YouSaid · the spoken record

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

lines on the record: 37
first: 2008-09-24
most recent: 2009-09-24
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“This will no doubt be echoed in all our speeches, but this building must be done every day through our decisions and concrete actions.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“In conclusion, democracy, the defence of human rights, and equal rules for all countries in the world are the three key elements to building a new multilateralism. These three requirements must be equal and the same for all countries, but above all for those that, through their own actions and because of their level of social and economic development, lead the major developed countries of the world. It is clear that those who have the greatest responsibility and hold the greatest leadership roles — won through military, technological, economic and even cultural power — also have an obligation to exercise that leadership in a responsible manner. This is what we, the developing and emerging countries, feel, and what we ask of the major nations of the world. They have the responsibility to build this world.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“We are genuinely convinced that there is a need to build a new multilateralism in which all of us are genuinely on an equal footing; where rights and obligations and the road map for the course to be taken 09-52228 4 are the same for rich and poor countries alike; and where the rights and responsibilities of developing countries are the same as those of developed States. We therefore agreed that equal rules of the game for the entire world was one of the basic elements of ensuring success in building multilateralism. If we do not achieve this, we will continue with these rhetorical exercises year after year, but we will never achieve the results that are not a right but an obligation for all of us who make up this body.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Lastly, I would like to tell the Assembly that, as a member of the Group of 20 (G-20), which will meet tomorrow in Pittsburgh, we would like to call for the presence of another multilateral body to be heard from at those meetings: the International Labour Organization. In the two previous G-20 meetings, there was a great deal of discussion about the financial crisis. However, as we did then, we continue to believe that a key issue is to once again discuss the real economy. That is why we believed it timely that workers and business owners, as genuine actors in the real economy and as catalysts to re-energizing it, should be heard from as well in those forums, alongside officials from multilateral credit institutions and the World Bank.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“It is genuinely satisfying, and a salve to the soul, to hear from the mouth of the President of the United States of America that there is a need for the Palestinian people to be able to live on their land free of settlements of any kind, as well as, clearly, a right for Israel’s citizens to live in peace within their borders. The words of the President and the timely message he delivered at Cairo University, which many here likely followed with interest, place us in a position that we have not occupied for many years, namely, the possibility of beginning negotiations — successful ones, I hope — between the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel to at last resolve a key issue for international peace and security, namely, the Palestinian question.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“We have also reached an agreement to send up two bills — which we have also already done — to contribute to the recovery of children born in captivity during the dictatorship. Those will include provisions to ensure respect for the victims, as well as on society’s collective right to learn their identities. The second thing that I would like to share has to do with the fact that I listened today to the President of the United States speak about an issue that is crucial to world peace and security, as well as to the rights of the Palestinian people. It is also a key component of a strategy against international terrorism, which, as ever, we continue to condemn.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Thirty years later, the men who comprised the Commission and the men and women who are its members today visited an Argentina where criminals responsible for genocide under the dictatorship are being tried by judges in accordance with the Constitution. We have also reached an agreement with the Inter-American Court to send a bill to our legislature — which I have already done — to eliminate the crime of libel and defamation against journalists. That is homage to the freedom of expression and of the press. But I also firmly believe that it should apply to all citizens. It is offensive that, in the twenty-first century, someone could be sentenced to prison for having said something and said it freely.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“The first took place quite recently, on 9 September, when the Argentine Republic received a visit from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, including its Chair and the President of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. That visit occurred 30 years after the Court’s first visit, during the dictatorship, when it came to investigate the crimes that were being committed and to take complaints from Argentine citizens — including our Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is with me today and who, like his father, was imprisoned at that time — and to hear testimony about the serious violations that were taking place.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“As President of the Argentine Republic, therefore, I humbly reiterate once again our appeal for the extradition of the officials whom Argentina’s justice system believes are responsible — not to be found guilty, but to be judged and to be allowed to take advantage of all the rights and guarantees that every Argentine citizen and foreigner has in our country: guarantees under democracy, whose unconditional defence Argentina has made part of its institutional and historical core. I would not wish to conclude without referring to three events that I believe are very positive, which I would like to share with the members of the Assembly today.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“I would like to say to him that my country, the 3 09-52228 Argentine Republic, is not an imperialist country — neither by way of belief nor as a reflection of our history. To the contrary, ours is a country that suffered from colonial oppression at its founding. During the world’s bipolar era, we also suffered from the doctrine of national security. I would like to tell him that, like him, I believe in God. We may do so in different faiths but, in the end, I believe that neither of us believes that God could command us to prefer threats or to avoid justice from being done.