The	Philippines congratulates the President on his election to preside over the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session. He has our full support. We also congratulate Her Excellency Ms. Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, President of the Assembly at its seventy-third session, for her success in making the United Nations relevant for all at a time of determined efforts to make it irrelevant. Working here at the United Nations, I witnessed that her heroic efforts brought off brilliant effect. It was a privilege to serve with her.
Since the first session of the General Assembly, in 1946, States Members of the United Nations have gathered annually to pledge their commitment to peace, because that is what the United Nations was founded for after the Second World War. Peace first; the big words and ideas proposing ways to create the right environment to make peace meaningful and thrive, or not, are secondary. But we know that peace comes for sure when the fighting stops, not just long enough to wash the dead and bury them but long enough for survivors to start over. To be sure, they never get back what they loved and lost, but they start again with what little is left, because hope springs eternal. We are in the United Nations to sustain that hope and fight off despair.
As we approach the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, predictions are rife with the demise of multilateralism. One piece of evidence proffered is the democratic election of strong Governments that talk tough and brush aside the demands of the United Nations — well-meaning for the most part — about how Governments should do their job more kindly, by standards more honoured in the breach than the observance in the West. Weak Governments, unable to protect their people, appear desirable because they make the case for multilateral intervention at the prompting of conscience of course — but sometimes at the unilateral prompting of great Powers or violent or civil non-State actors.
Strong Government is better. That is why Government was invented, to get things done, but always consistently constitutional in its actions. Firm is good and severity is justified, but all within the law. Far from dying or dead, the United Nations is alive and strong, although only as much as its Members make it. Most United Nations States Members are democracies. And do not say there are democracies and “democracies”. All democracies are pretentions in some degree. The growing electoral trend towards strong Governments does not change their democratic character. That trend proves the United Nations has achieved one of its key goals for peace — the spread of democracy — because they lean more to peace than war, although the jury is still out on that one.
Some in the rest of the world might not like the electoral result, but the people back home are happy with their choice. It is theirs to make and regret, but it is not the United Nations to decide. The next election might change it more to one’s liking, or not. Still, we are warned of States eroding multilateralism by each asserting too much sovereignty. But in what respect? Perhaps by insisting on carrying out a State’s defining duty to protect its population against harm by any means efficient to achieve that purpose. That may cause dismay among the civil in society — civil society is free to complain. Better yet, they should run for public office to gain legitimacy and be able to do something about it. But the United Nations is not free to interfere with the State in its defining function of protecting its citizens and stamping out threats.
In a reflective mood, my President asked me, “When did it happen that the rule of law no longer means the rule of law but the rules of crime. When did the presumption of innocence, which attaches only after arrest and arraignment, attach itself to the perpetrator the instant he is caught? That makes it legally impossible to suspect, let alone arrest him on probable cause. There are no more suspects, only victims of human rights violations when enforcing the law for the protection of citizens.”
All I could say was, “I do not know. I just do not know.”
The nations herein united should not let this platform be used to threaten others with accountability for taking a tough approach to crime, instead of taking seriously what they cannot, the Western proposition that the sure-fire way to end crime is to legalize it. Then it is no longer criminal. Well, that works after a fashion, not to punish lawbreakers but sit down and talk them out of repeating the only thing at which they are any good — crime. That is something I learned at the Munich Security Conference on human trafficking — not as the evil it is but as a regular job. The pay is not bad. Traffickers know only how to traffic — anything, as a German expert said, and they will not stop, because they cannot stop, until they are stopped.
The threat to multilateralism comes as much from its own vain attempts to usurp State functions as from unilateralists attempts to oust it from the world stage and return us to the anarchy of the pre-war period out of whose ashes the United Nations was born. Talk before fighting is what the United Nations is about. And if talk fails, talk some more. War is really the ultima ratio regis.
In the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) we are still talking; knowing that talk, so long as we give up nothing vital in the process, does not hurt. We are negotiating a code of conduct with China in the South China Sea. We have had incidents with swarming Chinese ships and lost a reef in our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). But, so far, we have had no interference in the joint exploration and development of oil and gas in areas within our EEZ, but China claims them as well. I crafted a memorandum of understanding on oil and gas, which China accepted, that allows us to move forward without the slightest compromise or diminution of our respective sovereign and international rights. But who can tell?
The code of conduct is a code of reality, the reality of the proximity of the soon-to-be biggest economy in the world in one place, with a commensurate industrial war-making capacity. But war is a totally remote possibility. All parties have built so much and achieved such material progress that none of us, or any outside Power, will risk losing the richest market in the world. It is therefore a code of live and let live with China — until it is not. We have all asked of each other, ASEAN members and China, for mutual restraint and complete respect for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, to which all of us are signatories, binding ourselves unqualifiedly thereto, including China. Then it is something else. We will come to that and cross that bridge when we get there, maybe.
Multilateralism has come into question because it allows itself to be bent to unipolar purposes — or worse, to the purposes of non-State actors — against multilateralism’s reason for being, namely, the protection and safety of the weak and many, against the strong and few. Multilateralism is not owned by a select club of Member States. It is by and for all, or no one. The Philippines believes that the United Nations stands on the single pillar of the aggregated sovereignties of its Members. That is parlous but stable enough for a time. The United Nations is a collection of sovereign States, not a sovereign collective itself. It is only as effective as its Members make it. It harnesses sovereignties, not for some against others but to common purposes of peace and productive cooperation.
Sovereignty is as much a duty of care as it is an assertion of unlimited freedom of action. In the United Nations the two combine in the willing assumption of that duty on the part of States towards the international order to ensure peace and the well-being of “we, the peoples of the United Nations”. The Philippines is a proud founding Member of the United Nations, present at the creation even before we were independent. Carlos P. Romulo proclaimed in 1946 at the General Assembly during its first session:
“By the circumstances of our birth as a free and independent State, we are committed to the aims and purposes of the United Nations.” (A/PV.41, p. 819)
Even as our State was cloaked with sovereignty at birth, so was it saddled with the duty, commensurate with that power, to use it only for good.
Our engagement with the United Nations has been in the belief that the United Nations work must reflect the realities of the times, so as to be practical and useful in achieving the aspirations of “we, the peoples of the United Nations” — peoples as they are, in the real situations they are in, and not the Member States. The United Nations does not work with abstractions, that is for politicians and professional do-gooders. Only then can the United Nations stay relevant and become effective. The aspiration of the vast majority of my people today, call them short-sighted or just plain wrong, is to be free of drugs and safe from crime. Is that so hard to understand? It seems impossible for some to accept. But the cartel can be persuasive in kind, if not in reason. The United Nations is the core of the multilateral global order. As long as the United Nations exists, none can trumpet the end of multilateralism. But it must be a United Nations strengthened and capacitated in its every Member, so that all, collectively, may achieve its aim of peace and safety.
An increasingly complex security and global situation, which is to say an anarchy beyond that of the inter-war years between States, but which now includes non-State actors, both violent and civil, requires the Security Council to adapt, reform and expand its membership, but only of formal States — throw everything in the pot and nobody can eat it. It needs to be representative, even at the risk of stasis, and democratic, for the sake of legitimacy. It cannot let itself be paralysed when the situation screams for humanitarian action. It must be prompt, yet circumspect and sharply focused, when it takes action, attempting no more than to end the carnage, with just enough rebuilding to enable reason and compassion, not hysteria and the usual self-dealing, to find a good way forward. No one expects the best.
We ask the Security Council to provide the General Assembly with multiple candidates — especially women — for the post of Secretary-General, with due regard to gender balance and regional rotation. Something is not right with its mindset and system if, after nearly 75 years, the United Nations has failed to have a woman Secretary-General. Do not blame it on the vote. The vote goes only as far as the Security Council lets it. From my experience, women know best how to build, men how to tear down.
Central to United Nations reform is funding. The Philippines is deeply concerned with the United Nations deteriorating financial situation. States look to the United Nations to implement their priority agenda — peace and security, of course, humanitarian assistance foremost, along with human rights, and lately sustainable development, climate action, migrants and refugees. But States will not provide it with the means to meet those mandates. They come to complain about what they expect from the United Nations, but step down from the rostrum without committing what all States can spare, which is far more than even the poorest actually contribute. Almost all the countries of the world can afford to give more to the United Nations, as I know all Governments have the capacity to do so if they are careful not to waste and steal at home what they can well afford to give to the United Nations.
Some can give more money to peacekeeping, others to personnel. No country can take the lion’s share of credit there: they all wear the same uniform, with the same badges and the same Blue Helmets. They bleed the same colour and give up their last breath like any other. But the United Nations itself must engender trust in its use of funds. The Secretary-General’s financial reform proposals would do well to uphold accountability, transparency and sustainability. The public is awash with stories of fiscal irresponsibility.
