Tanzania, 2005

On

behalf of the United Republic of Tanzania, I

congratulate the President on his election as President

of the General Assembly at its sixtieth session. I wish

him every success. I would also like to extend my

delegation’s gratitude to his predecessor, Mr. Jean

Ping, for presiding over the Assembly’s fifty-ninth

session, which, among other accomplishments,

successfully negotiated the outcome document of the

High-level Plenary Meeting.

At the outset, I should like to commend

Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his outstanding and

tenacious leadership of the United Nations through one

of the most trying interludes in the Organization’s

history. That period has probably been the most

creative and visionary in the Secretary-General’s

career, as he inspired the Organization and its

membership to embark upon ambitious and much-

needed reforms to make the Organization relevant and

equal to the threats and challenges of a globalizing

world in the twenty-first century.

The summit that has just ended set the tone,

agenda and direction for where the United Nations

should go 60 years after its inception at San Francisco

in 1945. The pace of reform will be determined by the

collective political dedication of us, the Members of

the Organization. The process of United Nations

reform has brought us together and reaffirmed the

sovereign equality of nations and demonstrated the

indispensability of collective action and the demands

of shared responsibility and obligations in international

affairs. Although what we have agreed upon falls short

of what we set out to accomplish, we have to put

details into what we need to implement with the same

spirit of collective dedication and a sense of common

purpose. We should not allow political expediency and

posturing to rob us of our declared objectives.

The glaring indignities of poverty, hunger,

illiteracy and preventable disease amidst the glamour

and opulence of prosperity in some quarters of the

world should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

That is achievable if we implement the commitments

that we resolved to undertake at the summit that has

just ended. At Monterrey we agreed on a framework

for partnership. For some members of the G-8,

Gleneagles transformed a 30-year-old pledge to devote

0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to

official development assistance into a timetable; for

others, it resulted in predictable increases. Debt

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sustainability has finally given way to debt

cancellation for some countries, including my own, the

United Republic of Tanzania. That is a tremendous

relief and will make a significant quantitative and

qualitative difference to our development programmes

and priorities.

Trade and investment have also received

acceptance as being central to growth and

development. The Doha trade and development round

of negotiations, to take place in Hong Kong later this

year, should be completed with agreements on pending

issues such as subsidies.

The political capital generated at the summit

should bring about a convergence of resources from

our development partners and the economic, political,

fiscal and institutional reforms already under way in

Africa, and result in predictable and implementable

development programmes. The issue of absorptive

capacity should not arise when there is coherence and

coordination among our partners within a collaborative

framework at country level to mainstream assistance

into national development strategies and priorities.

The United Republic of Tanzania has already

complied with the critical element of paragraph 22 (a)

of the 2005 World Summit Outcome (resolution 60/1),

which calls upon developing countries to adopt and

implement comprehensive national strategies to

achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

We are ahead in achieving the goal regarding universal

primary education, namely, nine years before the 2015

deadline. We are on-course in achieving the goals

regarding access to safe drinking water, reducing child

mortality and promoting gender equality in political

participation and decision-making structures. With

steady assistance and our macroeconomic and political

stability, we should get closer to achieving most of the

Goals by 2015.

In sub-Saharan Africa individual countries are

accelerating reforms and improving the climate for

investment. Frontloading aid flows and innovative new

sources of finance to bridge the financial gap in

achieving the MDGs should be scaled up, as should

aid-in-trade to overcome supply side constraints.

Subsidies and market-access issues should also be

addressed simultaneously in the international

development agenda. The outcome of the Helsinki

process, with its wealth of ideas, adds tremendous

value both to the reform process launched last week

and to the overall international development agenda. It

addresses political deficits and requirements to bring

about purposeful development and democratic changes

in this era of globalization.

The relationship between development and

security at the national and international levels has

clearly emerged during the debate and negotiations on

the 2005 World Summit Outcome, on which I do not

need to dwell here. The arms race in conventional and

nuclear weapons can only bring the world to

apocalyptic brinkmanship — by design or by accident.

The agonizing endeavour to mobilize development

efforts to achieve the MDGs stands in stark contrast to

the irony of spending trillions of dollars on armaments

of total and mass destruction. It is therefore most

disconcerting that the summit was unable to come up

with an agreement on disarmament and non-

proliferation. We should not give up on the subject of

disarmament and non-proliferation. Let us therefore

make another effort to resume negotiations on those

issues.

We in Tanzania and in our region are also

particularly keen to see a global convention concluded

soon to regulate the marking and tracing of all small

arms and light weapons and on the illicit brokering of

arms which fuel violent conflicts and instability in our

regions in Africa.

Collective security cannot be enhanced without

reform of the Security Council. The reform of the

Security Council too has been deferred, but the issue of

the Council’s expansion and the reform of its working

methods should remain on the agenda. Negotiations on

the issue should resume soon. The United Republic of

Tanzania supports the Ezulwini consensus on the

reform of the Security Council, bearing in mind that

only Africa has yet to have either a permanent seat or a

veto in the Council. Our interlocutors should recognize

that imbalance in our negotiations and should try to

accommodate Africa’s demands to make the Security

Council more, not less, representative and more, not

less, legitimate.

The condemnation of terrorism in all its forms

and manifestations brings us closer to an agreed

definition, which would be helpful in galvanizing our

undivided efforts to combat terrorism. The lack of an

agreed definition, however, should not delay an

agreement on a comprehensive anti-terrorism

convention in the course of this session of the General

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Assembly. As a victim of terrorism in recent years, the

United Republic of Tanzania has a compelling reason

to support a global anti-terrorist strategy.

