Venezuela
1 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
NON-OFFICIAL TRANSLATION
Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro:
Distinguished delegations from the various sister nations of the world, we witness today the signs of a new epoch for humanity. The United Nations system arrives at its 70th anniversary as it attempts to heal the deep wounds of the most destructive war humankind had ever endured.
World War II left physical marks in millions of women and men, and very deep moral marks caused by the fight against fascism and nazi fascism and its various forms of despise for human essence, for the diverse essence of culture and human civilization. Seventy years ago, humanity began to build a system for encounters and, as Pope Francis said just a few hours ago from this very rostrum, to draw a route in the construction of a common house – the Common House of Humankind.
We are close to the end of this Summit to set the goals common to our countries, to our peoples, to our governments concerning social development as a core element of this Summit to review the Millennium Goals and to define the 2030 agenda, the 2030 Plan.
I wish to acknowledge and congratulate the delegations of all the countries on their work of many months to evaluate the 2000-2015 goals. They managed to integrate the proposals from various countries, from various governments, with various visions, and render what we are approving today, the 2030 Development Agenda.
From Venezuela, we say it is an agenda for the development of a world of equals, a 2030 agenda to eradicate inequalities which constitute the source and the womb of all miseries, of all poverty, of the discardable cultures, as Pope Francis said in his tour around Cuba and the United States. Poverty is the offspring of the inequality imposed by domination systems over centuries all over the planet which torn Africa apart for centuries, thus imposing colonialism and slavery. Inequality is, in turn, the offspring of all forms of domination, exclusion and exploitation which devastated the aboriginal cultures, the primeval cultures currently represented in our America by our brother Evo Morales Ayma of whom we take pride.
2 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
Inequality is the womb of all miseries and all poverty. If we wish to set lofty objectives, as we effectively intend, if we wish to meet the lofty goals we set today – 17 goals which have been defined by our delegations and that we are subscribing today; 169 objectives to move forward with such significant topics as abating poverty, inclusive, cost-free, public and quality education, universal healthcare, universal right to housing, right to the environment, respect for Pacha Mama, that is, respect for Mother Earth.
If we wish to move forward with the lofty goals and objectives we have set, there is no doubt that we need to think of constructing an alternative economic model, an alternative social model, an alternative model for power relations in the world for the next 15 years. There is no other way, we say in Venezuela, precisely after going through 15 years attaining the Millenium Goals, one of the most beautiful, deep and significant processes of our history, which we experienced hand in hand with our brothers and sisters of Latin America and the Caribbean an awakening process, a process of reinvigoration of the struggles waged by those who were poor in the past, by those who were the forgotten ones, the shirtless, the barefeet.
In the past 15 years, from 2000 to 2015, Venezuela has undertaken an economic, social and political revolution – The Bolivarian Revolution inspired in the fundamental original cause of our Liberator Simon Bolivar, designed, directed and conducted by our unforgettable Commander Hugo Chavez Frias
Audience: [Round of applause].
President Nicolás Maduro:
The first step was to regain our political independence – the capacity to make decisions on our domestic affairs, the capacity to plan how to invest our national wealth. The second step was to regain our natural resources, and especially, to recover the wealth produced by the Venezuelan oil, the nationalization of our natural resources, the sovereign management of our fundamental resources, produced in our homeland, in this case, oil.
The third step was to constitutionally reinstate the fundamental rights of our people, which rights were denied for decades by the domestic oppression systems which were subject and submissive to foreign world powers beyond the borderlines of our homeland.
Such path, in our humble experience -and we say it today at this Summit on the 2030 Goals- such path undertaken by our people which has meant a deep
3 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
and genuine Revolution is what placed us in conditions to begin to establish and practice and construct a wealth redistribution system and reinstate the elements leading to economic equality and universal access to wealth.
Our Commander used to say since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution that if we wish to overcome poverty, let us empower the poor, let us empower the people. And when we speak of power, we refer, firstly, to the national branches of power. When we speak of power, we mean the citizens’ power – To empower the peoples so that they themselves take the reins of the construction of their own happiness, and overcome their own conditions.
Today, Venezuela can actually present a satisfactory balance, a positive balance to the United Nations Organization General Assembly. Today, Venezuela can say that the significant wealth of our country has been distributed through investment in education, housing, healthcare, the right to food and the right to life.