In 2015, with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we vowed to end poverty. The incidence of poverty in the Philippines fell from 27 per cent to 21 per cent from 2015 to 2018. But, as my President says, the important number is the 6 million Filipinos who are still very poor. It can be done, and it has been done on a far-greater scale than anyone thought possible. The new China lifted 800 million out of utter poverty in 20 years into what is, by any economic indicator, a real middle class. Aligned with the SDGs, our development plan points in the direction of achieving the aspirations of the Filipino people. Their aspirations are no different than those of any other people or nation: getting out of poverty, attaining a comfortable lifestyle, feeling secure about the future, especially for one’s children, and being safe by stopping crime, especially drug dealing, which strikes at the victim’s reason and soul.
I know that drug dealing falls somewhere between race, religion, political belief and gender as something to be equally protected. Admittedly, the drug experience is a bit religious. Therefore, prohibiting it is a crime against humanity up there with the others. But drugs are the reason my Government was elected by a landslide — a mandate that has only grown to 80 per cent because of unceasing criticism. In defending it, the public now own it. But that, as I said, is the problem with democracy: you cannot pick and choose the winner based on your delicacy. It depends entirely on the vote. The one with the most votes wins, while the others — more to one’s taste — lose.
Whatever the phraseology adopted to express them, those aspirations are not captured by measuring poverty based solely on income per capita. To truly gauge the progress of our strategies, we have to stop reporting the wrong metric. That is why we have begun to use the Multidimensional Poverty Index. Education is how people lift themselves out of poverty. It does not happen by itself. Philosophers are poor. Charity and social programmes are how we, as individuals and Governments, lift them out faster. Even more Filipinos received basic education this year, with over 27 million enrolled. Over 600,000 out-of-school youth and adult learners are benefiting from an alternative learning system. Tuition is free in State-run colleges, universities and technical and vocational institutions, at both the national and local levels. Tuition is tightly controlled in private institutions.
I urge all States to implement the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. It is telling that advocates of multilateralism conveniently leave out issues of migration. Migration is as multilateral as it gets. Migration is the pervasive reality today. The positive contribution of migrants fosters growth in countries of origin by remittances and countries of destination by industriousness. Migrant labour raises great cities out of deserts and mans the ships that enable global trade. Migrant health workers care for the sick, the children and the elderly, giving to strangers as much care as they gave their own loved ones back home. Sure, they are paid — and for that we are grateful to the host countries of our migrant peoples. Migrants themselves are grateful for the love that is sometimes returned, and sad when they are hurt instead.
Climate change — or, as Secretary-General Guterres calls it, the climate crisis — is the defining development issue of our time. Failure to address it nullifies all other endeavours in the long run. As one economist puts it, climate change matters so much for poverty: it is the poorest who are, and will be, hit earliest and hardest. John Maynard Keynes was prophetic: in the long-run we are all dead.
Climate change has brought my country—already one of the most vulnerable countries to disasters — extreme weather events of increasing recurrence and strength. Disasters are the reverse of God: they can make nothing out of something already there, built with great sacrifice. They wipe out socioeconomic gains like an eraser wipes the lesson off the blackboard at the end of the school day. Disasters do more — they reverse economic growth, so that we must start again not just from nothing, but with far less strength and spirit to try again. If climate action does not measure up to what is needed, we all face the same fate, that is, a diminished existence, then extinction altogether. But those who are most to blame will suffer less and much later than those who are least at fault.
We already have the global frameworks to address poverty, sustain development and combat climate change. Let us just do it. To borrow from Kung Fu Panda, “Enough talk; let’s fight.” The Secretary-General urges us to actually plant trees rather than plan some more to plant them. I think he is fed up.
When President Corazon Aquino addressed the General Assembly in 1986, after her peaceful People Power Revolution, she said, “[perhaps it is only the tragedy of conflict that teaches us the true value of peace” (A/41/PV5, p. 11). Everything we have, such as it is, everything we work for, everything we wish and strive for — indeed, the world as it is, with much to be desired and the better world we think we can make — will all be erased in an instant by nuclear war. We must eliminate that possibility — and we have tried. The universal ban on nuclear weapons was overwhelmingly adopted at the United Nations and swiftly ratified back home, except in the Philippines, for bureaucratic reasons no one can divine unless they work in Government. Let us not wait for conflict to make us value the peace we have. Let us hope that President Cory Aquino is proved wrong and that we will learn by reading and recollection, rather than living through our violent mistakes all over again.
Terrorism, with its links to drug trafficking and organized crime, is the most pressing threat to us all. The fight to retake the city of Marawi, which left it looking like Swiss cheese, was triggered by an attempt to serve a warrant of arrest for drug trafficking on the leader of an Islamic jihad. Some would argue that we should have just let him get on with his business. Unfortunately, my President will not oblige. He wants to eliminate the drug trade. I know this is terrible — where will we get our fix?
Peace is out of the hands of peacemakers — it is entirely in the hands of lawbreakers, who have attained a level of organization far superior to poor States like mine. The violent initiative lies entirely with them. But what lies with us is decency. It is in the way we fight, the way we protect, the way we defeat our enemies with arms when we are attacked with arms. We fight with the truth when attacked with lies, and will do so always and forever — all Constitutions mandate it — with only victory in mind and refusing anything less. Compromise throws away the advantage gained in a fight for survival, giving the other side time and space to recover and rally. But the fight must always be fought with a decent regard for the civilized opinion of humankind.
The fact that the United Nations endures after nearly 75 years is an affirmation of the world’s abiding desire for peace in spite of its failures, which are broadcast, and the dispiriting silence that greets its many successes. With successes, continuing challenges and unceasing criticism, the United Nations has demonstrated its resilience and affirmed its continuing relevance, which cannot be doubted given the alternative: the terrible wars out of which the United Nations was born. Shifting political realities, successive power configurations and the increasing confused nature of global realities should not make the United Nations change its character and goals of peace and democracy, sustainable development, if possible, and climate action for our sake and our children’s. For God’s sake, they are already screaming at us. They see what is there while we refuse to — none so blind, indeed. Those grim realities teach no values, they only urge surrender by compromise. That is unacceptable to the community of civilized nations. There can be no world order other than the one established with the United Nations as its guardian.
As a sovereign country, the Philippines renews its commitment to the ideals of the United Nations — to end the scourge of war, to uphold justice and, yes, human rights, starting with the right of the many who are good, to be safe and protected from the bad, and to maintain peace and amity among the nations under this one roof — united.


English interpretation provided by the delegation): I warmly congratulate Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, President of the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session, on his election to that honourable position. I pledge Poland’s full support for his mission. I also warmly thank Ms. Espinosa Garces for her active work as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-third session.
Peace, environmental protection and welfare are the three concepts on which I would like to centre my message today. Those three concepts should also serve as a cement that binds the entire international community: peace through respect for the law, environmental protection achieved through cooperation and co-responsibility, and welfare through engaging for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
On 1 September, we commemorated in Warsaw the eightieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, which began with an attack on Poland by two totalitarian States and two criminal ideologies, German Nazi Hitlerism and Soviet Stalinist communism. The Second World War, which violated the fundamental rights of nations and States to self-determination, claimed nearly 18 million victims worldwide and became a long-term trauma for millions more. This extremely painful historical experience has left its mark. Not only has it influenced international relations in the decades since, but it has also greatly affected the cultural and social consciousness, shaping both the ideas that we profess today and the goals that we set and pursue.
I would now like to repeat what I said during the commemoration ceremony in Warsaw with regard to the outbreak of the Second World War, which is that, despite the progress of civilization, despite that terrible lesson, today, in the twenty-first century, acts of incomprehensible barbarity are still being perpetrated all over the world — ethnic cleansing, mass murders and even genocide. Moreover, we continue to see assaults on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, and borders are still being moved by force. Looking at this, one cannot help but draw historical analogies. There is also the temptation today to buy time for peace through passiveness and submission, and sometimes even parlaying with aggressors in the name of one’s own interests, submission or appeasement, thereby succumbing to dangerous illusions that one can bargain with an aggressor at the expense of others in order to prolong peace for oneself. Such parlaying, in other words, involves pursuing individual interests, often economic, in one’s relations with aggressors, while at the same time invoking solidarity with the victims of aggression in grandiloquent words.
When creating the United Nations out of the ruins of the previous world order, we were guided by a completely different set of tenets. The guiding principle was “never again”. It seemed that we had all learned the cruel lessons of the Second World War. Unfortunately, as recent years have shown, that same temptation to deal with the aggressor exists today as it did then. I firmly believe that it is high time to shake ourselves out of the state of lethargy inherited from the past and stop repeating the same mistakes.