Respect for the human rights and fundamental

freedoms of all people is entrenched in the purposes

and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and

buttressed by the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights. For nearly 60 years, the institutional expression

and status of human rights in the United Nations has

been evolving, and it still is. We support the

establishment of the Human Rights Council to the

extent that it will elevate the centrality of human

rights, enhance the moral authority and integrity of the

United Nations, and overcome the shortcomings of the

current Commission on Human Rights. The new

Council should embody the principles and practices of

peer review in its working methods to avoid double

standards in accountability and compliance, which

have plagued the Human Rights Commission.

The new concept of the “responsibility to protect”

merits our support, after the recent international

failures to protect people in Rwanda and Bosnia. The

responsibility to protect should be a collective

undertaking by States to protect populations from

genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

However, we will need to establish benchmarks and

safeguards to guarantee against unilateral and

politically motivated interventions, such as those

experienced in the past with what were conceived and

presented as humanitarian intervention.

The African continent is the main scene of both

looming and several ongoing natural and human-made

disasters. Some are forgotten and protracted, while

others gain initial media attention but receive delayed,

and often inadequate, responses. We support the

recommendations in the outcome document for new

standby arrangements and funding for emergencies in

Africa.

There is an international regime in place to

provide protection and assistance to refugees fleeing

for their lives from persecution, violence and gross

violations of human rights. The United Republic of

Tanzania has received and protected such victims since

we became independent, in 1961. Currently, Tanzania

is still hosting over half a million refugees. We are

gratified and encouraged by the commitment in the

outcome document to safeguard the institution of

asylum and by its reaffirmation of the principle of

solidarity and burden-sharing in assisting refugee

populations and their host communities. We equally

hope that the recognition of the Guiding Principles on

Internal Displacement will provide more effective

protection for internally displaced persons by relevant

and appropriate authorities.

The outcome document has duly recognized the

tragedy of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the malaria and

the tuberculosis that have hit Africa so hard. That

global awareness should be matched by adequate

funding to save current and succeeding generations

from the ravages of those diseases.

Tanzania would like to thank President Olusegun

Obasanjo of Nigeria for the statement he made, in his

capacity as Chairman of the African Union, on the

situation relating to conflicts, peace and security in

Africa. We are grateful to him, to other African

leaders and to the Chairman of the African Union

Commission — His Excellency President Alpha

Konare — as well as to all our friends outside Africa,

for their dedicated efforts to prevent and resolve

conflicts in Africa.

Last week, the Security Council adopted its

resolution 1625 (2005), on strengthening the

effectiveness of the Council’s role in conflict

prevention, particularly in Africa. Among other things,

the resolution stresses the importance of averting

conflicts to make possible peaceful development,

security and stability in Africa. The resolution also

calls for the strengthening of cooperation and

communication between the United Nations and

regional organizations such as the African Union in

mediation efforts and peacekeeping.

The bulk of United Nations peacekeeping

operations are in Africa, following peace agreements

that are at various stages of implementation. Despite

serious numerical, logistical, financial and sometimes

image constraints, multidimensional peacekeeping

operations are making positive contributions to

restoring peace in Africa in collaboration with the

African Union and other friends of Africa. Political and

operational partnerships between the United Nations

and the African Union need to be strengthened and

institutionalized.

We welcome the implementation of the

Comprehensive Peace Agreement in the Sudan in

partnership with the United Nations. We encourage

progress in the current peace negotiations on Darfur.

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The institutional and operational requirement to

bridge the transitional gap from peacekeeping to

development, in the form of a Peacebuilding

Commission, is one of the main decisions to have been

taken in the current reform of the United Nations.

Africa needs the Commission. It should become

operational as soon as possible. The peaceful outcomes

in Burundi and Somalia — and, soon, in Sierra Leone

and Liberia — require a peacebuilding mechanism

during the transition from peacekeeping to

reconstruction and development. The peace processes

in both Burundi and Somalia have had tortuous paths,

but those countries finally have peace agreements and

transitional Governments in place. The Peacebuilding

Commission should focus priority attention on both

Burundi and Somalia. The second summit on the Great

Lakes region, to be held later this year in Nairobi, will

pave the way for a peace and security pact and for

peacebuilding initiatives in the region.

The only remaining case of self-determination in

Africa is Western Sahara. We appeal for maximum

cooperation by the parties concerned and for

unrelenting support for the issue from the international

community through the Baker plan. It is in the interest

of all of us here to reach a peaceful solution to that

problem.

I cannot conclude my statement without

addressing the situation in the Middle East, and in

particular the question of Palestine, which remains of

great concern to my Government. There have been

path-breaking developments in the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict to revive the road map and invigorate the

initiatives of the Quartet. The new leadership of

Mr. Mahmoud Abbas at the Palestinian Authority, the

withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip and the

coming elections in the occupied territories are

injecting new dynamism and a positive direction into

the peace process. But we must accept the reality that

the people of Palestine have equal rights, not only to

live in peace and security in full human dignity but

also to establish their own independent State,

coexisting side by side with the State of Israel. We

should therefore do all we can to help secure the just

and lasting peace that is the right of the Palestinian,

Israeli and Arab peoples.

Finally, I want to reiterate our deepest sympathies

and condolences to the victims, the Government and

the people of the United States of America in the wake

of the death and destruction wreaked by Hurricane

Katrina.