Rwanda, 2005

Allow me to begin by

congratulating the President of the General Assembly

at its fifty-ninth session, Mr. Jean Ping of Gabon, and

all Member States on the successful adoption of the

2005 World Summit Outcome (resolution 60/1). The

summit outcome document was the product of months

of consultations and negotiations. We wish to we pay

tribute to Mr. Ping for skilfully guiding the process to

its conclusion. We also wish to congratulate Mr. Jan

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Eliasson on his election as President of the General

Assembly at its sixtieth session. Let me assure him of

my delegation’s full support and cooperation in the

tasks that lie ahead in this session.

By adopting the summit outcome document, we

reaffirmed our belief in the purposes and principles of

the United Nations and agreed to take appropriate and

urgent steps to achieve the Millennium Development

Goals (MDGs). We also committed ourselves to

renewing the Organization to make it more efficient,

effective and transparent so that it can be more

responsive to the numerous and varied challenges and

expectations of our times and, indeed, can save

succeeding generations from the scourge of war,

maintain international peace and security, develop

friendly relations among nations and, most important,

promote social progress and better standards of life in

larger freedom.

We must work together in a serious and concerted

manner to achieve the MDGs and other goals outlined

in the summit outcome document. We must create a

world that is free from hunger, poverty and

deprivation. We must create a world of greater

economic opportunity for developing countries. We

must create a world in which people are free to live in

dignity, a world that does not tolerate — or fail to

respond by protecting populations under threat of —

genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes

against humanity. This is no time for business as usual.

We must be urgent and focused in our action.

It is a matter of great concern to us all that if

current trends persist, many African countries will not

achieve most of the MDGs by 2015. Some African

countries have actually regressed since 2000 in their

efforts to achieve MDG targets. Poverty, hunger and

infectious diseases lay waste entire communities and

nations, often exacerbate the effects of war and

conflict, and make the prospects for recovery infinitely

more problematic. Urgent action needs to be taken to

reverse those trends.

We need greater commitment from developed

countries, particularly with respect to increasing

official development assistance to at least 0.7 per cent

of gross national income, freer and fairer trade and

debt cancellation. Let me remind the Assembly that the

target of 0.7 per cent of the gross national income for

official development assistance was set by our

Assembly more than 40 years ago and that, as we

speak, only five countries have reached it. The time for

speeches and debate is over. We must have action on

those issues.

Most of us have now come to understand the

interconnectedness and interdependence of all nations

around the world and the nexus between security and

development. Poverty, hunger and deprivation in

sub-Saharan Africa are bad for peace and security in all

191 nations represented here today. By recognizing that

interdependence, we accept that there are collective

responsibilities and obligations, as well as collective

benefits and opportunities. The responsibilities include,

in the words of the Charter, to “promote social progress

and better standards of life in larger freedom”. We can

have neither security without development nor

development without security at the national, regional

and international levels. It is both unacceptable and

unsustainable for one half of the world to live amid

wealth and plenty while the other half dies from

disease and hunger.

Our Governments are judged according to their

actions, not according to ideals or principles. Similarly,

the United Nations should be judged according to its

actions, not according to the values and principles laid

out in the Charter. It is our experience that, while the

United Nations is immaculate in its values and

principles, it has all too often been found wanting in its

actions. If there is any advice we can offer to the

United Nations on its sixtieth birthday, the advice

would be that it must learn from its mistakes and be

more effective in implementation.

There are probably no States members of this

Assembly apart from Rwanda where the United

Nations has consistently neglected to learn from its

mistakes, resulting in massive loss of life and untold

misery. Allow me to explain. It was in 1959, while

Rwanda was still under United Nations trusteeship,

that the first acts of genocide against Tutsis took place

there, leading to the first mass refugee problem on the

African continent. The United Nations watched

unmoved and no action was ever taken. In the years

following 1959, the United Nations stood by in silence

and inaction as pogroms took place throughout the

country, resulting in massive loss of life and

compounding the refugee crisis.

More recently, in 1994, while the United Nations

had a huge political and military presence in Rwanda,

it watched without taking action the planning and

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implementation of genocide. We all recall the shocking

decision of the Security Council to withdraw

peacekeepers at a time when hundreds of thousands of

defenceless people needed them most.

When the genocide was totally consummated, the

Security Council mandated one of its members to send

troops to the country, which only succeeded in

allowing the perpetrators of the genocide safe passage

out of Rwanda and into the Democratic Republic of the

Congo, from where they have been a major source of

insecurity and instability for the entire subregion. Over

the last 11 years, our repeated appeals to disarm and

demobilize those genocidal forces have, if not fallen of

deaf ears, yielded no results.

