UNLD CB RU/ST/10

THIRD UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON

THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

STATEMENT BY:

Mr Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic

Inaugural Session

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ADDRESS BY JACQUES CHIRAC

PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

TO THE UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE
ON THE LEAST DEVELOPED COUNTRIES

BRUSSELS, MAY 14, 2001

http://www.elysee.fr

Your Majesty,

Mr. Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Presidents,
Prime Ministers,
Madame President of the European Parliament,
Mr. Secretary-General of UNCTAD,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

For many years I have travelled the world, a world of growing paradoxes and contrasts.

Here, the industrial societies which, despite the fact that poverty has not disappeared and, worse, has not even declined for many years, have never been so rich, so secure in their prosperity and in a sense so arrogant.

There, the countries which were still destitute just after the last war but which have made enormous strides and which. by taking advantage of world economic growth, are catching up by leaps and bounds.

Elsewhere, the nations which are suffering, the growing inequalities between people and States, and the poverty which affects a great number of men, women and children.

We cannot and must not resign ourselves to these violent contrasts and this fundamental injustice.

It is more and more self-evident that the duty of solidarity has become the political and moral imperative of our time.

Across the world, a billion people are eking out a bare subsistence and have no hope of ever transcending the poverty line. Two billion people - a third of the human race! - have less than two euros a day to live on.

These stark numbers reveal the terrible insecurity of lives blighted by hunger, the shortage of safe drinking water, illiteracy, illness without health care, armed conflict, political oppression in many cases and untimely death.

In 49 countries, most of them in Africa, a majority of the population bears the terrible consequences of non-development. The international community has no right to just write off 600 million human beings! Now more than ever we must, together, assume our duty of humanity. It is my hope that this Third United Nations Conference will enable us to strongly proclaim three principles in the form of goals.

The least developed countries must be helped; solidarity must be globalized.

The least developed countries must be brought into the mainstream; globalization must benefit all.

The least developed countries must be engaged and must act. The response to support provided must be responsibility and determination on the part of the recipient. Nothing will be done that they have not themselves decided.

First of all, the least developed countries need resources to prime the pump of growth. They ask the world for the initial investment without which nothing can be done. This call is legitimate. It is in everyone's interest to respond to their request.

These poor countries are the poor neighbourhoods of the global village. Our collective inability to enable all to go forward disfigures and jeopardizes the economic and social progress which the industrialized countries are so proud of, just as the persistence of poverty in our countries betrays the shortcomings of our own social welfare policies.

The situation in the LDCs matters. Their share of international trade flows may be small, but what happens to them affects us. Armed conflict fuels illicit trafficking. Poverty and insecurity drive drug production and the proliferation of organized crime and illegal immigration networks. The struggle for survival accelerates deterioration of soil, depletion of water resources, deforestation and pillaging of natural resources. The absence of development is a factor for crisis and deprives us of an immense potential source of economic and cultural momentum which could benefit us all. Helping the LDCs is part of good stewardship of the world's public assets - peace, prosperity, environment and cultural diversity.

Excluded from world financial flows, often suffocated by debt and above all by the lack of economic prospects, the LDCs are not attracting privatesector investors. How can this handicap be overcome?

First, by relieving their debt burden, a process which is already well under way. The system set up to benefit the most heavily indebted countries at the 1996 G8 Summit in Lyon has been steadily improved to the point where it will be possible for virtually all the debt to be cancelled. For the international community, this means writing off a total of 60 billion euros. France alone is contributing ten billion euros. In addition, France proposes that to prevent a return to indebtedness, the World Bank provide grants to the LDCs to finance certain kinds of social welfare spending.

Provided that we remain active, some forty, countries will be thus able to achieve two fundamental goals: eliminating over-indebtedness and undertaking large-scale social programs to combat poverty.

