YouSaid · the spoken record

Cristina Fernández

lines on the record: 188
first: 2010-09-24
most recent: 2015-09-24
sittings or episodes: 6
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

“Perhaps we could also list the 29 resolutions of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee and the 11 resolutions and 8 declarations of the Organization of American States, as well as the 27 11-50692 resolutions of various forums — Ibero-American forums, the Union of South American Nations, the Common Market of the South, meetings of the Arab and African countries — and the entire world. Through such resolutions and declarations, all of them have been demanding that this issue be addressed. The United Kingdom has systematically refused to do so and has obviously used its status as a veto-wielding member of the Security Council to that end. The year 2013 will mark the passage of 180 years since the Argentines were expelled by force of arms from our Malvinas Islands.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“The question of sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands is also a trial by fire for this body in terms of whether it is possible for it to comply with a policy that is essentially multilateral and under which all members are obliged to accept the resolutions of this Assembly. Ten General Assembly resolutions have invited the United Kingdom and my country to sit down to negotiate and discuss our sovereignty. Bear in mind that Argentina is not asking for those resolutions to be implemented in terms of recognizing sovereignty. No, it is simply asking for compliance with some of the provisions of the 10 United Nations resolutions on the matter.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“For that reason, I ask that God will enlighten those who must make this historic and structural decision of global significance so that greater balance can be achieved and so that this year Palestine will be able to take its seat number 194. I am sure that if we succeed in that endeavour we will help to create a world that is not only safer, but more just. I would like to make another point, one linked to the situation that we have been describing, with regard to what is shown by the injustice of certain countries — five, to be exact — on the Security Council having veto rights. Once again, we have come to the heart of the United Nations to raise an issue that is just as vital, and not only to Argentines.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“But allow me to say to Assembly members, on the authority we have as a country that has suffered from the scourge of international terrorism, that to prevent Palestine from becoming a member of this Assembly means to continue providing alibis to those who engage in international terrorism and who in that repudiation find precisely one of the false arguments they use to justify their crimes. I believe that the non-inclusion of Palestine this year, far from providing greater security and stability in the world, will bring about greater insecurity and conditions that are utterly unfavourable to what should be the prestige of a body that should represent the interests of all citizens of the world.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“At that time, the right to veto was necessary, because in that bipolar world, with the fear of a nuclear holocaust, that right gave to Council members the balance necessary to ensure the security of humankind. Today, that balance is broken. Permanent seats and the right to veto are not about defending security or universal stability; rather, they are often about the position of Council members exercising their right. In my most recent statement before the Assembly (see A/65/PV.14), I believe I concluded by expressing my hope that this year Palestine would be become the 194th Member of the concert of the United Nations. My country, Argentina, like most South American nations, has recognized the State of Palestine. I sincerely believe that blocking the entry of Palestine could perhaps be seen by some as benefiting the State of Israel.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“The twentieth century produced crises that were not adequately solved by political means. I call once again for the reform of this important Organization, which represents multilateralism — something we have always consistently defended. We need a more pluralistic and diverse world, and to make political bodies such as the United Nations, and crucially the Security Council, more democratic. We do not agree on the need to expand the number of permanent members; on the contrary, we believe that the permanent member category should be eliminated. The right to veto also should be eliminated, as it really prevents the Security Council from carrying out the true functions that it had in the bipolar world in which it was originally conceived.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Indeed, we believe that this task should already have been begun, already formulated, in order to avoid precisely what we are experiencing now. For some people it is just a matter of numbers on the stock market, but for others they signal the destruction of the hopes of a lifetime. As I was saying to a colleague the other day during a visit to Europe, economic crises always end up impacting the political system. There cannot be a serious economic crisis, in which millions of people fall into poverty and lose their jobs, homes, education and health, without that also signalling profound political transformation. And when such political transformation results in further serious economic crises, the result is experiences that I will not go into now. Totalitarianism often came out of crises.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Unfortunately, we continue to find ourselves in the same situation, because other than the changes that I would describe as purely cosmetic, we have gone no further with the necessary regulation. Moreover, the credit ratings agencies — which bear a great deal of the responsibility for much of what has happened — rate Argentina, for example, as a marginal economy. Until very recently, they categorized economies on the brink of default higher than that of Argentina. Therefore, transparent regulation of the ratings agencies is needed, as they bear a great responsibility for the crisis we are currently seeing in various regions — which will, of course, have an impact on all countries. 