UN General Assembly
2001

Peruvians stood up and proved capable of mobilizing ourselves and peacefully struggling to regain our democracy and our freedom. On behalf of millions of men and women of my country, I would like to thank the peoples and Governments of the world for their friendship, active role and solidarity in helping us regain our democracy. Today, Peru has now begun a new democratic dawn. We are aware, however, that we have great responsibilities. We must strengthen a full-fledged democracy and our still fragile institutions and reactivate our economy so as to achieve sustainable growth that will generate decent and productive jobs. We must strengthen our institutions and defeat poverty, which form an indissoluble part of the same goal, because poverty, corruption and drug trafficking conspire against democracy. We can now declare, here before the international community, that the time has come to give a human face to globalization, so that competitiveness becomes permanent. We Peruvians have freshly inscribed in our collective memory a horror of terrorism. During the 20 years of terror, Peru has lost 25,000 human lives, which