UN General Assembly
2005

As President Wade said, it is a question of “having a good, hard look at the Sahara” and thinking about the creation of a High Authority of the Sahara based on the American model of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was a successful example of integrated development. We should like here to invite the international community, which decided to proclaim 2006 as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification, to participate in this important work of constructing what has been called by President Wade and his brother and friend, President Olusegun Obasanjo, the “Great Green Wall of Africa”, to slow the advance of the desert. As President Wade has said, “Either the desert or the human being — one will have to disappear.” We hope that it will be the desert. Certainly, the struggle to promote development should go hand in hand with another fight, that for a world where peace, security and the scrupulous respect of human rights and individual freedoms reigns. This is 15 why my country fully supports the important