NAM Ministerial Conference - Un



MALAWI

STATEMENT BY

H.E. MR. STEVE D. MATENJE, S.C.,

AMBASSADOR AND PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE REPUBLIC OF MALAWI TO THE UNITED NATIONS

DURING

THE MINISTERIAL MEETING OF THE

COORDINATING BUREAU OF

THE NON-ALIGNED MOVEMENT

HAVANA, CUBA

27 - 30 APRIL 2009

Check against delivery

Mr. Chairman,

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Delegates and

Observers

I wish to begin by thanking the Government and people of Cuba for the warm hospitality extended to me and my delegation since we arrived in this great country and the beautiful city of Havana. We commend Cuba for its excellent leadership of the Movement during the past three years and congratulate Egypt on assuming the chair of the Movement for the next three years.

At the outset, I wish to convey to you, Mr. Chairman, the deepest regrets of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Malawi for being unable to attend this meeting in person due to circumstances beyond her control. However, she sends her fraternal greetings and wishes the meeting successful deliberations.

Therefore, it is my great honour and privilege to address this distinguished gathering on behalf of the Malawi Government.

Mr. Chairman,

This meeting is taking place at a time the world is facing many challenges. I have in mind volatile food and energy prices, climate change, terrorism, poverty, HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis and Malaria, which continue to undermine social and economic development in some of our countries. The situation is compounded by the current global financial and economic crisis, which has brought about its own challenges such as a reduction in foreign direct investment, remittances, tourism, and demand for primary commodities from developing countries, just to mention a few.

Mr. Chairman,

The bad news is that in many instances, these challenges have reversed the gains made by developing countries in the achievement of the internationally-agreed development goals (IADGs), including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), resulting in the deepening of poverty particularly in the least developed countries (LDCs).

The enormity of these challenges means that no one country is immune or able to resolve them alone. We have no option but to act collectively and urgently in the pursuit of the principles upon which NAM was founded in order to find the solutions we need to save our countries from the effects of the crises we face today.

However, the good news is that our movement provides us the opportunity to act collectively. In addition, it gives us a common forum to deliberate and find innovative solutions needed to not only address these challenges but also address equally important and related issues such as peace and security, disarmament, sustainable social, cultural and economic development, human rights and the rule of law, and the provision of humanitarian assistance in conflict situations and in times of natural disasters.

But, we will succeed only if we speak, to quote the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, “with one voice and one language with the large regional blocks that control the future and destiny of the world” end of quote.

Mr. Chairman,

In this regard, Malawi welcomes the UN High Level meeting on the Global Financial and Economic Crisis to be held in June this year and hopes that as a Movement, we will seize the opportunity to speak with one voice and one language as we address the issues that we consider to be the most important to the economic prosperity of our countries.

For Malawi, these include addressing the effects of the crisis, ensuring food and nutrition security both at household and national levels and promoting sustainable economic growth as a means for reducing abject poverty afflicting many of our countries.

Mr. Chairman,

We, in Malawi, have learned that there cannot be sustainable peace, security and development without sustainable food and nutrition security. To us food and nutrition security are key to the successful implementation of the internationally-agreed development goals, particularly the MDGs.

Yet the majority of the people in our countries are unable to produce enough food simply because they cannot afford the cost of basic agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and high yielding seeds.

Surprisingly, our bilateral and multilateral development partners have consistently refused to help the LDCs to provide subsidies to their people to enable them afford the cost of agricultural inputs they need to produce enough food for themselves.

For these reasons, for the past three years, Malawi has, with its own resources, successfully implemented an agricultural input subsidy program for poor farmers. This has resulted in the production of sufficient food in quantities that have surpassed our national requirements.

We have demonstrated that, properly managed, agricultural input subsidies for poor farmers can dramatically assist in increasing the production of food and ensuring food and nutrition security at both household and national levels and, thereby, promoting peace, security and development. Indeed, as it is commonly said “a hungry man is an angry man”.

In this regard, Malawi wishes to request members of the Movement to support our consistent call to the bilateral and multilateral development partners to consider helping LDCs provide agricultural subsidies to poor smallholder farmers.

We also call upon members of the Movement to share expertise in research, science and technology in food production and processing as part of our collective strategy to attain global food security and reduce poverty.

Mr. Chairman

This meeting has considered many other issues of common interest to all NAM member countries, including the reform of the United Nations Security Council. Malawi joins the rest of the NAM membership in reiterating that the principal organs of the United Nations, in particular the Security Council, must be reformed in order to make it democratic, more representative, more transparent and more accountable and reflect current world realities.

In this regard, we support the African common position on the reform of the Security Council based on the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration of the African Union for Africa to have two permanent seats, with all rights and privileges including the veto power, if it will be maintained, and five non-permanent seats.

As you know, the African common position is inspired by the need to address the historical injustice perpetrated at the inception of the United Nations which resulted in the denial of representation of Africa in the permanent category and gross underrepresentation in the non-permanent category. We also support calls for other reforms of the Security Council including to its working methods.

Mr. Chairman,

As you also know, Malawi is both a least developed country and a land locked developing country. As such we commend the meeting for recognizing the special needs of the least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and small island states (SIDS), and urge the Movement to remain actively engaged at the international level in ensuring the full and urgent implementation of all international instruments including the Brussels Declaration and Programme of Action, the Almaty Declaration and Programme of Action, the Mauritius Strategy, the Monterrey Consensus and the Doha Outcome Document which, among other things, address the special needs of these groups of countries.

Mr. Chairman,

Let me conclude by pledging Malawi’s continued and unwavering support for the Movement and its founding principles. We believe that together we can overcome the hurdles in our midst and ahead of us. Let us put to concrete action our decisions and make NAM an action-oriented, results-based Movement, committed to fostering sustainable peace, security and development within its membership and at the global level.

I thank you for your attention.

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