Nepal, 2001

At the outset, I wish to

express, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government and

the people of Nepal, and on my own behalf, our

profound condolences to the Government and the

people of the United States, as well as to the families

who lost their loved ones in the unfortunate crash of

American Airlines flight 587 on 12 November.

Let me congratulate you, Mr. President, on your

well-deserved election to steer the fifty-sixth session of

the General Assembly. My felicitations also go to the

other members of the Bureau.

I also congratulate the Secretary-General on his

election to a second term and on being awarded this

year’s Nobel Peace Prize, together with the United

Nations.

We are meeting against the backdrop of the 11

September terrorist attacks that took innumerable lives

and caused colossal damage in our host country and

host city. The Nepalese people express their full

solidarity with the American people in this hour of

grief and support the American-led war on terror.

The horror’s powerful ripples have been felt

beyond the borders of the United States, around the

world. They have pushed the already slumping global

economy into a recession that is sure to unleash misery

and starvation on millions of people and kill thousands

of children in the developing world.

In the wake of the terrorist onslaught, the United

Nations was quick to act. It approved fresh measures,

including Security Council resolution 1373 (2001),

calling on Member States to stem the terrorists’

channels of communication, freeze their finances, deny

them refuge and support, strengthen domestic and

international law against them and collectively take all

necessary measures to prevent and defeat them.

A broad coalition of States united around a

common goal has launched a global campaign against

terrorism. Itself being a victim of terrorist activities,

which have taken nearly 1,800 lives over the past five

years and have grossly undermined development

efforts, Nepal fully understands the challenges and cost

of defeating this elusive enemy that has no borders, no

territory and no standing army. Yet with collective

resolve and determination and with preventive and

curative actions we can sniff out the forces of

terrorism, if we only refrain from political expediency

and moral relativism.

Enforcing all the existing relevant conventions

and resolutions is as crucial as the early conclusion of a

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comprehensive convention on terrorism in order to

achieve the objective.

The twenty-first century begins with a new and

uncertain security environment. No sooner had we put

the wars, and the cold war, of the last century behind us

and had begun to grapple with internal conflicts than

terrorism emerged as a grave threat to international

peace and security. It should be tackled decisively and

without delay.

As we engage in the war on terrorism, we must

not forget that the edifice of durable peace can be

erected only on the fundamental pillars of the

prevention of conflicts, the peaceful resolution of

disputes, persistent efforts for disarmament, poverty

reduction and development, and respect for diversity,

fairness and justice. The culture of peace and dialogue

should advance the process.

We now live in a global village where all are

interdependent. A fire in one house may consume the

entire village if left unchecked. That is why concerted

efforts to secure peace and stability are critical in the

troubled nations of Africa, Asia, Europe and elsewhere

that have suffered wanton instability and violence that

are pernicious for their national integrity, social

harmony and economic progress.

In particular, we will have to end the cycle of

violence and death in the Middle East by finding a

durable solution to its festering problem. The war on

terror and the restoration of stability will succeed in

Afghanistan if its people are saved from starvation and

unwarranted hardship now and assured of their

country’s reconstruction when the struggle is over.

Criminal acts such as those involving the present

anthrax scare in the United States and the use of sarin

gas in the Tokyo subway a few years back are strong

testimony to the necessity of abolishing biological and

chemical weapons before an appalling catastrophe

befalls us. More importantly, the proliferation of

nuclear weapons and the increasing likelihood of their

use by terrorists, viewed in the context of the

successful 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to

the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear

Weapons, constitute compelling reasons to follow the

path of complete and general nuclear disarmament.

The inability of the Conference on Disarmament

to agree on its programme of work for the past several

years raises serious doubts about our commitment to

disarmament. That forum should be activated without

delay and should be tasked with negotiating new

disarmament treaties, including one on nuclear

disarmament, and to strengthen the existing ones.

In order for United Nations peace efforts to

become instrumental in promoting global peace, Nepal

has lent them moral backing, has contributed nearly

40,000 troops and has sustained 42 casualties in the

line of duty. Nepal is willing to work for the

improvement of peacekeeping operations, taking into

account both the Brahimi Panel report and our

collective experience.

While we are preoccupied with the immediate

steps against terrorists, we must not overlook or

abandon other equally pressing issues central to

durable peace, such as the need to remove poverty,

create jobs and provide education, drinking water,

health and other basic services in poor countries. The

reason is simple: terrorists and anarchists often exploit

the vulnerabilities of the impoverished, the

unemployed, the excluded and the disaffected to carry

out their sinister designs.

Of course, poor countries have no choice but to

undertake painful reforms to improve their governance

and performance. Decreasing assistance to the poor in

the face of increasing prosperity in the rich countries

defies our understanding. Therefore, it is equally

urgent and essential that they receive increased support

from their development partners.

For example, rich countries need to reverse the

decline in development assistance and meet the aid

targets, fully fund and expand the Heavily Indebted

Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative to cover all least

developed and worst affected countries and facilitate

investment in the South. Their trade barriers ought to

be dismantled and markets opened to spur exports and

help to broaden the production capacities of developing

countries.

As the advanced nations seek to hammer out a

stimulus package to extricate their economies from the

dark shadow of the present economic downturn, they

must also be mindful of the much greater needs of

poorer nations at this time of economic hardship.

Undoubtedly, all developing countries face

serious obstacles to their development journey. But

landlocked developing countries suffer from the

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additional impediments of remoteness, transit-transport

difficulties and lack of access to sea-based resources.

However, nowhere are the trauma of deprivation

and dispossession and problems of development more

staggering than in the least developed countries,

virtually all of which are in Africa and Asia.

