Egypt warns of marginalising developing countries

Egypt urged the international community to realize social justice and provide jobs to eliminate poverty warning against the growing marginalisation of the economic role played by the developing countries.

In his speech before the UN General Assembly , Egypt's Permanent Delegate to the UN Ahmed Abul -Gheit called for providing jobs and developing human resources as well as establishing social investment funds.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit said many initiatives and thoughts for supporting African development had been developed over the last years, but results had fallen short.

Despite the fact that the development of any society fell on the shoulders of that society, that society would not be able to do so, as long as the international community was not willing to help.

Indebtedness, poverty, disease and shortfall of official development assistance (ODA) all represented abnormal obstacles preventing achievement of the limited aspirations of the people of the African continent.

Neither the historical origin of those crises and conflicts nor the role of the former imperial forces in demarcations of borders and fomenting ethnic strife should be ignored.

He did not accept the claims blaming the tribal nature of the African people for the crises in development and causes of conflict in Africa.

Furthermore, he did not accept the claims that there was an absence of so-called good governance.

If there were any truth to those claims, then the whole picture had also to be considered.

As Africa was facing the challenges of development, it was in need of an effective settlement of conflicts by the United Nations.

The Secretary-General had shown that the real problem of conflict settlement was not in the absence of the early warning mechanism, but in the need to react to warnings with speedy and effective measures, something which had not been done so far.

More than two-and-a-half years ago, the Secretary-General had issued a report on the causes of conflict in Africa, he said.

Since then, there had been many developments, such as an increased determination by Africa itself, for settlement of disputes on its own.

That determination had been seen on more than one occasion, such as in the involvement of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Sierra Leone, and the activities of President Nelson Mandela in Burundi.

Egypt had always supported those efforts, but reiterated that an increasing African role should not spare the United Nations and the Security Council of its responsibilities and should not marginalize the role of the international organizations.

There was a great gap between the commitment of the international community and the actual steps taken by the international community to overcome the root causes of conflicts.

The open-ended working group had underlined that there was an absence of sincere political will by the international community.