At the same time, official development assistance must be increased. In 1990 we undertook to devote 0.2% of our GNP to the LDCs. We have not even come close. With the notable exception of some of the Nordic countries and the Netherlands, the OECD -countries have reduced their assistance almost by half over the last ten years. The rich countries must now take advantage of the return to growth to resume assistance and focus it more on the poorest countries. A growing number of people in the privileged countries expect them to extend a helping hand to the most vulnerable and to be generous to the most destitute.

France is' also paying attention to improving the quality of development assistance. It will be gradually untied, in compliance with the agreement reached in the Development Assistance Committee. It will be allocated in closer coordination with the other donors and above all with the recipient countries. Civil society will be more closely involved in drawing up and implementing programs.

Lastly, I am convinced of the need to mobilize private sector initiatives. They help bring people together and involve our fellow citizens more directly in international solidarity. I therefore call for France to increase tax concessions for donations to provide an incentive for financing humanitarian and development activities.

Aid, though crucial, is not enough. The LDCs must be included in a globalization process which benefits all and which takes full account of their specificities.

LDCs must be helped to gain access to international financing. Much remains to be done. The IMF and the World Bank must play a central role here.

To help LDCs to take better advantage of free trade, Europe has decided to open its markets to all their goods with the exception of arms. The entire developed world should take inspiration from this decision. This system set up to implement it supplements the preferences granted to the countries covered by the Cotonou Agreement. We have been, and continue to be, careful to ensure that steps are taken to ensure that the new system has no negative impact on the products of other disadvantaged regions. I am thinking here of sugar, on which France will be keeping a very watchful eye.

To move forward, Europe proposes a new broad-based trade round in which world trade would be better regulated as markets are opened up. It would provide developing countries with secure outlets. At the same time,

LDCs need machinery to support their integration into the mainstream economy, protect their production, foster price stability and lend impetus to regional integration.

Better international regulation of other global phenomena is also needed if the LDCs are to develop sustainably. The fight against global warming, of which they are the primary victims; the preservation of biodiversity, in particular through application of the precautionary principle to the use of GMOs; prevention and enforcement measures to combat organized crime and the looting of resources that has been occurring in a number of countries - in all these areas, the industrialized countries must shoulder their full responsibility.

This international regulation, the discipline that is needed if globalization is to be humanized, require the active involvement of all. This is why I call for better political representation of LDCs. If, as I proposed last August, France hosts an informal summit of countries representative of the world in all its diversity in 2003, this group will be fully represented.

Opening up globalization to the LDCs also requires recognition of their cultural contribution. We must fully understand how much the modern world stands to gain from their knowledge, their social organization, their creativity. They will be thereby convinced that they can turn towards the future without turning their backs on the past and that they can cultivate pride in their civilizations while allowing them to develop and taking on board modernity. This is one of the new goals of Francophonie. I call on multilateral institutions to devote more programs to African, Amerindian and Asian civilizations.

But aid and mainstream integration will be effective only if they support domestic projects. We now have a better understanding of what it takes for a society to move toward long-term sustainable growth. The process rests on four basic concepts: building political legitimacy; securing the social basis for development; putting in place the essential infrastructure; and enabling the population to create wealth. These are indeed the main guidelines of development plans for Africa prepared by several African Heads of State, including President Obasanjo of Nigeria.

The first concept is building a democratic and peace-oriented political system which can focus the country's energies on economic and social development. This is why the quest for peace has such high priority. This is why governments tempted by outside adventurism or the use of force to resolve domestic problems must be dealt with severely.

Of course the road to democracy is long and fraught with many pitfalls. No one imagines that the rule of law can be established overnight, especially in nations which have just been founded, which bring together often rivalrous communities within borders sketched out by the accidents of history and whose populations have been sorely tried and radicalized by desperation.

Nevertheless. Beyond cultural differences, the principles of good governance are universal. The international community cannot assist corrupt, oppressive and predatory regimes. They are ethically reprehensible. In addition, economic expansion cannot occur if the dignity of men and women is not respected and if they cannot confidently enjoy the fruits of their labours in physical, legal and financial security.

