Papua New Guinea, 2011

Mr. President,

allow me, on behalf of the Government and people of

Papua New Guinea, to offer our warmest

congratulations on your assumption of the presidency

of the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session. We

pledge support for your statement highlighting the

success of global endeavours that are founded on the

principles of partnership, justice and responsibility. I

also thank your predecessor, Mr. Joseph Diess, for his

invaluable contributions to the United Nations, and I

wish him well.

I also wish to congratulate the Secretary-General,

His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on his

reappointment for a second term, and to thank him for

attending our recent annual Pacific Islands Leaders

Meeting in Auckland, New Zealand. His attendance at

our regional meeting was the first by a United Nations

Secretary-General and is testament to the strengthening

ties between the United Nations and the Pacific region.

We particularly note his heartfelt comments when

describing his experiences on witnessing the adverse

effects of climate change on low-lying atolls in the

Republic of Kiribati and the various other development

challenges faced by many small island States in our

region.

Allow me, like other speakers, to take this

opportunity to welcome our newest member of the

United Nations family — the Republic of South Sudan.

Papua New Guinea continues to benefit from a

strong United Nations presence through its delivery of

various development programmes. Papua New Guinea

welcomed and formalized the “One United Nations

Initiative: delivering as one” concept in 2006. That has

11-51372 4

unified all the efforts of the various United Nations

agencies under one budgetary framework, monitoring

and evaluation process.

The concept will enable a more effective and

efficient way for the United Nations to deliver on its

mandate, particularly the new country programme for

Papua New Guinea, to be rolled out at the beginning of

January 2012. It will target the areas of governance,

social justice, health, education, gender, the

environment, climate change and disaster management.

That new country programme is part of our

overall efforts to achieve the Millennium Development

Goals (MDGs). Since the inaugural MDG report was

published in 2004, Papua New Guinea has produced

two MDG progress reports. The first, in 2009, was a

summary report and the second, in 2010, a

comprehensive report. They showed that we have been

able to achieve some of the national MDG targets,

especially on poverty reduction and child mortality.

In terms of universal primary education, Papua

New Guinea is progressing well, with the enrolment of

children in grades one to six increasing significantly —

by 53 per cent. That is a marked improvement and will

increase the literacy rate in the long term. Our

Government recently announced a policy of free

education from the elementary level to year 10 and

subsidized education from grade 11 to university,

commencing 2012.

We are also revamping our national health system

to improve immunization programmes, to provide a

clean and safer water supply, to centralize the purchase

and supply of medical drugs, and to reduce maternal

and child mortality and the incidence of malaria,

HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases. The

recent important summit on non-communicable

diseases, attended by our Minister for Health,

reiterated our equal responsibility for our own, our

families’ and our communities’ health and well-being.

Our Government remains committed to achieving

the MDGs, and we are now scaling up progress in all

relevant sectors. Our new Development Strategic Plan

2010-2030 and Medium Term Development Plan aim

to develop and foster key enabling environments,

which will raise Papua New Guinea to a middle-

income country and improve its Human Development

Index ranking.

We call on all our development partners to

complement our efforts to achieve the MDG targets in

line with our national development plans and policies. I

believe other developing countries will support our

call.

We are also investing heavily in the rehabilitation

of our major transport infrastructure, including roads,

airports and seaports. Aside from that, we are also

rolling out rural communication systems and rural

electrification. As we are all aware, improved

infrastructure will enable effective service delivery.

Women play critical roles in all facets of our

development. Our Government is conscious of the need

to have more women participate actively in the affairs

of state and in the economic life of our country. I am

pleased to report that we have recently passed the first

vote on a parliamentary bill that will provide for

22 seats reserved for women to contest in the coming

elections in 2012. That provision does not stop them

from contesting any of the existing seats.

We also appreciate the push by multilateral

partners like the Asian Development Bank and the

World Bank for gender equality. In the same breath,

however, we urge them to support our financial

institutions by specifically allocating funds without

risk to be lent to women entrepreneurs to develop

business opportunities.

We note the recently adopted San Francisco

Declaration by the countries member of the Asia-

Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) last week,

under the leadership of the United States of America.

That is a major step forward in supporting women in

business and is a powerful tool for women of the APEC

member countries. We will encourage our women in

Papua New Guinea to take advantage of the

opportunities created by that Declaration.

There remain many other global challenges that

continue to affect the development aspirations of many

of our countries. One is nuclear non-proliferation. The

Pacific remains a nuclear-weapons-free zone. We call

upon other Member States who are not yet signatories

to sign and ratify the Rarotonga Treaty.

The illegal use, abuse and the dangerous

proliferation of small arms and light weapons continue

to hamper the development aspirations of many

developing countries. We therefore call upon the

international community to deal seriously with

5 11-51372

outstanding issues such as the illegal supply of and

trade in small arms. Our Government will do all it can

to accelerate the implementation of the

recommendations in our own Gun Summit Report.

On transnational crime, Papua New Guinea

remains committed to working closely with other

Governments and relevant international law

enforcement agencies to curb drug trafficking, human

trafficking and money-laundering.

As one of the top five remaining rainforest

nations, we are committed to addressing the many

challenges of climate change, biodiversity and

sustainable development of our forests. We continue to

maintain dialogue with all stakeholders, being mindful

that issues confronting many nations on climate change

are very complex.

In the matter of United Nations reform, we

support and encourage the reform of the United

Nations, its agencies and its Secretariat, to make them

more responsive to and active in responding to global,

regional and national challenges. We reiterate our call

for an expansion of membership in the permanent and

non-permanent categories of the Security Council,

which must take into account the geopolitical realities

of today’s world.

In terms of our contribution to the maintenance of

international peace and security, I am pleased to

announce the deployment of our uniformed personnel

as military observers. That is history in the making for

our country, and we thank the United Nations for

giving us the opportunity for our security personnel to

participate in international peacekeeping duties.

On regional issues, tuna is an important source of

food and is, along with tourism, an economic resource

for the Pacific island States. Papua New Guinea and

countries that are parties to the Nauru Agreement are

determined to process tuna onshore to add value and

create employment for our people. We encourage

investors to invest in onshore activities.

At the Pacific regional level, we are conscious of

our obligation to conserve fisheries through sustainable

fishing. The parties to the Nauru Agreement have

introduced the Vessel Day Scheme to limit the total

catch for conservation purposes. In addition, Papua

New Guinea continues to make funds available to the

South Pacific community to tag tuna species so that we

are can quantify and assess the tuna stocks for the

future.

Over the past nine years, Papua New Guinea has

continued to experience unprecedented economic

growth levels of 6 to 8 per cent per annum. That has

been largely attributable to significant increases in

foreign investments in our mineral and hydrocarbon

sectors and to the high prices of our agricultural

commodities. Those economic growth levels have

positioned Papua New Guinea to become a significant

development partner within our region.

Papua New Guinea greatly values the objectives

and principles of the United Nations Charter. We

reaffirm our support for the maintenance of

international peace and security, the development of

friendly relations among nations and working together

towards the achievement of the aspirations of all of our

peoples.