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afrol.com, 9 September - President Yahya Jammeh was one of the few African heads of state making human rights the main focus of his speech at the UN Millennium Summit. Not surprisingly, he did not go into the human rights situation in The Gambia. - It is disheartening to observe the proliferation of conflict situations in different regions of the world, Jammeh started his speech. To make Africa’s determined effort at conflict prevention, resolution, management and peacekeeping successful and sustainable, the Gambian President called on the international community to provide greater moral and institutional support for the attainment of these noble objectives. - The present imbalances and lack of fair adjustments in our participation in the process of globalization should also be addressed, so as to enable developing countries to take advantage of world economic growth by mobilizing both domestic and external resources for sustained economic growth and development, according to Jammeh. Yahya Jammeh went on giving weight to the environmental aspects on development. "The environmental threats faced by the international community, as clearly indicated in the Global Environment Outlook 2000 of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), concludes that special attention should be paid to the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption within the richer segments of all countries," he said. The President reiterated his Government’s commitment to the Malmö Declaration and emphasized the need for development assistance far beyond current levels "if we are to register any success in meeting the goals and targets we have set ourselves". On democracy and human rights, the President then said: "The promotion of peace and democratic values and principles is linked to the development of good relations between Governments. For that reason, my Government considers the failure of the United Nations to respect the dignity and rights of 23 million Taiwanese to membership to our Organization as a serious setback to the professed universality of the United Nations and a gross contradiction to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)." Given the situation for human rights and democracy in contemporary Gambia, Jammeh's mind flow to the UN treatment of Taiwan was nothing less than surprising. Jammeh made sure to keep the international perspective. He thus closed his speech by reminding the UN of the situation in Cuba: "Likewise, the economic embargo on Cuba has proven to be very counterproductive, and it is my Government’s hope that the international community’s recent change of attitude would usher in renewed cooperation and reconciliation with that great country." Cuba and Taiwan will have noted Jammeh's speech as a positive step. Source: Based on UN
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