In this vein, as President of the Republic of Poland, I cannot fail to refer to the situation in our part of Europe. I want to make it clear once again that every country has an equal right to self-determination. Poland has been and will continue to be a champion of independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, both for Ukraine and Georgia. State borders must not be changed by force. Poland, so gravely affected in the previous century, has a moral duty to speak out very clearly on this matter — and we are doing so. We are making efforts to ensure peace and justice in the name of peace and freedom, which are so dear to us.
This year we are coming to the end of Poland’s two-year membership of the Security Council — an experience we regard as valuable and meaningful. Our tenure has emphasized the role of my country which, as a founding Member of the United Nations, considers itself an integral part of the great international system of cooperation between nations and States. It is primarily common values, objectives and legal norms that bind the system together. The past few years have unfortunately shown that international law is often challenged and disavowed today, even though it is precisely international law that provides the basis for the implementation of principles such as the sovereign equality of States, justice, responsibility and security.
The law exists not only for the benefit of States, but for the benefit of humankind as a whole and for the benefit of each individual. A violation of its norms must produce consequences and individuals responsible for such breach must be held accountable. It was in this spirit that, during its presidency of the Security Council in 2018, Poland organized a high-level debate on the promotion and strengthening of the rule of law in the maintenance of international peace and security, which I presided over as President of the Republic of Poland (see S/PV.8262). I would like to make it very clear that international law is the strongest tool that civilized nations have to ensure long-term peace. Peace comes through law — there can be no peace without the law. Poland, which in its history has tragically experienced genocide and war crimes as a result of acts of aggression from other countries, will always unalterably be on this side of the law and on this side of the victims of violence. We have strongly and consistently emphasize this point in international forums.
First of all, through our work in the Security Council, we emphasize the indisputable role of international law in maintaining the global security architecture that was created after the Second World War and in protecting civilians in armed conflicts.
Secondly, we remain a consistent advocate of children’s rights. This year we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Poland initiated. It has a special dimension for us. It is a universal and historically unprecedented international document that relates solely and exclusively to children. This groundbreaking Convention has changed the way we think about children. It has given children the protection they need and deserve. Children are the most vulnerable group in terms of exposure to the consequences of conflict. In this connection, we are placing particular emphasis on the problem of the reintegration of children previously enlisted in armed groups and of children born as a result of sexual violence in wars.
Thirdly, we call for strengthening protection for persons with disabilities in conflicts. These people are particularly exposed to a range of negative phenomena associated with conflict and post-conflict situations — violence, threats to life and health and difficulties in accessing health care, education, rehabilitation and, in extreme cases, life-saving humanitarian aid. In June, on the initiative of Poland, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2475 (2019), the first ever devoted to persons with disabilities in armed conflicts.
Fourthly, and finally, we promote the protection of the rights of persons belonging to religious minorities. We are concerned about the surge in violence and religious hatred. We are particularly painfully aware of the spreading violence against Christians, and yet freedom of religion is one of the fundamental human rights and freedoms. Enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation among ethnic, cultural and religious groups is more important than ever before. That is why, for several years now, Poland has been calling for the increased engagement of international organizations in promoting full respect for the rights of religious minorities and in ensuring freedom of religion and belief. A living testament to the Polish commitment to the cause is the fact that this year the General Assembly decided to designate 22 August as the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.
Today, as President of the Republic of Poland, I would like not only to take stock of Poland’s achievements in the field of promoting peace in the world, but also to emphasize our contribution to solving the second key challenge of the contemporary world, which is caring for the natural environment. We will soon be handing over to Chile the presidency of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Our term in office has produced a significant contribution to global climate policy. At COP 24, held in Poland, the Katowice Rulebook was adopted. The objective of COP 24 was to provide a manual on how to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. That is what we achieved. Therefore, I would like at this point to thank all the political leaders for their personal commitment and presence in our meetings, both during the COP 24 leaders summit and in the closing stretch of the negotiations in Katowice. Thanks to the Katowice climate package, the world has at its disposal a set of guidelines on operationalizing the Paris Agreement and taking related action.
I realize many of us believe that more needs to be done to protect the environment and that our ambitions should be greater. However, I also believe that the essence of the fight to counter the negative processes taking place in the natural environment lies primarily in building international consensus on the issue, and one cannot transgress its limits. Ambitions must be expressed together because only then can they be realized. Only together can we save our natural environment. The fact that the document crowning COP 24 was adopted unanimously is all the more gratifying. After laborious negotiations, part of this arrangement resulted in the acceptance of the Just Transition Declaration. For me, it is a source of great satisfaction that this concept, coined during the Katowice Conference, is now part of the official language used by the European Union and the Environmental Action Program (EAP) of the newly formed European Commission.
Let me assure members of the Assembly that Poland will support the European Commission in the implementation of the just transition concept, as defined at COP 24. Responding to the call for a higher level of ambition on environmental protection, in conjunction with yesterday’s Climate Action Summit, convened by the Secretary-General, on behalf of Poland I have proposed five initiatives that are either already under way or about to be implemented at the national level. In pursuit of sustainability, the aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their production will be balanced through their absorption by ecosystems and adaptation to climate change.
First, we have created a programme that is aimed at reducing household emissions. Secondly, we will seek to reduce emissions from public transportation. Thirdly, through large-scale afforestation programmes, we want to enhance the absorption of emissions by ecosystems, which should bring us closer to climate neutrality. Fourthly, we have developed plans to adapt cities to climate change. Fifthly, we have drafted a long-term programme to change the economic profile of one of Poland’s strongest economic regions — Silesia.
First and foremost, Poland emphasizes the issue of a solidarity-based and just, low-carbon transition. We are also convinced that building a green economy is possible only when voices of all social groups are duly taken into account. Environmental policy must be understood as a social policy and cannot be used as an instrument to gain economic advantage derived from the different energy mixes of individual economies or reserves of natural resources at hand.
The issue of the environment should be seen in the wider context of debate on sustainable development. In that vein, I believe that the time has come to launch an international discussion on the modern model of welfare policy. It is worth reflecting on the meaning of the term today and how to position it in a globalized world. What goals should we set ourselves on the road to its achievement? What model of a modern welfare State would we adopt — the model against which we would pitch our political ambitions? In Poland, we have now started that debate, facilitated by the dynamic development of Poland’s economy and extensive social aid programmes implemented by the Polish authorities.
Welfare policy should be based on the concept of sustainable development, as set out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which we have all adopted — in other words, responsibility, solidarity and justice. At the July session of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, we noted significant progress in achieving the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. However, the discussion revealed a lag in implementing many of its Goals, as confirmed in the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2019, which indicates that Sustainable Development Goal 4, concerning education, is at risk.
That delay is an acute problem and should be eliminated as soon as possible. We all agree that education is fundamentally important.
Secondly, our citizens also consider health care to be a key aspect when defining quality of life. We must make immense financial investments and achieve a much higher level of fair and effective coverage, both as individual countries and globally. In some parts of the globe, negligence in health care has led to the reappearance of diseases that were already considered to have been eradicated, and in developed countries the level of medical services is still under heavy pressure from social expectations. That is mainly due to an ageing population and the consequent increase in health needs. In Poland, that problem is currently being addressed as one of the most pressing challenges for the country’s social policy.
Thirdly, the harmonization of the standard of living is an equally important element of sustainable development and a welfare State, next to increasing educational opportunities and health protection. Policies should aspire to systematically combat poverty and prevent exploitation, including economic exploitation, and to reduce social disparities through the systematic increase in the average standard of living for families. Only an economy based on respect, honesty, the harmonious cooperation among all social groups and the fair distribution of the fruits of labour, can bring about sustainable development in individual countries and the international community as a whole.
We must introduce the concept of commonwealth into the language of economic debate. Those issues are particularly important outside of developing countries as well. Today, even in some rich Western countries, we are witnessing mass protests in which citizens are demanding respect for their social rights and highlighting the deterioration of their living conditions. Instead of respect, they face arrogance and brutal police violence. I believe that a sincere dialogue about welfare policies would help prevent such tensions.
Shared responsibility should be the starting point of our efforts to achieve a better tomorrow for future generations. Poland is determined to continue its endeavours to ensure development, peace and security, respect for human rights and support for vulnerable groups in need of special protection. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to call for the promotion of peace through the law, care for the natural environment through responsibility-sharing and engagement in welfare policy through sustainable development.
There is no doubt that as an international community we are faced with mounting and often unprecedented challenges. However, I am convinced that by working together we will be able to meet those challenges.