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“I said that there were constitutional guarantees in my country; that the principle that no one is guilty until proven guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt prevails from one end of my country to the other; and that we have guarantees for freedom and the administration of justice. Nevertheless, that did not happen. Instead, this year, one of the officials whose extradition was sought by the prosecutor on the case was promoted to minister. I know that some 4, 5 or 15 speakers from now the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran will take the floor. Surely, he will once again deny tragedies that occurred in the course of western history in the twentieth century. He will surely invoke the threat of other imperialisms. And he will also surely invoke God.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“For Argentina, the first was in 1992, at the Embassy of Israel, and the second was at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). Hundreds of people died in those attacks. Today, in this Assembly, I am joined by the head of AMIA, the entity that was bombed, as well as by family members who have accompanied him. In 2007, then-President Néstor Kirchner came here to the Assembly (see A/62/PV.5) to call on the Islamic Republic of Iran to agree to extradite officials of its country wanted by the Argentine justice system in order to carry out a proper investigation and assign responsibility for that serious attack. Last year, I myself came here (see A/63/PV.5) to call once again on the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran to accede to our request.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“We were recently able to agree, following a humanitarian request, that family members with loved ones buried on the islands should be able to travel there by air to inaugurate a cenotaph to pay tribute to those who fought for their homeland. All of this points to the very clear need to look at multilateralism not only as a type of rhetorical statement repeated every year in this or other multilateral forums, but rather in terms of concrete results. Otherwise, it will become increasingly complicated, with ever more unresolved problems. For, in the final analysis, the multilateralism we have been persistently proclaiming since 2003 has not been put into practice. My country and the United States are the only two countries to have experienced attacks of international terrorism.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Essentially, this is sometimes because the nations most responsible for pollution and gas emissions, which should bear greater responsibility for reducing those emissions, in terms of investments both in their own countries and in developing countries, cannot come to an agreement either. As I was saying yesterday in our meeting, I think we need to understand that the only possibility of successfully approaching globalization lies precisely in the setting of common rules which would be respected by all nations, developed and developing. In this framework, we should mention the situation of the Argentine Republic, where we still have a colonial enclave, our Malvinas Islands, which persists without the possibility of addressing the question of sovereignty together with the United Kingdom, as proclaimed in many General Assembly resolutions.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“I believe that, for all of us, defining multilateralism is going to require specific actions and rules so that absolutely all of us will have the same parameters when it comes time to judge conduct, attitudes and institutional situations. Yesterday I took part in the climate change event convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in order to bring positions closer together with a view to the Copenhagen Conference, which will take place in a little more than 10 weeks’ time. A decade and a half ago we agreed on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, dealing with environmental protection, and we later adopted the Kyoto Protocol in order to begin ensuring respect for those obligations undertaken by nations. A decade and a half later, it is clear that neither agreement is being satisfactorily implemented.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“09-52228 2 I make this appeal because I played an active role from the platform of the Organization of American States, and also accompanied the former President of the General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, to El Salvador in order to carry out a task which would safeguard two basic values which, in my opinion, our region has managed to develop: democracy and respect for human rights. Therefore, I believe that multilateralism would also mean understanding that we have to set common and general rules in this globalized world that must be accepted by all countries. In this case, we are faced with a cynical media coup which was carefully hidden or minimized because, in fact, it was slanted against the advent of populist progressive Governments in the region.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“I say this because it is crucial that we realize that we must design and forge a multilateral strategy which is strong and specific to return democracy to Honduras. We need a strategy which would actually allow for true respect for human rights and ensure free and democratic elections — which can take place only with full respect for the constitution. If we do not do this, we would be setting a harsh precedent in a region where, for decades during the national security doctrine, suspensions of democracy claimed the lives of thousands and thousands of Latin Americans, led to the exile of many other and created the region’s most serious economic and social tragedy in memory.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“Next to the Argentine Embassy is a television studio which broadcast the news of President Zelaya’s arrival in Honduras, the repression and the demonstrations in favour of the return of democracy. That was one of the reasons. In any event, we have had better luck than the Embassy of the sister Republic of Brazil, where, at an early stage they cut off not only the electricity but the water as well — for having given shelter to the constitutional President, Manuel Zelaya. As a Latin American, I must recall that not even in Chile during the dictatorship of General Pinochet, or in Argentina during the dictatorship of General Jorge Rafael Videla — perhaps the two cruelest dictatorships in Latin America — was there similar behaviour against embassies that were actively working to give shelter to refugees.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“I must confess that, when I arrived in this city to participate in this session of the General Assembly, I had intended to begin my statement with a strong appeal on the need to rebuild multilateralism and cooperation as the two basic instruments to overcome what today is undoubtedly the central issue in our global discussion, namely, overcoming the social and economic crisis. However, certain events on Monday and Tuesday oblige me to begin my statement by reporting that the Embassy of the Argentine Republic in Tegucigalpa, Republic of Honduras, had its electricity cut off some two days ago. That, of course, was not because we had not paid the bill, but was for far more serious reasons.”
