General Assembly Session 62 meeting 69

The President

I should like to convey to the Government and people of Algeria the General Assembly's profound sorrow at the tragic events that targeted United Nations premises in Algiers yesterday. Our deepest sympathy and condolences are also extended to the families of the United Nations staff members who were killed or wounded as a result of the bomb attack.

I invite representatives to stand and observe a minute of silent prayer or meditation.

The President

The Assembly will hear a message by video by the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, who is currently in Bali, Indonesia.

The Secretary-General

It is close to midnight here in Bali, but I feel compelled to most urgently address the General Assembly in the wake of the terrorist attack on the United Nations offices in Algiers.

Words cannot express my sense of shock and outrage. This was a despicable strike against individuals serving humanity's highest ideals under the United Nations banner. One head of Government speaking today in Bali said it well: those serving the United Nations serve us all, and so this was an attack on all of us.

We are still counting the dead, tending to the wounded and looking for the missing, not only from our own United Nations staff, but also innocent Algerians. My heart goes out to the victims. Their sacrifice cannot and shall not be forgotten.

I spoke to President Bouteflika this evening to express my deepest condolences to the people of Algeria and to the families of the victims. I asked the President to take all necessary measures to ensure the security of United Nations personnel.

I have also asked the United Nations Development Programme Administrator, Mr. Kemal Dervis, and other senior officials to proceed to Algiers immediately. They will determine how best to aid those injured in the attack and their families. The security and welfare of United Nations staff is paramount. We will take every measure to ensure their safety in Algeria and elsewhere, beginning with an immediate review of our security precautions and policies.

We all remember the attack of 19 August 2003 against United Nations headquarters in Baghdad. It claimed the lives of some of our best and brightest, among them Sergio Vieira de Mello and many Iraqis. We have taken many measures since then to enhance the security of our staff and premises around the world.

Meanwhile, our brave men and women continue their difficult and dangerous work. Our mission has been and will always be to help those most in need. The Baghdad attack will not deter us. Neither will this most recent attack. Our colleagues in Algiers would ask no less.

In Algiers, we have today one more ugly reminder that terrorism remains the scourge of our times. The international community must be resolute in opposing those who prey on the innocent and vulnerable and those, like the United Nations, that seek only to help them. As Secretary-General, I wish to assure members of this body that I will continue to work with them in meeting that ever-present danger.

Let us salute our brave men and women. Let us know that this attack on the United Nations is an attack on us all and our highest ideals. I call on this General Assembly to stand united. We must all condemn this deed, just as we must work together to bring its vile perpetrators to justice.

The President

I give the floor to Her Excellency Ms. Carmen Alicia Maldonado De Wennier, Secretary for Social Welfare of Guatemala.

Ms. De Wennier (Guatemala)

The delegation of Guatemala is honoured to address this High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly, at which our common goal is to ensure the higher interests of children and to address the vicissitudes we must all endure in preparing a better world for them.

We thank the Secretary-General for having prepared the report on progress achieved. All such progress is of the highest value. Every country has striven to achieve results and has prepared plans and programmes based on its own cultural wealth, according pride of place to boys and girls alike.

Guatemala is a young country and, like all in our situation, has its own problems with a population more than 50 per cent of which is comprised of children and young people under 25 years of age, roughly 5 million of whom are under 5. That group is our human capital and efforts are therefore now beginning to focus on the comprehensive development of those children.

In compliance with commitments made in the Plan of Action to generate conditions conducive to providing children and young people with a world in which they can develop in dignity, we have launched a number of measures that we deem to represent progress in various spheres and which we share with the General Assembly today.

The Ministry of Education has achieved near complete coverage in primary schooling. We have achieved 97 per cent this year, and hope to include the remaining 3 per cent next year with formal, semi-formal and remote education programmes. Working within the President's Secretariat for Social Well-being, the national agency that identifies, coordinates and supervises preventive and family and community enhancement efforts, as well as the rehabilitation and resocialization of adolescents facing criminal prosecution, we provide programmes that offer alternatives to incarceration, including monitored freedom and community services.

Actions undertaken focus on the individual as a complete human being -- head, heart and body. We cannot envisage a future managed by a generation that is unable to think, feel and act. We start from the premise that we must listen to what the hearts of our children are telling us. We have to cure not only physical but spiritual hunger as well.

We are dealing in all our programmes with children with various physical and mental disabilities. In a common effort of the Government, civil society organizations devoted to children, and international organizations, in 2003 we approved and implemented a law on the comprehensive protection of children and adolescents based on the best interests of children. On that basis, as of 2004 we launched a public policy for the protection of children and youth and a plan of action that entail obligations both for Government institutions and civil society organizations. In the context of that plan, programmes have been successfully developed, including one entitled "Growing Up Healthy in the Home", led by the First Lady's office of public works. National coverage reaches the most distant and vulnerable regions of the country, where the largest number of indigenous and poor populations are concentrated.

Those programmes enlist mothers as managers of development in educational processes, maternal care, health care and child nutrition. The campaign against HIV/AIDS, particularly vertical mother-to-child transmission, is of particular concern to the State. We have formulated and implemented a strategic national plan to reduce HIV/AIDS. Guatemala, vulnerable to natural phenomena as a result of severe weather, has prepared and implemented, in concert with UNICEF and State institutions, a handbook on how to care for abandoned children, children without adult care and children at risk.

Caring for those who continue to suffer from one terrible evil affecting our young people and children is also an issue of major concern. Among the specific actions we have taken to prosecute those who traffic in children, we have established for the first time an office within our prosecutorial agency, the Guatemalan Public Ministry, to address those perpetrators and the phenomenon of irregular adoptions. A strategic plan has been launched to implement national policies to combat trafficking in persons.

We have made the issue of adoption a priority over the past four years. In that regard, my country has ratified its accession to The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Cooperation in respect of Intercountry Adoption, which will enter into force in Guatemala on 31 December. On Monday, the children's parliament symbolically debated and adopted a law in line with The Hague Convention; that law was adopted by our Congress yesterday. The voices of the children who speak to the conscience of adults has finally been heard.

On 14 January, there will be a change of Government, and UNICEF has suggested a road map for the new authorities. Guatemala needs continuity in its programmes to attain the Millennium Development Goals. We have learned from the experiences of such brotherly countries as Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Israel, Mexico and Peru, which have advised us with regard to many of our programmes. We have in common an unfinished task; our work has only just begun.

We are committed to achieving a world fit for children. Guatemala supports the declaration to be adopted at the end of this Commemorative High-level Plenary Meeting. If we seek to achieve our goals, let us follow the light and not lose our way. Let us hear the clamour of the innocent hearts of our children and work with the maturity and, above all, the resolve of adults. Working together, we will achieve those goals.

The President

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