We have managed to revert the exclusion trends of the capitalist discardable culture, paraphrasing Pope Francis, and from investing in the past barely 33% of the national income, of the national wealth. Today Venezuela invests 62% of the national wealth in the development of our people, in the development of equal conditions to abate poverty and misery with resulting indexes showing significant improvements in education, healthcare, employment, labor remuneration.
We have managed to reverse the trends towards de-regulation of labor conditions of the workers, creation of precarious Jobs that overexploits workers, especially the youngest workers. The right to a stable job, as referred to by documents of the United Nations Organization, the right to a decent job, which we call the right to a fair and egalitarian job, is a fundamental right if we wish to think of protagonistic peoples who can overcome their difficulties and their poverty and misery.
We have fully adopted with full satisfaction the 17 goals that have been proposed for this new term, 2015-2030. It is 17 goals to eradicate poverty, put an end to hunger, ensure healthcare, guarantee a quality education, attain gender equality, guarantee the availability and sustainable management of water, ensure the access to energy on fairly basis as we currently do through the Petrocaribe project. Made up by 18 member states, Petrocaribe provides for joint projects for a genuine access to energy, which I deem it worthy of study by the committees that will follow up this 2015-2030 plan. So, it is a
4 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
plan with 17 goals to foster fair economic growth, a transformation of an economic model as provided by the 8th goal. Without the transformation of the unfair economic model, of the single mind model which attempts to impose political and social conditions that are unacceptable for our people, a model that is imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on our countries which renders impossible development and the attainment of the long-awaited, lofty, necessary and just goals that we are proposing for 2015-2030. Only a deep transformation of the economic systems, only a full and absolute change of the systems imposed by the single minded neoliberal thinking that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank represent, the goals and objectives proposed today to eradicate poverty and develop universal social happiness can be economically viable and sustainable.
Audience [round of applause].
President Nicolás Maduro:
Lastly, Mr. President, dear brothers, dear sisters of the governments represented at the United Nations Organization, 2030 is a goal that must bind us all. Based on the history of the last 15 years, and of the 70 years of the United Nations System, which involved great challenges and big problems faced by humanity, we think that the next 15 years will bring big challenges for the consolidation of world peace, for the consolidation of new fair, equality-based, inclusive relations, for the construction of social and technological models enabling our peoples to access the rights that today are denied to over 1.2 billion poor people existing in the world today. Those are significant topics that the United Nations Organization has to define. If it is true that for the attainment of these social goals a new economic model becomes necessary, as well as addressing new schemes for the construction of equality, it is also true, at least we believe so in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, that the construction of a system ensuring peace and sovereignty for our peoples also becomes necessary.
The tragic history endured today by the Arab peoples, our brothers and sisters in Africa, and our brothers and sisters in Asia with the most tragic and painful massive migration ever known to humanity in 70 years of history at this time suffered by the Mediterranean countries and Europe, is but an example of what I mean. What is the cause for such massive migration that flees from misery and pain? There is one cause alone: Unfair wars that attempt to conquer entire countries. Fifteen years for the Millennium Goals have elapsed, how come that that region of the world is living a scary movie? Millions of Muslim Arab brothers and sisters in the Middle East look for a thread of peace, a beacon of hope. The specific concrete cause which has negatively impacted these brotherly peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is but the unfair
5 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
imperialist wars, the attempt to control the world by a single hegemon which intends to dominate the peoples. Let us stop the unfair wars! Let us stop the imperialist wars! In this fashion there will be truly human conditions to move towards lofty objectives which, after 70 years of the United Nations system, humanity has been able to identify and construct. As Pope Francis said with a full house and the moving applause from all cultures and all the peoples, if we wish to have by 2030 a common house -and we in Venezuela have that dream and will indefatigably struggle to make it true- we need to think of a common house without imperialist wars, without destruction, without racism, without xenophobia, without despise, without inequality. Let us think of a common cause of the peoples whose relations are based on the respect for the international laws and let the peoples take on the 2030 Agenda as the great human agenda for the construction of peace, happiness and universal justice.
Thank you very much, dear brothers! Thank you very much dear sisters! The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela expresses its joy for and abides by this 2030 Plan. Thank you very much!
Audience [round of applause].
