Tanzania, 2011

I congratulate you, Sir, on

your well-deserved election as President of the General

Assembly at its sixty-sixth session. My delegation has

full confidence in you, and we assure you of our full

support and cooperation. I also thank and congratulate

your predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Joseph Deiss, for

very ably steering the affairs of the sixty-fifth session.

A lot has been achieved, which, I have no doubt, you

will consolidate and advance.

Allow me also to take this opportunity to extend

my heartfelt congratulations to our illustrious Secretary-

General, His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, on his well-

deserved second mandate. His reappointment reaffirms

the trust that we have in him and in his leadership skills.

It is also recognition of his dedicated service to the

United Nations and humankind as a whole.

Once again, I congratulate and welcome the

newest member of the United Nations family, the

Republic of South Sudan, and assure them of

Tanzania’s continued friendship and cooperation.

This year the United Republic of Tanzania, which

is a union between two sovereign States — the

People’s Republic of Zanzibar and the Republic of

Tanganyika — will celebrate 50 years of the

independence of Tanganyika. We will also celebrate 50

years of our membership in the United Nations. I stand

before the Assembly today, 50 years later, to reiterate

that same faith in, and that same commitment to, the

United Nations as expressed by the founders of our

dear nation. I am proud that Tanzania has remained

faithful to the ideals of the United Nations, and is a

proactive Member of this body. We promise to stay the

course for the next 50 years and beyond.

The people of Tanzania are happy to have had the

opportunity to contribute to maintaining peace and

security in Africa and other parts of the world. We have

always believed that mediation, conflict prevention and

pacific settlement of disputes are the best means of

resolving conflicts. As a result, Tanzania has been in

the forefront of mediation efforts to resolve conflicts in

the countries around us, in our region and elsewhere on

the continent.

Our country also has been contributing troops,

police, corrections officers and civilian personnel to

United Nations peacekeeping missions and through

regional and sub-regional arrangements. We promise to

continue to do so wherever and whenever asked. More

important, we are humbled to have had the rare

opportunity to pioneer the efforts, together with

Denmark, that lead to the creation of the Peacebuilding

Commission in 2006.

We are also proud to have had, in the 50 years of

our membership in the United Nations, the opportunity

to contribute to the decolonization of Africa and other

parts of the world. At independence, the founding

father of our nation, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere,

said that the independence of our country was

incomplete until all countries of Africa were free.

That guided Tanzania to strongly oppose all

forms of colonialism, apartheid and racial

discrimination on the African continent and elsewhere.

It also informed our resolve to help our brothers and

sisters who were fighting for their independence and

freedom in Africa. We had the honour of hosting the

headquarters of the African Liberation Committee in

Dar-es-Salaam until colonialism, apartheid and

minority rule had been dismantled.

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We gave sanctuary as well as moral and material

support to almost all the liberation movements of

Southern Africa. Here at the United Nations, Tanzania

was afforded the rare honour of chairing the United

Nations Special Committee on Decolonization from

1972 to 1980. That was the critical phase in the

decolonization of Africa and in the struggle against

apartheid and minority rule. It is heart-warming indeed

to see our efforts, sacrifices and contributions being

rewarded so handsomely with the independence of all

African countries and with apartheid having been

dismantled in South Africa.

Only Western Sahara remains outstanding. I hope

the United Nations will expedite the process so that the

Saharawi people can determine their future peacefully.

We believed at independence, as we believe now

and always will believe, that all human beings are born

equal and deserve equal protection of their civil,

political, economic, social and cultural rights, as

outlined in what has come to be known as the

International Bill of Rights. This guides what we are

doing at home, with regard to promoting democracy,

the rule of law, human rights, including personal

freedoms, among them the freedom of expression.

It is in this spirit also that I wish to reaffirm our

solidarity with the Palestinian people in their rightful

quest for an independent homeland. Our plea is for the

fulfilment of the vision of two States: the State of

Israel and a sovereign, independent, democratic and

viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace

and harmony. That is why we also remain in full

solidarity with the people of Cuba in demanding the

end to the embargo. It is perhaps the longest-lasting

embargo in history. The people in these three

countries — Israel, Palestine and Cuba — have

suffered for far too long. It is time their burdens are

eased.

Our other goal was and still is the attainment of

African unity. We believe in the strength of unity for us

to be able to effectively face up to and overcome the

daunting political, security and development

challenges facing our continent. It was in pursuit of

this ideal that on 26 April 1964, Zanzibar and

Tanganyika merged to form the United Republic of

Tanzania. We will never tire in our efforts towards the

realization of the dream of the founding fathers of a

United States of Africa. However, we are mindful of

the fact that this will be a gradual process and regional

economic integration and regional groupings will be its

foundation and the building blocks.

After 50 years of independence and 50 years of

our membership of the United Nations, Tanzania

remains a firm believer in the indispensability of

multilateralism. It is through multilateralism that we

can bring all nations and therefore all peoples together

to shape their common present and future and that of

the world they live in. It is through multilateralism that

peace and development will be guaranteed for all

nations, through the pursuit of common values. It is for

these reasons that I believe the United Nations is

relevant today, as it was 66 years ago. It is for the same

reasons that the world needs the other multilateral

institutions for global economic, social and political

governance.

