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19

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1999-09-30

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1999-09-30

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un-security-council

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1. “The Programme also implements a variety of technical assistance projects in Africa. Training and mutual cooperation in human rights, in the conduct of elections, in parliamentary procedures and in public sector administration are important components of our multifaceted relationship. Several Indian companies have established joint ventures in Africa, infusing capital, upgrading technology levels and promoting job creation. Indian industry is involved in a significant way in the development of African infrastructure in sectors such as railways. In 1998, we set up a revolving fund for Africa for promoting trade, investment and technology sharing, as well as for revitalizing our bilateral trade with Africa and for investing in Africa's development. Africa will remain the highest priority for us as a partner in cooperation.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

2. “India has contributed to the best of its ability to the promotion of peace and sustainable development in Africa. We attach the highest priority to economic cooperation with Africa. A primary instrument of our technical cooperation with Africa has been the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme, which has trained some 20,000 African nationals so far in fields including banking, foreign trade, hydrology and water resources, communications, electronics, satellite imaging, agriculture, small and medium industry, software, renewable energy sources and the like. Over 15,000 African students study in India. We provide 1,350 training slots every year in our best educational institutions, of which nearly 60 per cent are reserved for nominees from Africa.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

3. “On AIDS, the latest World Health Organization figures for Africa are 54 million infected, and the Human Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme informs us that the cost of the medication developed by Glaxo Wellcome has come down from $10,000 to $3,000 per patient per annum, which is still well beyond African means. If all 54 million Africans are to be treated, the cost to the continent per annum could well be $162 billion. Where is this money to come from? This touches upon the general question of neglect and non- application in the developing world of cutting-edge scientific and technological research in the areas of health and upon the need for urgently exploring innovative ways of financing the application of this research, particularly in Africa.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

4. “The World Health Report 1999, published by the World Health Organization, describes the challenge of malaria in Africa as a social and economic development issue, not just a health concern, and it also goes on to say that because the adverse economic impact of malaria in Africa has been estimated to be greater than 1 per cent of gross domestic product, it could be considered a cause, and not just a consequence, of underdevelopment. Determined international action to eradicate malaria could thus add at least 1 per cent to African gross domestic product; this is far more doable than putting an arbitrary cap, for instance, on defence spending.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

5. “Even more telling, the Economic Commission for Africa has reminded us that the gap that needs to be financed by external resources if Africa is to reduce poverty is 9 per cent of African gross domestic product, which is almost the same figure as for official development assistance. In most developing economies that have taken off, that gap was hardly ever more than between 2 per cent and 3 per cent. The figure for Africa demonstrates the qualitatively different nature of African need; the decline in net inflows and the limited scope of foreign interest are therefore even more disturbing. On public health, the report refers to the challenges of both HIV/AIDS and malaria, again perhaps without spelling out the magnitude of the problem Africa faces.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

6. “However, those African countries that do not have commercially attractive natural resources, no matter how well they are governed or how stable their macroeconomic environments may be, are unlikely to get substantial foreign investment. Since these are the countries that often need foreign direct investment most, there is a clear disjunction between need and supply, which needs to be addressed. Across the continent, to illustrate this point, industrial-sector growth, which has driven development in all regions, has declined from 3.8 per cent in 1997 to 3.2 per cent in 1998, largely because investments are absent.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

7. “That report also found that, above all, foreign investors looked for African countries with an open, well-regulated macroeconomic environment; the recommendation in the Secretary-Generals report that African countries should create an enabling environment to attract investment is therefore a sound one. However, the World Investment Report also found that almost all foreign direct investment into Africa was sunk into the quick exploitation of natural resources. In other words, if two African countries had natural resources, such as oil or gas, of immediate interest to foreign investors, the one with the more stable environment would stand a better chance of getting the investment.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

8. “Eight of the 10 best performers in the Borda rankings in Africa were also among the top 10 in terms of per capita income, countering that claim often made that human development is not necessarily dependent on income growth. The report urges African countries to create a positive environment for investment, including through greater attention to human resources and public health, but other reports from the United Nations system fill out the picture. On investment, the World Investment Report, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, pointed out last year that foreign direct investment in Africa yielded greater returns than that in any other region.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

9. “It is clear that we need to address in other forums the specific needs of countries and subregions in Africa and help them craft appropriate solutions based on local endowments. We are disappointed that section III of the report, on building a durable peace and promoting economic growth, considers aspects of good governance in far more detail than it does practical measures to promote growth. Effective, transparent and accountable governance responsive to the needs and priorities of the governed is important, but linking assistance and investment to arbitrary norms not related to economic parameters will promote neither human rights nor prosperity. In contrast, the report to the Economic and Social Council clearly establishes the close relationship between income and well-being.”