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
NON-OFFICIAL TRANSLATION
Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro:
Distinguished delegations from the various sister nations of the world, we witness today the signs of a new epoch for humanity. The United Nations system arrives at its 70th anniversary as it attempts to heal the deep wounds of the most destructive war humankind had ever endured.
World War II left physical marks in millions of women and men, and very deep moral marks caused by the fight against fascism and nazi fascism and its various forms of despise for human essence, for the diverse essence of culture and human civilization. Seventy years ago, humanity began to build a system for encounters and, as Pope Francis said just a few hours ago from this very rostrum, to draw a route in the construction of a common house – the Common House of Humankind.
We are close to the end of this Summit to set the goals common to our countries, to our peoples, to our governments concerning social development as a core element of this Summit to review the Millennium Goals and to define the 2030 agenda, the 2030 Plan.
I wish to acknowledge and congratulate the delegations of all the countries on their work of many months to evaluate the 2000-2015 goals. They managed to integrate the proposals from various countries, from various governments, with various visions, and render what we are approving today, the 2030 Development Agenda.
From Venezuela, we say it is an agenda for the development of a world of equals, a 2030 agenda to eradicate inequalities which constitute the source and the womb of all miseries, of all poverty, of the discardable cultures, as Pope Francis said in his tour around Cuba and the United States. Poverty is the offspring of the inequality imposed by domination systems over centuries all over the planet which torn Africa apart for centuries, thus imposing colonialism and slavery. Inequality is, in turn, the offspring of all forms of domination, exclusion and exploitation which devastated the aboriginal cultures, the primeval cultures currently represented in our America by our brother Evo Morales Ayma of whom we take pride.
2 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
Inequality is the womb of all miseries and all poverty. If we wish to set lofty objectives, as we effectively intend, if we wish to meet the lofty goals we set today – 17 goals which have been defined by our delegations and that we are subscribing today; 169 objectives to move forward with such significant topics as abating poverty, inclusive, cost-free, public and quality education, universal healthcare, universal right to housing, right to the environment, respect for Pacha Mama, that is, respect for Mother Earth.
If we wish to move forward with the lofty goals and objectives we have set, there is no doubt that we need to think of constructing an alternative economic model, an alternative social model, an alternative model for power relations in the world for the next 15 years. There is no other way, we say in Venezuela, precisely after going through 15 years attaining the Millenium Goals, one of the most beautiful, deep and significant processes of our history, which we experienced hand in hand with our brothers and sisters of Latin America and the Caribbean an awakening process, a process of reinvigoration of the struggles waged by those who were poor in the past, by those who were the forgotten ones, the shirtless, the barefeet.
In the past 15 years, from 2000 to 2015, Venezuela has undertaken an economic, social and political revolution – The Bolivarian Revolution inspired in the fundamental original cause of our Liberator Simon Bolivar, designed, directed and conducted by our unforgettable Commander Hugo Chavez Frias
Audience: [Round of applause].
President Nicolás Maduro:
The first step was to regain our political independence – the capacity to make decisions on our domestic affairs, the capacity to plan how to invest our national wealth. The second step was to regain our natural resources, and especially, to recover the wealth produced by the Venezuelan oil, the nationalization of our natural resources, the sovereign management of our fundamental resources, produced in our homeland, in this case, oil.
The third step was to constitutionally reinstate the fundamental rights of our people, which rights were denied for decades by the domestic oppression systems which were subject and submissive to foreign world powers beyond the borderlines of our homeland.
Such path, in our humble experience -and we say it today at this Summit on the 2030 Goals- such path undertaken by our people which has meant a deep
3 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
and genuine Revolution is what placed us in conditions to begin to establish and practice and construct a wealth redistribution system and reinstate the elements leading to economic equality and universal access to wealth.
Our Commander used to say since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution that if we wish to overcome poverty, let us empower the poor, let us empower the people. And when we speak of power, we refer, firstly, to the national branches of power. When we speak of power, we mean the citizens’ power – To empower the peoples so that they themselves take the reins of the construction of their own happiness, and overcome their own conditions.
Today, Venezuela can actually present a satisfactory balance, a positive balance to the United Nations Organization General Assembly. Today, Venezuela can say that the significant wealth of our country has been distributed through investment in education, housing, healthcare, the right to food and the right to life.
