Statement by Mr. Xolisa Mabhongo, Charge D' Affaires, in the Informal Thematic Consultations of the General Assembly on Cluster I Issues 
28 April 2005
Mr Facilitator,
We thank you for convening this meeting to exchange views on Cluster I - Freedom from Want. We associate ourselves with the statements made by the delegation of Jamaica on behalf of the Group of 77 and China and by the delegation of Malawi on behalf of the African Group. In these deliberations South Africa continues to be guided by the ongoing preparations of the African common positions under the auspices of the African Union.
We believe that the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly in September should be a time for decisive and concrete actions to accelerate the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals and the broader development agenda. We concur with the Secretary-General's report that the international community has the resources to reduce poverty dramatically to achieve the MDGs by 2015.
Mr Facilitator,
My delegation welcomes the recognition by the report of the Special Needs of Africa. As indicated by the Millennium Project, Africa's development challenges are much deeper than the often-cited issue of governance. There is a need for increased public investments to overcome the region's high transport costs, small markets, low productivity of agriculture, adverse climatic conditions and the high disease burden. These cannot be addressed by African countries alone but require also the involvement of the international community in the framework of NEPAD. We urge the international community to provide direct support for regional and subregional projects especially for infrastructure.
We support the call by the Secretary-General that the donor community should scale up the provision of official development assistance (ODA) in order to meet the target of providing 0.7% of GNP as ODA. We are encouraged by the various proposals for innovative sources of financing including the proposed international financial facility. These efforts should be complemented by comprehensive debt relief and we therefore would support the proposal that debt sustainability needs to be redefined as the level of debt that allows a country to meet its development objectives.
In addition we believe that more needs to be done to ensure that developing countries benefit from the international trading system. Market access, in particular in those areas of export interest to developing countries such as agriculture, needs to be enhanced. Priority also needs to be given, as proposed by the Millennium Project, to the strengthening of the supply-side and the productive capacities of developing countries to improve their export competitiveness.
Mr Facilitator,
We have made the point in previous interventions that it is important that the Doha development round should be completed in 2006 with an outcome that is development-oriented and balanced. We believe therefore that in September our Heads of State and Government will need to also give consideration to this issue and thereby give impetus to the preparations for the Hong-Kong Ministerial Meeting of the WTO.
We believe that a broader reform of the international institutions is also critical to give developing countries more say in policy formulation and in the elaboration of the rules that govern international trade and finance. Reform should aim at making these institutions work for development as recognised in the Millennium Declaration. It should also be accompanied by efforts to enhance the coherence in international financial and trading policies to improve efficiency and to reduce the burden on developing countries.
Mr Facilitator,
We welcome the recognition by the report of the Secretary-General of the importance of gender equality and we support the proposals aimed at addressing the pervasive gender bias as evidenced in the education of boys and girls, tenure of property, reproductive health services and with representation in decision-making institutions.
We urge the international community to increase the resources available to address the challenge posed by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. In this context we support the proposals for integrated approaches that should also target the building of national and regional health infrastructures in developing countries.
In conclusion, we believe that the international community should commit in September to accelerate the implementation of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and to put sustainable development in the centre of all development efforts. In this context we also wish to reaffirm the framework of common but differentiated responsibilities as the basis for addressing the challenge of climate change. Furthermore in September the international community should also commit to concrete actions to meet the goals set in Johannesburg in such critical areas as biodiversity, desertification and sustainable forest management.
I thank you.