2009-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 64 (2009)
“We must accept with humility that it is necessary to build a world that is different from the one we have had to date — one in which respect for human rights, for the will of peoples and for those who are different, do not think as we do or who pray to a different god is not merely a catalogue of good intentions set out in the United Nations Charter, but a reality that is experienced a little more concretely every day.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Lastly, I wish to speak to all those men and women who have institutional governmental responsibilities in any of the branches of the State in their respective countries to once again advocate for the transformation of an international policy that has its fullest expression in this House. The reform of the instruments that we are requesting is not simply a question of cosmetics and formulas and changes that barely conceal that everything is continuing as it stands. The present situation, the complexity of the world that is coming, in terms of food and energy, requires all of us to re-examine our behaviour and our paradigms.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“I believe that a member of the Security Council — one that is among the principal nations of the world in the defence of freedom, human rights and democracy — should give concrete proof that it is not just talk but that it is truly convinced that it is necessary to end this shame, that of a colonial enclave in the twenty-first century. I want to request again, as have the different Presidents who preceded me — because Malvinas is for Argentineans a State policy as well — the cooperation that this body has always provided to once again urge the United Kingdom to agree to comply with international law and to demonstrate that it is serious in wishing to build a different world and a different citizenry.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“It has to go through the circuit of production, work, knowledge, services and goods so that there can be a virtuous cycle that can generate well-being for the whole of society. Finally, I want to mention a matter that affects not only my country, beyond its geographical location, but also concerns this Assembly and also the need to face the twenty-first century without colonial enclaves. Here I refer to the issue of our Malvinas Islands, where, despite the resolutions of this body, despite all the measures taken here for the United Kingdom to agree, in virtue of what is set out in Article 33 of the Charter of the United Nations, to negotiate in peace between the parties, that country resolutely refuses to discuss with the Argentine Republic the issue of the Malvinas Islands.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Thus we believe not only that our strategy has been correct but that it is absolutely necessary for all of us to review, with a great deal of intellectual humility, what is happening today in the markets and see what are the possible solutions for overcoming the situation. We emerging countries have a great advantage in what we do not have: no credit risk agency will come, nobody from the IMF will come tell us what to do, a great country that has grown on the basis of its real economy and today really has problems on the basis of a casino economy or a fictional economy, where it was thought that only capitalism can produce money. I always say that capitalism was invented in order to earn money, but on the basis of the production of goods, services and knowledge. Money alone does not produce more money.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We have fully paid our debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and about 15 days ago we announced that we will settle our debt with the Paris Club, which had a cut-off date of 10 December 1983 — the very year when the first democratic President took office, after the dictatorship. Here in New York yesterday, in the Council on Foreign Relations, I announced that Argentina has received a proposal from three very important banks that represent bond-holders who did 25 08-51570 not participate in the 2005 bond exchange and who are proposing to do so in conditions more favourable for my country, Argentina, than those of the 2005 exchange.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“However, now we are seeing the most formidable State intervention in memory from exactly the place where we had been told that the State was not necessary, in the framework, moreover, of an incredible fiscal and trade deficit. My country, the Argentine Republic — which, if it continues to grow at the rates at which it has been growing since 2003, will this year be completing the largest economic growth cycle of its almost 200-year history — has always upheld the need for a State presence, fundamentally because the market does not assign resources to the most vulnerable sectors and because we see the State as connecting the interests of society and market interests. Since 2003, an Argentina that had been in debt up to as much as 160 per cent of its GDP has today reduced its debt to almost 50 per cent of GDP.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Today, we cannot speak of the “caipirinha effect” or the “tequila effect” or the “rice effect”, or the effect that always showed that the crisis moved from the emerging countries towards the centre. Today, if we were to give it a name, we would have to say, perhaps, the “jazz effect”, which moves from the centre of the first economy of the world and spreads to the rest of the world. That situation does not make us content or happy. Quite the contrary, we consider this an historic opportunity to review behaviour and policies, because during the period of the Washington Consensus, we — the countries of South America — were told that the market would solve everything, that the State was not necessary, that State intervention was something for which groups that had not understood how the economy had developed were nostalgic.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“What I want to say with this is that, for us, the exercise of multilateralism is not simply a hackneyed speech. It is a deeply-held conviction and a concrete and objective policy, showing results in what are normally called emerging regions, where we are capable of giving examples of multilateral collaboration in overcoming conflicts. The other reform that we have always promoted is that of the multilateral credit institutions, but fundamentally the reform of an economic model that placed the generation of wealth at the centre of the fictional economy and of the world of finances. Recent days show that those matters, those positions, were not the result of an ideological bias or closed dogmas but of objective and timely observation of what was going on.