Madagascar, 2000

I join all those who have welcomed

the start of this fifty-fifth session of the General

Assembly. Endorsing the Millennium Declaration of

the Millennium Summit, I reiterate its message: Let

us — the peoples of the United Nations, faced with

new challenges; brothers and sisters, partners linked by

and in our support for the principles of our

Organization; with the expectations and constraints of

our countries and peoples, yearning for peace and well-

being; likewise facing the requirements of

globalization and the manifold risks of conflict and

marginalization — be united in our action; let us say:

“We the peoples”, inspired by new hope and new

momentum, are for a better millennium.

The delegation of Madagascar congratulates you,

Mr. President, on your unanimous election to preside

over the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly, a

tribute both to your eminent diplomatic qualities and to

your country, Finland.

We also pay tribute to Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab,

Minister for Foreign Affairs of Namibia, for the

dedication and determination he displayed in presiding

over the fifty-fourth session.

We convey our congratulations to the Secretary-

General on his efforts he has made. His actions will

benefit all the citizens of the world, who are all anxious

to leave deprivation and poverty behind.

I also take this opportunity to thank, from this

rostrum, the United Nations, for having adopted

resolution 54/96 M of 14 March 2000, as well as all the

countries and organizations that helped Madagascar

following the cyclone damage at the beginning of this

year.

With regard to restructuring the United Nations, it

is high time to enact such proposals as enlarging that

cornerstone of collective peace that is the Security

Council, streamlining the institutional structure to

make it work better, and improving the financial

structure with a view to a more equitable assessment of

contributions. The power of the veto, which in itself

constitutes a nullification of democracy, is

incompatible with the founding principles of our

Organization.

We know that, unfortunately, Africa is a place of

perpetual conflict, but a new impetus is manifesting

itself in the search for lasting peace and reconciliation.

With regard to the crisis in Comoros, Madagascar

respects the position expressed by the Organization for

African Unity (OAU) at its thirty-sixth Assembly of

Heads of State and Government, held at Lomé. The

Antananarivo Agreement of April 1999 remains the

viable solution for bringing to an end the separatist

crisis in Anjouan, a crisis that was caused by the

unconstitutionality of the regime currently in power.

Madagascar welcomes the efforts undertaken in

Burundi by President Nelson Mandela in his capacity

18

as mediator and facilitator. Those efforts led to the

signing of the Arusha agreement, which we hope will

allow the people of Burundi to be united once again

and to find peace and a new impetus for development.

Madagascar has long supported the struggle for

self-determination of the Sahraoui people and

encourages the implementation of the United Nations

Settlement Plan as the only viable mechanism able to

resolve the differences between the two parties.

We welcome the outcome of the mediation efforts

undertaken by President Ismail Omar Guelleh of the

Republic of Djibouti. Thanks to those efforts, Somalia

is now beginning to find peace after more than a

decade as a non-State. The election by the parliament

in Djibouti on 25 August 2000 of Mr. Abdikassim

Salad Hassan as the new President is a step towards

agreement. The people of Somalia can now embark

upon the process of restoring a State of law and civil

peace through their own efforts and with the support of

the international community.

The desire in recent months for dialogue between

the two Koreas is encouraging. We welcome the

summit conference held in Pyongyang in June 2000 to

discuss peaceful reunification that led to the signing of

a joint North-South declaration. The family reunions

that took place after half a century of separation were

moving, and such meetings should be facilitated in the

future. The decision to have the athletes of the North

and South march together at the Olympic Games in

Sydney reflects a desire for reconciliation.

Madagascar is a peaceful island in the Indian

Ocean. Through me, my country reiterates its

commitment to carrying out disarmament. We are

counting on the implementation of the conventions

prohibiting the production, proliferation and illicit

sales of weapons of all kinds. On 25 August 1999,

Madagascar ratified the Convention on the Prohibition

of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of

Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction.

Furthermore, our Parliament's ratification process for

the Convention on Biological and Toxin Weapons has

begun.

The proliferation of light weapons is one of the

causes of the spread of conflict. My country therefore

fully supports the convening in 2001 of an international

conference under the auspices of the United Nations on

the illicit trafficking in light weapons in all its aspects.

We pay tribute to the United Nations peace

volunteers who were victims of the recent terrorist act

of aggression in West Timor. We underscore the need

for a joint strategy to deal with the current wave of

violence. Thus on 1 October 1999, Madagascar signed

the International Convention for the Suppression of

Terrorist Bombings. We look forward to a speedy

conclusion of the draft convention for the suppression

of acts of nuclear terrorism.