11-50692 26 It is regrettable that we have been asking for the reform, reorganization and modification of the multilateral credit bodies for so long now.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“It is crucial that this message be understood, because today we may see speculation on food; yesterday, it was on oil, and tomorrow, it could be on little candies, if that would be profitable and beneficial to the moving of this capital, which gets transferred from one side of the world to the other without any control or regulation whatsoever. Here I must say that, as a member of the Group of 20 at the London meeting — when it was decided to inject an enormous amount of financial resources into the financial sector that was experiencing problems — I maintained that it was necessary to guarantee that those resources being injected into the financial world could later return to the real economy, the concrete economy, to be able to generate employment, products and services.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“This not only destroys thousands of jobs but also generates immense profits that someone is pocketing. We would like to reiterate once again, in the light of our own experience — and I reiterate once again that I do not want to set up a model — the need for multilateral credit organizations to work extremely hard on regulating the global movement of capital and financial speculation. If this does not happen, it will be impossible to achieve that ever elusive market stability, and as a result, the economies of both emerging countries, which have been sustaining the growth of the global economic activity, and developed countries alike will be overwhelmed.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“If we look at the relationship between global GDP and financial stocks in the 1980s, we see that it was a one-to-one relationship. There was a financial stock that was exactly equal to the goods and services being produced by the world. From the 1990s, figures skyrocketed. In 2008 total financial stocks, total financial activity in the world, reached 3.6 times the global GDP. This meant a tremendous gap between what we produce and what is in what I call the “enter key” economy. I call it that because, if we go looking for these shares, they are mere keystrokes transferring numbers from one place to another, from one currency to another, producing unparalleled market volatility and recurrent crises whereby exchanges go up and down on a daily basis.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Argentina does not pretend to be a model or an example for anyone, but we do wish to reaffirm the need to formulate clear rules with regard to the transfer of capital in the area of financial speculation. Many speakers before me, and doubtless many more to come will do the same, have complained about financial commodity speculation, especially in the food sector. When we compare the growth of global financial stocks to global GDP — what all of the citizens and businesses of the world produce in goods and services — it becomes clear why we are facing a world where speculation is out of control, careening from one side to the other and from one country or region to another, affecting currencies, economies and the daily lives of citizens, destroying jobs and preventing people from obtaining a dignified education and health care.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Our unemployment rate is among the lowest, and we have completed the most significant cycle of economic growth in our 200 years of history. Among the emerging countries of our region, Latin America, Argentina has had the leading growth rate and is regularly paying its debt without turning to capital markets. I am not going to list all of the numbers, but they are very compelling. In 2003, we spent 2 per cent of GDP on education and 5 per cent on debt payments. Today, Argentina devotes 6.47 per cent of its GDP to education and spends 2 per cent to debt payment. The situation in the world is quite different. Many regions and countries have severe problems.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“In each of our addresses we have made the same calls to a world that has changed significantly since 2003, when the Argentine Republic was cast as a black sheep gone astray and which found itself in default because of a continued failure to fulfil its obligations. In reality, we were victims, used as guinea pigs in the experiments of the 1990s and neoliberal policies. 25 11-50692 Much has happened since then, when Argentina defaulted on the largest debt — at least, so far — in the history of humanity, $160 billion. Over the past eight years, Argentina has restructured its debt, reducing it from 160 per cent to less than 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The rates of poverty and indigence have been reduced to single digits, and we must continue that fight.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“Exactly eight years ago, in this same context and from this same rostrum, the President of my country, Néstor Carlos Kirchner, addressed the Assembly, four years after having assumed the presidency of the Argentine Republic with only 22 per cent of the vote. Given the situation of the Argentine Republic — which had fallen into default in 2001, where about a quarter of the population was unemployed and levels of destitution and poverty had exceeded 50 per cent — he stated that the multilateral credit institutions needed reform, particularly the International Monetary Fund, as did the political bodies of this honourable Organization. President Kirchner made five speeches to the General Assembly, and I have made four. This is my fourth statement as President of the Republic.”
