| Date | 18 October 2004 |
|---|---|
| Started | 15:00 |
| Ended | 18:20 |
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Agenda items 38 and 46 (continued)
New Partnership for Africa's Development: progress in implementation and international support
(a) New Partnership for Africa's Development: progress in implementation and international support
Report of the Secretary-General (A/59/206)
(b) Causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa
Report of the Secretary-General (A/59/285)
2001-2010: Decade to Roll Back Malaria in Developing Countries, Particularly in Africa
Note by the Secretary-General (A/59/261)
Mr. Benmellouk (Morocco)
First, we would like to thank the Secretary-General for his thorough reports on progress in the implementation of New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) (A/59/206) and the causes of conflict in Africa (A/59/285) and his note on malaria (A/59/261). We share the view of the Secretary-General that African countries have shown the political will to continue implementing NEPAD and that African partners are willing to lend support to the efforts of the African countries to reform their macroeconomic policy and improve democracy and governance.
A major effort has been made to consolidate democracy in Africa and to strengthen conflict prevention and settlement. Similar efforts have been made to invest in human resources and to meet the most elementary needs of the people in terms of health, education, access to drinking water and decent housing. However, despite these sustained efforts to create a national environment that is conducive to investment and sustainable growth, Africa continues to suffer from major handicaps that hamper its economic and social development and which could jeopardize the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.
The report of the Secretary-General on the follow-up to the Millennium Declaration (A/59/282) gives us a clear picture of the socio-economic situation in Africa. All regions of the world are on the right track for attaining the Goals, except for Africa, where poverty has worsened. More than half of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than a dollar a day. The growth rates of the African countries remain very low in terms of halving poverty by the year 2015. The growth rate that we saw on 2003 is about 3.6 per cent, which is far from the goal of an annual growth rate of 7 per cent.
Africa suffers from an enormous backwardness in terms of basic infrastructure, hospitals, roads, ports and electrical and telephone networks. The continent suffers from the most serious kinds of infectious diseases. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria threaten Africans and threaten the sustainable development of Africa. According to the Secretary-General, AIDS could destabilize African countries and thwart their ability to protect their citizens, their borders and their efforts to combat terrorism. These are examples of structural handicaps and of problems that are daily being faced by African leaders.
The greatest difficulty encountered so far by African countries lies in the lack of financial resources. Indeed, the mobilization of national resources is not in itself enough to guarantee proper financing for socio-economic development programmes, the consolidation of peace and the promotion of sustainable development.
International support remains crucial to make NEPAD a success. In the Declaration on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (resolution 57/2), adopted by the General Assembly in 2002, the developed countries pledged to lend the necessary support for the implementation of NEPAD and to live up to their international commitments, particularly those entered into in the Monterrey Consensus. More specifically, measures have to be taken to attain the goals and levels set for official development assistance (ODA) as a percentage of gross national product in order to resolve the problem of external debt, to open markets to exports from African countries, to promote and facilitate investment in those countries and to support them in attaining the Millennium Development Goals.
In that regard, the report of the Secretary-General notes a slight increase in the level of ODA to Africa: it has increased from $16 billion in 2000 to approximately $23 billion in 2003. We welcome that positive trend and encourage donors to continue their efforts to reach the international goals set.
We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our support for the efforts made by various development partners to explore new avenues to mobilize additional financial resources. We also welcome the initiative of Brazil, France, Chile and Spain with respect to poverty eradication and the elimination of hunger, and the proposal of the technical working group on new modes of financing. Those proposals should be seriously studied by the Assembly.
The persistence of poverty could call into question all the efforts made by African countries that have truly committed themselves to implementing NEPAD's values and principles by redoubling their efforts to promote democracy, good governance and human rights and reforming their macroeconomic policies. At the present time, poverty remains one of the major threats to the stability and security of many regions, indeed, the entire world. We need to join forces and lend Africa the necessary support and solidarity to enable it to root out the poverty and despair of its people, as well as to combat the underlying causes of conflicts, which, unfortunately, continue to sow division among the peoples of Africa.
Mr. Benmellouk (Morocco)
Indeed, despite efforts made by the African countries and by the international community, the continent remains divided by conflicts and political crises. Most military conflicts in the world are taking place in Africa, and almost all of the subregions of that continent are affected by conflict or at risk of being affected.
