General Assembly Session 62 meeting 94

Mr. Talbot (Guyana)

Your initiative, Mr. President, to convene a thematic debate on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is most timely and welcome. Guyana is pleased to contribute to the deliberations on these important issues. In doing so, my delegation associates itself fully with the statements delivered by the representative of Antigua and Barbuda on behalf of the Group of 77 and China and by the representative of Mexico on behalf of the Rio Group.

The MDGs are an important dimension of the international development agenda. They represent a key focus of global efforts to build a better world in the twenty-first century, one where people everywhere live in dignity, free from want and fear and in an environment protected from the ravages of human activity. Our debate focuses on hunger and poverty, education and health: areas where the need for progress is especially urgent. Progress in those areas is of course integrally linked with achievements in respect of other Goals, notably those related to the empowerment of women, environmental sustainability and the strengthening of the global partnership.

The theme of our present debate aptly captures our shared recognition of the fact that progress towards the achievement of the MDGs on the whole is currently off track, despite the many instances of successful interventions reported by various countries and stakeholders in this very debate and the fact that the international community has the means to address the gaps that persist. As noted in the background information for this discussion, some 143 million children under the age of 5 in the developing world continue to suffer from inadequate nutrition. In a $65-trillion world economy, such a situation is nothing less than a call to resolute action. At the midpoint en route to 2015, our actions must be imbued with a new sense of urgency, and our partnerships with a renewed vitality, to ensure that the MDG agenda is put back on track.

Speaking from a national perspective, the Guyana MDG report for 2007, which summarizes my country's efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, reveals that progress at the national level has been modest and uneven in recent years. Guyana has attained near universal primary education, but attention to some dimensions, such as improving the percentage of trained teachers and the student-teacher ratio, continues to be necessary. The retention of trained teachers, many of whom have been lost to developed countries and other regions, is also a major challenge.

Our country is on track to achieve targets in relation to the eradication of extreme hunger, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and ensuring environmental sustainability. However, intensified efforts are needed to make the attainment of targets in relation to the eradication of extreme poverty and combating HIV/AIDS more likely, as well as to consolidate the encouraging gains made recently towards eliminating the threat of malaria.

On the other hand, should current trends continue, achieving the targets set for reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating other major diseases may prove elusive.

Thankfully, South-South cooperation, including extensive medical assistance from the Republic of Cuba, has contributed in great measure to developing Guyana's capacity to address challenges in the health sector. We anticipate that an increase in the number of trained medical personnel, among other things, will make an appreciable difference in Guyana's indices in the health area over the medium to long term.

The attainment of the MDGs in Guyana remains firmly anchored in our country's poverty reduction strategy. The level of success in countering significant structural economic challenges and maintaining favourable national economic conditions overall will directly impact the prospects for attainment of the Goals by our country. At the centre of those endeavours is the need to improve agricultural production and productivity. Guyana's experience indicates that sustained economic growth remains a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to ensure progress towards the MDGs. Indeed, a number of further lessons can be drawn from the MDG experience that bear mention in our debate.

First, significant progress is possible with the scaling up of assistance and efforts. As a country participating in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Debt Initiative, Guyana has benefited from significant multilateral and bilateral debt relief. The substantial decline in debt servicing has afforded us the opportunity to channel increasingly more of our resources towards poverty reduction. The higher level of investment in the social sectors has provided the basis for the more positive trends in achievement that we have begun to see recently. The programme on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, which is facilitated with assistance from the United States through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, provides a good example of the impact of scaled-up external assistance. Before the initiation of that programme in Guyana, in 2001, 35 per cent of children born to infected mothers were also born with the HIV/AIDS virus. By 2005, in areas where the programme was accessible, the percentage had dropped to an average of 5 per cent.

Secondly, the extent of progress is currently circumscribed mainly by the lack of resources, and by issues of sustainability where previous assistance had been received. There have been notable shortfalls in donor pledges and disbursement of financial resources to implement our poverty reduction strategy. For instance, from 2003 to 2006, Guyana received just one fifth of the amount pledged -- and needed -- for support to achieve the MDGs. Important resource gaps have been identified. The additional resources that are required are beyond the capacity of Guyana's current macroeconomic programme. The gap between resource commitments and disbursements therefore needs to be closed as a matter of urgency.

