Peru, 2007

For Peru, Sir, your election as President of the General

Assembly at its sixty-second session is a guarantee of

experience and exceptional work. I am convinced that

your performance will strengthen the principles of

dialogue and coordination that guide the efforts of the

United Nations to attain realistic commitments that

contribute to well-being in the daily life of humankind.

On 15 August, an earthquake occurred in the city

of Pisco, seriously impacting the southern populations

of Peru, claiming priceless human lives and causing

great material damage. The Peruvian people deeply

appreciates the immediate and generous response of

the international community, as well as the speedy

action of the United Nations Office for the

Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Office’s

support showed that united action can make a

difference in a crisis situation and contributed to the

Government’s activities in attending to the urgent

needs of the victims. Our sincere recognition goes to

the cooperation received, which is now being

channelled by my country’s Fund for Southern

Reconstruction.

The stabilization and growth of the Peruvian

economy over the past 76 months have generated

national and international confidence and expectation.

We are convinced that the investment and participation

of our productive forces will allow us to maintain

continuous growth and to exploit the opportunity to

enhance a model and national project of social

tranquillity and development.

In the first year of his Government, President of

the Republic Alan García has laid the foundations for

greater dynamic growth in the country. We must now

consolidate and give practical and positive content to

the democracy, governance and economic stabilization

of the country in order to allow the growth indices to

generate national confidence and participation that can

be converted into transparency, equity, justice and

social peace.

The struggle against poverty and inequity is the

most formidable current challenge to the national and

foreign policies of Peru. In the conviction that the

dignity of human beings and their welfare are at the

core of governmental management, and that economic

indicators should be based on the well-being of our

population without distinction, the Government of Peru

has redefined its social policy through a concept of

productive inclusion, access to education and

technological innovations, territorial institutional

development and support for the population. To that

end, we have begun implementing a national strategy

of rural development and a national strategy of food

security to address chronic child malnutrition.

Important road infrastructure works will complement

the incorporation of the Peruvian Andes and Amazonia

into the development of the country.

Towards the fulfilment of the Millennium

Development Goals, Peru has set itself the concrete

goal of reducing the current level of poverty from 50

per cent to 30 per cent by 2011. Chronic malnutrition

will be reduced from 25 per cent to 16 per cent, and the

provision of potable water and electricity will be

extended to 90 per cent of citizens. Likewise, we plan

to eradicate illiteracy, reduce employment in the

informal sector from 53 per cent to 35 per cent, create

1.5 million jobs, and reduce the external debt from 24

per cent to 13 per cent of the gross domestic product.

The Government’s new direction in State action

is focused on decentralization. The strategic

decentralization plan goes beyond the mere transfer of

resources or the execution of public works in the

interior of the country. The regions can now coordinate

their own development plan, efficiently distribute more

than 80 per cent of the national budget, interlink and

gradually integrate Peru as a whole, and promote the

better distribution of the population and income

through a process of national institutionalization that

supports optimal care of the environment.

Peru has become one of the emerging countries of

the region thanks to the continuous growth of its

economy over the past eight years. Its strategic

location in the South American Pacific, the full force of

a modern legal framework that encourages investment

and exports, the diversity of its natural resources, its

growing diversification in the global markets, and its

political and macroeconomic stability are factors that

ensure a development process of genuine social

inclusion.

Much remains to do. In the face of the

uncertainty of the Doha Round negotiations and a

cautious evaluation of the effective possibilities of

integration in the Andean subregion and Latin America,

Peru is striving to conclude free trade treaties with its

major commercial partners that will complement

regional and subregional integration schemes and

multilateral trade negotiations. In the Andean

Community comprised of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador

and Bolivia Peru has an up-to-date free-trade zone.

Likewise, Peru has entered into free-trade treaties with

Chile and the United States, and is negotiating similar

instruments with Canada and Mexico. Negotiations

with the Central American countries are scheduled to

begin shortly. We have finished negotiating a free-trade

agreement with Singapore, negotiations with Thailand

have reached an “early harvest” agreement, and we

have begun to negotiate a free-trade agreement with the

People’s Republic of China. Likewise, the negotiation

of an agreement of association between the Andean

Community and the European Union has begun. Our

priorities are now to pursue negotiations with Korea,

Japan, India, Russia, Australia and New Zealand.

Our objectives are clear: to ensure access to the

markets of our main commercial partners; to establish

fair and predictable commercial rules and regulations

that complement the standards of the World Trade

Organization; to diversify the markets for our exports

of goods and services; and to attract investment and

technologies to modernize our productive structure,

reduce the technology gap, and modernize Peru’s

physical infrastructure in order to increase its

competitiveness.

Following on the results of a regressive utopian

experiment in Latin America, we are convinced that

Peru’s model of integration into the global economy,

while consolidating regional economic expansion, will

allow us to ensure the participation of the large

majority of our people in the system’s benefits, with

concrete improvements in their daily lives. It will

thereby contribute to the people’s sense of belonging to

their social institutions and of full citizenship, as well

as to their perception of themselves as agents of social-

economic change and to the consolidation of the

democratic system.

In the framework of such integration, my country

is also assuming growing international responsibilities.

