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Friday, September 19, 2008 - 10.09 GMT |
Make this an “Assembly of Frankness”
–
President of UNGA |
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By a Special Correspondent
The 63rd Session of the United Nations
General Assembly that opened earlier this
week will address the key issues of Climate
Change, Gender Equality, Democratization of
the United Nations, the spread of terrorism
and human trafficking.
The theme for the sessions was laid down by
the President of the General Assembly Fr.
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, in
an opening speech in which he said he wished
this UNGA session will go down in history as
the “Assembly of Frankness”. He said crises
faced by the world today were too serious to
allow for euphemisms or half measures.
“Change – real, credible change – is the
watchword of the day” he said.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, representing
Sri Lanka, is also expected to focus on
these issues as he brings to the UNGA the
understandings reached at 15th SAARC Summit
held in Colombo last month, where too the
focus was on these key issues.
In what is considered a helpful coincidence
the Sri Lankan President and current Chair
of SAARC will be present concrete action
already initiated by SAARC to resolve the
food crisis, especially the establishment of
the SAARC Food Bank, and the proposals made
in the Colombo Declaration on Food Security.
Terrorism will attract much attention, with
this week’s terrorist attack on the US
Embassy in Yemen, doing much to focus the
attention of the West, especially the US, to
the need for concerted efforts to combat the
increasing threats to peace and development
by the forces of terror. The President of
the UNGA said that no State should
appropriate the right to decide which States
were “terrorists” or sponsors of terrorism,
less still should States that were guilty of
wars of aggression – the worst form of
terrorism – unilaterally take action against
those they had stigmatized. The Assembly
would embark on a discussion of
international terrorism, including its
definition.
The new session of the UNGA takes place in
the wake of the recent SAARC Summit which
reiterated the commitment of member states
of SAARC to strengthen the legal regimes
against terrorism including implementing all
international conventions relating to
combating terrorism.
The President of the General Assembly drew
attention to various crises of great scale –
“economic, financial, environmental,
humanitarian and legal – which were
converging in the shadow of the of the
present world food crisis. He identified
today’s credit market distortions,
subsidized oil prices and rising food prices
as having exponentially aggravated a
deterioration of the world economy”, with
States today finding themselves in an
“unprecedented global economic upheaval”.
Commenting on world hunger, the UNGA
President set the tone for discussions by
stating that at the root of world hunger was
the unequal distribution of purchasing power
within and between countries, and calling on
governments to take “courageous decisions”
that included addressing distortions brought
on by development model pushed by the
International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank.
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