Latvia, 2005

Today, I would like to

begin by congratulating the founding nations and all

those present here today as we celebrate the sixtieth

anniversary of the United Nations, which can be proud

of so many great accomplishments.

Since its foundation in 1945, the United Nations

has helped to negotiate an end to over 170 regional

conflicts and has deployed more than 35 peacekeeping

missions. It is leading international efforts to clear land

mines from former zones of warfare. It has provided

aid to tens of millions of refugees fleeing war, famine

and persecution. It has focused the world’s attention on

issues of human rights. It provides annual

disbursements that amount to $10 billion per year for

various development programmes. It has made safe

drinking water available to 1.3 billion people during

the last decade. It has helped to eradicate smallpox

from the globe, with polio set to follow soon. It has

helped to reduce world child mortality rates by half

since 1960. It has improved education in the

developing countries, where 60 per cent of adults can

now read and write. It provides over 2 million tons of

food to victims of emergencies every year. About 30

million people in 36 different countries benefited from

such assistance in 2004 alone. And it has hosted a

variety of significant events, such as the Rio

Conference on Environment and Development, which

resulted in important treaties on biodiversity and

climate change.

The vast majority of the United Nations

employees over the years have been guided by a

profound sense of duty. I would like to single out those

responsible and dedicated workers who provide

humanitarian assistance in the poorest regions of the

globe, in zones of conflict, and in places that have been

affected by natural disasters. We should pay tribute to

all those who have lost their lives in the service of

humanity, like the lamented Sergio Vieiro de Mello,

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who was killed while leading the United Nations work

in Iraq.

The world needs the United Nations. It needs the

United Nations today as much as it did 60 years ago.

We need a United Nations that is more and more

efficient in dealing with global challenges and able to

act efficiently to prevent such horrors as the genocide

in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, and the

ongoing human tragedy in the Darfur region of the

Sudan. While such values and principles as national

sovereignty, non-intervention and self-determination

lie at the very core of relations between the United

Nations Member States, we also have to recognize our

collective responsibility to protect innocent civilians

from wide-scale abuse and suffering. It is our duty to

arrive at a common understanding of that responsibility

to protect so that the international community can act

efficiently to avert future mass killings and crimes

against humanity. I encourage those United Nations

Member States that have not yet done so to ratify the

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and

to support the Court’s endeavours to bring war

criminals to justice.

When the United Nations was created, my

country, Latvia, was an occupied country and had no

say in the rules that govern the Organization. It was

therefore a particular honour that the President of

Latvia was chosen as a Special Envoy of the Secretary-

General for promoting reforms within the United

Nations during the past six months. I am delighted that,

in some aspects, we have succeeded in reaching a

broad consensus, as for instance on the necessity of

creating a peacebuilding commission. However, we

still do not have a common understanding regarding

many other reforms that need to be carried out. It is our

shared responsibility to arrive at such an understanding

soon.

As we work to strengthen the United Nations, we

should ensure better cooperation and practices and

avoid duplication of effort. Latvia strongly supports the

decision to establish a Human Rights Council, which

recognizes human rights as a priority on the United

Nations agenda. I therefore encourage delegations to

work with vigour to ensure the smooth transformation

of the Human Rights Commission into a council and to

set the highest standards for its future members. A vital

role in the realization of those standards will be played

by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. I wish to

confirm Latvia’s support for the Commissioner and her

Office, and welcome the decision to allocate a larger

share of the United Nations regular budget to that

important aspect of its work.

My country fully supports the management

reforms of the United Nations administration that have

been put forth by the Secretary-General. The reforms

would afford the Secretary-General greater authority

within certain fields of the United Nations activities, as

well as greater responsibilities. The reforms would also

contribute to the transparency and professionalism of

the Secretariat, which has been justly criticized for

serious deficiencies in its work. I am pleased that the

United Nations leadership is willing to propose viable

changes for improving the operations of the

Secretariat. It is now up to the Member States to arrive

at a consensus upon those proposed measures.

Latvia has consistently endorsed reform of the

Security Council in order to render it more effective

and representative. We believe that the Security

Council should be enlarged to incorporate new

permanent seats without veto rights. We also believe

that the permanent members of the Security Council

should refrain from using the veto in cases of genocide,

war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against

humanity. That promises to be one of the most difficult

issues to resolve, but we should nevertheless not

abandon our efforts to reach a feasible accord by the

end of this year.

