| Date | 23 September 2008 |
|---|---|
| Started | 09:00 |
| Ended | 13:25 |
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Agenda item 100
Report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization (A/63/1)
The President
In accordance with the decision taken at its 2nd plenary meeting, on 19 September 2008, the General Assembly will hear a presentation by the Secretary-General of his annual report on the work of the Organization (A/63/1), under agenda item 100. I give the floor to the Secretary-General.
The Secretary-General
I welcome all participants to the opening of the general debate of the sixty-third session of the General Assembly. It is customary for the Secretary-General, on this occasion, to assess the state of the world and to present our vision for the coming year.
We all recognize the perils of our current moment time. We face a global financial crisis, a global energy crisis and a global food crisis. Trade talks have collapsed yet again. We have seen new outbreaks of war and violence and a new rhetoric of confrontation. Clearly, climate change threatens our planet ever more. We often say that global problems demand global solutions. And yet, today we also face a crisis of a different sort. Like those others, it knows no borders. It affects all nations. It complicates all other problems. I refer, here, to the challenge of global leadership.
We are on the eve of a great transition. Our world has changed more than we may realize. We see new centres of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world. The problems we face have grown much more complex. In that new world, our challenges are increasingly those of collaboration, rather than confrontation. Nations can no longer protect their interests or advance the well-being of their peoples without the partnership of other nations.
Yet, I worry. There is, today, a danger of losing sight of that new reality. I see a danger of nations looking more inward, rather than towards a shared future. I see a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of development and a more equitably sharing of the fruits of global growth. That is tragic, for at this time one thing is clear: we must do more, not less. We must do more to help our fellow human beings weather the gathering storm. Yes, global growth has raised billions of people out of poverty. However, if you are among the world's poor, you have never felt poverty so sharply. Yes, international law and justice have never been so widely embraced as on this sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
However, those living in nations where human rights are abused have never been so vulnerable. Yes, most of us live in peace and security. However, we see deepening violence in many nations that can least afford it: Afghanistan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq and Sudan, to name but a few. We can do something about it, and with strong global leadership, we will. (spoke in French)
I would like to speak to you, members of the Assembly, about the three pillars of development: human rights, peace and security. I say this candidly: the situation in the area of development is serious. In the course of last year, we watched, with the greatest concern, the skyrocketing of fuel prices, foodstuffs and commodities. The rich countries fear a recession, while the poorest ones no longer have anything to eat. That is why in two days, we shall hold a high-level event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We must raise awareness throughout the world and harness global action, with a particular focus on Africa. As you know, progress has been uneven. Not all promises have been kept, but we have made enough progress to know that achieving the MDGs is within our reach.
At the high-level event, I shall bring together a new coalition, made up of Governments, non-governmental organizations, and leaders of the private sector and religious and philanthropic groups.
We know that this is an effective formula. It has already worked for malaria, a scourge which kills one child every 30 seconds. Last year, I set up a new type of public-private partnership, which operates on the basis of a scientific strategy, marshals funds and is managed centrally at the global level. On Thursday, I will announce the results of new research which show that this partnership is a resounding success. The moment is drawing near when we can declare that malaria, one of the last scourges besetting humanity, has been eliminated.
At the present time, we are going to apply this new global partnership model to other MDGs. I will ask you, the members of the Assembly, to be both ambitious and specific. I will ask you to indicate what you intend to do and how you will do it to help us achieve our goals by 2015. And I propose that we hold, in 2010, a summit meeting on the Millennium Development Goals in order to review the follow-up on these new commitments. We have to take things in hand, starting today. We have to respond to this appeal, wherever we may be. We owe it to the poor of the Earth.
The Secretary-General
The United Nations is the champion of the most vulnerable. When disaster strikes, we act. We did so this year in Haiti and other Caribbean nations hit by hurricanes. We did so in Myanmar after Cyclone Nargis; there, the challenge now is to push for political progress, including credible steps on human rights and democracy. We did so in South-East Asia, affected by severe flooding, and in the Horn of Africa, afflicted by drought, where 17 million need emergency help.
Since taking office, I have called for more strenuous action in Somalia. Must we wait and see more children die in the sand? We at the United Nations are leaders. We at the United Nations are duty-bound to do what compassion and human decency demand of us.
The global food crisis has not gone away. It may have faded from the daily headlines, but note this fact: last year, at this time, rice cost $330 a ton. Today, the price is $730. In a single year, the food staple that feeds half the world's population has more than doubled in price. People who used to buy rice by the bag now do so by the handful. Those who ate two meals a day now get by on one. The United Nations has led the world's response. Our United Nations High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis set forth solutions. We focused on getting seeds and fertilizer into the hands of small farmers. We aim to create a new green revolution in Africa. But the truth is that we lack new resources. The international community has not matched words with deeds.
The Secretary-General
--> -->
| <type 'exceptions.UnicodeEncodeError'> | Python 2.6.6: /usr/bin/python Fri May 24 10:25:22 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_63/meeting_5' |
| /data/vhost/www.undemocracy.com/docs/trunk.py in maintrunk(pathpart='/generalassembly_63/meeting_5') |
| 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-63-PV.5', 'gadice': '', 'gameeting': 5, 'gasession': 63, 'highlightdoclink': None, 'htmlfile': '/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-63-PV.5.html', 'pagefunc': 'gameeting', 'pdfinfo': <pdfinfo.PdfInfo instance>} |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteHTML(fhtml='/home/undemocracy/undata/html/A-63-PV.5.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'pg002-bk04', dtextmu = u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">The Secr...ecessary resources, mandates are meaningless.</p>', councilpresidentnation = None |
| /home/undemocracy/unparse-live/web2/unpvmeeting.py in WriteSpoken(gid=u'pg002-bk04', dtext=u'<h3 class="speaker"> <span class="name">The Secr...ecessary resources, mandates are meaningless.</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">The Secr...ecessary resources, mandates are meaningless.</p>', mspek = <_sre.SRE_Match object>, mspek.end = <built-in method end of _sre.SRE_Match object> |
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args =
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encoding =
'ascii'
end =
705
message =
''
object =
u'\n\t<p id="pg002-bk04-pa01">We know that peace and...ecessary resources, mandates are meaningless.</p>'
reason =
'ordinal not in range(128)'
start =
704