Honduras, 1998

I am pleased and honoured to convey a cordial

and respectful greeting from the people and Government of

the Republic of Honduras and from the other countries that

are members of the Central American Integration System,

of which I am proud to be the current Chairman.

Mr. President, Central America wishes to express its

satisfaction at your well-deserved election to preside over

this fifty-third regular session of the General Assembly.

Your outstanding professional and public career is a

guarantee that this session of the Assembly will yield

fruitful and significant results.

Our delegation wishes also to express its gratitude to

the representative of the Ukraine, Mr. Hennadiy Udovenko,

for the commendable work he did during the last General

Assembly. We also express our sincerest gratitude to Mr.

Kofi Annan, who, in discharging his mandate as Secretary-

General of our Organization, has displayed a spirit of hard

work and dedication in a particularly difficult period for the

United Nations.

Throughout its history, Honduras has fought for the

system of democratic government to take root on its soil. It

has fought to take its place in the world community as a

fully fledged State, to imbue its independent, republican

character with respect for basic human rights, and to ensure

public freedoms for all of its inhabitants. However, many

of those efforts were frustrated at certain regrettable times

in our past, a past that was closely interlinked with that of

the other States of the Central American region.

Fortunately, in recent decades Honduras has safeguarded

and strengthened its democracy and its internal institutions,

in spite of the deplorable and difficult circumstances

experienced by the Central American region as the

involuntary theatre of the cold war, which was imposed on

us from outside, and in spite of the undesirable

consequences of armed conflicts.

The Governments of Central America are currently

working hard to consolidate peace and a spirit of internal

reconciliation in our societies. Our resolve is strong in this

process, and the progress achieved is truly encouraging and

a just reward for these efforts. We are determined to turn

away forever from the fratricidal battles that have caused us

so much suffering and diverted our energy from the

construction of the prosperous, democratic, free and

happy region that our peoples yearn for and that their

democratic Governments strive to offer.

It must be said that although Honduras was not the

direct scene of Central American armed conflicts, it did

suffer the grave consequences of the instability,

uncertainty and violence of the region, which caused

thousands of Hondurans to emigrate to other countries,

mainly to the United States. Unfortunately, justice has not

been done to our compatriots, as they have not been given

the same opportunities and immigration status enjoyed by

other Central Americans. We trust that the sacrifice of

Honduras in the Central American conflicts of the past

will be fully understood and that our emigrants will be

given the consideration that they justly deserve.

Furthermore, the Presidents of Central America, in

ongoing consultations and regular meetings, are giving

strong impetus to regional integration in all fields:

economic, political, social and cultural. These dynamics

of integration include the States of Belize, Panama and

the Dominican Republic, through broad participation

mechanisms and the signing of economic treaties and of

bilateral and multinational exchanges. We are hoping also

for a joint venture with the Mexican Republic, and we

maintain that the region as a whole must enjoy the same

benefits that the three principal North American countries

have already agreed upon for themselves.

The Government of Honduras commends the

Secretary-General of the United Nations and fully

supports his efforts to reform the Organization. There is

consensus in Central America on the fact that United

Nations reform, including broader membership of the

Security Council, is a necessity for the international

system. But this expansion must be based upon equitable

geographic representation and the consensus of the

regional groups and the existing subregional mechanisms.

The restructuring must also include a procedural review

in order to ensure greater representation, transparency and

efficiency.

The Government of Honduras supports the initiative

of the President of the United States to establish a

worldwide organization to fight against terrorism. We

strongly condemn all types of terrorism without exception

because we believe it is a form of human cruelty that no

political, ideological, religious or cultural cause can

justify at this stage of our civilization.

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On the subject of controlling illegal drug trafficking,

our Government reiterates its support for the special session

of the General Assembly on the world drug problem.

Because of its strategic geographic position, Central

America is in danger of becoming a production and trade

area for narcotic drugs and must therefore receive the

greatest possible international support to fight this scourge.

We are pleased also at the advances achieved by the

Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the

Establishment of an International Criminal Court, held in

Rome, whose goal was to create a legal forum with global

jurisdiction in order to bring to trial and convict individuals

for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Honduran people themselves have suffered from

the use of anti-personnel mines, which have taken a high

toll in human lives. Consequently, we are prepared to

support the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use,

Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel

Mines and on Their Destruction. The Government of

Honduras is proud to announce that today it has deposited

with the Secretary-General its instrument of ratification of

the landmines Convention.

The countries of the Central American Region view

with concern and deplore the recent nuclear tests conducted

in other geographical regions, and we advocate the

introduction and full implementation of the Comprehensive

Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as an important step towards the

total elimination of these devastating weapons.

Honduras supports the efforts of the Republic of China

on Taiwan for full membership in the United Nations and

in the international agencies of the United Nations system.

We are convinced that conditions have changed

significantly and that at this time in our history there can be

no justification for the international isolation to which more

than 21 million people are subjected.

Among other noteworthy issues is the advancement of

women in society. We welcome this advancement not only

because women have the right to equality, but also because

with their help we can envision a fairer and more humane

world. We invite States to support the Platform for Action

in the effective implementation of the Fourth World

Conference on Women.

