UN General Assembly
2002

﻿I greet you, Your Excellency Mr. Jan Kavan of the Czech Republic, President of the General Assembly, which I address for the first time. A short distance from here, on the fateful day 11 September, 2,801 citizens of the world died. In Colombia, violence claims the same number of victims every month. Forty three million Colombians, peace- loving people, are experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Every year Colombia buries 34,000 of its own, victims of violence. We have lost 10 per cent of our youth. Last year the country registered the highest homicide rate in the world: 63 per 100,000 inhabitants. During the past five years, we have experienced 8,000 acts of collective destruction, more than those recorded for any other cases of violence in the world; 280 villages were the object of guerrilla and 8 paramilitary attacks with serious consequences for local civilians and the armed forces. The terrorist attack carried out during my inaugural ceremony killed 21 ordinary people. Two million people, 40 per cent of them children, have been forcibly displaced under