UN General Assembly
2002

social protection of the poor, improving coverage of basic services, political empowerment of civil society, and strengthened partnerships with development stakeholders. My Government is committed to relentlessly pursuing those objectives in line with the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals. In that, we shall be counting on the wholehearted support of the international community. At this juncture, I would like to express my Government's most profound gratitude to our principal partners in development and to the donor community at large for their active participation at the sixth Roundtable Donors Conference for the Gambia, held in Geneva on 18 and 19 September 2002. We are confident that all the pledges made will be honoured so that together, in the true spirit of international solidarity, we will implement smoothly and successfully our national programme of action for poverty alleviation. That is all the more urgent considering the fact that, during the rainy season this year, we experienced a long dry spell initially, resulting in the poor performance of both crops and livestock.