Likewise, because children and adolescents are the

most vulnerable members of society, we are prepared to

lend our vigorous support to the convening of a world

conference of ministers responsible for youth, with a view

to the implementation of national programmes and of the

World Programme of Action for Youth to the Year 2000

and Beyond, and in order to support the institutions and

programmes designed to safeguard our children and

young people as the generational and spiritual reserve of

our homeland.

Globalization is a subject of particular concern that

must be tackled in this unique forum — so vital to

humankind — because it gives rise to challenges of an

unprecedented magnitude.

It is true that humankind has always faced singular

challenges throughout the millennium that is now drawing

to a close. Major worldwide events have occurred that

have drastically changed the way of life of millions of

people: the Christian revolution, in the spiritual realm; the

liberal revolutions of France and the United States, in the

political realm; the Industrial Revolution, in the economic

realm; and the Russian Revolution, in the social realm.

Each of these historic events affected in a different way

humankind?s self-image and the role of States in

governing society.

Thus, the twentieth century — which saw great

achievements, serious errors, titanic efforts, enormous

upheavals and profuse bloodshed — is now drawing to a

close. We are about to open a new chapter for

humankind, one that is replete with uncertainty,

expectations, fears and hopes — the first century of the

approaching third millennium.

The twentieth century will bequeath to future

generations a legacy without parallel or comparison in the

history of human development. This is the century that

took us to the very depth of the microcosmos through the

splitting of the atom and the deciphering of the genetic

code, allowing us to unravel the components of matter

and discover and use an impressive number of new and

even-made elements with the help of innovative formulas

for nuclear energy, light, heat and sound. It has been a

century of great discoveries in all the sciences —

mathematics, physics, medicine, chemistry, optics,

genetics, psychology and electronics.

This is the century of the outer space and man?s

daring probes and adventures of man beyond his planet.

This is the century of vertiginous speeds that broke the

sound barrier and of communications and transport that

have, indeed, transformed the earth into a global village.

It is the century of universal cybernetic information,

which has connected man with his neighbour in the other

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hemisphere, just as two friends used to talk in their back

yards, separated only by a garden fence. Today, the

computer performs tasks that would have taken the most

cultivated and talented man centuries of work, or that he

would have never been able to perform. Races and cultures

have been mixed, influencing each other in an unceasing

exchange of creations. There has been a massive spreading

of ideas, news, customs and new developments such as man

never dreamed of accomplishing in the course of his long

and trying existence on earth. This is the century of

geopolitical changes, as sudden as they are unimaginable,

so huge that their very force left their own protagonists

behind.

Unfortunately, it is also a century that will be

remembered with sadness, as the century of the two great

worldwide slaughters and many dreadful, apparently local

and centralized, wars. It is the century of thermonuclear,

toxic and chemical weapons and other means of mass

destruction. It is the century of merciless, senseless

terrorism, and also the century of the terrible AIDS

pandemic. It is the century, finally, of man?s greatest

destruction of the ecology and of the purity of his

environment, seriously threatening the very existence of his

planet. We are concerned, and we are surely ashamed, that

this century will also be remembered as the century of the

direst poverty in an alarming majority of countries. We are

grieved that when there is prosperity, it is concentrated

among the richest, but when there is a crisis, on the other

hand, its devastation is brought down on the poorest.

But if there is one issue that characterizes this century

and for ever marks it in the annals of the human race, it is

the desire for, the necessity of and the value of freedom.

Never have we fought so hard and paid such a high price

for freedom, or for the lack thereof, as we have done in this

century. Never have there been so many attempts to destroy

freedom through systems, ideologies, regimes and wars, and

never has man carried out such monumental exploits, such

beautiful and heroic deeds, in the defence or pursuit of

liberty, as in the last 10 decades of this millennium. The

great figures that left their mark on contemporary history

are those who denied freedom to their nations or achieved

it gloriously, sometimes at the cost of their own lives.

Thank God that we can say at this time, and in this

world forum, that freedom has triumphed and will continue

to establish itself in every corner of the world where it is

still denied or crushed, whenever conditions show our

peoples that freedom, an essential human value, is worth

the trouble and that to fight for it and to keep it are

important for man?s physical and spiritual well-being.

Along with freedom, democracy is triumphing

around the globe, but for this progress to continue to be

effective and to last, so that we do not lose what we have

gained and do not return to the tyrannies we defeated

with so much effort and suffering, certain conditions must

be fulfilled. This is the huge challenge of the next

millennium: how to keep this freedom, how to extend it

to the farthest corner of the planet and — the final test —

how to manage it for the benefit of all humankind.

It is true that, just as there are hopeful and

encouraging expectations on which we must capitalize,

there is also a lot of worry, and even fear, in our nations

concerning these swift, radical and dizzying universal

changes. The world economy has progressed and

developed dramatically in the last 25 years. Economic

globalization has opened up opportunities and risks for all

the countries of the world. However, at this time it is

quite clear that the benefits of globalization are not shared

by all countries and that, in many cases, there is an

increasing disparity between developed and developing

countries, an inequality that produces social and political

tensions in our countries and severely threatens the

democratic advances for which we have paid so dearly.