My delegation welcomes the statement made by the Secretary-General in his report on the causes of conflict in Africa that there has been considerably progress in resolving conflicts in Africa since 1998. Only six African countries can be considered to be in a situation of armed conflict and very few others are facing deep political crises. The progress that has been made in restoring peace to certain areas of Africa attests to the effectiveness of the approach taken by Organization. The appointment by the Secretary-General of special mediators and the establishment of special commissions to examine the sources of disputes are measures that have produced results and should therefore be supported.
Clearly, however, peace-building efforts cannot be fully effective without the cooperation of the parties concerned, that is, unless the territorial integrity of each country is respected and there is substantial international assistance provided at every stage -- from cessation of hostilities, through national reconciliation, including peace-building and the return of refugees and displaced persons -- all carried out in conformity with international law. We believe that the development of regional and subregional cooperation is key to preventing the escalation of conflicts and ethnic rivalry, as well as the most effective way to overcome situations of conflict -- potential or existing -- in a continent which has inherited artificial borders from the colonial era.
The Kingdom of Morocco, in solidarity with our African brothers, will spare no effort to advance the cause of peace in Africa, as our participation in various United Nations peacekeeping operations and our political mediation initiatives to build peace in Africa bear witness. Morocco is also committed to building regional and subregional cooperation, as well as economic integration, which will further strengthen the trust among neighbouring countries and allow for the establishment of a solid basis for sustainable peace and development. Morocco's initiative to guarantee free access for the exports of African countries and the financial investment, free trade, technological and economic cooperation agreements signed with a number of countries will further strengthen economic and commercial relations among African countries and help us to move towards attainment of the NEPAD goals.
Mr. Smaili (Algeria)
--> -->
| <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> | Python 2.6.6: /usr/bin/python Wed Jun 19 13:48:01 2013 |
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in |
| 194 if __name__ == "__main__": |
| 195 pathpart = os.getenv("PATH_INFO") |
| 196 maintrunk(pathpart) |
| 197 |
| 198 |
| maintrunk = <function maintrunk>, pathpart = '/generalassembly_59/meeting_34' |
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in maintrunk(pathpart='/generalassembly_59/meeting_34') |
| 131 elif pagefunc == "gameeting": |
| 132 LogIncomingDB(hmap["docid"], hmap["gadice"] or "0", referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| 133 WriteHTML(hmap["htmlfile"], hmap["pdfinfo"], hmap["gadice"], hmap["highlightdoclink"]) |
| 134 elif pagefunc == "agendanumexpanded": |
| 135 LogIncomingDB(pagefunc, hmap["agendanum"], referrer, ipaddress, useragent, remadeurl) |
| global WriteHTML = <function WriteHTML>, hmap = {'docid': 'A-59-PV.34', 'gadice': '', 'gameeting': 34, 'gasession': 59, 'highlightdoclink': None, 'htmlfile': '/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-59-PV.34.html', 'pagefunc': 'gameeting', 'pdfinfo': <pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>} |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteHTML(fhtml='/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-59-PV.34.html', pdfinfo=<pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>, gadice='', highlightth=None) |
| 322 if dclass == "spoken": |
| 323 if not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice: |
| 324 WriteSpoken(gid, dtextmu, councilpresidentnation) |
| 325 elif dclass == "subheading": |
| 326 if agendagidcurrent and (not gadice or agendagidcurrent == gadice): |
| global WriteSpoken = <function WriteSpoken>, gid = u'pg003-bk01', dtextmu = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Smai...ake more committed steps in favour of Africa.</p>', councilpresidentnation = None |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteSpoken(gid=u'pg003-bk01', dtext=u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Smai...ake more committed steps in favour of Africa.</p>', councilpresidentnation=None) |
| 69 print '</cite>' |
| 70 |
| 71 print dtext[mspek.end(0):] |
| 72 |
| 73 print '</div>' |
| dtext = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">Mr. Smai...ake more committed steps in favour of Africa.</p>', mspek = <_sre.SRE_Match object>, mspek.end = <built-in method end of _sre.SRE_Match object> |
<type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'>: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xf4' in position 2214: ordinal not in range(128)
args =
('ascii', u'\n\t<p id="pg003-bk01-pa01">The joint consideratio...ake more committed steps in favour of Africa.</p>', 2214, 2215, 'ordinal not in range(128)')
encoding =
'ascii'
end =
2215
message =
''
object =
u'\n\t<p id="pg003-bk01-pa01">The joint consideratio...ake more committed steps in favour of Africa.</p>'
reason =
'ordinal not in range(128)'
start =
2214