A third lesson is that a holistic approach remains the best guarantee for the successful achievement of the MDGs, given the interrelated nature of the challenges to be addressed. One of the more formidable of Guyana's challenges in meeting the MDGs is the problem of reducing the incidence of communicable diseases. It was widely accepted that our country had overcome the challenge posed by tuberculosis many years ago. However, with the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the incidence of tuberculosis has resurfaced, to the extent that it is now recognized as a foremost public health challenge. In this instance, treating tuberculosis effectively is intricately linked to effectively addressing the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS, which of course is also closely linked with progress in other socio-economic areas.

Going forward, Guyana's critical challenges include addressing impediments to economic growth, including the maintenance of debt sustainability, strengthening agricultural production and productivity, addressing capacity-building needs and obstacles to resource absorption, optimizing the resource envelope, coping with rapidly rising prices for basic food items and energy, improving monitoring and evaluation methods, addressing competing priorities such as those occasioned by climate change, dealing with crime and security and exogenous shocks, mainstreaming gender issues and developing a national strategy for achieving the MDGs in Guyana.

The challenge from climate change is particularly real for a country like ours, which on the coasts is below sea level and subject to extensive flooding and which suffered a loss of nearly 60 per cent of its gross domestic product as a result of the last major inundation, in 2005. Care has to be taken to ensure that meeting the real challenge posed by climate change does not exacerbate the competition for resources to be devoted to the MDG challenge.

In conclusion, my delegation wishes to underscore the fact that many gaps persist in the global effort to ensure the achievement of the MDGs by 2015. One is the relatively limited attention accorded to agriculture and food security. As the World Bank has noted, about 70 per cent of the MDG target group live in rural areas, particularly in Asia and Africa. For most of the rural poor, including in countries such as my own, agriculture is a crucial component in the successful attainment of the MDGs. Increased global investment in agriculture and food security is therefore essential to the success of the MDG agenda.

Mr. Yohannes (Ethiopia)

First of all, I would like to express my delegation's appreciation to you, Mr. President, for organizing this thematic debate around the theme "Recognizing the achievements, addressing the challenges and getting back on track to achieve the MDGs by 2015". The debate is timely, as we are at the midpoint in the process of implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and must take stock of what has been accomplished so far and determine what tasks remain to be accomplished in order to achieve the Goals before the target date.

My delegation associates itself with the statements made on behalf of the Group of 77 and China and the African Group.

As indicated by various United Nations reports and previous General Assembly debates on the MDGs, the progress achieved so far has not been very encouraging, although varying degrees of progress has been made by countries. The mixed outcome of the efforts made, however, should not be viewed as lagging behind, but as an impetus for a further redoubling of our efforts and commitments to achieve the Goals.

The challenges associated with the implementation of the MDGs are obvious and have been discussed at various times and on various occasions in the past. But now that we are halfway through the MDG implementation process, it is high time that we identify the key challenges and take concrete actions to address them effectively and in a timely fashion. It has been repeatedly stressed that, unless we secure an adequate global partnership, efforts by developing countries alone will not yield the results that we all wish to see -- at least not before the deadline.

Mr. Yohannes (Ethiopia)

It is obvious that our development partners have failed to deliver on their promises to implement the Monterrey Consensus, the Millennium Declaration and other internationally agreed commitments. That lack of partnership, coupled with the increasingly volatile and difficult global economic situation, has compounded the challenges already being faced by developing countries, has negated whatever limited progress they may have achieved thus far in the process and has increased the magnitude of the difficulties.

My delegation fully shares the view that scaling up investment in agriculture, infrastructure and social sectors should be accorded paramount importance. In order to accelerate industrial development and increase overall economic growth, it is essential to develop the agricultural sector, which is crucial in ensuring the provision of inputs for industry and achieving food security. The emphasis placed on agriculture by our development partners and by the international financial institutions, however, has been inadequate, rendering weak and ineffective that sector's significant contributions to the efforts of developing nations to combat hunger and poverty. Likewise, the lack of a sufficient and constant supply of resources in the social sectors, such as health -- since the majority of the people in developing countries suffer from preventable and curable diseases -- and education, an area whose contribution to capacity-building is critical, is one of the major obstacles to achieving the MDGs.

Ethiopia, with its agrarian economy, has duly recognized the key role of the agricultural sector in the economy and its quick, positive impact, right from the beginning, on the growth of the other economic and social sectors. The agricultural sector provides critical resources in terms of the human power and the natural resources needed to achieve fast development, and it is the major source of foreign exchange.