I raise those examples to highlight the fact that

Rwanda is probably the country most interested in

United Nations reform. We wish to take back home

from this meeting a message of hope and a promise to

our people that we have reinvented a United Nations

that will never betray them again.

My Government welcomes the endorsement of

the “responsibility to protect” in the summit outcome

document. The responsibility to protect includes a

responsibility to prevent genocide, crimes against

humanity and ethnic cleansing, as well as a

responsibility to prevent incitement to commit those

crimes.

But here again, action, not words, will be the

measure of our success or failure. How will the United

Nations respond the next time action to protect

populations is required? Will there be lengthy

academic and legal debates on what constitutes

genocide or crimes against humanity, while people die?

What is clear to us is that no nation or people

should have to face the horrors that we faced 11 years

ago. Where a State is unable or unwilling to protect its

people, as was the case in Rwanda in 1994, then the

responsibility to provide such protection should — and

indeed must — shift immediately to the international

community. Such action should be taken by the

Security Council in a timely and decisive manner in

order to save the lives of populations under threat. Our

pledge of “never again” to genocide should not ring

hollow the next time we are confronted with such

crimes.

A collective international response to genocide

includes a responsibility for all States to combat

impunity and bring to justice any persons accused of

having committed such crimes. We find it inexplicable

that, while some States profess commitment to the

Charter, human rights and international law, they allow

known suspects of the Rwanda genocide to live in their

countries and take no action to apprehend them and

transfer them to the International Criminal Tribunal for

Rwanda or to Rwanda for prosecution. Those States

must be challenged, if necessary by the Security

Council, to fulfil their international obligations to

apprehend and transfer those fugitives for prosecution.

Rwanda, as a country emerging from conflict,

understands better the usefulness of and strongly

supports the plans to establish a peacebuilding

commission. We have indeed seen the United Nations

spend hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions,

on peacekeeping missions that leave behind no

repaired road or bridge, no rehabilitated school or

health centre in the countries where they have been

deployed. Instead, they leave behind children who will

never know their fathers and are most vulnerable to

poverty. Those resources could be better spent to create

lasting peace and stability.

We must, however, ensure that the commission

does not become another bureaucracy that is difficult

to access and out of touch with the realities in

countries emerging from conflict. It should take a long-

term approach to post-conflict recovery and change the

current practice whereby short-term approaches to

long-standing conflicts mean that we apply mere

“band-aid” solutions to highly complex situations.

The Commission should consult actively and

widely with the countries affected and those countries

that have successfully emerged from conflict in the

recent past. It must also ensure local ownership of

solutions and outcomes so that its work can be

sustainable.

We believe that the Security Council should be

reformed to improve its transparency and

accountability. The reform process should enable

States that are not members of the Council to

participate more actively in its deliberative processes,

especially on issues that affect them. A reformed

Council should be seen by all States to be more

accessible, transparent and credible.

Terrorism continues to brutally kill innocent

civilians. We must all join hands to fight that evil of

our times. My country will continue to lend its support

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to international efforts to combat terrorism. We

welcome the decision to negotiate and conclude a

comprehensive convention against terrorism and my

country stands ready to partake in that effort. We

believe, however, that what is lacking is not a

convention but a universally shared commitment to

fight the evil. After all, in 1994, we had a Convention

against genocide that was 46 years old, and yet

genocide occurred in my country.

Turning to issues closer to home, we welcome the

progress made in the peace process in Burundi. We

congratulate the newly elected Government and stand

ready to work closely with the Government and people

of Burundi and the international community to

consolidate that commendable progress.

We also welcome the progress being made in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the

Transitional Government has prepared a draft

constitution and has begun the process of registering

voters for elections. Progress is also being made with

respect to the integration of the armed forces. We

welcome all those developments, recognizing that they

contribute to sustainable peace and stability in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo and in the wider

region. We also stand ready to continue to support the

transition process in the Democratic Republic of the

Congo.

We would also like to take this opportunity to

renew our commitment and support for the

International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.

My Government looks forward to the forthcoming

second summit, to be held in Nairobi in December. The

summit must come up with concrete measures to deal

decisively with the menace of the genocidal militias

that continue to roam freely in the region and frustrate

our collective peace efforts.

My Government’s commitment to peace and

security in the region is demonstrated through our

participation in the peacekeeping Mission in the Sudan,

where Rwanda is the biggest troop contributor.

The role of the international community is

critical. In that connection, we would like to pay

special tribute to the United States Government for its

assistance and support, which have led to the

establishment of a tripartite mechanism comprising the

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and

Uganda to examine and resolve issues that could result

in tensions between the three countries.

We also welcome the role of the African Union

and the United Nations in advancing the prospects for

sustainable peace and security in the region.

Finally, let us this time build a United Nations

that, in addition to having good words to say about life,

is one which nourishes and protects life all over the

world.