2011-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 66 (2011)
“The United Kingdom can do as it likes because no one is compelling it to implement the decisions of the Security Council, because it is a permanent member and an important member of NATO. In a world of double standards — where only the developing and extremely weak countries are compelled to abide by the international legal order while those who can systematically violate it do so — it is not possible to build peace, let alone maintain international security, because such situations end up creating the kind of insurmountable disputes and differences we see every day. I believe it important to note that the concepts of security and peace can never be associated with military matters alone. They must be essentially associated with political values, equity, freedom and a cause for which humankind has fought from the beginning: equality.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Those who were once irreconcilable enemies and rivals are now associates, allies, friends or whatever anyone might care to call them. What is certain is that those who can unleash terrible conflict situations, tragedies and international terrorism are not and never will be seated there. Thus, the Security Council has lost its effectiveness because it is not in line with today’s world or the dangers besetting it. Quite the contrary, the use and misuse of their dominant position by members of the Council in certain countries have provoked conflicts that cannot then be stifled by the Council, much less by the Organization. 7 10-54959 We believe that the case of the Malvinas Islands is very enlightening.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Resolutions of the Council are applicable only to those countries that do not have sufficient power or the right to a permanent seat on the Council. The Council should be reformed because it has never been able to maintain international peace and security. That is not simply because some seats are permanent or because the world context has changed since the San Francisco Charter created the Security Council. The Security Council, with its permanent members, was a Security Council where those who were seated could, by pressing a red button, cause a nuclear holocaust. That was the true reason for creating a Council that could strike a balance between the interests of a bipolar world and prevent a nuclear holocaust. That world no longer exists.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“British Petroleum, operating off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico, set off an unprecedented ecological catastrophe. The lack of oversight by our country or any other over what the United Kingdom is doing in the Malvinas Islands has mobilized us not only to defend the natural resources of my country, but to seek to avert an ecological catastrophe that could occur due to this total lack of oversight. Some may say that this has nothing to with security. It has a great deal to do with security, because one of the central problems of our globalized world is the need to adapt the Security Council to our times. We need a Security Council worthy of its name. England, like other countries that have a permanent seat on the Council, has used and misused its position.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Our claim is absolutely up to date. The United Kingdom has systematically refused to implement universally binding General Assembly resolutions calling for negotiations with the Argentine Republic on the question of sovereignty. But that is not all. Unilateral decisions have been taken to exploit hydrocarbon resources on the islands. There are two aspects to this exploitation. The first is that it constitutes depredation of natural resources that belong to us. It is unthinkable that territorial, historical or legal sovereignty can be maintained over islands that are 14,000 kilometres from the United Kingdom and whose transplanted population sits on a continental shelf that unquestionably belongs to the Argentine Republic geographically, geologically and historically. The second aspect is the risk of ecological catastrophe.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Thus, we hope that the offer I make to the Islamic Republic of Iran today before the General Assembly will put an end to the pretext of non-neutrality and to accusations of our complicity in withholding impartial justice. I address this in particular to those who insist that there can be no impartial justice. I believe that this eloquent gesture has international precedents and will allow us to resolve this situation and to channel this dispute institutionally. We must do this if we wish to feel truly part of the international community. We must resolve this dispute in a framework of justice and legality. Finally, again in connection with security concerns, we must once again, here in this Assembly, demand respect for our sovereign rights over the Malvinas Islands. We do not do so solely for historical reasons.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“We are a country of open- mindedness because of our immigrant heritage, which guarantees plurality and diversity for all. There is a precedent for what we are proposing. This precedent is not a capricious or fantastical legal construction; it is the Lockerbie case. That is an international precedent of a trial held in a third neutral country that could provide guarantees for those who fear they might not be judged impartially. In this connection, I would like to clarify that the Argentine Republic is not seeking guilty parties. All the Argentine Government seeks is justice. Ultimately, anyone who has committed a crime of such magnitude should be punished.