Ivory Coast, 1996

My delegation and I are pleased, Sir, to see you

presiding over the fifty-first session of the General

Assembly. Your great experience of multilateral

diplomacy, along with the apt initiatives which your great

country, Malaysia, and you yourself have taken in many

focal areas of international relations make you the right

person to guide us and to ensure the success of this

important session.

I extend my sincere congratulations to your

predecessor, Ambassador Diogo Freitas do Amaral, for

the outstanding work he did in heading the General

Assembly at a difficult time, marked by a financial crisis

unprecedented in the history of our Organization. Thanks

to his abilities and diplomacy, he helped to preserve the

founding roles of this institution, namely the maintenance

of peace and of economic and social development, and to

guide it towards new areas. We are particularly grateful

to him for his excellent work at the last session, which

marked the fiftieth anniversary of our Organization.

The delegation of Côte d’Ivoire would also like to

thank the Secretary-General for the active and

determined part that he has always played in heading the

Secretariat, particularly in the areas of peacekeeping and

economic and social development. Accordingly, the Côte

d’Ivoire endorses the Declaration of African Heads of

State or Government, who, at the thirty-second Summit of

the Organization of African Unity, held at Yaoundé,

reaffirmed Africa’s right to a second term and

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recommended the candidature of Mr. Boutros Boutros-

Ghali.

Nearly a year ago, on 22 October 1995, a Special

Commemorative Meeting of the General Assembly took

place, involving 129 Heads of State or Government who

had come here solemnly to reconfirm their belief in the

ideals of the Charter of the United Nations, namely peace,

development, international cooperation, equality and justice,

and also to demonstrate their commitment to the reform and

modernization of our Organization so that it can take up the

challenges of the future. In the Declaration on the Occasion

of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations, adopted

on 24 October last, we committed ourselves to assuring that

we:

“will give to the twenty-first century a United Nations

equipped, financed and structured to serve effectively

the peoples in whose name it was established.”

(resolution 50/6)

Encouraged by Ambassador Diogo Freitas do Amaral

over the past year, the General Assembly and the

Secretariat have advanced on the path of reform for the

United Nations and clarification of its objectives and

missions. The open-ended working groups of the General

Assembly responsible for examining “An Agenda for

Peace”, the Agenda for Development, Security Council

reform, the financial situation of the United Nations, and

the strengthening of the United Nations system, have

sufficiently progressed in their considerations to allow the

greatest hopes as to the restructuring of our Organization,

its revitalization with an eye to greater effectiveness

adapted to contemporary needs and challenges.

I would add that after a decade of study and reflection

on United Nations reform, it is now imperative to proceed

with such reform so that we can focus on what constitutes

the raison d’être of our Organization: its essential missions,

namely, the maintenance of peace and security, the

promotion of economic and social development, the

struggle against poverty, humanitarian assistance, the

protection of human rights and democracy, the protection

of the environment, dialogue among cultures and respect for

diversity.

Concomitant with this progress by Member State

towards reform, there has been an equally commendable

effort by the Secretariat to correct the Organization’s

disfunctions, particularly those relating to fragmentation

within the United Nations system and the inadequacy of

certain coordinating mechanisms, as well as, in some cases,

the absence of a rational division of labour, which has led

to overlapping and duplication.

I would particularly like to mention, among other

things, the progress that has been made towards the

restructuring and revitalization of the United Nations in

the economic, social and related fields pursuant to

resolution 50/227. On the basis of that resolution, the

Economic and Social Council will carry out its work

within a rationalized framework that should enable it to

attain the objectives assigned to it under the Charter. Its

working methods will also be adapted to the necessity of

better time management and greater budgetary savings,

operating on the basis of a rational reduction in the many

outputs of this body, with a view to assuring greater

effectiveness. Thanks to this resolution, we should be able

slowly to move away from the heavy and spendthrift

bureaucracy associated with our Organization.

It is in this spirit that, in anticipation, the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was able to

reform its working methods, redeploy its people in the

field and develop its activities thanks to a fruitful

partnership within and beyond the United Nations system,

notably with representatives of civil society. This truly

remarkable transformation of UNDP over the past two

years has enabled it to regain a central role in operational

activities for development on all continents, particularly

in Africa, where it is steering the United Nations System-

wide Special Initiative for Africa.

Reform is an act of the will that plays itself out over

time. It must be carried out from the inside and under the

impetus of Member States. In this regard, we may

welcome the evaluation of the Efficiency Board chaired

by Under-Secretary-General Joseph Connor, whose work

is highly encouraging as to the rational management of

the United Nations system.