That is why the Government of Ethiopia has prepared an agricultural development-led industrialization strategy with the objective of according primacy to the agricultural sector as the driving force behind overall development. Under the strategy, thousands of development agents have been trained through agricultural technical and vocational education and training institutions, and more than 5,000 farmer training centres have been established to support farmers in increasing agricultural production enough to meet local needs and to make the country competitive in world markets, with comparative advantages. An improved package of extension services has been made available in accordance with existing environmental and market conditions; these are designed to address problems related to production and productivity.

For those and other reasons, the sector has so far been registering steady growth in terms of production and, together with strong export performance, has contributed to the achievement of tangible results in speeding up economic growth in recent years. During the current budget year alone, we have so far achieved 10.8 per cent economic growth, and we have also registered average economic growth of 10 per cent for five years in a row. That significant economic performance also happens to be above the average rate of economic growth for countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ethiopia, in addition to being among the first countries to prepare and implement its Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, has made positive progress in implementing the MDGs. In fact, during the preparation of the now-completed Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme at the dawn of the new Ethiopian millennium, the Government seized the opportunity to incorporate the MDGs into our national development plan. In our efforts, we have achieved encouraging results that should make us optimistic that we will meet the targets of some of the Goals.

With regard to primary education coverage, the number of children in primary schools increased from 8.1 million in 2002 to 12.6 million in 2006. That brought the gross enrolment rate from 61.6 per cent in 2002 to 91.3 per cent in 2006. The enrolment ratio for females also increased, from 52.2 per cent in 2002 to 83.9 per cent in 2006.

The Government of Ethiopia also recognizes that the poor health status of its citizens is a serious constraint on economic productivity and impedes efforts to reduce poverty and combat hunger. Common poverty-related diseases, including malaria, tuberculosis, childhood illnesses and HIV/AIDS, continue to cut short the lives of Ethiopians. The Government, fully supporting the emphasis on health in the MDGs, has developed and has begun to implement a 20-year health sector development programme. Early results of its implementation indicate that access to health services has risen from 52 to 72 per cent and that the under-five and infant mortality rates have both declined, from 167 to 123 per 1,000 people and from 97 to 77 per 1,000, respectively, all in five years.

The Government, in its determination to build on what has been achieved over the years, has designed a comprehensive five-year development plan, called the Plan to Accelerate Sustainable Development to End Poverty. The plan is now being implemented, with the aim of carrying forward important strategic objectives being pursued under the completed Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme. Not only will the agricultural and social sectors continue to receive the highest priority and attention in our development, but other important sectors such as energy and infrastructure development will also be accorded the emphasis that they need and deserve. The measures taken to develop the energy sector, by building the capacity of our national power-generation schemes for rural electrification and electricity exporting programmes, have been very encouraging so far.

The Government's efforts to expand the country's national road network outward from the capital in all four directions and to develop communication infrastructures have also started to have a positive impact on the growth of the economy. Both sectors will undoubtedly continue to enjoy the Government's full support, as they are crucial in achieving the MDGs and other internationally agreed development goals. Although developing countries are doing their best to make sure that they do not remain behind, they need to secure an adequate and predictable supply of resources from our development partners.

My delegation therefore calls for an increase in pro-poor investment in order to enable developing countries, especially those in Africa, to achieve the MDGs by the target date. The full and timely realization of the international community's commitment to meet the target of allocating 0.7 per cent of gross national income as official development assistance is highly imperative.

We also call upon the international community to level the playing field for African countries so they can fairly compete in international markets and to take additional measures for the effective implementation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act and the Everything but Arms initiative.

By delivering on all promises in terms of support in financing and by our partners taking the urgent, necessary steps with regard to the implementation of major development initiatives, we believe that the targets of the MDGs will be achievable, despite the multifaceted challenges we are facing now.

Mr. Ould Hadrami (Mauritania)

At the outset and on behalf of my delegation, I would like to congratulate the President of The General Assembly on having convened this high-level debate on the theme "Recognizing the achievements, addressing the challenges and getting back on track to achieve the MDGs by 2015". Since assuming the presidency of the General Assembly, Mr. Kerim has taken many initiatives within your mandate, particularly with regard to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). I would like also to congratulate the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, on his tireless efforts towards the same end and for having fully involved all relevant bodies of the United Nations system in order to achieve the MDGs.