Despite acknowledging the importance of various

multilateral institutions, Tanzania is of the view that

they need to undergo serious reforms to overcome the

serious governance deficits within them. We need

reforms that will make them more representative — in

particular, reforms that will increase the voices of the

developing countries. The original structures have

ignored us. We should not allow this to continue. It is

for this reason that Tanzania supported the calls for

reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions, the United

Nations, the World Trade Organization and the other

multilateral institutions.

With regard to the United Nations, we should

expedite the process of reforming the Security Council,

in both categories, and in doing so include developing

countries, particularly those from Africa, Asia and

Latin America. It is sad to see that no serious progress

has been made for close to two decades. Now is the

time for us to start serious negotiations, negotiate in

earnest and conclude at the earliest possible time.

Promoting development, particularly shared

growth, has been one of the core functions of the

United Nations. It is pleasing to note that the United

Nations has remained steadfast in its discharge of this

function through its agencies and through a number of

initiatives undertaken by the United Nations

Headquarters itself. United Nations leadership has

always been noticeable in all the major socio-economic

challenges facing the world: sustainable development,

health care, maternal and child health, poverty, food

security, education, and so on. This involvement and

leadership underscores the relevance of the United

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Nations today and the United Nations tomorrow and

the day after tomorrow.

However, the good intentions of the United

Nations have not been fully realized. Some of the

developed countries have not met their commitments of

allocating 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product

to official development assistance. Let me use this

opportunity to join all those who have spoken before

me in repeating our appeal to developed countries to

honour their commitments.

I believe that if this had been done, we would

have been on target with the implementation of the

Millennium Development Goals and many other

important global matters. I would also like to use this

opportunity to thank and commend those few

developed countries that have kept their promise. May

the examples of these countries inform and encourage

the others to do the same.

We meet at a time of great uncertainties over the

global economy. Economies are still weak,

characterized by low growth in many major economies,

high levels of inflation, unemployment, increasing

food and fuel prices and nervous financial markets. In

a globalized world, ripples of economic and financial

crises in the developed economies affect all of us in the

world. And for us from poor developing countries,

matter get even more complicated.

As we all call for concerted global action to

maintain economic stability and ensure that we do not

head into another global recession, I appeal to the

United Nations to remain seized of the situation and

exercise its traditional leadership over global issues.

This is a matter of great concern to us in Africa, a

continent that has experienced extremely challenging

economic, social and political situations, but a

continent that is now poised to go to the next level:

from despair to hope and from lost decades to decades

full of opportunities.

Democracy is steadily on the march in Africa and

the Arab Spring has capped it all. Peace is reigning

almost all over the continent. There are no serious

conflict situations except for Somalia, where the

serious involvement of the United Nations, the African

Union and the world community is still needed. All

that Africa needs now is continued support to build the

institutions of democracy and governance, to build our

economies and to overcome social challenges.

Among the challenges demanding the serious

attention of this body and the international community

at large is the continued drought in the Horn of Africa

and some countries of East Africa. The problem has not

abated and its consequences are momentous, as

exemplified by the ongoing famine in Somalia. It is

high time for more attention to be given to the situation

in this part of Africa, for there is every indication and

every reason to believe that the problem is escalating

and involving more countries. Tanzania is already

feeling the pressure of the crisis.

Piracy is the second problem in our part of the

continent that I would like to mention here today. The

problem of piracy still lingers on and it is, in fact,

expanding. We are now witnessing more and more

attacks taking place further to the south of Somalia.

They used to take place in the Gulf of Aden, but now

the attacks are moving southward, as far as Tanzania,

Mozambique, the Comoros and Madagascar. Since last

year, when piracy activity moved to our territorial

waters, 13 ships have been attacked and five of them

were successfully hijacked. These attacks have caused

an increase in the cost of shipping to our ports. If we

do not succeed in stopping them, they may disrupt

shipping services and impact negatively on our

economy. We need the support of the international

community to help us build capacity to fight piracy. We

welcome the Assembly’s readiness to assist us to

improve our courts and prisons to try and punish the

pirates. But if a similar gesture were extended to us to

build capacity to prevent attacks, there would be fewer

pirates to bother us.

Controversies continue to prevent progress on the

draft comprehensive convention on international

terrorism. The more we delay, the more sophisticated

international terrorism becomes in its strategies and

tactics. We recently witnessed events in Abuja in which

the United Nations was attacked. Tanzania condemns

these cruel acts in the strongest terms possible and

expresses solidarity with the people of Nigeria and the

United Nations. It is clear that the struggle against

terrorism must remain a high priority for the United

Nations.

I would be remiss if I concluded my statement

without acknowledging and thanking the Secretary-

General for the honour he accorded me and my

country, Tanzania, last year when he formed a

Commission on Information and Accountability for

Women’s and Children’s Health. He appointed me and

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada to co-chair

the Commission. It was an honour to serve on the

Commission, and I hope that the recommendations we

made will help to advance the cause of the noble work

that we are all doing to save the lives of millions of

innocent women and children who are dying from

causes that can be prevented.

I end as I began, by reaffirming our faith in the

United Nations, a true embodiment of humanity. We

dedicate ourselves to respect the values and principles

enshrined in our Charter and we shall continue to

play — as we have always have done during our first

50 years as an independent State — a full, honest and

constructive part in the work of the United Nations.