It is indeed an honour to participate in the seventy-fourth session of the General Assembly, representing Sri Lanka. I bring greetings from His Excellency President Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka, who regrets very much his inability to have attended this session.
Permit me to warmly congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session. Undoubtedly your longstanding experience will guide the work of the Assembly to a successful conclusion. Let me also thank the outgoing President, Her Excellency Ms. Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces, for having successfully conducted the work of the previous session.
I also wish to extend Sri Lanka’s appreciation to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for his sagacious leadership and untiring efforts in achieving the objectives of the United Nations.
The theme of this year’s general debate is both timely and significant as we strive to build a world of peace and prosperity by eradicating extreme poverty, ensuring access to quality education and striving to respond to climate change and to promote inclusion. As we complete the first cycle of reviews of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, it is clear that we have made substantial progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet the end of the road is a long way off, with the increasingly devastating impacts of climate change threatening to reverse those gains and impede our path to development.
Sri Lanka reiterates its strong commitment to the climate-related global initiatives. It endorses the clear message of the Climate Action Summit, held last week in this very venue, and notes that we are on the brink of a climate emergency. It is imperative to strengthen our collective political will and accelerate global action in stalling its emergence.
Inequality-driven push factors, aggravated by climate change, have a definite negative bearing on individuals and communities, forcing them to leave their usual habitats, resulting in a mass-scale migration of people.
Having adopted the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, a voluntary framework for governing migration in a manner that is safe, orderly, regular and responsible, it is now time for us to ensure its full implementation.
Climate change has also exacerbated the global phenomenon of poverty, undermining human dignity and remaining one of the greatest threats to the achievement of the Goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Sri Lanka remains committed to the international efforts on poverty eradication, which has been at the heart of our development strategy for several decades now.
Quality education remains the key to social progress and economic empowerment. Sri Lanka greatly values quality education as a means of eradicating poverty and achieving progress. We have a longstanding policy of providing universal and free education at the primary and secondary levels since 1945, many decades before the introduction of the Millennium Development Goals or the SDGs. Today Sri Lanka’s literacy rate stands at 92 per cent, one of the highest in the world.
As we persevere in these efforts to reverse the negative trends, our ability to address global challenges has been compromised in recent times by the increasing threat to multilateralism. As the United Nations approaches its seventy-fifth anniversary, next year, this is an excellent opportunity to assess its successes and failures, including its engagement with Member States. The partnerships fostered between Member States and the United Nations over seven decades, based on trust and equity, must not be compromised or allowed to be hijacked by actors accountable to none and with selective political agendas. Given the changes in the landscape of global politics, particularly the emergence of non-State actors, it is vital that the Organization, which is composed of and driven by sovereign Member States, ensure that primacy and respect be given to the decisions taken by Member States regarding essentially domestic matters.
In this context, our quest to strengthen the work of the General Assembly through its revitalization process is extremely important to ensuring that it remains relevant as the main deliberative and policy-making organ of the United Nations. Therefore, it is incumbent upon United Nations policy implementers to refrain from being misled by entities with vested interests. The United Nations must also desist from making decisions without a valid consultative process, as its work must always be Member-State-driven. Failure to ensure this will not only discredit this body and negate the values that it represents but also break the trust of Member States, jeopardizing the partnerships within the United Nations.
Sri Lanka’s commitment to disarmament remains steadfast. With the increasing challenges to the global arms-control, disarmament and non-proliferation regimes, Sri Lanka continues to recognize the pivotal role of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) and urges the resumption of substantive negotiations under its mandate. Decision CD/2119, adopted in February 2018 under Sri Lanka’s presidency of the CD, was a modest contribution towards bridging different viewpoints, focusing on the early resumption of negotiations. We see value in the continuation of this process.
Additionally, in recent years, Sri Lanka has acceded to a number of disarmament treaties, including the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Sri Lanka has also presided over the Meetings of States Parties to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, and of States Parties to the Review Conference of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The 2020 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference will also provide an opportunity for Member States to deliver on their commitments, as the Treaty marks the fiftieth anniversary of its entry into force next year.
Sri Lanka has been contributing to United Nations peacekeeping efforts since 1960, serving in the Central African Republic, the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, South Sudan, Timor and the Western Sahara, thereby demonstrating our commitment to global peace and security. We look forward to enhancing our contribution to a more secure and peaceful world, and obstacles must not be placed in the way of Sri Lanka’s long-standing peacekeeping contribution to the United Nations.
Given Sri Lanka’s experience of the recent past in low- and high-intensity conflicts with terrorist groups, few countries can qualitatively match the troops sent by Sri Lanka, which have extensive professional experience in all aspects of peacekeeping and providing humanitarian assistance. I take this opportunity to express gratitude for their contribution and wish to particularly salute three soldiers — Corporal M. Wijesinghe, who made the ultimate sacrifice in Haiti in 2005; and Captain H.W.D. Jayawickrama and Corporal S.S. Wijekumara, in Mali earlier this year.
Sri Lanka is also concerned about the deteriorating situation in the occupied Palestine territory, including East Jerusalem, where the continuing expansion of settlements across the occupied West Bank is leading to the increased demolition of homes. While restating Sri Lanka’s consistent and principled position that the Palestinian people have a legitimate and inalienable right to the natural resources in their territory and to statehood, we further recognize the legitimate and sensitive security concerns of both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. In this context, Sri Lanka reiterates the importance of the early implementation of the relevant General Assembly resolutions on the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to statehood and the attainment of the two-State solution, based on the 1967 borders.
There can be no development without peace. Peace is a catalyst for stability, inclusiveness and socioeconomic growth. For nearly 30 years, Sri Lanka was one of world’s worst-affect countries in terms of separatist terrorism, long before the fight against terrorism became an international buzz phrase. With the defeat of terrorism in Sri Lanka in 2009, we experienced an unprecedented peace dividend for nearly a decade. However, on 21 April — Easter Sunday — this peace was shattered by a heinous terrorist attack in Sri Lanka, which took the lives of more than 250 of our citizens and foreign nationals and injured hundreds more.
The attack was an act of radical extremist terrorists who were inspired by and claimed allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Sham. It challenged the pluralistic processes in Sri Lanka of normalization, reconciliation and development, which had been arduously rebuilt since the end of the separatist conflict. Despite the attempts of the terrorists to destroy the country’s social fabric, the resilience and trust between our communities and law-enforcement authorities ensured that citizens themselves warned of impending attacks and assisted in apprehending the culprits.
The incident also reminded us that no country is immune to the bane of radicalization, extremism and terrorism. It has reaffirmed our resolve to fight these global menaces and urge all countries to work in collaboration to address their root causes. We especially thank the Secretary-General and our friends in the international community who unreservedly condemned the Easter Sunday attacks and supported the Government of Sri Lanka in numerous ways.
The events surrounding the Easter Sunday bombing also taught us that fighting terrorism must go hand in hand with protecting human rights. One cannot be compromised for the sake of the other. This very delicate balance has often been elusive, with States veering towards one extreme or the other, applying double standards to similar situations and often politicizing these issues. We as a nation have found ourselves up to the task of overcoming the challenges posed by the violent extremism of Easter Sunday. The citizenry was secured within a relatively short period of time, and law and order restored. Our institutions asserted themselves, each in its respective role, to ensure that the people, communities and society as a whole were able to feel safe again.
In fact, the period following the Easter Sunday attack has proven to be a litmus test for Sri Lanka’s resolve to adhere to human rights standards, while fighting terrorism, as well as to determine the strengths and shortcomings of the democratic institutions that have been consolidated in recent years. In this context, a ministerial committee headed by Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana has been established by the Cabinet to study and propose amendments to the draft counter- terrorism legislation currently under consideration by the Parliament.
Conscious of its international obligations, Sri Lanka is also consulting with partners in an effort to bring about domestic enabling legislation that would make it compliant with more recent relevant Security Council resolutions on combating terrorism, including on terrorist financing, border security and returning terrorist fighters and on countering violent extremism. Efforts are also under way to curb terrorists’ use and abuse of the Internet and social media platforms, including by developing legislative measures and law- enforcement mechanisms to counter radical ideologies leading to violent extremism. In this context, it is necessary to develop the critical thinking of youth, strengthen community bonds, inculcate a sense of civic duty and build community resilience to mitigate the effects and influences of extremist ideologies conducive to terrorism that may escape the eye of law-enforcement authorities. In that regard, the role of the community and its resilience against local drivers of extremism are essential to preventing violent extremism.
The recovery over the past five months has demanded that we be resolute in governance. If we are to truly overcome these challenges, we must move towards incorporating a whole-of-society approach within a whole-of-Government approach.
