Rome, 19-20 February 2003

Carlos Manuel Inácio Figueiredo

Portugal’s IFAD Governor

Mr Chairman
Mr President of IFAD
Distinguished Governors and Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen

On behalf of the Portuguese Government and also the Portuguese delegation among us today, I would like to begin by greeting the Council of Governors of IFAD at this meeting. Needless to say, this encounter symbolically heralds the 25th anniversary of this financial institution of the United Nations, which has made a considerable contribution to a more expedient, effective worldwide combat against hunger and rural poverty.

I would also like to express our appreciation for the fine organisation of this meeting, as well as our desire that the different works will progress according to plan. We should always remember that it is becoming increasingly necessary to make more searching, concerted efforts to ensure that the noble mission of solidarity assumed by IFAD will be fully accomplished. This same mission should be more widely known and enhanced by all of us.

I would also like to greet the President of IFAD, Mr Lennart Bage, to whom we offer our sincere congratulations and encouragement so that he may successfully accomplish the tough, complex mission of conducting the affairs of IFAD in the forthcoming years, by affirming his irreplaceable role in combating poverty and hunger in the most diverse regions of the globe. This particularly applies to the African Continent where, even today, indicators of human development are cause for considerable concern and are quite unacceptable.

The celebration of the 25th anniversary of IFAD affords an opportunity for us to reflect more profoundly upon the ways in which the institution has evolved, the incalculably rich experience it has built up over its 25 years of active engagement throughout the planet. But, above all, mention must be made of the new challenges it faces in a world of increasing globalisation, but which continues to suffer from considerable food shortages and serious regional asymmetries in terms of human development.

For these reasons we must clearly identify new geographical spaces in which IFAD may resolutely and effectively invest to fully accomplish its mission. If you allow me, here in this assembly, I would like to vigorously urge you to support a young independent country, Timor-Leste. After 25 years spent fighting for its independence, this country is today a free state and unquestionably deserves help on its path to development. Furthermore, we have every reason to be satisfied at the ratification, in this very assembly, the integration of Timor-Leste in IFAD as a fully-fledged member country.

We would like to believe that the combat against hunger and poverty will be intensified through a greater awareness, mobilisation and involvement of all countries. This particularly applies to those countries whose income distribution and levels of human development display staggering asymmetries. The struggle should be an unquestionable priority, as voiced by the so-called Monterrey Consensus.

Whilst on this issue we should highlight the importance of the position assumed by the recently elected President of Brazil, when he decided that his first political priority would be to combat poverty. This stance reveals a highly commendable attitude of solidarity and determination with regard to the combat against these types of injustice that live alongside the advantages and opportunities made possible by a system that is economically and socially more open, and technologically more advanced.

There is no doubt that such initiatives arouse in us a feeling of greater hope of obtaining positive results more rapidly in this relentless combat against poverty and hunger in rural zones. Obviously such initiatives deserve our entire consideration and every respect.

In fact, when one realises that what continues to be a large portion of the world population lives in a state of extreme poverty, and survives on less than one US dollar per day, and around three-quarters of the poor in the world continue to live in rural zones, we cannot help but rethink strategies and adjust means to increase the effectiveness of the combat against such injustices that are truly inadmissible in the world of today.

I feel it my duty to reiterate to all present the engagement assumed in the Millenium Declaration and adopted in September 2000. It materialised in the goal which consisted in “reducing by one half the number of poor in the world, living on less than 1 US dollar per day, besides the proportion of the hungry, before 2015”.

However, available indicators show trends that point to a significant worsening of these phenomena in the developing countries. Not only through its mandate, but also in view of its new orientation, IFAD can, and undeniably will play an essential role in formulating new institutional partnerships founded on a multilateral basis. With this framework in mind, it will strive to achieve greater effectiveness, not only in mobilising required resources, but also in correctly allocating these same resources according to needs. In this way it may strengthen the mechanisms required to combat poverty and hunger in the world.

My country has endeavoured to resolutely engage in this combat, by assuring an active presence on various work fronts and in international cooperation. It has participated in international undertakings and organisations, of a bilateral as well as multilateral nature.

In fact, Portugal has continued to pursue its cooperation policy for development, namely in Portuguese-speaking countries and territories. Its principal objective has focused on stimulating economic growth, reducing poverty and promoting sustainable management of natural resources.

On the other hand, in the different multilateral organisations involving our participation and to which this development cooperation effort extends, we are trying to foster sustained development in the more depressed rural zones, thus helping to invert a negative trend, which often fuels cycles of successive degradation of the respective populations’ living conditions.

In this scenario, we are also ready to further our involvement and work more closely and actively with IFAD to help to effectively achieve its strategic objectives.

In this way our country will continue with the same level of contribution for the 6th Replenishment of IFAD Resources to enable this institution to both rigorously and effectively intervene in programmes and projects designed to combat poverty which, we trust, will produce visible results in an acceptable period of time.

In fact, the swift pace of the economic and financial globalisation process should be accompanied by a permanent, systematic effort to increasingly integrate the rural areas whose human development rates are most problematic. Only in this way will it be possible to share the benefits and opportunities of this same globalisation. At the same time, in this way one may also learn to face the multiple challenges that it involves and which must, of course, be promptly overcome.

One of these challenges, perforce the main one, undoubtedly consists of a more equitable distribution of income and a significant reduction in the levels of incidence of phenomena such as hunger, poverty, and social exclusion in many regions of the world. This is particularly acute in the Sub-Saharan region, where one witnesses truly frightening, intolerable indicators.

With this perspective in mind, we should stress the important role of cooperation for development. This function is desirably based on a matrix of broader, responsible, institutional partnerships, designed to obtain more visible results and secure returns on available resources.

From this point of view, I believe it would be particularly useful to stimulate a more profound knowledge and exchange among the different national organisations, qualified to further cooperation and development. This should lead to a more intense, closer working articulation with IFAD, so as to achieve added effectiveness in the Programmes to Combat Rural Poverty.

Finally, I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation for the sense of commitment and competence displayed by all the IFAD collaborators in the performance of their functions. In this way they have contributed to the international prestige and recognition of this United Nations’ institution.

Thank you very much for your attention.

The Governor for Portugal

Carlos Inácio Figueiredo