Thus, all the sectors where overlapping and

duplication were most obvious have now been singled out

with a view to proper management that will generate

substantial economies in the budgetary performance of the

Secretariat. Here we would like to say how pleased we

are that the Secretary-General was able to hold the United

Nations budget for 1996-1997 within the strict limits

defined by the General Assembly. The $150 million in

savings are the result of a set of measures aimed at

rationalizing and maximizing the cost-effectiveness ratio

of the work of the Secretariat, as can be seen in the first

report of the United Nations Efficiency Board, which was

made public last month.

5

The new spirit of budgetary strictness and

administrative efficiency that is becoming prevalent within

the Secretariat and among those in charge of the agencies

and programmes of the United Nations system seems to

have given us a new awareness of the need for self-

examination and for concrete responses to the needs of

Member States.

With close links between thinking and operational

activities, and with an increasing presence on the ground,

the United Nations will be closer to the people, and thus

better able to take into account their needs in a number of

areas, such as employment, education, health, humanitarian

assistance and environment.

Specifically on the question of humanitarian

assistance, we should highlight the remarkable way in

which the United Nations has adapted in dealing with the

refugee problems resulting from internal conflicts in various

parts of the world. There are millions of displaced persons,

and this situation is without precedent since 1945. The

Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have been

particularly effective in this area.

I think these examples are enough to rehabilitate the

United Nations in the minds of some. If we were to believe

its detractors, our Organization would be bureaucratic,

behind the times, ineffective and yet extravagant. While

some of these criticisms were perhaps justified to some

extent in the past, today we can say that our Organization

is moving resolutely towards reform and a structural and

functional transformation that started a decade ago.

Last year in San Francisco, 50 years after the founding

of the United Nations, the international community

reaffirmed at the highest level of leadership the relevance

to today’s world of the Charter and its purposes and

principles. Through this important act, the international

community enshrined its commitment to attaining the

objectives set out in the Charter. The Declaration of

24 October 1995 also confirmed the essential tasks of the

United Nations for the year 2000: promoting peace,

development, equality, justice and understanding among

peoples. It also gave a special place to the advancement of

women and the protection of children.

In order to carry out these tasks, in the last few years

Member States have worked out careful strategies through

the cycle, ending this year, of thematic conferences that

began in New York in 1990 with the World Summit for

Children, continued in Rio with the United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development, in Vienna

with the World Conference on Human Rights, in Cairo

with the International Conference on Population and

Development, in Copenhagen with the World Summit for

Social Development, in Beijing with the Fourth World

Conference on Women and in Istanbul with the Second

United Nations Conference on Human Settlements

(Habitat II). In this connection, we should also emphasize

the importance of the upcoming World Food Summit, to

be held under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome in

November 1996. Complementing these initiatives, the

Agenda for Peace and the Agenda for Development

provide an appropriate framework for thinking about the

important interrelationship and interaction between peace

and development.

Along the same lines, and without being exhaustive

in my list, I would like to recall the progress made last

year in the areas of peace and disarmament with the

signing on 24 September 1996 of the Comprehensive

Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. The establishment of new

nuclear-weapon-free zones in South-East Asia, the South

Pacific and Africa, and measures relating to nuclear safety

and security are also positive achievements in this area.

In conflict prevention, on the initiative of Canada

and the Netherlands excellent progress has been made in

developing the rapid-reaction capability of the United

Nations to respond to threats to peace and security. Other

initiatives from various sources also bear witness to the

growing concern over preventing conflicts and acting in

advance, particularly in the area of development, so as to

create conditions for consolidating social peace in

Member States.

With regard to human rights and fundamental

freedoms, I would underline the specific, dynamic and

publicly visible results of some recent United Nations

decisions, such as the establishment of a High

Commissioner for Human Rights, the establishment and

effective functioning of International Tribunals to

prosecute and judge persons accused of serious violations

of human rights in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda,

and measures taken, or scheduled to be taken, in

combating terrorism and organized crime.

For these reasons, I think we can say that the United

Nations is now a much more coherent instrument vis-à-vis

its objectives, its missions and its strategies. However, we

6

must complete the renewal that is now under way. I have

already stressed that the Secretariat’s efforts to adapt,

carried out through austerity measures, are healthy, but the

dividends should be used to strengthen operational activities

for development.

The other central organs — the General Assembly, the

Security Council and the Economic and Social Council —

must make continued, deeper-going transformations to

update their structures, their functioning and their working

methods and adapt them to special circumstances that are

unlike the post-world-conflict circumstances of 1945.