The Secretary-General has highlighted the

linkage between security and development. The

commitments he outlines are designed to advance the

realization of the Millennium Development Goals,

which, if achieved by 2015, would mark a genuine turn

of the tide in our common struggle against poverty and

disease. The comprehensive package agreed at the G-8

Gleneagles summit in July is an important milestone in

helping Africa to eradicate extreme poverty, combat

AIDS and malaria, and ensure that every child receives

a primary education. We must now make sure that what

was agreed at Gleneagles, including a doubling of aid

by 2010 and the writing off of billions of dollars in

debt, will be delivered.

I would also like to highlight the necessity of

achieving gender equality, which includes universal

access to reproductive health information and services

by 2015. That was the central goal of the agreements

that were reached at the International Conference on

Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. Our

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countries must strengthen girls’ access to both primary

and secondary education so that they become less

subject to early forced marriages and economic

exploitation. Girls must be made safe from genital

mutilation. Girls and women must be guaranteed

sexual and reproductive rights and protection against

HIV/AIDS and other diseases. There is no excuse for

half a million women dying each year of pregnancy-

related causes that are entirely preventable.

The need for continued development concerns

almost all regions in the world, including Eastern

Europe, which has experienced momentous changes

since the fall of the iron curtain in the late 1980s and

early 1990s. Thirteen years ago, the United Nations

Development Programme (UNDP) established an

office in Latvia to facilitate the country’s development

and improve people’s lives. Its mandate in Latvia will

conclude at the end of this year, and I take this

opportunity to express Latvia’s gratitude for the

invaluable assistance that UNDP has provided to my

country over these 13 years.

Today, Latvia, as a full State member of the

European Union, has become a net contributor of aid

for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. We

know that, without the promotion of good governance

at all levels, sound macroeconomic policies and a

concerted fight against corruption, the Goals will not

be reached. Latvia stands ready to share its experience

of transition to democratic rule and a free market

economy, as it has done and will continue to do with

countries in transition in Eastern Europe and the

Caucasus. We welcome the initiative of establishing a

democracy fund to assist all committed countries in

their efforts to consolidate democratic political

systems.

Recognizing the opportunities that derive from

the use of modern technologies in the field of

information and communications, Latvia has been

actively involved in the preparations for the World

Summit on the Information Society, which will be held

in Tunis this November. We hope that the Summit will

provide unprecedented opportunities for strengthening

cooperation among Governments, civil society and the

private sector in promoting the use of information and

communication technologies and generating knowledge

societies.

A major step forward is our unequivocal

condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and

manifestations. My own country, Latvia, regained its

freedom through peaceful and non-violent means. We

triumphed due to our firm belief in historical justice,

along with a great deal of persistence, patience and

hope.

Latvia welcomes the Secretary-General’s counter-

terrorism strategy. We need to arrive at a

comprehensive convention on international terrorism,

which would provide a legal framework for

international cooperation in combating that modern-

day scourge of humanity. The war against terrorism

will be won only if it is fought while respecting basic

human rights and remembering humanistic ethics.

I express my profound disappointment that we

could not achieve any consensus on disarmament and

the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Progress in that area is more urgently needed than ever.

I therefore encourage every United Nations Member

State to act responsibly and in good faith in the pursuit

of those goals.

Since the previous session of the General

Assembly a year ago, the world has experienced

natural disasters of an unprecedented scale of

destruction. We have just had Hurricane Katrina, and

are still getting over the terrible tsunami last year in

South-East Asia. The hard lessons of those crises must

be learned in order to prepare for future emergencies.

While there is nothing we can do to prevent

earthquakes and tsunamis, scientists have warned us

for years that our continued dependence on and

increasing consumption of fossil fuels is generating

greenhouse gas emissions that are causing disruptive

climate changes. Unless we diversify our sources of

energy, we can expect to see more devastating

hurricanes and floods in some parts of the world, along

with drought and desertification in others.

The challenges that our nations face are

formidable, and we will be able to overcome them only

by working together. As we prepare to implement the

decisions we have made at this gathering, I wish us all

the foresight and the courage to uphold the higher

interest of the common good over narrow, short-term,

local concerns. The future of our peoples depends on

us.