{"id":28,"date":"2009-09-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulkagame.com\/_test_&#038;web\/?p=28"},"modified":"2017-07-23T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2017-07-23T17:00:11","slug":"president-kagame-addresses-the-64th-session-of-the-general-assembly-of-the-united-nations-new-york-24-september-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/?p=28","title":{"rendered":"President Kagame addresses the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations \u2013New York, 24 September 2009"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Statement by His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda at the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on Thursday 22 Sept 2009, New York.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>His Excellency Dr All Treki;<\/li>\n<li>President of the United Nations General Assembly;<\/li>\n<li>Excellencies;<\/li>\n<li>Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This Session of the United Nations General Assembly offers further opportunity to reflect<br \/>\non how best to reconcile what at times, mistakenly appears to be irreconcilable \u2014<br \/>\nsocioeconomic development and a healthy environment.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders, experts and citizens world over ask: &#8220;How can we grow our economies and spread<br \/>\nprosperity to more of the world&#8217;s citizens, and not degrade our oceans, rivers, and the air we<br \/>\nbreathe?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But these are also times of extraordinary scientific, technological and business innovations<br \/>\nthat can help address these challenges \u2014 if we have the courage to put into proper<br \/>\nperspective and indeed harmonise our national, regional, and global priorities.<br \/>\nHistory is replete with illustrations of how nations, immersed in crises, changed the<br \/>\nunderlying assumptions by which they acted, and created new institutions and tools to solve<br \/>\nproblems, and emerged from the process as stronger societies.<\/p>\n<p>While these innovations are always different, the challenges to surmount them are always the<br \/>\nsame: forging a shared vision; increasing social capital required to enhance predictable,<br \/>\ntrustful relations between peoples; receptivity to doing things in new ways; and adopting<br \/>\nexplicit moral purpose to achieve common goals.<\/p>\n<p>We have an exceptional opportunity to address our environmental challenges, improve our<br \/>\neconomies, and reform our global multilateral institutions for better global governance \u2014 at<br \/>\nthe same time.<\/p>\n<p>The G-20 for example is now playing a crucial role in restoring global economic stability; but<br \/>\nshould we not even broaden the base further to include many nations that are most<br \/>\nvulnerable to the decisions of the few?<\/p>\n<p>All nations should be part of these important discussions, because they have valuable<br \/>\ncontributions to make.<\/p>\n<p>This is the time to embrace &#8220;true multilateralism&#8221;.<br \/>\nWe in developing nations appreciate the corrective measures by the G8 and G20 to<br \/>\naccelerate global economic recovery \u2014 but it is evident that most of their proposals fall short<br \/>\nof die concrete steps needed to address challenges that are specific to Low Income<br \/>\nCountries.<\/p>\n<p>Multilateralism has always been the key tenet in forging a fairer international community \u2014<br \/>\nbased on equitable global governance; the United Nations itself is based on this very sound<br \/>\nand tested principle and practice.<\/p>\n<p>The rise of worldwide networks of trade, industry, prosperity, and social values, togedier<br \/>\nwith creation of multilateral institutions to guide and harmonize these processes, have no<br \/>\ndoubt contributed to a fairer and improved global decision-making system &#8211; this is what<br \/>\nneeds to be rendered more inclusive.<\/p>\n<p>Improving global governance has also to address international justice. International justice<br \/>\nshould be fair to all &#8211; rich and poor; strong or weak. We are pleased to note that the sixty<br \/>\nthird session of the United Nations General Assembly undertook to comprehensively<br \/>\nexamine the issue of universal jurisdiction.<\/p>\n<p>We look forward to the resolutions on this matter in the current session of the General<br \/>\nAssembly. Regarding socioeconomic challenges in our East African Community region, we<br \/>\nare making progress in key areas &#8211; for instance, preparing to inaugurate in January 2010 the<br \/>\nEast African Common Market to facilitate greater trade, investment and free movement of<br \/>\nalmost 130 million people. We believe that there is no better mitigation strategy to economic<br \/>\ndifficulties than building larger regional markets that bring improved productivity, which<br \/>\nincreases purchasing power, and in turn, strengthens our societies.<br \/>\nRegarding the global environmental challenge, this United Nations General Assembly<br \/>\nsession provides an important platform for preparing for the Copenhagen Climate Change<br \/>\nSummit. Every nation should have co-equal status and be considered &#8220;A Concerned Nation&#8221;<br \/>\nat the forthcoming summit. This implies that each nation has both rights and obligations, and<br \/>\nshould be open to &#8220;burden sharing,&#8221; according to their ability to do so.<\/p>\n<p>This is the time to address in a timely fashion such key issues as how much the industrialized<br \/>\ncountries are to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases; how much are developing countries to limit<br \/>\nthe growth of emissions; and how to finance and support strategies to conserve energy,<br \/>\nmitigate risk, and build green technologies that counteract the impact of climate change in<br \/>\nthe developing world.<\/p>\n<p>We have been making a modest but proportionate contribution in Rwanda, by among other<br \/>\nthings, hosting African preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen Summit \u2014 to encourage<br \/>\nthe strong and essential African voice at this critical meeting.<br \/>\nWe have also been actively implementing national environmental policies for reforestation,<br \/>\nterracing, and the rehabilitation of wetlands that supply lake and river systems in our country<br \/>\n\u2014 to name a few \u2014 with good results.<\/p>\n<p>On the matter of peace and security: the world faces a number of regional threats.<br \/>\nThe Great Lakes Region has its share of peace and security problems, but we continue to<br \/>\nmake significant progress in fundamentally addressing this question. The leaders of this<br \/>\nregion recognize that most crucially, homegrown solutions, beginning with a joint regional<br \/>\neffort, can bring about sustainable peace. It is in this context that we, together with our<br \/>\ncolleagues and neighbors in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are dealing with the root<br \/>\ncause of instability in our area \u2014the negative forces that have been a menace since 1994.<br \/>\nIf history teaches us anything, it is that we cannot apply same strategies for different<br \/>\nproblems and expect satisfactory outcomes all the time \u2014we have to think differently on the<br \/>\nfundamental questions, including the urgent imperatives of:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Strengthening the future of all nations by fostering economic growth and<br \/>\ndevelopment whilst investing in the environment \u2014 this should be our moral purpose;<br \/>\n\u2022 Improving peace and stability of all regions by learning from, and supporting,<br \/>\nlegitimate regional actors and;<br \/>\n\u2022 Engaging and embracing the majority world into multilateralism of decision-making,<br \/>\ntrade, and prosperity \u2014these should be our shared vision.<\/p>\n<p>Future generations will know, then, how leaders of nations in the year 2009\u2014 immersed in<br \/>\ncrises, focused on the most difficult challenges, including global economic crisis, climate<br \/>\nchange and greater peace and security; and acted with resolve.<\/p>\n<p>I THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statement by His Excellency Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda at the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on Thursday 22 Sept 2009, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11114,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/11114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulkagame.rw\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}