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“But I will propose to the Islamic Republic of Iran — even if it has no faith in Argentine justice, as it has said, because of prejudgement and insufficient neutrality to carry out a trial — that a third country be selected, through mutual agreement between our countries, in which there are guarantees of due process and where international observers and United Nations representatives may participate to bring to trial the terrible attack on AMIA in our country. I should also like to say that we do not consider that attack as an 10-54959 6 attack on one community or one religion. For us, it was an attack on all Argentines. I am President of a country where we can celebrate the Jewish New Year with the Jewish community, as I did this year in my capacity as leader of the country. We also celebrated the end of Ramadan at an Islamic centre.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“It is for those reasons that we continue to make this request for extradition. We have also emphasized that for any Argentine citizens who believe that our country’s justice system is not fair enough or does not enforce the law, we are party to international conventions to which they can turn, including such international tribunals as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Despite the fact that we have guaranteed that all these principles will continue to be respected in the Argentine Republic, we have not yet achieved results. I shall not on this occasion call for the fourth time for something that will clearly not achieve results.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“The first was the blowing up of the Israeli Embassy, and the second tragedy was the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). In that regard, in 2007, my country’s then President, Néstor Kirchner, requested the Islamic Republic of Iran to agree to the extradition of Iranian citizens whom the Argentine justice system had accused of participation in carrying out that heinous crime. I did the same as President in 2008 and 2009 — to little effect, I must confess. I did so while emphasizing that mine is a leading country in respecting human rights and bringing to justice those who commit crimes against humanity. I have also underscored that we have a system that ensures due process and the right to counsel and that does not permit anyone to be tried or convicted in absentia.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“With regard to the final focus, namely, building international peace and security, we sincerely believe that the resumption of dialogue between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority is very good news indeed when it comes to finally achieving what I believe all of us have looked forward to for quite a long time: that the State of Palestine will be seated as a full member during the next session of the General Assembly. We believe that will make an enormous contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security. I say this by virtue of our experience as a country that has been a target and victim of international terrorist groups. As the Assembly is aware, in 1992 and 1994 my country was the victim of two terrible terrorist attacks.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“It is not fair that developing countries — which, by paying a high price, have been able to overcome high levels of poverty and social inequality through economic growth — should be the ones that have to assume responsibility for the environmental legacy of developed countries, which for decades contaminated the world and which should therefore be the ones to shoulder this responsibility. Establishing viable targets and goals that are in line with the need to continue to grow the economy also require that we seriously realign our goals in the area of global warming.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“It is also linked to the equitable distribution of wealth, which should make societies sustainable through a model that is not just economic but also essentially political. Climate change, which is very important and will soon be addressed at the Cancun meeting, has also been a central theme in all the interventions that have been made from this rostrum. While it is well and good to speak of that, we have not been able to reach an agreement because, in fact, we are not being offered a solution in this area that is just and equitable in terms of who, and to what degree, should bear primary responsibility for damage due to environmental pollution.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“We therefore believe in the need for global re-engineering of multilateral funds — essentially in a theoretical framework different from the one that the world has experienced, namely, the Washington Consensus. That Consensus has been exhausted by failure, but has not been replaced by a new theoretical framework that gives different roles to central banks, as well as to States as instruments to promote counter- cyclical fiscal measures that ensure something which, in our opinion, is a central concern: employment stability, rather than just currency stability. We also sincerely believe that currencies should not be protected solely from a monetary perspective; on the contrary, we believe that the value of each country’s currency is directly linked to the potential for growth and wealth-generation capacity of each country’s economy.