Mauritania aligns itself with the statement made by the representatives of Antigua and Barbuda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh on behalf, respectively, of the Group of 77 and China, the Group of African States and the least developed countries.

This high-level debate is an important milestone in assessing the progress made so far towards achieving the MDGs, as well as the difficulties that have been encountered in this endeavour. At the half-way point, we must admit that the hoped-for results on the MDGs are far from being achieved. Even if some countries have made progress, for many, particularly in Africa, much remains to be done in terms of combating poverty and hunger and improving education and health, not to mention all the other areas. It is urgent that the international community genuinely mobilize itself towards the achievement of the MDGs by providing the resources and means necessary to reach that objective.

Following free and fair elections in 2007, Mauritania is currently a democratic country with institutions based on the people's will and where the rule of law exists and democratic freedoms are respected. The Government has formulated a three-year development programme. In order to finance this programme, the assistance of development partners was requested at a round table held in Paris in 2007. At that event, approximately $1.9 billion was pledged. The Mauritanian authorities are working with donors, to monitor the status of the use of the pledged funds while taking the necessary steps to guarantee swift implementation and ensuring that all sectors work together towards carrying out projects to which the international community has committed itself. With the mobilization of the resources agreed at the Paris round table, Mauritania will be able to make good progress towards achieving the MDGs, beginning with strengthening its poverty alleviation programme.

With regard to health, my Government's efforts have focused on improving the quantity and quality of the services offered to the population. In this framework, we will be taking major steps, inter alia, to build and extend the health infrastructure network, improve the supply and distribution of medicine and prevent the most widespread illnesses.

The midterm plan for our Health and Nutrition Support Programme is being reviewed. The Programme was launched three years ago and aimed at improving the effectiveness of the health sector in Mauritania, in particular with respect to promoting quality care and to changing the mindset of mothers regarding the nutrition of young children. This programme is helping to improve people's health and nutrition by improving the living standards of pregnant women and nursing mothers and children under 2 years of age, by helping to spread the consumption of iodized salt and by building the capacity of health care institutions.

With regard to HIV/AIDS, a national awareness campaign is under way to draw attention to the dangers of this disease and to explain how it is transmitted and how to protect oneself. In this framework, 70 non-governmental organizations and 52 women's cooperatives have received funding.

The National Institute of Medical Specialists is providing on-the-job training in surgery and paediatrics; there has been improvement in the staffing of regional hospitals. The Institute has also organized visits by surgeons to the interior of the country to bring health care to the people. Despite our efforts, the ratios for both generalists and specialists continue to be below those recommended by the World Health Organization.

In the area of education, a status report is being prepared to introduce major reforms to enable that sector to meet human resource requirements, based on appropriate training and taking account of the realities of the contemporary world and the demands of globalization.

Concerning gender equality and the empowerment of women, Mauritania has taken important steps by making men and women equal under the law. The country's development strategy, which aims to reduce the percentage of Mauritanians living under the poverty line to 17 per cent, puts Mauritanian women at the core of its anti-poverty strategy. To this end, special priority has been given to women in terms of building their capacity to participate in economic life by emphasizing the improvement of women's access to the market through better access to bank loans, microcredit and savings; access to secure property rights; and increased participation by women, particularly women heads of household, in wealth-generating activities.

In terms of employment of women in the public sector, major progress has been made since Mr. Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdellahi assumed the presidency of the Republic in April 2007. For the first time in Mauritania's history, women have been appointed by the President to senior posts, as ambassadors, regional governors, prefects and other senior positions which were previously reserved to men.

Furthermore, by law there is a 20 per cent quota for women in the two chambers of the parliament and in municipal councils. Mauritanian women are gaining all their rights and achieving full equality with men under laws guaranteeing the development and empowerment of a group that represents more than 50 per cent of the population.

The efforts being made by Mauritania cannot, on their own, ensure that we achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015; the solidarity and support of the international community are also needed. The urgent mobilization of the funds pledged at the Paris round table will be an important step in that direction.

The Acting President

I call now on the observer of the Observer State of The Holy See.

Monsignor Auza (Holy See)

In the year 2000, in this very Hall, heads of State or Government agreed on an ambitious, yet needed, set of global development goals to be achieved by 2015. At the halfway point, while much has been done towards achieving the goals, abject poverty, hunger, illiteracy and lack of even the most basic health care are still rampant, indeed worsening, in some regions. Tackling these challenges, which continue to afflict hundreds of millions of people, remains therefore at the very centre of our concerns.