In this connection, and with particular regard to the

General Assembly, I should say, as I did when I presided

over the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly, that

this body, within the context of the institutional balances

provided for in the Charter, should continue to play its full

part in the reform process under way. The General

Assembly, because of its unique form of legitimacy, is still

the best guarantor of the common interests of the Member

States.

As this fifty-first session begins, we find ourselves at

a crossroads. Last October we resoundingly reaffirmed the

irreplaceable nature of the United Nations. Today, showing

political will and above all a spirit of solidarity, we must

now translate that commitment into action. Without this

reaffirmation of solidarity, the values on which the

international community rests will become rather

meaningless. Our Organization must tirelessly continue to

seek ways of strengthening this solidarity. We do not see it

as much as we would like to, and the frustration of

developing countries is growing because of situations in

which international cooperation targets are simply

disregarded and many promises remain unkept.

It is one thing to establish aid programmes and time-

frames, but it is another to move ahead and actually do

what the international community has committed itself to

do. Of course, the United Nations is often judged by

international public opinion on the basis of its ability to

consolidate peace. But its credibility also depends on its

ability to act firmly in order to fill the increasingly wide

gap between the rich and the developing countries.

It is high time that development aid found its place in

an effort to mobilize, in which the actors, the industrialized

countries and the developing countries all get their fair

share. One cannot talk simultaneously about the existence

of universal values, such as democracy or human rights,

and still feel satisfied with a situation in which poverty and

the AIDS epidemic are steadily gaining ground, thus

exacerbating the divisions within the international

community and thwarting national efforts.

In this context, the effort to combat AIDS must be

a subject of particular concern because of its devastating

world-wide effects, especially in developing countries,

where 90 per cent of HIV-positive individuals are

located — 60 per cent in Africa alone — but which do

not have the resources to deal with this pandemic. On the

question of access to medicines, particularly anti-

retrovirus agents, it seems unacceptable to us that such

preventive medicines are available to only 10 per cent of

those suffering from AIDS/HIV.

However, also within the context of international

cooperation to combat AIDS, we welcome some strong

action that has been taken. For example, we welcome the

Economic and Social Council resolution making the

question of AIDS as one of the topics for its 1997 high-

level segment. We would also place great hope in the

commitments made to provide the Secretariat with an

appropriate structure and relevant resources to support the

United Nations AIDS Programme.

I would like to speak more about Africa, as many

representatives already have, because the picture painted

is often very far from the reality. There is little in

common between the usual cliches about the wretched

situation in Africa and the velvet revolution which our

countries are engaged in carrying out. We have suffered

from the scourge of the economic crisis which has spared

no continent. We have suffered from the globalization of

the economy, in which we have been marginalized. We in

Africa are now beginning to reverse this trend. All the

specialists agree that Africa has set forth on the path to

economic recovery, with an average growth rate last year

of 5 per cent.

For my own country, Côte d’Ivoire, I can say that

after the l980s, which were marked by a difficult

economic and financial crisis, the Government adopted a

coherent economic policy, backed by thorough sectoral

strategies to obtain viable, strong, self-sustaining growth.

Stabilization and adjustment programmes begun in 1993

enabled the Côte d’Ivoire to meet the conditions in 1994

for a recovery with greater diversification in our

economy, greater weight being given to the private sector

and careful management of public finances, and a re-

centering of State control in the areas of regulation

monitoring and in the environment of economic activities.

This policy enabled us to achieve a 7-per-cent growth rate

7

in 1995, and suggests that we can achieve double-digit

growth in 1998, which is the goal of President

Henri Konan-Bédié, whose plan is to make Côte d’Ivoire a

truly industrialized nation.

Along with efforts to win the fight for development,

African countries have also committed themselves to

democratization, as can be seen, inter alia, in the

organization of multi-party elections, the establishment of

the rule of law and the emergence of a responsible civil

society. Backed up by true legitimacy, political leaders are

about to succeed in building modern States with the

primary purpose of ensuring national cohesion and progress.

The advances that we see here and there on our

continent must be backed up by more sustained action by

the industrialized countries. Time is running out, and we

must move quickly from speeches, promises and good

intentions to concrete action. The adoption of the Agenda

for Development ought, therefore, to be an opportunity for

re-thinking the philosophy underlying development

assistance, its mechanisms and its modalities, so that socio-

economic activities can be placed at the centre of the work

of the United Nations.