   1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

10. “This is heartening, but the World Economic and Social Survey 1999, prepared by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, claims that African growth has declined from 2.7 per cent in 1997 to 2.5 per cent in 1998. We hope that United Nations assessments will not vary so widely; it becomes difficult otherwise for Member States to judge what the objective situation is. Also, we need to break down the problem if we are to make meaningful recommendations; western, eastern and southern Africa have had a particularly difficult time, but within those regions, according to the Survey, countries in the CFA franc zone have done rather well, some growing by 4.9 per cent in 1998 and others by 5.5 per cent.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

11. “In general, anything the Security Council does for Africa is likely to be insufficient unless there are concrete international efforts to address its underlying problems effectively; as the Secretary General has said, development is an essential condition for the maintenance of peace and security. How has Africa done over the last year? The figures we have from the United Nations system are confusing. The annual summary of the economic and social situation in Africa submitted this year to the Economic and Social Council put the figure for gross domestic product growth in 1998 at 3.3 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent in 1997, the highest growth rate of any region in the world; it reported that the 33 African least developed countries increased their growth rate from 2.4 per cent in 1997 to 4.1 per cent in 1998.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

12. “All regions of the world should be dealt with equally, and equally transparently, and Africa deserves not just the Council's attention in debates like these, but the prompt dispatch of United Nations peacekeeping operations whenever they are required. Most of the points made in the section on humanitarian assistance recapitulate the recommendations made in the recent report to the Security Council on the protection of civilians in armed conflict (S/1999/957). I shall say only that in a statement to the Council earlier this month (S/PV.4046 (Resumption 1)) we explained in detail why we believe that those recommendations need much closer examination and should not be accepted as a basis for action.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

13. “The international conference on United Nations peacekeeping, which we hosted in New Delhi in March this year, had a major emphasis on peacekeeping in Africa. We made a special effort to ensure wide African participation, and trust that those who attended found the experience useful. We have contributed to almost every peacekeeping operation mounted by the United Nations in Africa, and will remain committed to peacekeeping efforts there. African peacekeeping capacities are being developed, but this should not become an excuse for the Security Council to abdicate its responsibilities for the maintenance of international peace and security and refuse to set up peacekeeping operations in Africa on the basis that they would require extra resources, involve physical risks to peacekeepers or could be long-drawn-out.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

14. “It is well established that mercenaries are sustaining several ongoing conflicts, have committed horrible violations of human rights and humanitarian law and actively market their services to antagonists in Africa. Most of them come from countries outside the continent that have recently pruned their armies. Again, this is a problem for Africa whose solution does not lie in African hands. The other important omission is terrorism, which has bedeviled Africa and African security as it has many other parts of the world. At the recent Organization of African Unity (OAU) summit in Algiers, African leaders pledged themselves to work for an international and global convention for the struggle against all forms of terrorism. We welcome and support this call. We welcome international efforts to strengthen Africa's capacity for peacekeeping.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

15. “This is an interesting tack to take, but since most of the arms used in African conflicts are made on other continents and exported there, quite often in the full knowledge that they will be used by those on whom embargoes have been placed, any legislation that African States enact will be ineffective unless there are equally strict legal checks in the arms-exporting countries. On reducing arms purchases to below 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product, the report notes that many countries in Africa were of the view that this would be difficult to implement. Again, almost by definition, this is not a figure that can be given general sanctity. We are surprised that the report is silent on mercenaries.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

16. “The Secretary-General's report calls for steps to check corruption in Africa, but as the report to the Economic and Social Council made clear, Africa urgently and rather desperately needs these funds back, and to achieve that aim it needs the help of the foreign Governments where these banks are based. Corruption cannot be staunched at source if bribes can be safely squirrelled away abroad. We note that the Secretariat is working with African States to make the violation of Security Council arms embargoes a criminal offence under national legislation.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

17. “We have participated in the Interlaken process, and would be interested to see targeted sanctions work. We believe that the focus of the exercise should be to lessen the impact of the sanctions on the innocent, in Africa and elsewhere, rather than on easing the administrative burden for the international banks through which financial sanctions are imposed. A related but crucial point needs to be made here: as one of the reports (E/ 1999/ 16) submitted to the Economic and Social Council earlier this year noted, Africa has suffered massive capital flight, estimated at about $22 billion between 1982 and 1991; these outflows, which have grown even larger since then, represent the fruits of corruption and have been invested in banks in developed countries.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

18. “However, since in this debate we will look at the totality of the challenges facing Africa - if only to set the problems of conflict and security in perspective - I will refer also to those issues highlighted in the report where responsibility for action lies elsewhere than with the Council. We note with interest the modest, practical steps that the report suggests in the section on responding to situations of conflict. We would all agree that it is always sensible, as a general principle not limited to Africa, to avoid rival mediation efforts; sometimes, this has led to tensions between the mediators which feed back into the conflict. Contact groups and special conferences may be helpful, though by definition they become useful - and should be set up - only when the parties to a conflict are prepared to talk.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source

19. “Even though the ministerial meeting proposed by the Secretary-General will be held next year, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the Council about Africa, a continent with which we in India have close and historical bonds. The Secretary-General's report on the causes of conflict and the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa, issued in April 1998, made a series of recommendations to the United Nations system and to Member States. A year has elapsed and it is time to take stock, as the Secretary- General has done in his progress report. As we said last year, most of the problems that the Secretary-General identified in his report are outside the mandate of the Security Council to address.”

    1999-09-30 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.4049Resumption2 (1999) · source