Globalization has further marginalized them, and the

information revolution has hardly touched them. The

United Nations special programmes of the past two

decades have apparently been inadequate and unable to

make a difference, as many of these countries have

become increasingly worse off over the last decade.

Nepal is committed to vigorously implementing

the outcome of the Third United Nations Conference

on the Least Developed Countries. We sincerely hope

that our development partners will leave no stone

unturned in carrying out their commitments, including

the European Union’s “everything but arms” scheme.

Conflicts and chaos, and deprivation and disasters

continue to spawn humanitarian problems and to create

situations in which human rights are compromised.

Today there are 22 million refugees, including 100,000

in Nepal, and many more internally displaced persons

around the globe. Responding to such exigencies is

naturally a priority, as is the war on terror, but we must

bear in mind that humanitarian assistance cannot

prevent the recurrence of crises until people are

empowered and their vulnerabilities addressed.

I should like to take this occasion to thank the

international community for its support in the

maintenance of refugees in Nepal. We urge it to

continue its assistance until the problem is resolved,

leading to their repatriation. To this end, we are

engaged in dialogue with the Government of the

Kingdom of Bhutan.

The need has never been so urgent to protect

refugees, maintain ecological balance, preserve the

environment, promote sustainable development and

ensure that this planet remains at least as liveable for

our children as it has been for us. The strengthening of

existing global treaties on the environment, and

particularly the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, is

urgently required.

Nepal, a least developed and landlocked nation,

has accorded its topmost priority to poverty reduction,

spending more than 70 per cent of its budget in rural

areas where the poorest people live, and has adopted a

market-led development policy with a two-pronged

strategy.

Policies and measures have been instituted to

attract foreign investment and to harness people’s

creative potential by means of economic liberalization,

investment incentives, decentralization and the

rationalization of public spending priorities. Of late, we

have taken steps towards land reform, the

empowerment of women through education,

inheritance rights and political participation, together

with special developmental programmes to assist weak

and vulnerable people and regions.

Yet progress has been slow in coming, with the

attendant serious consequences. Nepal’s per capita

gross national product of $220 is one of the lowest in

the world; 38 per cent of the population lives below the

poverty line; and the ratio of the Government’s foreign

debt stock to government revenue is 410 per cent, and

to annual exports, 350 per cent. These statistics are

incredibly disheartening, even among the least

developed countries.

Despite this, Nepal is left out of the Heavily

Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. I therefore

urge the donor community to include Nepal in the

Initiative to help release our resources from debt-

servicing obligations, which will enable us to

implement poverty-reduction programmes more

effectively. But this will in no way substitute for the

need for increased development assistance.

The United Nations has an elemental role to play

in meeting all these challenges. To prepare it to address

them, Nepal believes that we should revitalize the

General Assembly and the Economic and Social

Council and augment cooperation and coordination

among the various United Nations organs. Likewise,

we deem it imperative to enlarge the Security Council

and to improve its methods of work, including through

the deepening of its cooperation with troop-

contributing countries.

Veto power militates against the basic tenets of

equality and democracy; it reflects the realities of a

bygone era. Nepal is convinced of the necessity to do

away with the veto and understands the profound

difficulty of achieving this goal. Until it has been

eliminated, this power ought to be rationalized by

defining the parameters for its application.

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The Millennium Declaration has given us a vision

of and benchmarks for a peaceful, decent, just and

viable global society, and it has indicated how the

United Nations could be instrumental in achieving

them. It is our collective obligation to implement them,

sharing the burdens and benefits equally. Nepal

welcomes the road map for the implementation of the

Declaration.

The implementation review of various global

compacts has unmistakably established a shortage of

financial resources as the principal reason for lack of

progress. Nepal hopes that the World Summit on

Sustainable Development and the International

Conference on Financing for Development, to be held

next year, will do their best to chalk out a blueprint for

financing developmental activities, which is the

foremost concern of the developing world.

As regional cooperation is an effective vehicle for

broadening markets and production as well as for

building collective competitiveness, Nepal and other

South Asian countries have been working together

under the umbrella of the South Asian Association for

Regional Cooperation (SAARC). I am happy to inform

the Assembly that Nepal will have the privilege of

hosting its next summit in January 2002, following its

postponement two years ago.

Again, in the spirit of regional solidarity and of

its abiding commitment to peace and disarmament,

Nepal looks forward to the early relocation of the

Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia

and the Pacific to Kathmandu, where it belongs. We

have, on our part, completed all necessary preparations

for the effective functioning of the Centre from Nepal.

Democracy, development and human rights are

integral to society’s advancement. Therefore, Nepal is

engaged in promoting democracy and freedom, and

human rights and justice for all, particularly women,

children and vulnerable groups. We cherish these

values, which are crucial to preserving human dignity

and to bestowing on human beings the opportunity to

reach their full potential.

In the aftermath of the agonizing royal massacre

in Nepal early this year, our people’s faith in

democracy has been further reinforced, as it ensured a

smooth succession and stability in the face of a terrible

crisis. I thank all our friends for their solidarity and

support at a time of national tragedy in Nepal.

We have witnessed unprecedented unity among

nations in fighting major wars in the past, and

terrorism at present. If we show the same kind of

resolve and dedication, we can successfully fight

poverty, deprivation and discrimination. The United

Nations should brace itself to face them effectively, and

Member States should assume a greater sense of

responsibility. Nepal, committed as it is to the

principles and purposes of the United Nations, will

continue to do its best to help it achieve its goals and to

make a difference in our people’s lives.