediately after a war of independence that

took the lives of one third of its people and caused

unimaginable destruction. And in the wake of the

American and French revolutions of the eighteenth

century, that war of independence challenged the

human race to recognize the universal character of the

proclamation of humankind’s right to freedom, dignity

and equality by making the men and women of Haiti

free.

Our nation was born in 1804 and, although poor

and since then deprived of resources, it has never

hesitated to extend material support to peoples

struggling for freedom, including in greater Colombia,

which is today Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and

Panama, under the leadership of Francisco Miranda

and then Simón Bolívar.

Despite our limited resources, Haiti has always

demonstrated its firm belief in one human race. And

therefore we fully appreciate that immense movement

of solidarity and compassion of the international

community for our country, from the moments

immediately after the earthquake right up to the

commitment on 31 March at the New York conference

by which it agreed to participate in rebuilding Haiti on

the basis of the plan of action prepared by the Haitian

Government.

Since then, with the assistance of the

international community and support from the United

Nations, we have set up a commission to coordinate

resources for rebuilding. This commission is an

important strategic mechanism for helping the country

manage transparently and with discipline the resources

mobilized within the international community to

support our country as it rebuilds. The commission has

already adopted over 30 projects, on education, health,

infrastructure and so forth, costing over $1 billion.

May I extend my thanks to those countries and

agencies that have followed up on their commitments

to make financial contributions. I trust that a similar

effort will be made by others as well so as to help us

respond quickly to the over one million Haitians who

are still living in tent cities and temporary shelter.

We have just held an important high-level

meeting on the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs). Ten years ago, when 189 countries met here

to make the collective commitment to achieving the

eight Millennium Development Goals by the year

2015, the international community was actually in

agreement on what the world should look like in

2015 — a world well on the way to reducing extreme

poverty, where children and mothers would not have to

die because of lack of health care, where all children

would be able to go to school, where millions of people

would no longer die of hunger every year, where

women would be able to fulfil their potential in a

society without any gender-based discrimination.

That vision was the right one, because it placed

human dignity at the very heart of all development

programmes and the international cooperation agenda.

And that vision also had the advantage of providing

countries and their partners in the international

community with a clear, straightforward structure for

planning development and organizing cooperation with

the countries that were committed to help achieve the

Goals.

While significant progress has been made in the

right direction, five years from 2015 there is still a long

road to travel because the developed countries have not

fully lived up to the commitments made with respect to

the Millennium Development Goals, particularly their

financial commitments.

What shall I say about the trillions of dollars that

have been swallowed up over the last 10 years in wars

that have been as bloody as they were unjustified?

What shall I say about the defence budgets which

every year exceed by far what would be needed to

attain the Millennium Development Goals?

And what shall I say about the incalculable

wealth that has simply evaporated in speculation, in the

arrogant supremacy of the virtual economy over the

real economy?

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Are we going to continue sacrificing the well-

being and lives of millions of human beings, the future

of planet Earth, to this culture of fear and greed?

What shall I say about the fact that official

development assistance continues to fall, when in 2005

the developed countries committed to doubling the

amount by 2010?

What happened to the decision to encourage a

more open trading system, when assistance to farmers

in developed countries is over three times the amount

of official development assistance?

In truth, the globalization that began centuries

ago, with the colonization and the importation of

African captives to work as slaves on sugar-cane and

coffee plantations, whose products would then be

exported to the West or the North, needs to be

reinvented.

The time has come for us to invent a new kind of

globalization, one that is based on the simple concept

of our common humanity, on trust, cooperation and

mutual respect, on respect for our environment and all

forms of life in it. We must, as a matter of urgency, do

away with a vision that sees profit as a veritable god,

reduces citizens to the level of simple consumers, and

regards planet Earth as a colony that we can destroy.

The global village will not be able to maintain forever

its fashionable neighbourhoods side by side with

wretched slums where humanity is dissolving: a socio-

economic North and South — not a geographic one.

In Haiti, living on an island in a part of the world

that has always been swept by hurricanes, we are

particularly worried about global warming and the

climatic disturbances that come with it: more frequent

and more devastating cyclones and a rising sea-level.

Must the poor continue to pay for the waste, the

unbridled appetite for energy of their wealthier

brethren? Must they renounce their efforts to improve

their standard of living in order to feed the consumer

frenzy of the industrialized countries?

The so-called war against drugs consists of a few

little skirmishes in the consumer countries but full-

scale bloody battles in the production and transit

countries, whose very existence is sometimes

jeopardized.

Are the countries of the South still to be pilloried

as responsible for the production and transit of illegal

drugs even though the engine for this lucrative

trafficking is demand for drugs in countries of the

North?

What shall I say about the arms trafficking, which

flows from the North to the South and supports the

drug trafficking?

It is for us to provide the answer to those

questions, and we cannot sidestep them much longer

without rushing to our common doom. The only hope

lies in a renewed humanism, clear-sighted, embracing

of all life and the environment, on which we are

dependent and for which we are responsible. In that

sense, South-South cooperation affords new promise,

and I invite the leaders of the countries of the South to

strengthen those channels for the well-being of our

respective peoples.

Some of the statements I have heard in this

session of the General Assembly seem to presage a new

and different consciousness, which may be what is

required for our vision of a new humanity. Still, as

always, we must be mindful to that commitments and

action match the expansive rhetoric.

This is the moment for Haiti to renew its call for

the lifting of the embargo against Cuba. Besides having

been condemned in many Assembly resolutions, an

embargo of this kind is absolutely contrary to the

values we advocate in matters of international

commerce.

I would be remiss if I were not to convey, on

behalf of the Haitian people, our condolences to the

many peoples who have suffered lately from natural

disasters in Chile, China, Pakistan, Guatemala and

Mexico.

I shall conclude by referring to the presidential

and legislative elections that will mark the end of my

term and the end of a particularly difficult year for the

people of Haiti. It is important that that difficult

process be conducted with rigour, fairness and

transparency, so as to consolidate our young

democracy. Therefore I appeal to all national actors

and our international friends, so that together we can

make our way through that electoral crossroads

successfully.