Authoritative studies tell us that, in spite of the remarkable economic growth in many developing countries, the overall goal of reducing hunger and poverty has remained elusive. My delegation believes that greater international solidarity is necessary if we are to succeed in narrowing the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor countries and between individuals within countries.

While international aid is important, a fairer international trade environment, including addressing market-distorting practices, which disadvantage weaker economies, is even more decisive. In this regard, the importance of the upcoming Doha review conference cannot be stressed enough. The combined efforts to meet the 0.7 per cent of official development assistance (ODA) and to review trade and financing mechanisms, on the one hand, and to end bad governance and internecine conflicts in recipient States, on the other, will go a long way in lifting millions of people out of extreme poverty and hunger.

My delegation wishes to assure the Assembly that the Holy See remains actively engaged in alleviating poverty and hunger, which are an offence against human dignity. It will not cease to highlight these basic needs, so that they remain at the centre of international attention and are addressed as a matter of social justice.

The Holy See is very pleased with the good progress made towards achieving universal access to primary education, with some of the poorest regions seeing a dramatic increase in enrolment. However, without redoubled efforts, 58 countries may not achieve the goal of universal primary schooling by 2015.

Education underpins all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It is the most effective tool to empower men and women to achieve greater social, economic and political freedom. Governments and civil society, public and private sectors and parents and teachers must invest in the education of future generations to prepare them to face the challenges of an increasingly globalized society. In particular, utmost efforts must be made to give equal educational opportunities to boys and girls, and to ensure that no child is left behind for purely economic and social reasons. Precisely with this end in view, thousands of educational institutions of the Catholic Church are located in degraded inner cities and in far-flung villages, in the peripheries of huge cities and in places where children are constrained to work in order to survive.

The health-related MDGs also require our collective action. While progress has been made in reducing child mortality, there has been slower progress in addressing maternal health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. The overriding cause of the slow progress has been the lack of resources at the most basic levels of health care and the continued lack of access to even those levels. It has long been demonstrated that investing in primary health care, rather than in selective, culturally divisive and ideologically driven forms of health services, which camouflage the destruction of life among medical and social services, is one of the most cost-effective and successful ways to improve the overall quality of life and the stability of families and communities.

Moreover, the lack of progress on the health-related goals demonstrates the interconnected and mutually reinforcing nature of the MDGs. The significant correlation between poverty and the persistent high levels of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and maternal mortality is evident. My delegation wishes to assure members that the Holy See, through its institutions, will continue to provide basic health care, with a preferential option for the most underserved and marginalized sectors of society.

This thematic debate, at the halfway point between the Millennium Declaration and 2015, comes at this rather poignant time of the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At the heart of both the Declaration and the MDGs is the goal of a better future for all. More than talks and summits, the achievement of this goal requires commitment and concrete action. Our common fight against extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and illness is not merely an act of generosity and altruism -- it is a condition sine qua non for a better future and a better world fit for all.

The Acting President

I now give the floor to the observer of Palestine.

Mr. Mansour (Palestine)

Allow me to express my delegation's appreciation to the President for organizing this important debate.

Palestine aligns itself with the statement delivered on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.

The Palestinian people face serious challenges in their attempts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While progress has been made, the Palestinian people have been unable to create an enabling domestic environment for realizing their MDGs: namely an environment free from the oppression and punitive, destructive restrictions and measures of military occupation -- an environment in which the ability to progress is not contingent on the occupier's permission, but rather on the actual work and energy exerted by a people to achieve these goals. The ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, constitutes the main and most formidable obstacle to the Palestinian people's achievement of any form of sustainable development and the MDGs as a whole.

Particularly over the past eight years, the illegal policies undertaken by Israel, the occupying Power, have actually plunged Palestine into a development process, in reverse, undoing all previous progress towards the MDGs. According to the World Bank, the Palestinian economy registered steady growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) of 8 per cent each year until 1999. The World Bank notes that since 2000, however, due to the harsh effects of the Israeli-imposed closures and movement restrictions, Palestinian real GDP has shrunk by 40 per cent.

