Honorable Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa,
Heads of State and Government,
Distinguished delegates and guests,
It was hard enough to withstand the worldwide feud between two superpowers but to live under the total hegemony of only one is still worse.
Let’s be clear: it’s impossible to accept a world order which is the full embodiment of the principles and objectives of a system that for centuries colonized, enslaved and looted our peoples.
The Non-Aligned Movement - the people’s organization that has put up the strongest fight, provided most support and resolutely defended the interests, the just causes and the struggles for national liberation in the Third World, all along the cold war - has not yet seen the last of itself; it will never do.
There is no need for the Movement to apologize or ask for anyone’s permission to exist and to go on fighting. Even the United States earnestly requested to attend this meeting as a guest, so be it. It’s better that way, so that the great empire may learn how its modest subjects feel.
The United Nations organization must be reformed and democratized. The Security Council’s dictatorship must cease. The General Assembly’s rights should be acknowledged as it represents every state in the world. The Council should be expanded according to the UN present membership and the permanent members should be twice, and if necessary thrice, the present number.
Why is it that some talk of limiting membership to one from Latin America and the Caribbean, one from Africa and one from Asia? Whose idea is it? Who has agreed to that? Why not two or even three to represent the emerging countries from every one of those regions as they constitute the overwhelming majority of the UN membership? If Western Europe has two representatives, why is it that over 4 billion Third World people have only one?
The right to veto must be removed. But, if that were not possible now, it is still unacceptable to have first and second class permanent members. Rotation is not an option; it would only serve deceit and confusion, it would divide and curtail the authority of the new permanent members. They should all enjoy equal rights.
Likewise, the International Monetary Fund must be transformed and democratized. It should no longer be a worldwide political destabilizing factor and a financial policeman for the United States interests. No one should have the right to veto its decisions. Such principle should also be applied to the World Bank.
The World Trade Organization, where we are a majority cannot become, through division and deceit, an instrument of the cruel neo-liberal globalization imposed on the world. On the other hand, a final and binding supranational Agreement on Investments as designed by the OECD - an exclusive rich people club where none of our countries takes part — is unacceptable in as much as it forces the countries in, or leaves them out, regardless of consequences.
The acclaimed free movement of capital and commodities must also apply to that which must stand above all else: the human being. No more bloody walls like that under construction along the American-Mexican border which is taking a high toll in human lives, hundreds of them, every year. The persecution of immigrants must cease. Xenophobia must end, not solidarity.
We’ve had enough of the hypocritical protests of those who strongly complain when others want to produce nuclear weapons: the mightiest power in the privileged group of those who have it, the one turning its own into increasingly powerful, accurate and deadly weapons. That encourages the fearful proliferation and it will never be conducive to a really comprehensive nuclear disarmament.
The arms race does not stop for a second. It doesn’t grow quantitatively but it does qualitatively. It only serves as a guarantee for the privileges of the new order and as the basis of a lucrative and dishonest business. Weapons are increasingly expensive; they ruin the emerging peoples that use them to kill each other. Trafficking with weapons is worse than trafficking with drugs.
Neo-liberal globalization is rapidly destroying nature, poisoning the air and the waters, killing the forests, causing soil desertification and erosion, depleting and wasting the natural resources, changing the climate. How will the 10 billion people we will soon be make a living? What kind of life will that be?
Development assistance is constantly reduced. It never reached the projected 0.7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product and, as an average, it has decreased to 0.25 percent; 0.2 percent in the richest country. They want to turn us into an immense free zone with cheap labor force and not even taxes to pay.
No hopes for the children, the elders and the sick. And if the population of Africa perishes of AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and tens of old and new diseases that is of no concern to the trans-national corporations and the blind market laws; what counts is the extraction of oil, gold, diamonds, platinum, copper, chrome, uranium and other valuable resources.
The unipolar world and its global order are smashing the states sovereignty and independence. Interventions are on the rise. The always repulsive terrorism that kills or maims innocent people is used as a pretext by the power that has exercised the most reprehensible forms of terrorism in tens of countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America - including Cuba - to begin launching missiles in any direction, regardless of the innocent people who might get killed, heedless of laws, judges or evidence and doing its own absolute will; that is, the world as a Western film in the old Hollywood style.
Such reprisals cannot be legally nor morally justified. That is not the way to fight terrorism; such brutal actions encourage that which only a universal awareness and a common struggle by the peoples can eradicate.
The economic blockades against the countries must cease. Depriving millions of people including women, children and elders of food, medicine and the means to make a living is an extremely cruel act of terrorism, a real genocide. They should be considered war crimes and punished by the international courts of law.
The abuses and displacement of the downtrodden Palestinian people must cease. Peace should be given a chance. The concerted agreements should be observed.
The occupied Arab territories should be returned. The double standard and the double morale in international affairs must cease.
Hunger and poverty must be completely eradicated. The lack of teachers and schools, doctors and hospitals must cease.
The endless plundering caused by the foreign debt, which grows more with every payment thus preventing our development, should also cease.
Unequal exchange, as practiced by the conquerors with the natives purchasing gold with mirrors, marbles and European trinkets, must cease.
The debt accumulated by those who exploited us for so many centuries must be paid back.
The policy of luring our peoples to pursue the unsustainable life style of the consumer societies must cease.
The destruction of our national identities and our cultures must cease.
Many things must cease to exist but first disunity amongst ourselves must end as well as the ethnic wars and conflicts between our peoples which should rather struggle for their development and their right to survive and to take the place they deserve in tomorrow’s world.
One day we will not be separated by our ethnic origins, nor by national chauvinism or borders, rivers or seas, oceans and distances. We shall be, above all else, peoples that will unavoidably live in a globalized world, but a truly just, fraternal and peaceful world.
That day we must earn by struggling.
Thank you.