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“In a concrete multilateral exercise, heads of State, who do not always share the same viewpoints or interests when we take decisions, were able to work unanimously to forge a resolution and plan of action to help our sister Republic of Bolivia, affected by those who do not respect the democratic will of the people freely expressed through elections. That is not our only experience of multilateralism. Previously, at the meeting of the Rio Group in the Dominican Republic, at the time of the incident between the sister Republics of Ecuador and Colombia, heads of State intervened and were able to navigate a conflict which, on the basis of history, in other situations would surely have degenerated into an armed conflict between two sister countries.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“The Organization needs to be reformed, not just from the point of view of dogmatic approaches to the world, but to meet the real need of all States to ensure the functional, operational and results-oriented character of the activities and interventions of the Organization. In this context, I would modestly like to put forward an example from our region, South America, of how we were recently able to demonstrate that multilateralism can be achieved, despite differences of approach and vision that different Governments in our region may have. Here I am looking at the President Evo Morales — the legitimate President of our sister Republic of Bolivia. I would like to say that, a few days ago, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) met in support of the democratic legitimacy of that country.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“I would thus urge once again that, in compliance with international law and because ensuring access to justice is what truly shows how we respect truth, justice and freedom, this request from the Argentine justice system, accepted by INTERPOL, be respected. That would undoubtedly contribute to providing truth for all — not just for Argentines, but for the entire international community — at a time when truth and justice are elusive values internationally. 08-51570 24 In this Hall, as we have been doing since 2003, I would also like to call for the reform of our multilateral bodies — not only of the United Nations, which includes us all, but also of the multilateral financial institutions as well. That involves us all, and it is necessary to recreate a multilateralism which has been lost, leading to a far more insecure world.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Before all the countries of the world brought together in this Assembly, and with the conviction I have always held that innocence must be respected until an individual has been convicted and sentenced by a competent judge, I would like to affirm that, in my country, those citizens will have a fair and public trial with their full participation, with all the guarantees afforded by Argentine law and by the oversight of the international community. Given the gravity of these events, this would guarantee to the Islamic Republic of Iran that there would be fairness, truth and justice in that trial.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Last year, before this very Assembly, former President Kirchner asked INTERPOL to ratify the arrest warrants issued by my country’s Ministry of Justice against Iranian citizens accused of participating in the AMIA building bombing. Days later, INTERPOL ratified them, and international arrest warrants were issued accordingly. I call upon the Islamic Republic of Iran, in compliance with international law, please to agree that the Argentine justice system can bring to trial in public, transparent courts, and with the full guarantees given by a democratic system, those citizens who stand accused.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“The recovery of these children shows how important — how crucial — it is to support this type of initiative and underlines the importance of the work that has been done to identify the victims of the Balkan wars and those of the 11 September attack on the World Trade Center. In the fight against impunity, which is a State policy in the Republic of Argentina, we cannot fail to mention an issue that, for us, is undoubtedly another cornerstone of this inexhaustible struggle. My country, the Republic of Argentina, suffered two attacks, in 1992 and 1994: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy and the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We deem invaluable the testimony of the women who are with us here at the Assembly today, members of Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo — the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo — who envisioned the creation of this genetic information bank. They have been able to recover, from oblivion and disappearance, 95 of the 500 grandchildren who disappeared, children of those political prisoners who disappeared under the former dictatorship in Argentina. The work of these women is living witness to how, even amidst adversity and against all that State terrorism — not just in my country but in other republics — has meant, it is possible to overcome death and fight for life.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“I know that the Republic of France will soon be ratifying it, but it is indispensable that we all strongly commit to ensuring that the inviolability of persons be one of the guiding principles for all States. In this context, I would also like to put forward the Latin American Initiative for the Identification of Disappeared Persons. I would like to say that, together with the Guatemalan Foundation for Forensic Anthropology, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team, we are promoting this initiative to establish genetic identity banks to enable us to report precisely on violations of human rights and properly identify victims.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“As the first female head of State in the history of my country, I would like to address this Assembly by speaking first on the issue of human rights. Members know that, for my country, the policy of unrestricted respect for and promotion of human rights is one of our State policies. In that context, I would like to urge that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance — which was so energetically promoted by our country and which I co-signed, as First Lady of the Argentine Republic, in Paris last year together with 73 other delegations — be ratified by all countries that have signed it. Thus far, only four countries — Argentina, Albania, Mexico and Honduras — have ratified it.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)