The socio-economic consequences of such a regression of the economy are vast. This dire situation has negatively impacted the goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger among the Palestinian people. Poverty has risen to unprecedented levels due to rising unemployment, and food insecurity has become a major concern. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) now warns that almost half of the population does not have enough food to meet its needs.

This humanitarian crisis is a man-made disaster caused by occupation policies, especially the collective punishment which Israel continues to inflict on the Palestinian civilian population via, inter alia, closures and restrictions on movement, home demolitions and illegal confiscation of Palestinian land. In this regard, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cites Israel's matrix of movement restrictions as "a primary cause of poverty, and the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip" (A/61/500, para. 37). Such illegal measures are being taken to extremes by the occupying Power, which continues to impose a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip. It also continues to illegally construct and expand settlements and the wall in the West Bank, turning Palestinian communities into isolated bantustans, further dissected by more than 580 checkpoints and roadblocks, and making movement and internal trade between Palestinian cities and towns nearly impossible.

The situation in the Gaza Strip is most dire as living conditions continue to plummet. On 9 August 2007, Filippo Grandi, Deputy Commissioner-General of UNRWA, declared:

"Gaza risks becoming a virtually 100 per cent aid-dependent, closed-down and isolated community within a matter of months, or even weeks, if the present regime of closures continues".

Since then, Israel's siege has caused even further devastation as hundreds of industries and factories have been destroyed or shut down and thousands of employment-generating opportunities have been halted or lost, forcing the entire population to survive only on the minimal humanitarian assistance that the occupying Power permits to enter the area.

The negative effects of the occupation on the living conditions and development of the Palestinian people are not limited to the economy. The goal of universal primary education has also been gravely impacted. A recent school survey released by UNRWA in the Gaza Strip reveals a nearly 80 per cent failure rate among grades four to nine, with the highest rate among grade-four pupils, 90 per cent of whom failed math. Tragically, that is what results when children, who must cope with the psychological and physical traumas of constant exposure to conflict and violence and who have been forced into extreme poverty, go to school hungry and unable to focus and learn. Dropout rates for boys and girls are also increasing, and deepening poverty has led to increased levels of child labour. Moreover, despite earlier successes, attendance at girls' schools in the upper levels is decreasing, obstructing efforts to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The Palestinian people also continue to struggle to reduce child and maternal mortality rates, which have been affected by problems of access to health care and food supply. Israeli checkpoints, curfews and the wall obstruct access to health care and delivery facilities, affecting reproductive health care, both pre- and post-natal. Moreover, rising poverty and hunger have led to a marked increase in anaemia and malnutrition among Palestinian women and their children.

In addition to the impact on the economic, social and health situation, the Israeli occupation has also seriously harmed environmental sustainability. Environmental degradation due to scarcity of water, rapid population growth and Israeli land confiscation and exploitation of natural resources has reduced Palestinian green lands, forests and biodiversity from 4.3 per cent in 1998 to below 1.5 per cent by 2004. That dramatic loss of green lands is also due in part to Israel's systematic use of Palestinian land as a dumping ground for untreated chemical and sewage waste, as well as the construction of illegal settlements and the wall, the uprooting of trees and the obstruction of environmental projects, such as sewage and sanitation projects, especially in the Gaza Strip.

Special attention should be given by the international community to those unique circumstances and challenges confronting the Palestinian people. Here, we recall that, in the Millennium Declaration, world leaders affirmed the collective responsibility

"to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level... [as] a duty... to all the world's people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs" (resolution 55/2, para. 2).

Development cannot coexist with oppression and hegemony, whose worst manifestation is foreign occupation. We must uphold our commitment to spare no effort to ensure that all civilian populations suffering disproportionately the consequences of armed conflicts and humanitarian crises are given the necessary assistance and protection so that they can be empowered to work towards a better future for themselves and their nations.

Palestine should not be the exception. The Palestinian people have clearly asserted their desire for peace and a life of freedom, dignity and prosperity for their children. Those goals also undoubtedly encompass the achievement of the MDGs, which would help to lift the Palestinian people out of the misery that the occupation has imposed on them. We thus reiterate our call for the international community's full and firm support for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, which the world has come to realize and agree is a prerequisite not only for peace, but also for development, and without which achievement the MDGs will, regrettably, remain out of reach.

The Acting President

In accordance with General Assembly resolution 57/32 of 19 November 2002, I now call on the observer of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Ms. Filip (Inter-Parliamentary Union)

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