Finally, as Sri Lanka steps into the second decade since the end of its internal armed-separatist conflict, we remain committed to promoting and safeguarding the human rights of our people through a comprehensive process that would deliver permanent peace to our country. Recent events have reaffirmed the independence of our judiciary, as well as the resilience of our democratic institutions, including public services. These events also give form to our public’s trust in democracy and the rule of law, and, despite numerous challenges, the country has progressed in its course towards reconciliation and durable peace.
In that context, I am happy to note that there has been significant progress in addressing the many facets of the conflict. The Office on Missing Persons and the Office for Reparations are now fully operational. The Cabinet of Ministers is also discussing the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. Sri Lanka has maintained constructive and continuous engagement with the United Nations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and human rights mechanisms, whereby, since the standing invitation of 2015 was made, Sri Lanka has welcomed 10 special-procedures mandate holders and working groups. Independent institutions have also played a critical role in this regard, and it is encouraging to note that the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka was reaccredited as an A status national human rights institution by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions in May 2018.
One would have to agree that the foregoing are not simple steps for a country to take, especially when that country has suffered 30 long years of conflict and more recent blows to its economy and polity. Promoting a peaceful and just society reconciled to itself is not only a stand-alone objective, but it is also a prerequisite for a sustainable and inclusive approach to development that leaves no one behind.
Every country has its own unique post-conflict situation. While we can learn from the experiences of others as we chart our own path to reconciliation, we are committed to finding innovative and pragmatic solutions to protect the country’s national interest and the well-being of all Sri Lankans, guided by the provisions of our Constitution.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate Sri Lanka’s commitment to a rules-based global order. We value the spirit of multilateralism and cooperation. Although humankind faces numerous challenges, I am confident that we are well within our ability to address them in a collective, constructive and cooperative manner for the betterment of all and our future generations.


On behalf of the delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Sir, I would first like to congratulate you on your election as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session. I express the hope that, under your able guidance, Mr. President, this session will be crowned with a successful outcome.
The current session of the General Assembly is being held at a time when the global focus on and demand for achieving world peace and development are increasing at an unprecedented rate. Peace and development — a shared aspiration of the present era — are pillars of the United Nations work and the main goals on which all United Nations activities are predicated. Despite the efforts of a large number of States Members of the United Nations, achieving peace and development continues to face serious challenges stemming from the flagrant violation, within the international arena, of the principles of respect for sovereignty and sovereign equality, enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
Unilateralism, which values strength as the ultimate means for achieving goals, is infringing on the sovereignty of many countries, creating widespread tension in international relations and posing a threat to achieving peace and development. The Security Council, which shoulders the responsibility of ensuring the maintenance of international peace and security, has been reduced to an instrument serving the strategic interest of a specific country that pursues sanctions, exerts pressure and attempts regime change in specific countries — all in total disregard of international justice.
In view of the international situation over the past year, the United Nations must further enhance its role. The prevailing reality wherein principles of respect for sovereignty and sovereign equality are being flagrantly violated stands as a sobering lesson that true peace and security can be achieved only when States possess powerful strength of their own.
In his historic policy speech in April, Comrade Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, advanced the country’s central tasks at its present stage of consolidating the material foundations of socialism by focusing all its efforts on building the economy and developing an elucidated and reasonable way to ensure peace on the Korean peninsula. The present situation, which is marked by increased hostile acts against our country, demands that we hold higher the banners of self-sufficiency and self-reliance in order to consolidate socialism. We have the solid foundations of a self-supporting economy, reliable scientific and technical strengths, and an invaluable tradition of self-reliance, which are our most precious strategic resources, and we would not trade them for anything. Under the seasoned leadership of Comrade Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, our people are now making devoted efforts aimed at resolutely overcoming difficulties and challenges and at glorifying our Republic as an independent powerful country — a country of the people, whose ideals are fully realized.
The key to consolidating peace and stability and achieving development on the Korean peninsula is in the full implementation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-United States joint statement agreed and adopted at the historic summit and talks between the two countries that were held in Singapore in June 2018. More than a year has passed since the adoption of the 12 June Democratic People’s Republic of Korea- United States joint statement. However, the relations between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States have made little progress so far, and the Korean peninsula continues to experience a vicious cycle of increased tension that is entirely attributable to the political and military provocations perpetrated by the United States, which has resorted to its anachronistic hostile policy against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
In his historic policy speech, Comrade Kim Jong Un, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, stated his position that the United States needs to put aside its current method of calculation and approach us with a new one, and that we would patiently wait for a courageous decision from the United States. In our assumption that the United States has had enough time to come up with a calculation method that it can share with us, we have expressed our willingness to sit with the United States for a comprehensive discussion of the issues on which we have deliberated so far. Depending on the outcome, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea-United States negotiations can either become a window of opportunity or an occasion that will hasten a crisis.
The historic Panmunjom Declaration on Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula, which was well received by our friends in the north, south and overseas, as well as the international community, when it was submitted to the General Assembly just one year ago, is now at a standstill and has not even advanced to the main phase of its implementation. That can be attributed to the double-dealing behaviour of the South Korean authorities, who performed a handshake of peace before the people of the world but behind the scenes introduced ultra-modern offensive weapons and held joint military exercises targeting the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea with the United States.
The introduction of the latest offensive weapons and the United States-South Korea joint military exercises targeting the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea constitute flagrant violations and challenges to the implementation of the military agreements outlined in the Panmunjom Declaration, wherein the two sides agreed to completely cease all hostile acts against each other and refrain from building up armed forces. The improvement of inter-Korean relations can be achieved only when the South Korean authorities put an end to their worship of big Power and their policy of dependence on foreign forces that encroach upon the common interests of the nation and fulfil their responsibility to their nation by implementing the existing inter-Korean declarations in good faith.
The theme of the general debate for this session, “Galvanizing multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion”, reflects the most essential points of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the States Members of the United Nations by 2030. The Government and the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea are now actively striving to fulfil the 2030 Agenda and achieve the SDGs through our vigorous struggle to build a powerful socialist country, uphold the banner of self-reliance, and, in 2020, submit the country’s first voluntary national report on the progress it has made in implementing the SDGs to the United Nations.
Practical measures should continuously be taken to actively assist developing countries in their sustainable development efforts by enhancing the roles of United Nations and other organizations within its system in economic and social areas. It is vital for all States Members of the United Nations to create a peaceful environment in which to fulfil the 2030 Agenda and achieve the SDGs.
From that standpoint, my delegation extends its full support and solidarity to the Government and the people of Syria in their strenuous efforts to regain the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel, defend their national sovereignty against the destructive and subversive plots of hostile forces and achieve territorial integrity. We categorically reject the application of the Helms- Burton Act and the economic, trade and financial embargo imposed by hostile forces against Cuba and unreservedly support the efforts of the Cuban people to vigorously push forward with the building of their economy and national defence system. We also support the dynamic external activities of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Government of Cuba towards the expansion and development of their foreign relations. In the same vein, we extend our unwavering support and solidarity to the struggle of the Government and people of Venezuela to safeguard their sovereignty.
My delegation would like to take this opportunity to express its heartfelt gratitude to the delegations of the many countries that have extended unflagging support and encouragement to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and consistently accorded attention to the peace and development of the Korean peninsula. The Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea will develop and strengthen the bonds of friendship and cooperation with all countries of the world that have a friendly attitude in their respect for our sovereignty. We will work hand in hand with all peace-loving forces of the world to establish a regime of lasting peace on the Korean peninsula.


It is an honour to be in this Hall for the opening of the seventy-fourth session of the General Assembly. On behalf of the Republic of Nauru, I would like to congratulate His Excellency Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande on his recent assumption of the presidency of the General Assembly. Let me assure him of my delegation’s full cooperation and support as he steers our important work during this session. I would also like to thank Her Excellency Ms. Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces for her exceptional work as our outgoing President.
As it is my first time appearing before this body as the President of Nauru, allow me to recognize the Secretary-General, His Excellency Mr. Antonio Guterres, and to commend him for his recent trip to the Pacific. I hope that it will be the first of several visits to our region, as the United Nations strives to become more responsive to the needs of the smallest and the most vulnerable.
The Secretary-General posed an incredibly important question to us in his opening address: referring to a world of disquiet and a growing fear of the people that they are being left behind, he asked: “Do they believe, as leaders, we will put people first?” (A/74/PV.3, p. 1). More than just a question, it was a poignant reminder that we gather here merely as servants of the people. His words should also serve as a challenge to all of us to build a more equitable and responsive Government at home and a more equitable and responsive multilateral system here at the United Nations.