In the beginning of the process of global

liberalization, it was maintained that the reduction in the

flows of assistance for development would be far

outweighed by the commercial benefits and private capital

flows to our regions. The truth is that, even though we

support commercial liberalization with concrete measures,

our products have often been faced with various kinds of

barriers that are hard to overcome.

In combination, factors such as the reduction in

development assistance, barriers to the export of our

products, the scanty movement of private capital or its

excessive concentration in certain areas, and the burden

of foreign debt become formidable obstacles to the

economic growth and social development of our peoples.

I believe the time is ripe to evaluate what is happening at

the global level in order to take measures that will

prevent further deterioration of the living conditions of

our population and promote a more just economic and

social order.

This concern is especially legitimate in the light of

financial developments in recent days in certain countries

of South-East Asia and Japan. Those economies and

systems were held up to us as an example to follow and

as a standard for what can be achieved with full economic

liberalization. Russia followed that path that led to the

8

crisis affecting us today, which we all hope is temporary.

All of this means that the economy is not everything, and

that a setback in maintaining the welfare level of a people?s

well-being because of economic and financial mechanisms

can rapidly deteriorate its political and social conditions,

presenting the imminent danger of moving backwards in the

development of democracy and imperilling once again the

precious gift of freedom, for which millions of men and

women have given their lives in this century. Creating great

expectations and exaggerated hopes of well-being and

development is dangerous, as are the disappointments that

can be felt by our peoples when the democratic system and

the new economic order are incapable of giving concrete

answers to the basic needs of our nations. This is the risk

of backlash, the reversal of conquests and the return to

instability, rivalry, mistrust and the loss of internal, and

even international, peace.

Under the pressure of globalization, modernization and

economic adjustments, we have surely put at stake millions

of the planet?s inhabitants? right to better life especially in

Latin America. At stake is the national identity of countries

and the identity of regions faced with an increasingly rapid

process of universalization and assimilation, which is not

always laudable. At stake is the vulnerability or resistance

of our societies before the avalanche of influences,

requirements and models imposed from the outside, behind

the mask of structural adjustments and modernization. At

stake is stability: we are faced with the massive

development of violent, or simply rebellious, acts of the

poor, the marginalized and the excluded, because they feel

powerless before the walls that prevent their access to

survival, work, education, health and safety, which are

essential, basic rights, amply consecrated by the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, whose fiftieth anniversary we

Hondurans have celebrated with the greatest pleasure and

with renewed hope that such principles can actually lead us

to fairer, happier societies.

We cannot hide the fear, shared by many of the

Governments represented here, that a new economic order

that is unfair, oversized and all-encompassing, and that does

not take into consideration the political and social realities

of each country and the processes that led us to these

vertiginous changes, would destroy any possibility for the

equitable development of each person and each people, to

the extent that globalization generates excessive

concentrations of power in large and monstrous

consortiums, instead of solidarity in the enjoyment of the

goods and opportunities afforded by a new, universal

society.

Whether we are moving towards an ideal, globalized,

fraternal and peaceful world of solidarity, or towards

other forms of tyranny, submission and cruelty — this is

the question we must ask, all of us who have public

responsibilities in Honduras and in every corner of the

planet. In a world where the borders no longer divide

countries, but rather swell to embrace the geographic

contours of the planet, in a world in which the scope of

international relations is limited only by human ambition

and imagination, the question is whether we are heading

for the globalization of ethics or an ethics of

globalization. This question must be answered if we are

to avoid the death, in the vortex of capital and market

growth, of humankind?s ethical and moral values, which

have been the pillars that prevent the crumbling of what

we all call civilization.

At issue, in short, is the ability to govern societies,

but without losing the freedoms that gave birth to States,

and without losing the ethical values that have kept them

alive, sheltered by eternal concepts such as national

sovereignty, basic human rights, the survival of the planet

and the self-determination of peoples.

After all, in the hierarchy of the values that define

our highest aspirations, the supreme goal of society and

State continues to be the human person, and the supreme

good we are trying to achieve is not growth, not

development, not globalization, but happiness and well-

being.

This is the right time, then, to seek alternatives such

as the needed reinforcement of multilateral institutions

with funds on preferential terms to support development;

increased cooperation in order to foster better

opportunities for those most in need and to reduce

imbalances and close the distance between the richest and

the poorest; the governing of globalization so that it does

not demand sacrifices from most nations while

concentrating its benefits in a few; and the search for

additional, expeditious mechanisms to reduce the foreign

debt that is choking most of humankind. The United

Nations must become the appropriate forum to foster

these and other initiatives required to guarantee better

conditions for developing countries, intelligent measures

to ensure universal peace and harmony.

Honduras, its people and its Government, declare

their faith in the superior qualities of man and his

capacity for hope and faith in a better destiny for all

humankind. We are sure that the unity of all the peoples

of the earth around the essential topics of peace, survival

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of the planet, a worldwide economic system that is more

balanced and really open to all and the construction of

societies that are fairer, freer, and safer will remain the

raison d?être of the United Nations and its most important

task. In this effort, the Organization can count on the

support and solidarity of Honduras and other Central

American States.