The second concept is securing the social basis for development. Conquering poverty means providing everyone with access to safe drinking water and to nourishment which is sufficient in both quantity and quality, rebuilding health care systems and giving absolute priority to establishing efficient educational systems which can deliver literacy to all, girls and boys equally.

I stress the fight against AIDS, which as all know is causing untold damage in Africa. In Abidjan in 1997 I called for an end to the unconscionable situation in which most of the victims of the scourge are in the South while the medicine is in the North. I called for the creation of a Therapeutic Solidarity Fund. Today, at last, minds have changed. The approach is no longer to confine the fight against AIDS to the search for a vaccine and to prevention, thus passing a death sentence on tens of millions of people who have the misfortune to be infected already.

We must now put into practice the progress made over the past few months through agreements on long-term provision of reduced-price drugs and on local production. We must also raise funds to help finance these agreements and build the health care infrastructure to effectively administer the multi-drug therapy. These are the goals of the conference to be held in Dakar in late November as a follow-up to the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly. These would also be the objectives of the Fund to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis which the G8 member States, with the support of the United Nations Secretary-General, are considering setting up. It is my hope that this can be accomplished at the Genoa Summit. The backing already announced augurs well, and I welcome it.

The third concept is the construction of essential infrastructure. Energy, transport, sewer systems, telecommunications - in all these sectors funding is needed for concrete, realistic programs devised by the countries themselves in close consultation with donors. This is the spirit of the undertakings adopted by the G8. In Genoa I will be supporting the program on renewable energies and the initiative on access to the new technologies.

The fourth concept is fostering the entrepreneurial spirit, to create wealth. Free enterprise and the profit motive encourage creativity. Conversely, experience has time and again demonstrated the sterility of the authoritarian approach. Despite their handicaps, LDCs must unreservedly embark on the road to a market economy within the framework of the rule of law.

This means that investment, both domestic and foreign, must take place in a secure institutional environment. Meanwhile, the raising of private capital must be actively encouraged, first and foremost from domestic savings. This is the goal of a new program started by the French Development Agency.

We need to innovate and come up with new ways of financing small businesses. Let us take inspiration from the concept of microcredit developed to such good effect at the instigation of Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the brilliant inventor of the Grameen Bank, to whom I wish to pay special tribute.

Your Majesty, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Twice over, in 1981 and 1990. France hosted the Conference on LDCs. With this meeting in Brussels, Europe takes over. extending a hand supported by hope.

Hope, because these countries have moved forward. More and more of their leaders are choosing the path of democratic opening and a market economy. The mirage of totalitarian solutions has faded away. Single-party inertia has been superceded by an awakening of civil society and the momentum it never fails to gather when given the means to assert itself. The appearance of self-respecting political parties, the affirmation of the role of women and the rise of civic associations of all sorts all bear witness to the determination of societies to take charge of their own fate.

Hope, because the institutions in charge of development assistance are changing. They 'are becoming more open to social concerns and they have understood that economic equilibrium cannot be achieved at the expense of peoples. They recognize the need to work together. They are learning the virtues of humility, recognizing that they do not have the secret to development because development is the result of the constantly regenerated alchemy specific to a time and place. They are more open to dialogue and often willing to entrust their programs to international and local NGOs.

Hope, because the international community has changed the way it looks on the poorest countries. In a globalized world, now at long last it sees them as valuable partners with natural and cultural resources of crucial importance to tomorrow's world.

No, poverty is not a foregone conclusion. The unconscionable situation in which the world gets ever richer and the poor remain poor can and must be ended. If the international community extends its hand to them in trust and friendship, the least developed countries will become the next area of economic and social growth. It is there that new experience will be acquired for the benefit of mankind as a whole.

Tomorrow, I am convinced, the "Least Developed Countries" will be the "Newly Emerging Countries". I propose that from now on we call them by that name as a sign of our hope and our confidence.

Thank you.