The Secretary-General’s challenge resonates strongly in Nauru, where just last month we held elections that saw over half the seats in Parliament change hands. The people of Nauru have spoken loud and clear that they are seeking change. Indeed, after an economic collapse followed by many years of stagnation, far too many Nauruans have been left behind, and they are hungry for improvements in the quality of their lives. It is the highest priority of my Administration to restore to them what has been lost, return what has been taken and deliver on the promises that have gone unfulfilled for too long. By working with our partners towards our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate goals, I am confident that my Administration can succeed where previous ones have stumbled. And important work has already begun that promises to transform our country in meaningful ways.
Construction is moving forward on a major upgrade to our maritime port, which promises to deliver a much greater measure of food and energy security, as well as unlock new economic opportunities for the country. Our current arrangement requires that ships be moored at sea, with supplies ferried to shore by smaller vessels. This set-up is incredibly costly, and unpredictable weather can delay shipments of basic goods for days.
Jointly funded by the Green Climate Fund, the Asian Development Bank, Australia and the Government of Nauru, the new port has the potential to become a hub of commerce for our small island and the wider Pacific. Value-added services for fishing and shipping vessels will become viable in Nauru. It will become far easier for ships’ crews to disembark, thereby providing local business owners with more business opportunities. The port will also open new markets to our exports and facilitate the development of new trade partners and ventures, all of which will provide a more diversified and reliable revenue stream for our economy.
Our plan is to move forward with port construction in parallel with the development of the interior of our island. The Higher Ground initiative, as it is known, represents a historic opportunity to build our resilience to climate change and sea-level rise by moving housing and critical infrastructure away from our vulnerable coastal areas. An area equal to 80 per cent of our island, topside, rises many meters above sea level and sits undeveloped, providing a veritable blank canvas to reimagine sustainability on small islands. We are in the early stages of developing a master plan, which we look forward to sharing with committed partners in the near future.
A new port facility and the Higher Ground initiative, along with an aggressive push on renewable energy and efficiency, serve as the major cornerstones of a sustainable-development strategy that has the potential to create good jobs, generate new revenue streams and radically improve our fiscal situation. More importantly, those efforts will finally create a wealth of new opportunities for our youth, something that has gone missing in Nauru for a generation.
The potential upside in Nauru is significant, but there remain some distressing barriers to fully capitalize on that moment. Early this year, Nauru presented its first voluntary national review at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. The voluntary- national- review process helped focus attention on the key gaps and challenges in the implementation of our national strategies. Health and education emerged as two areas that require urgent attention.
The President of the General Assembly has highlighted education as a key component of the vision for this session of the General Assembly; so it is too for my country. Teacher retention is a persistent challenge, and student truancy has risen to alarming levels. Also, the lack of good job opportunities that require a diploma has led some families to question the value of a quality education. I will therefore be calling for a review of the education system in Nauru to address the challenges and issues that we face, with a view to putting in place a quality education system that will provide all learners, young and old, with capabilities to become economically productive, develop sustainable livelihoods and enhance individual well-being. But, most importantly, the curriculum will embrace the Nauruan language, cultures and traditions.
A healthy population is equally important to the health of a nation. Nauru suffers from some of the highest rates of non-communicable diseases in the world. Diabetes has taken the lives of far too many friends and family members. Some of this situation can be attributed to the astronomical price of fresh fruits and vegetables on the island, where even basic produce can cost as much as $16 per kilogram. Our water supply does not meet the standards of the World Health Organization, and we need to upgrade and climate-proof our health-care facilities. We are losing our loved ones and their expertise. We are losing our history. We will require multilateral assistance, or we risk losing our future as well.
The climate crisis is another challenge to our medium- and long-term viability, which is why climate action has been fully integrated into our development strategy. We take our international obligation to reduce emissions very seriously, but as a small and vulnerable country, our overriding priority must be resilience. Nauru already sits in a drought-prone region of the Pacific, and the frequency of droughts is projected to increase in the future. Improving our water security is therefore a key priority. We do not currently have a modern distribution system, so we rely on trucks to deliver water to on-site storage tanks. Installing new tanks and buying additional trucks can improve the situation in the short term, but our priority must be to install a water- and sewerage-reticulation system, as envisioned in our Nauru Water and Sanitation Master Plan.
Eradicating poverty and improving our way of life also revolves around the development of sustainable energy supplies. The importation of fossil fuels is a massive drain on our national coffers. I am therefore pleased to announce that much progress has been made in reaching our target of generating 50 per cent of our energy from solar power by 2020. This is an incredible feat for our small island, and I must attribute its success to the collaboration with our development partners, namely, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, the European Union and the Asian Development Bank, all of which I would like to acknowledge. I thank them very much.
The small island countries of the Pacific, including Nauru, are highly dependent on marine resources for its sustenance and economic development. The tuna fishery is worth $6 billion annually, and it is one of the best- managed fisheries in the world. I attribute the success to our award-winning organization — the parties to the Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries of Common Interest — and the combined efforts of the Forum Fisheries Agency and the Pacific Community. I must also recognize the contributions of the outstanding men and women of the Nauru Agreement and its member countries, who have been persistent in their efforts and bold in their vision. However, as a word of concern, this fishery is projected to disperse and disappear from the waters of the nine member countries and territories of the Nauru Agreement in the not-too-distant future — another effect of the climate crisis. Sea-level rise is not only about an existential threat to our small and low-lying island. Climate change also threatens an economic Armageddon if the tuna fishery disappears.
With regard to small island developing States (SIDS), we have a very useful plan for improving our efforts in the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action Pathway, which highlights our special circumstances and development challenges. As small island developing States, we have always called for genuine and durable partnerships. Partnerships are certainly part of the solution, but they need to be mainstreamed, tailored and SIDS-friendly. Treating everyone the same does not mean that everyone is treated fairly, and this is why we continue to stress the special case of the small island developing States.
We applaud the efforts of the Secretary-General in spearheading the reform of the United Nations development system to be more effective and fit for purpose. The recent review of the multi-country office brings special attention to small islands, including in the establishment of the multi-country office in the North Pacific. For our subregion, this has been long overdue and is a positive step in the right direction towards ensuring longer term in-country engagement for durable institutional-capacity development. We look forward to working closely with the United Nations and our development partners in shaping the future that we want — one that is risk resilient and one where our children have a future.
As already mentioned, Nauru is taking very ambitious domestic action to address climate change, and while there are similar pockets of activity around the globe, the sum total leaves us far short of our goals as set forth in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. After decades of inaction and delay, many dangerous impacts are now unavoidable, all of which are well captured in the special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, entitled Global Warming of 1.5° C. In small island developing States, many of those effects have been with us for quite some time. Climate change will be the defining security challenge of the century, and it requires a similarly robust multilateral response. For that reason, Nauru supports the proposal by the Pacific small island developing States to appoint a United Nations special representative for climate and security, whose work must begin with an assessment of the capacity of the United Nations to respond to climate disasters.
It is not enough to proclaim the virtues of multilateralism if we do not strengthen the commitment to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for citizens everywhere. Development is not sustainable if it is not fair and inclusive. We therefore call on the United Nations to embrace willing and capable partners like Taiwan in its SDG endeavours. Taiwan is ready to share the experience it has accumulated in reaching its level of success with its partner countries, including Nauru. In 2018 alone, Taiwan carried out development projects in various SDG fields.
It is high time that the United Nations lived up to the ideals it espouses. On that note, I want to thank the Government of Cuba for strengthening my country’s health sector through the deployment of its very able medical brigade. Yet while that brigade is saving lives in Nauru, its own people continue to suffer extreme and unjust hardships under the economic, commercial and financial embargo that the United States has imposed on Cuba for nearly six decades. We call on the United States not to forget the friendly people of Cuba, who are hurting under its sanctions.
The work of the International Law Commission on the topic of sea-level rise in relation to international law is of tremendous importance and interest for the Pacific region. The issues around baselines and rising seas are critical, and we believe that it is in the interest of all States to give serious consideration to the effects of sea- level rise on the livelihoods of their peoples. Ensuring the security of our oceans is another problem that we must all tackle. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing represents a great threat and serious losses for our small economy. Those issues are enshrined in SDG 14, and in that regard we look forward to the convening of the second United Nations Ocean Conference in Portugal in 2020.
My administration is determined to give more than it receives and committed to being a champion for the weak, the vulnerable and the voiceless, taking nothing from them but rather giving them a better education system, a better health-care regime and renewable energy resources, while helping to equip them to navigate a future that is hopeful yet unpredictable. And while we cannot build that better future alone, we are looking forward to forging the strong partnerships and powerful multilateral system that we require. I am fully aware of the challenges that we face as a Pacific small island developing State, but I can also see the great opportunities that are now within our grasp. Here I would like to recall the words of the Secretary-General, when at the opening of the general debate (see A/74/ PV.3) he said, “We the leaders must deliver for we the peoples”. May God bless the Republic of Nauru and may God bless the United Nations.