In our efforts to foment dialogue, we are deeply

honoured to be able to organize a summit of heads of

State and Government of Latin America and the

Caribbean and the European Union, as well as the

summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation

Forum, both of which will take place in Peru in 2008.

Formidable technological advances, especially in

the information field; the emergence of new powers;

energy insecurity; climate change; growing inequity

and poverty; and new challenges to international

security characterize a changing and ever-more

complex international scene to which States and

international institutions must adapt. Global society is

interlinked through productive processes, trade,

financial flows, the digital telecommunications

revolution, and so on.

In this complicated scenario, Peru is participating

in the Security Council and in peacekeeping

operations. The Peruvian armed forces are present in

the Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti.

Peru attaches special importance to cooperation

with Haiti, having assumed in January the coordination

of the Group of Friends of Haiti in the Security

Council. In that regard, we support the renewal of the

mandate of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in

Haiti (MINUSTAH) for a year, as well as the gradual

reorientation of its work to promote development, in

support of its multidisciplinary and multidimensional

work. At present, we are contributing a contingent of

Peruvian military officers, which we expect to be able

to complement shortly with an engineering corps.

Our permanent representation in New York has

presented a draft resolution that, inter alia, reaffirms

the urgent call to fulfil the contribution pledges,

pursuant to the priorities presented by the Haitian

Government, especially for cooperation projects to

eradicate poverty, improve basic health services and

strengthen national institutions. We expect the draft

resolution to enjoy consensus in the Security Council

so that the international contribution to Haiti can

continue.

Last May, Peru, with the cooperation of Norway

and the United Nations Development Programme,

organized the Lima Conference on Cluster Munitions,

assuming a lead regional role in the endorsement of the

Oslo Process. At the Conference, Peru presented to the

69 delegations of the participating countries a proposal

to secure a declaration of the Latin-American region as

a zone free of cluster munitions, which have

indiscriminate effects on civilians. Our initiative

already enjoys the support of many countries of our

region.

Peru is also committed to effectively

implementing the Convention on the Prohibition of the

Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-

personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Peru is in

the final stages of preparing a national plan of action

against anti-personnel mines with a view to completing

the demining process along our northern frontier, in

cooperation with the brotherly country of Ecuador.

Moreover, Peru is firmly committed to efforts to

attain complete disarmament and the non-proliferation

of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as well as

their delivery systems, which constitute a threat to

international peace and security. In that respect, we

support the strengthening and universalization of the

relevant binding multilateral agreements. In that

context, Peru organized a regional seminar on the

implementation of Security Council resolution 1540

(2004) in November 2006, in which most countries of

the region participated.

The General Assembly is the forum in which the

middle-income countries can efficiently contribute to

identifying imaginative responses to conflicts and new

threats. That is why we resolutely support reform that

will strengthen the Assembly and ensure its ability to

adapt to change and to the most urgent needs on the

international agenda. In order to reinforce the

Assembly’s legitimacy, we need to sharpen procedures

and reduce its agenda. An equal priority is to carry out

more effective action against violations of human

rights. Security Council reform is needed urgently to

make the Council a more efficient, transparent,

legitimate and representative body with better working

methods. On the Other hand, we also want to highlight

the validity of the Economic and Social Council, an

essential instrument for promoting greater

effectiveness in the coordination of development

strategies, as well as assistance in emergencies.

International reality presents many challenges to

the universal system for promoting and protecting

human rights. There is still a dichotomy between

security and individual rights, with a backdrop marked

by the poverty and the inequality in which the great

majority around the world live and which affect human

dignity. The new Human Rights Council and the

system integrated into it ought to help in the response

to these challenges.

Discussion over the last few days in this

Organization shows that climate change is a world

problem that requires a collective response from the

international community in a framework of a

multilateral and worldwide commitment. Through

sustainable forest management, Peru has contributed to

the global commitment by reducing emissions caused

by deforestation. We have also made headway in

implementing our National Strategy on Climate

Change by strengthening national capacities to

maximize human and financial resources. The size of

the problem requires an agreement with goals for the

emission of greenhouse gases more ambitious than

those agreed in the first stage. Peru has great

expectations for the next meeting in Bali, and we will

work to ensure a common platform that will allow us to

very soon begin negotiations to define the new

international regime that we hope will be concluded in

2009.

The official launching of the International Year of

the Potato will take place at Headquarters on 19

October. This celebration is especially important for

my country because the potato has its origin in Peru,

and it is the country with the greatest genetic diversity

of this product. The cultivation of the potato was

developed in ancient times by civilizations that gave

rise to the Peru of today and is one of the great

contributions to the world’s diet. Peru has proclaimed

2008 as the National Year of the Potato and has

developed a calendar of multisectoral activities for

outreach and research that will be a positive

contribution to the work programme of the Food and

Agriculture Organization.

I shall conclude by noting that Peru participates

actively to ensure and strengthen the United Nations

Charter principles and objectives of peace, peaceful

coexistence and development, especially in the

Security Council and the Human Rights Council. In

accordance with this commitment, Peru will continue

to promote dialogue and coordination among peoples

of the world. It has put forward its candidature for the

Economic and Social Council and the Peacebuilding

Commission, bodies within the United Nations system

where we hope to achieve the support of all members

of the Assembly in order to contribute to working

towards a safer, more equitable world where

development can reach the large majority of

populations.