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“We also believe that there is a need to evaluate and legislate on risk- rating agencies, which for instance rated Argentina’s debt as highly risky when it reality the Argentine Republic had been scrupulously paying its debt since the first renegotiation, in 2005, without turning to capital markets. Nevertheless, they have given much higher rankings to countries that subsequently demonstrated that they did not have the capacity to address their debt because they had structural problems in their economies, such as fiscal deficits, commercial 5 10-54959 deficits and reserve outflows — precisely the opposite of what took place in Argentina.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“What I am trying to say is that our experience in Argentina, as well as that of other emerging countries — which, I wish to reiterate once again, are shoring up economic growth — makes it incumbent upon the Group of 20, as well as the Group of 77, where we will also push for this, to carry out a rigorous reform of international credit agencies, which have failed in their fundamental purpose: to ensure a stable global economy that produces jobs and well-being for the inhabitants of the planet. In that regard, we believe that it is truly urgent for there to be global legislation in the area of vulture funds, which basically move from one area of the country to another in genuinely speculative ways and have a pitiless impact on economies.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“We have used our reserves rationally because we believe that, in our case, they are the result of a trade surplus — that is to say, hard currency dollars — and should be applied to paying down the debt rather than putting them into capital markets, thereby resulting in double-digit debt while we would be paid only 0.5 per cent interest for our reserves. It would really have been senseless and irrational for our country to go into double-digit debt when in reality we had more than enough reserves, for which we would be paid barely 0.5 per cent.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“This is due essentially to counter-cyclical economic management and to an understanding that instruments such as the central bank, reserves, foreign trade, production, employment generation and better living standards, with a robust expansion in fiscal spending, are exactly what has meant that the crisis overwhelming developing countries has not had the same impact it would have had at other times. In this context, I wish to point out that we have also promoted the intelligent use of our reserves, which is something currently under discussion in all multilateral bodies, in the world of economics and in the context of the Group of 20.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“And, moreover, Argentina has achieved heretofore unknown inclusive growth in the past year, following our application of counter-cyclical measures throughout all of 2009 and in late 2008. We have experienced growth in economic activity of 9 per cent over the past 12 months. We brought the unemployment rate back down to 7.9 per cent. And we managed to continue reducing the rates of poverty and extreme poverty, which are now at levels never before seen in our country.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“And we did so through our own efforts and, crucially, with an economic and political strategy that was not dictated by demands from the multilateral credit institutions but was in line with our own convictions and, crucially, our own interests. In the eight years leading up to this bicentennial year — this year, my country marks 200 years of freedom — we have achieved the most significant economic growth ever seen in our 200 years of history. We managed to emerge from debt in a way never before seen in our history. Since that sovereign default of 2001, which was the greatest such default in history, today Argentina has renegotiated 93 per cent of its total debt with Argentine debt title-holders.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“And Argentina, in this sense, was somewhat of a guinea pig for the policies of the 1990s, when it was held up as a model pupil while it was in reality ratcheting up unsustainable levels of debt, producing neither goods nor services, and actually experiencing a fall in job- creation, finally collapsing in 2001 in a financial crisis very similar to that which shook the world in the third quarter of 2008. The ground fell out from beneath Argentina in 2001. However, through the policies we pursued from 2003 onwards, we have been able to overcome that crisis, which so closely resembled that which hit the world in 2008.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“With respect to the global crisis, whose impact has been felt in emerging countries despite the fact that it actually originated in developed countries, it must be pointed out that it was precisely the developing countries that supported the economic growth of the past decade and that will again reignite and sustain economic growth and activity and thus provide the means to overcome what is perhaps the most significant economic crisis since 1930.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)
“Most of the speeches we have heard so far today and yesterday have had three main focuses. One of them, without a doubt, is the global economic crisis, its impact and evolution and how to overcome it. Climate change has been another focus. And, finally, the third fundamental and very important topic has been the maintenance of international peace and security. 10-54959 4 I believe that emerging countries, and Argentina in particular, have a wealth of experience to share in connection with these three topics, and that we need to take a position.”
2010-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 65 (2010)