I have the honour to convey the greetings of His Majesty the King and the people of Bhutan. I am very happy to represent the land of gross national happiness for the first time at the General Assembly. Last year, with aspirations to serve my country, my party and I campaigned on a commitment to narrowing the gap. In the language of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we pledged to leave no one behind. Therefore, the theme identified for the general debate is relevant to me and my country.
In order to narrow the gap, all our initiatives and decisions are focused on uplifting the poor. We are convinced that it is only through quality health care and relevant education that we can eradicate poverty in all its forms in the most sustainable manner. Our Constitution mandates free health care and education for all Bhutanese. Although we are a resource-constrained country, our leaders have always insisted on strengthening the social sector. It is an investment. As we all know, it is never an expenditure. I am happy to share that, in July, my Government made teachers the highest-paid civil servants in Bhutan. We aspire to motivate teachers and attract the best and the brightest to that noble profession. It is only through investment in teachers that we can bring about significant improvement in the quality of education, work is under way in schools to encourage learning beyond textbooks and exams.
While it may not be new to many members, we are also in the process of shifting from summative to formative learning. The focus of our education goes beyond imparting skills and knowledge. We would like to ensure that our children learn to become good human beings, with qualities such as compassion, empathy and respect for nature. Those are the main elements of the gross national happiness-based curriculum we have in the schools in Bhutan. We plan to enhance the school curriculum with practical lessons on climate change so that every student becomes a climate champion.
A nation can grow only on the strong foundations of a good health-care system. Among the many health-care initiatives, my country is gearing up to launch the 1,000 Golden Days Plus package, which will make sure that every child is taken care of, even before he or she is born — from conception to the antenatal check-ups for mothers, institutional delivery, post-natal care, immunization schemes and exclusive breastfeeding for a minimum of six months. All women civil servants in Bhutan are entitled to six months’ maternity leave, with full pay. We will implement that package through financial incentives to all mothers during the 1,000-day period. That will enhance proper care for both mother and child, including their nutritional requirements. As we all know, the health of the mother is equally important during that critical period. After those 1,000 golden days, the Ministry of Health will hand over the precious child to the Ministry of Education for early child care and formal education. That is in addition to totally free secondary and tertiary health care. Both modern and traditional medicines are housed under one roof across the country.
For the services that are not available within Bhutan, we send our patients to high-end medical centres in neighbouring countries. The cost of those referrals are fully borne by the Government. That also includes organ transplants, cardiac surgeries and even joint replacements. I am also pleased to share that universal health coverage should not be too difficult to achieve in Bhutan by 2030.
With deepest appreciation and reverence to our visionary monarchs, I claim with pride that Bhutan is carbon-negative. The principles of gross national happiness — our philosophy of development with values — prevented us from exploiting our national resources for short-term gains. The Constitution mandates 60 per cent forest cover at all times; we have 72 per cent as of today. When climate change has become the greatest threat facing humankind today, is it not a wonder that a small country such as Bhutan had the foresight to take that path from early days?
I am pleased to share that my Government has adopted a national human settlement policy that places importance on environment-friendly and energy-efficient construction. Our energy comes from hydropower, which we all know is renewable. We are also taking initiatives to replace fossil fuels with clean energy. For instance, we have launched a package to procure 300 electric taxis, with support from the Global Environment Facility. That may appear to be few as an absolute number, but it is almost 10 per cent of the number of taxis in my capital.
Ironically, those contributions and initiatives are rendered futile by the choices of others. I personally feel that those who can are not doing enough. As a practising surgeon, I always share the following analogy. We advise patients to refrain from ill habits. Some listen but most do not. They later return with a terminal illness. By then it is too late to intervene. Such is the health of our environment. If we do not act now, we will leave an incurable, diseased planet. And none of us wants that.
Our focus on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) resonates well with the principles of gross national happiness. It is perhaps for that reason that Bhutan is well on track to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We have in place a joint parliamentary committee comprised of members from both the upper and lower houses. In addition, Bhutan presented its voluntary national review of the SDGs in July 2018. At the SDG summit held earlier this week, we committed to submitting another review in 2020. Just as we did for the Millennium Development Goals, Bhutan aspires to be an early achiever of the SDGs too.
Bhutan is set to graduate from the least developed country (LDC) category in 2023, coinciding with the completion of our ongoing five-year development plan. We have charted out a clear transition plan for graduation. To that effect, my Government has identified nine flagship programmes in critical sectors, which target multiple SDGs, including sustainable water management, waste management, organic agriculture, digital transformation, quality education and health care and, most important, economic diversification. We are mindful that Bhutan was found eligible for graduation based on social and income indicators during two consecutive triennial reviews. However, Bhutan did not meet the economic vulnerability index threshold either time. Today, as we prepare to graduate from LDC status, our last-mile challenges include eradicating poverty, addressing income inequality and ensuring that vulnerable segments of the population do not fall back into poverty due to climate-change hazards and natural disasters. In addition, we are also confronted with inadequate resources and a lack of institutional capacity. I personally feel that the targets of SDG 17 will help my country graduate on a sure footing; I request our development partners to consider that.
At a time when the relevance of multilateralism is often questioned, Bhutan’s faith in the United Nations remains unwavering. The challenges we face as a global community are too numerous and multifaceted for individual States to tackle on their own. In order to move ahead, we must work together as one global community, with the United Nations at the forefront. From our perspective, there is no alternative to multilateralism. At the same time, the United Nations must also evolve and keep up with changing realities. In particular, Bhutan considers that the existing structure and composition of the Security Council do not reflect the current realities and circumstances of the world. The reform of the Security Council must go hand-in-hand with the wider reforms of the United Nations system in order for the Organization to remain legitimate, effective and credible. Bhutan has long supported the aspirations of the Group of Four to serve as permanent members of an expanded Security Council, with, of course, Africa also appropriately represented.
Similarly, in our interconnected world, we realize that international peace and security are shared responsibilities. Despite our constrained resources and other limitations, Bhutan joined the fraternity of troop-and police-contributing countries in 2014. Since then, our engagement in peacekeeping operations have gradually increased. As the first country to sign the Rapid Deployment Level agreement in December 2017, our pledged contingent is ready to be deployed to serve United Nations interests unconditionally.
A few hours from now, I will board a flight for the long journey back home. I return with renewed confidence that Bhutan continues to enjoy goodwill and support from the international community. On behalf of my King, my Queen and the people of Bhutan, I offer sincere prayers for world peace.


Over the more than seven decades since this rostrum was raised to bear the weight of the entire world’s concerns, and the more than half century since the gloomy past of the Cold War began, we have heard in this Hall bright promises of democratic reconstruction — such as in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall — and of caring for people in need, as was the case with the Kosovo Albanians facing genocide in the late 1990s. Yet even here, in the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session, this Hall has once again been witness to a dozen complaining voices, various diverging world views and a substantial number of predictions of looming threats.
Many years after the end of history was announced and vast enthusiasm for globalism prevailed, we have been through the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, experienced a rise in violent extremism and terrorism that began on 11 September 2001, when Al-Qaida killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and been exposed to climate change, whose effects are felt in the air we breathe in the twenty-first century. While globalism can be criticized or endorsed, that does not actually matter in the end. What matters is that it exists. Nationalism might sound like an attractive alternative at times, and it can sometimes seem so, especially nowadays. But the range of issues that we face together is essentially transnational. Willy-nilly, we find ourselves in a context in which the distinction between national interests and global priorities is largely blurred if not entirely erased.
We live in a world in which, alongside its increasing opportunities, new threats are emerging on the horizon and new risks coming to the fore. Even worse, many of those threats and risks, however clearly they are expressed, do not usually meet with the right response. We live under an ozone layer that is thinning and in a climate that is melting icebergs. While security mechanisms are increasingly sophisticated and intelligence mechanisms have been improved, illegal migration, radicalization, extremism, organized crime and human smuggling have challenged not merely our security environment but the quality of our democracy. The range of issues clearly requires not just the mobilization of national capacities but much more efficient interaction at the transnational level.
Last Friday I had to interrupt my flight to New York after landing in Frankfurt, because Albania had been struck by a powerful earthquake. My country was severely damaged, but no lives were lost, thank God. As if that were not enough, just before the aftershocks subsided, we were assailed by a storm and a torrential downpour that made the situation even more horrible for our vulnerable citizens.