We have managed to revert the exclusion trends of the capitalist discardable culture, paraphrasing Pope Francis, and from investing in the past barely 33% of the national income, of the national wealth. Today Venezuela invests 62% of the national wealth in the development of our people, in the development of equal conditions to abate poverty and misery with resulting indexes showing significant improvements in education, healthcare, employment, labor remuneration.
We have managed to reverse the trends towards de-regulation of labor conditions of the workers, creation of precarious Jobs that overexploits workers, especially the youngest workers. The right to a stable job, as referred to by documents of the United Nations Organization, the right to a decent job, which we call the right to a fair and egalitarian job, is a fundamental right if we wish to think of protagonistic peoples who can overcome their difficulties and their poverty and misery.
We have fully adopted with full satisfaction the 17 goals that have been proposed for this new term, 2015-2030. It is 17 goals to eradicate poverty, put an end to hunger, ensure healthcare, guarantee a quality education, attain gender equality, guarantee the availability and sustainable management of water, ensure the access to energy on fairly basis as we currently do through the Petrocaribe project. Made up by 18 member states, Petrocaribe provides for joint projects for a genuine access to energy, which I deem it worthy of study by the committees that will follow up this 2015-2030 plan. So, it is a
4 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
plan with 17 goals to foster fair economic growth, a transformation of an economic model as provided by the 8th goal. Without the transformation of the unfair economic model, of the single mind model which attempts to impose political and social conditions that are unacceptable for our people, a model that is imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on our countries which renders impossible development and the attainment of the long-awaited, lofty, necessary and just goals that we are proposing for 2015-2030. Only a deep transformation of the economic systems, only a full and absolute change of the systems imposed by the single minded neoliberal thinking that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank represent, the goals and objectives proposed today to eradicate poverty and develop universal social happiness can be economically viable and sustainable.
Audience [round of applause].
President Nicolás Maduro:
Lastly, Mr. President, dear brothers, dear sisters of the governments represented at the United Nations Organization, 2030 is a goal that must bind us all. Based on the history of the last 15 years, and of the 70 years of the United Nations System, which involved great challenges and big problems faced by humanity, we think that the next 15 years will bring big challenges for the consolidation of world peace, for the consolidation of new fair, equality-based, inclusive relations, for the construction of social and technological models enabling our peoples to access the rights that today are denied to over 1.2 billion poor people existing in the world today. Those are significant topics that the United Nations Organization has to define. If it is true that for the attainment of these social goals a new economic model becomes necessary, as well as addressing new schemes for the construction of equality, it is also true, at least we believe so in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, that the construction of a system ensuring peace and sovereignty for our peoples also becomes necessary.
The tragic history endured today by the Arab peoples, our brothers and sisters in Africa, and our brothers and sisters in Asia with the most tragic and painful massive migration ever known to humanity in 70 years of history at this time suffered by the Mediterranean countries and Europe, is but an example of what I mean. What is the cause for such massive migration that flees from misery and pain? There is one cause alone: Unfair wars that attempt to conquer entire countries. Fifteen years for the Millennium Goals have elapsed, how come that that region of the world is living a scary movie? Millions of Muslim Arab brothers and sisters in the Middle East look for a thread of peace, a beacon of hope. The specific concrete cause which has negatively impacted these brotherly peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria is but the unfair
5 Address by President Nicolás Maduro to the 70th
General Assembly of the United Nations Organization
UNO Headquarters, New York
Sunday, September 27th, 2015
imperialist wars, the attempt to control the world by a single hegemon which intends to dominate the peoples. Let us stop the unfair wars! Let us stop the imperialist wars! In this fashion there will be truly human conditions to move towards lofty objectives which, after 70 years of the United Nations system, humanity has been able to identify and construct. As Pope Francis said with a full house and the moving applause from all cultures and all the peoples, if we wish to have by 2030 a common house -and we in Venezuela have that dream and will indefatigably struggle to make it true- we need to think of a common house without imperialist wars, without destruction, without racism, without xenophobia, without despise, without inequality. Let us think of a common cause of the peoples whose relations are based on the respect for the international laws and let the peoples take on the 2030 Agenda as the great human agenda for the construction of peace, happiness and universal justice.
Thank you very much, dear brothers! Thank you very much dear sisters! The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela expresses its joy for and abides by this 2030 Plan. Thank you very much!
Audience [round of applause].
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