PORTUGUESE PRESIDENT Cavaco Silva called on a fairer, more balanced and peaceful deal for Africa while addressing the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations in New York last week.
He urged international cooperation for “maintaining peace, creating sustainable development, educational access, health and the integration of the African economies in the international markets.”
“That’s why we must support the efforts of African states in the name of these objectives,” he said, adding that this was the expressed conclusion of the Cairo and Lisbon European-Union-Africa Summits, “both starting points in the deepening of dialogue between the two continents.”
Cavaco Silva, who spoke in Portuguese, mentioned the terrorist attack of September 11 as “one of the most infamous acts that the world had ever witnessed”.
He believed that hunger and poverty was “another common enemy that was equally destructive, only at a slower and more lethal pace”.
The challenges posed by climate change led the President to call upon the international community to conclude negotiations on a “transparent global agreement” to follow those already in place from 2012.
The President then went on to praise the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and former Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres, saying that these problems also required “a collective effort.”
On the future of the United Nations, Cavaco Silva said that its success was intrinsically linked to its capacity for renewal, its ability to be democratic, maintain its effectiveness and representative nature.
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