Madagascar strongly supports the

recommendations of the Brahimi report and looks

forward to their effective and speedy implementation

so as to strengthen the peacekeeping capacity of our

Organization. We should stress the training, equipping

and safety of peace volunteers. In this connection, the

countries concerned and neighbouring States should

make their contributions. Adopting a comprehensive

approach to conflict prevention is necessary because

the problem needs to be tackled at the source.

Because we support democracy and the

observance of human rights and the rights of citizens,

Madagascar joined in the decision taken at Algiers in

1999 during the thirty-fifth OAU Assembly of Heads

of State and Government to condemn the taking of

power through unconstitutional means. A resolution of

the thirty-sixth Assembly, which was held at Lomé,

urges the international community to condemn with

one voice such anti-democratic practices and to enact

sanctions against regimes that result from such

practices.

In the new millennium, let us ensure that children

remain at the heart of our collective efforts. The

twenty-fourth special session of the General Assembly,

on social development, held in June 2000 at Geneva,

emphasized the need to protect children, to inform

them of their rights and to educate them fully in order

to prepare them for citizenship.

In order to mark the Millennium Summit, on 7

September 2000, Madagascar signed Optional

Protocols: one to the Convention on the Rights of the

Child, on the involvement of children in armed

conflict, and another to the Convention on the

Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against

Women. Gender equality is for us an ongoing

challenge.

We condemn anything that runs counter to the

progress of human beings, and we endorse the common

struggle against social scourges and transnational

19

crime. We also wish to draw attention to the upsurge in

such new areas of concern as sex tourism, paedophilia

and the spread of HIV/AIDS. Moreover, together with

my sister Ministers for Social Affairs, we spoke out in

favour of a united struggle against those scourges in a

letter to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

What Africa needs is easier access to care and

medications. Without opposing in any way the noble

principle of freedom of thought and expression, we

deplore the ill effects of any type of physical or moral

aggression that is the result of the proliferation of cults,

and media representations of obscene and immoral

images. In this regard, legal instruments should be

designed and implemented to create parameters for the

electronic dissemination of material that poses a threat

to morality.

The signing by Madagascar on 7 September last

of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the

Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child

prostitution and child pornography attests to our

determination to work to safeguard the family unit and

family values, which are a source of human dignity and

which guarantee stable sustainable social development.

In this context, Madagascar adopted a law in 1999

which outlaws paedophilia.

Madagascar has also involved itself in the various

stages of the negotiations that led to the adoption and

the signing, on 14 September 2000, of the Protocol on

Biosafety, the objective of which is to avert the dangers

of using genetically modified substances. Madagascar

is also against any use of the research relating to the

cloning of human beings.

The economic and social difficulties facing my

country are made worse by the uncertainty and changes

in the international system. We must therefore

strengthen international dialogue on the basis of

partnership and shared responsibility. We are

convinced that the promotion of a culture of peace and

of mutual understanding will help bring about a

harmonious world. Accordingly, Madagascar supports

General Assembly resolution 53/22, which proclaimed

2001 the United Nations Year of Dialogue among

Civilizations.

We hope that this session will outline strategies

that are consonant with the requirements of

development and of human security, in keeping with

the plan of action proposed by the Secretary-General in

his report.

An overall rethinking of development is

necessary, because it is in everyone's interests to

increase the purchasing power of the developing

countries, so that in the near future they can become

equal partners as well as a potential market. We

deplore the glaring inequalities that exist today: our

peoples are suffering from famine and malnutrition,

whereas some others are enjoying amazing

overproduction. This imbalance does nothing to

promote commercial and financial flows. We therefore

support the Millennium Summit Declaration, which

proposes the adoption of a duty-free admission policy

for products exported by the developing countries, an

increase in official development assistance, and the

implementation of a debt relief and forgiveness

programme.

The holding in May 2001 of the third United

Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries

should lead to decisions that ultimately will help to

eliminate the least-developed-country category from

the scale of world economic values.

Accordingly, we support the principles of self-

confidence and of mutual trust in the establishment of a

monetary fund — a development fund — and a

commodity price stabilization fund. This initiative

seeks to both reduce the vulnerability of the developing

countries to exogenous factors and to decrease the

dependence of our economies on those of the

developed countries.

Concerning Africa specifically, regional and

continental integration is vital in order to avoid

marginalization. In this respect, Madagascar signed the

draft Charter of the African Union, which is the

expression of the rebirth of a responsible, sovereign

Africa.

Important meetings await us in 2001, including

the high-level intergovernmental meeting on financing

for development and the special session to follow up on

the World Summit for Children, which are all

opportunities to give real meaning to the commitments

undertaken during this Millennium Assembly.

We have come to this historic session convinced

that it will breathe new life into our Organization and

provide the basis for a dynamic for peace and

20

cooperation. We have come here because we have

confidence in concerted action to meet today's

challenges. We have come here because we have hope

in a viable future free from need in a world of well-

being and peace.