Science has progressed a great deal, and whether for good or bad goes well beyond the scope of this discussion, but it has not progressed to the point of being able to predict the arrival of earthquakes. However, while that may be the case with earthquakes, it is certainly not the case with regard to climate change, whose destructive effects can be tackled in advance in a number of ways. Needless to say, no country on Earth is immune to nature’s distorted hostilities or strong enough to cope with them alone. I am therefore pleased to be able to inform the Assembly that Albania has been working hard to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 45 per cent in the next decade and achieving net- zero emissions by 2050, in accordance with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. In addition, we have adopted a national climate change strategy, a mitigation action plan for greenhouse-gas emissions and a national climate-change adaptation plan, making Albania the first and so far the only country in the Western Balkans with a consolidated strategy on climate change.
We have undertaken many other initiatives to keep our skies blue and make our future horizon greener. New energy-efficiency standards in construction, a forthcoming ban on non-degradable plastic bags, a moratorium on hunting and logging and a growing tree-planting campaign are only a part of our ambition to make Albania a leading example for the green agenda. Those endeavours also serve as a reminder that climate action requires daily commitment. Not only is that true of action on climate change, it is certainly also true of the other great concern that we all share in today’s world — security.
An experienced army general once said that there are two types of countries in the world — small countries, and countries that are not aware that ultimately they too are small. Albania might be a small country from a global perspective, but it is aware of its global responsibility. During Albania’s decade of NATO membership, and regardless of the vast challenges we have faced, we have deployed troops to Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Mali and Afghanistan in order to make our mark in a world that should be safer and in hopes of a brighter future. Only a few months ago, two Albanian soldiers serving in NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Latvia lost their lives in the line of duty while dismantling explosives. Albania proudly remembers them today, at the world’s largest gathering of nations. Their martyrdom is a universal reminder of the noblest of causes, the protection of freedom and security and the provision of security to maintain freedom.
Despite that tragic loss, which cut deeply and has left a void in our souls, Albania is still firmly willing and ready to take up new responsibilities in Iraq in support of that country’s efforts to achieve stability. Even after the triumph of the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was declared, every country in the Assembly should be aware of the risks that come with post-caliphate metamorphosis. The small terrorist groups that may seem to have finally disappeared can still retain their capacity to launch brutal attacks. Neither the size of their territory nor their geographic location should prevent the world’s nations from carrying out their responsibilities and meeting their obligations.
Albania is particularly concerned about Iran’s destabilizing behaviour in the Middle East, but also by its often disruptive actions with regard to the Iranian opposition community, which has suffered despicable massacres and which my country is now generously hosting. We have had to respond firmly to various illicit activities against our national security interests and we stand firmly with countries that have been hurt by such activities, whether at sea or on land. No country is too small to take on its global responsibilities, regardless of its population, size or geographic location.
Albania will build on its multilateral experience by taking on and increasing its multilateral commitments. Next year Albania will chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for 2020, with a special focus on the protracted conflicts in and around Ukraine, Nagorno Karabakh and Transnistria, to mention only a few. Albania will also devote special attention to fighting any form of discrimination, particularly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, by relying on its exemplary interreligious tolerance, and by strengthening the role of women in peacebuilding activities, reflecting our nation’s feminist spirit. For a century Albania has provided a historical example of how harmony among Muslims, whether Sunni or Bektashi, Christians, whether Catholic or Orthodox, and Jews is not only possible but also socially fruitful. Though we are often regarded as a Muslim-majority country, we are also the land of Mother Teresa, now Saint Teresa, who is our highest national symbol and most distinguished daughter. Perhaps it is her human solidarity and commitment to universal goodness that should still guide us as we face the great threats to peace and security all over the world today.
Given its exceptional historical record and now very mature multilateral experience, Albania is no longer concealing its ambition to serve as a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2022 and 2023. I therefore call on all nations here today to take positive note of our Security Council bid for 2022. However, having global ambitions does not mean ignoring regional issues. My region of the Western Balkans has a long history of oppression and conflict and suffered under two of the cruellest evils of the twentieth century, communist dictatorships and inter-ethnic wars. As a result, while in the heart of Europe, the Western Balkans is its most underdeveloped region, with a number of disputes that still continue. We especially celebrated the Prespa agreement, which ended a decades-long dispute between Greece and North Macedonia. Albania was actively engaged in making it possible, and we see it as an inspiring example for the settlement of other ongoing disputes.
In order to build stronger ties and streamline cooperation by building a road map for connectivity and mobility in our region, Albania is working closely with Kosovo, Montenegro and North Macedonia, and looks forward to working with Serbia, too. However, while the climate for regional cooperation has improved significantly, the open dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and Serbia is still an obstacle to the entire region’s potential for development. Regardless of the issues that a young democracy like that of Kosovo might naturally face, it is quite clear that more than a decade after declaring independence, the Republic of Kosovo has managed to build a vibrant democracy and prove itself a reliable regional partner that has never wavered in its Euro-Atlantic commitment.
The time has come for all members of the Assembly — above all our Serbian friends — to recognize Kosovo’s independence, do justice to history and acknowledge reality, as the only reliable basis for building a better, common future. I therefore call on Serbia to recognize that an independent Kosovo is a reality that cannot be reversed and therefore to stop living in denial and make history — for themselves and for the world — by accepting reality. It is also important that Kosovo be given the opportunity to join all international and regional organizations that any independent sovereign country in the world has a right to join.
It is my sincere hope and daily commitment that the countries of the Western Balkans will manage to break once and for all with their past and work together to build their economies, integrate their markets and provide a better future, thinking and working for their children and ceasing to talk about their ghosts from the past. In that regard, I must underline a fact that I have stressed repeatedly to my European colleagues, which is that it is inexcusable that Kosovo, a country of just 2 million people, remains the only country in Europe today whose people remain isolated from the entire network of the visa-liberalization regime.
Since 2014, more than 100 million people have been added to the multitudes of people who can enter the European Union (EU) without a visa. How is it possible that the EU can still hold 2 million people hostage who have fought hard for their freedom and are firmly committed to the EU perspective? I urge the EU to stop this nonsense. On that note, I must also emphasize that the stability, security, prosperity and democracy of the region can be guaranteed only by adopting the European perspective. For this reason, a positive response to Albania and North Macedonia’s ambitions for opening accession talks will not be a mere acknowledgment of their merits, but also strategically the wisest decision by the EU for the EU.
When the first man stepped on the moon in the late 1960s — which, by the way, was a sign not only that humankind was expanding the limits of its universe, but also that it was heading into its future — Albania’s universe was extremely narrow and its orientation was backward. As the most isolated country on earth, Albania was the North Korea of Europe of its day. While the heritage of the past still affects the dynamics of our country in multiple ways, Albania has today joined the nations of the world in trying to build a brighter future by carrying out its institutional tasks in accordance with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. My Government considers the implementation of the 2030 Agenda to be an important part of Albania’s vision for development and integration. Indeed, we see it as an important complement to the agenda determined by our efforts to join the European Union. Our national strategy for development and integration combines our agenda for European integration with the 2030 Agenda.
We are committed to both these agendas for a very simple reason. We believe that they constitute a road map for modernizing our country and institutions and for elevating our society. Among the most important milestones of that agenda are our action plans on Roma — Egyptians — and on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and persons with disabilities. They contain concrete plans that are being implemented in order to guarantee the rights of these groups, which have very often been unfairly and unjustly marginalized. In addition, we have made great progress in terms of gender equality, with more women than ever before represented in Government, Parliament, regional councils and public administration. I am very proud to say that there are more women than men in my Government, which a good indicator of success.
In his memorable visit to Tirana in 2014, Pope Francis advised the youth of Albania to fly higher and higher and higher but never to forget their nest. While that sounds almost like divine advice, it is also an absolutely realistic demand, not only for Albania but it would seem for the entire region. In the context of our broad ambition to convert the brain-drain phenomenon into a process of brain circulation, we are pursuing special programmes to enable the members of our diaspora to anchor their futures in their country of origin.
There is one more element that I would be remiss not to mention, which is Albania’s unprecedented justice reform. The process of conducting a major clean-up by removing corrupt judges and prosecutors from the system, as well as establishing new judicial institutions tailored to tackling corruption and organized crime at the highest levels, is transforming the entire face of the country. The decades of corruption in the judiciary not only prevented justice from being served, it also became an impediment to ensuring that justice was the rule of our daily existence as a society. As the new justice system gradually takes shape and becomes fully operational, we hope that it will seriously curtail all acts of corruption and abuse of power and that it will finally ensure the triumph of a sense of justice and the rule of law throughout my country, a country I love deeply and am proud to represent in this Hall today.