Tonga, 2009

Like previous speakers, I

offer you, Sir, my warmest congratulations on your

election to the presidency of the General Assembly for

this session. I also wish to pay tribute to the Secretary-

General for his excellent report on the work of the

Organization (A/64/1) and for his continuing

leadership during these unprecedented and challenging

times. A testament to the Secretary-General’s

leadership has been his persistent efforts to convene

the Summit on Climate Change held earlier this week.

For those of us who are also members of the Alliance

of Small Island States, our own Summit, held

immediately beforehand, was a timely exercise in

focusing on the critical issues at stake in the run-up to

the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to be held

in December.

Climate change has taken its rightful place at the

forefront of many of the statements we have heard this

week. In the case of small island developing States like

ours, we all need to reach beyond our narrow national

interests and embrace our collective responsibility to

one another as nation States and to those most

vulnerable and least able to address the adverse effects

of climate change. At the Pacific Islands Forum, the

issue of climate change and the type of collective effort

it requires has been at the forefront of the meetings of

Pacific leaders, most recently in Cairns under the

chairmanship of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of

Australia. Such efforts resulted, earlier this year, in the

General Assembly’s adoption by consensus of

resolution 63/281, on climate change and its security

implications.

It has been heartening to hear in this Hall words

of action — a determination to move away from the

rhetoric of climate change to the reality of action:

action to mitigate the effects of climate change and

action to stop the waste of our energy resources. But

the words of Presidents and Prime Ministers are not

enough. They must be matched by action. Our

determination and our understanding of the truth of

climate change must be propelled by honest efforts to

mitigate and change the wasteful energy habits of a

lifetime into the productive energy habits of the future.

The lessons of the past year have reinforced our

support for reform of the international financial

institutions. In particular, we look forward to the

outcome of the just-concluded meeting of the Group of

20 in Pittsburgh as further crucial and concerted action

following the measures taken in Washington and

London.

Despite the uncertain global economic and

financial climate, we remain committed to making

further progress in achieving the Millennium

Development Goals (MDGs), which remain a core

component of our national development planning.

Much of that progress has been reliant on our own

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domestic efforts, but it has also been assisted by our

development partners. In that regard, we support the

Secretary-General’s convening of a special summit on

the MDGs in 2010 as a final push towards 2015.

Further, the high-level review of the Mauritius Strategy

for the Further Implementation of the Programme of

Action for the Sustainable Development of Small

Island Developing States, to be carried out the same

year, offers us, as small island developing States, a

fresh opportunity to take stock of progress and areas

for improvement. We also welcome the renewed

interest and engagement of the United States of

America regarding the Pacific islands.

Earlier this year, my country, the Kingdom of

Tonga, in compliance with its obligations under the

United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,

lodged a partial submission for the consideration of the

Commission on the Outer Limits of the Continental

Shelf. This was a significant exercise made possible

through our own efforts, with the technical assistance

of organizations such as the Commonwealth

Secretariat. As we are an island nation, the living

marine resources of our maritime zones and the

potential of non-living ones remain critical to our

future.

We continue to follow the meandering course of

the discussions on reform of the Security Council. We

maintain our support for such reform and hold the view

that there should be an expansion in both the

permanent and the non-permanent membership

categories.

Since 100 per cent of our power generation is

fuelled by imported fossil fuels, our economic potential

has been adversely affected by rising fuel prices, which

has forced us to investigate feasible renewable sources

of energy. We thus have set the target of achieving

50 per cent of our electricity generation utilizing

renewable energy sources by the year 2012.

We have reviewed donor funding provided by our

development partners to see how best we could achieve

that ambitious goal and also fulfil our wish to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions. At the conclusion of the

regional Pacific Energy Ministers Meeting hosted in

Tonga earlier this year, we discussed those issues with

our development partners. It very quickly became

apparent that a new model for doing business was

needed. And so it was that the concept for the Tonga

Renewable Energy Road Map was born.

The development partners all agreed to

collaborate, under the coordination of the World Bank,

to assess the current infrastructure of on-grid and

off-grid electrification throughout the Kingdom. The

World Bank, the European Union, the Asian

Development Bank, Australia, New Zealand and Japan

readily accepted this opportunity to actively participate

in the development of our Energy Road Map. Those

efforts were recently boosted by strong support from

the Government of the United Arab Emirates and the

International Renewable Energy Agency, which was

reaffirmed at bilateral meetings held in New York this

week.

Tonga’s cultural and constitutional roots are

innately enduring. We are proud of our 134-year-old

written Constitution, which is one of the oldest in the

world and is still in force. Our Constitution enshrined

basic human rights and freedoms that today are the

subject of international treaties. The Tongan way of life

is not based solely on the rights, responsibilities,

freedoms and obligations of the individual, but

emphasizes rights, responsibilities, freedoms and

obligations attaching to the extended family and the

whole community. While the values underlying human

rights may be expressed differently from Tongan

customary and traditional values, and while both

reflect similar aspirations, Tonga’s strength lies in the

binding links of collective group values and individual

obligations and responsibilities.

Our parliament recently considered ratification of

the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Parliament

voted not to ratify CEDAW, because to do so would

conflict with the cultural and social heritage that makes

up the unique Tongan way of life. We take the

ratification of international treaties very seriously. We

did not want to ratify CEDAW as a matter of

international convenience. We would rather be judged

by our actions to empower women than by a

ratification of convenience. And we make no apologies

for our stance. We admit that there are issues to be

addressed. But, rather than ratify CEDAW, we prefer to

address those specific areas of concern to women in

our own way. We maintain that our women are among

the most highly cherished, elevated and respected in

the world.

Finally, this month marks the tenth anniversary of

Tonga’s admission as a Member of the United Nations.

We reaffirm the rights and responsibilities bestowed

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upon us by the United Nations Charter, and we pledge

to continue to participate constructively in addressing

our common challenges. Those challenges will be

overcome by our action. Given that the United Nations

is the forum for united action and given the

commitments made by leaders to such action, we may

just awake to the fact that it is the good in the world,

not the evil, that surpasses all explanation.