Malawi, 2011

First of all, let me say

how pleased I am to come before the General

Assembly and to address it on behalf of His Excellency

Mr. Bingu Wa Mutharika, President of the Republic of

Malawi. The President was unable to attend due to

other State commitments, but he sends his greetings to

you, Sir, the Secretary-General and all the peoples of

the United Nations.

At the outset, I would like to extend my sincere

congratulations to you, Sir, on your election as

President of the General Assembly. Your election is a

manifestation of the confidence that the people of the

United Nations have in your leadership. I wish you

well as you lead this body in the next several months.

Allow me also to take this opportunity to

congratulate Mr. Joseph Deiss, the President of the

General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session, for his

effective leadership during his tenure. I had the

opportunity of working with him in Istanbul, and he

was very helpful to me personally as a new participant

in those international activities. He also showed much

interest in Africa. I hope that, whatever he does in

future, he will continue to show interest in Africa.

Let me also take the opportunity to congratulate

Mr. Ban Ki-moon on his unanimous reappointment as

Secretary-General. His endorsement has demonstrated

the international community’s confidence in his

leadership. I remember his visit to Malawi this past

year, when he came to visit the Millennium Village.

The people of Mwandama village anxiously await his

return, and they have sent word through me to ask him,

whenever he has time, to come back to Malawi.

Let me take this opportunity to join other

speakers in congratulating our brothers and sisters of

South Sudan for achieving their independence. I am

particularly excited about this because, when South

Sudan gained its independence, Malawi was Chair of

the African Union and played a small part in its

emergence as an independent State. I am very excited

about that. The emergence of South Sudan is, I believe,

a good manifestation of the importance of mediation

and negotiation in the settlement of disputes by

peaceful means. There is no question in my mind that

the remaining issues that exist between South Sudan

and the Sudan will also be resolved in a peaceful

manner. I therefore wish them well.

The theme of this general debate is “The role of

mediation in the settlement of disputes by peaceful

means”. I consider this an opportune time to discuss

that particular issue because today we are faced with

new problems, including inter-State and intra-State

problems. There is a new phenomenon of people who

become divided over ethnic, linguistic, religious or

cultural differences within States. Methods must

therefore be found to resolve disputes within States.

I therefore wish to commend the United Nations

and to encourage the establishment of durable

mechanisms to ensure that disputes between and within

States are resolved in a peaceful manner. In that

context, I congratulate the African Union, regional

organizations and other international organizations for

the mediation work they have done, especially in

Africa. I would like to encourage developing countries,

especially African States, to make sure to adopt the

practice of resolving disputes in universities and to

train people at regional and local levels in dispute

settlement and resolution techniques.

There are a number of issues facing the United

Nations and the world, but my country has identified

five that I hope will be put at the forefront of the

United Nations agenda at this and future sessions. The

first issue is that of disaster relief and management.

Disasters have now become a major problem in most of

our countries. They strain the resources of the least

developed countries, particularly in Africa. We face

problems of floods, heavy rains, droughts, earthquakes,

heavy winds and hurricanes almost every day. Such

developments have the effect of turning back the

progress made with respect to the Millennium

Development Goals. Therefore, I would like to invite

the international community to set up mechanisms in

Africa and elsewhere in the developing world that can

assist us in managing disasters.

My country also attaches importance to the issue

of climate change. Climate change has become an

extremely difficult issue in Africa, where crops are

destroyed because there is either too much rain or too

little rain, too much wind or too much sunshine. All

these possibilities are due to climate change. Therefore,

I encourage the international community to come up

with mechanisms to manage climate change. I know

that countries like Malawi have not contributed to the

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incidence of climate change. Nevertheless, we feel we

do have a collective responsibility to make sure that

the issue of climate change is addressed. I hope that the

upcoming seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change, scheduled to take place in South Africa, will

address this particular problem.

The third area to which my country attaches

importance is the issue of peace and security. As we are

all aware, no matter how much development we

achieve, it will be meaningless if there is no peace and

security in our countries. Unfortunately, in our

countries, especially in Africa, we now face a lot of

challenges. There are movements of people who are

bent upon bringing about unconstitutional changes of

Government, thereby causing instability.

In the case of Malawi, we are committed to

maintaining peace and security. We are also committed

to democracy and good governance. In this regard,

Malawi has, for example, instituted a number of

bodies, such as the Malawi Human Rights

Commission, an ombudsman, an anti-corruption bureau

and the Department of the Auditor General. All these

institutions are institutions of good governance aimed

at improving the governance in our part of Africa, and

certainly in Malawi.

Another issue that is of importance to Malawi in

particular and to Africa in general is the issue of self-

determination. We still have over 2 million people in

different parts of the world living under colonial

domination. I want to urge the international community

to make sure that by the end of the Third International

Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism — from

2011 to 2021 — all the territories under colonial

domination will be free and independent. I think that

self-governance is a very important concept. The self-

determination of colonized peoples is enshrined in the

Charter of the United Nations.

Of course, there is another element of self-

determination which the United Nations obviously has

to address, namely, that of self-determination outside

the colonial context. It is an extremely complicated

problem that needs to be addressed and studied. First

of all, what does self-determination mean within the

context of non-colonial States? What are peoples

within the context of non-colonial States? It is an issue

that obviously we must address because it is an

important one.

Finally, my Government attaches great

importance to the role of the Security Council. There is

no question that the Council has played an extremely

important role since the creation of the United Nations

in 1945. However, I think it is obvious to everybody

that the structure created in 1945 is no longer

applicable to the present situation. We need therefore

to make sure that the Security Council is democratized.

We need to make sure that majority of countries,

especially those most affected by the Security Council,

like Malawi and others in Africa, are given a role to

play in the Council. I therefore would like to endorse

Africa’s common position, known as the Ezulwini

Consensus, that two permanent member seats and five

non-permanent seats in the Security Council should be

given to Africa.