Statement by His Excellency Mr. M. Morshed Khan, MP, Hon'ble Foreign Minister, at the Certificate Awarding Ceremony of the Course on "Multilateralism and Its Impact on Bangladesh"

Bangladesh Enterprise Institute
Wednesday, 23 August 2006 at the BEI Conference Room

Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

At the outset, I would like to thank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute for offering this course on "Multilateralism and Its Impact on Bangladesh". It is indeed my pleasure to be present in this certificate awarding ceremony and share my thoughts on multilateralism.

Multilateralism is often a source of strength for small countries. It provides smaller nations the platform to voice their opinions and concerns, individually and collectively. Had there been no multilateral forum, small nations would have been disadvantaged in dealing with their more powerful counterparts.

For a country like Bangladesh, the impact of multilateralism has been profound. We should bear in mind that the impact and influence are mutual in the sense that Bangladesh has also had tremendous impact on the multilateral system. Since independence, we devoted our diplomatic efforts to find a stronghold in the multilateral fora. Our multilateral journey began with memberships in the Non-Aligned Movement and the Commonwealth and in less than three years of independence, we became a full member of the United Nations. Sovereign equality, mutual respect and the spirit of cooperation and dialogue are the foundations of multilateralism.

The United Nations embodies and upholds the fundamental principles of multilateralism. The year 2005 celebrated the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. As you would recall, the Hon'ble Prime Minister attended the Special UNGA in September 2005 and reiterated Bangladesh's commitment to multilateralism. In line with our commitment to international peace and security, we have maintained a robust presence in UN Peace-Keeping. Our troops are involved in 12 of the 18 on-going operations worldwide and with 10,288 troop-strength, we are the largest troop contributing country.

The prestige of Bangladesh in the United Nations was reflected in our successful election campaigns. We are well represented in various UN bodies and agencies, including the newly constituted UN Human Rights Council and the Peace Building Commission. Bangladesh's overwhelming victory in the Human Rights Council election signifies strong international endorsement of our commitment to upholding and promoting human rights.

Dear participants,

The multilateral system, especially the UN, is far from being perfect. On the issue of reforming the UN, Bangladesh maintains a consistent and principled policy stance. We hold that reform of the UN Security Council should be holistic, encompassing its structure, membership and working methods. The focus, we stress, should be on addressing the decision-making processes of the Council rather than to seek the expansion of privileged membership. We strongly believe that the reform exercise should address the imperatives of ensuring legitimacy, credibility, objectivity, accountability, representative participation, transparency in working methods and democratization in the decision making process in the Security Council.

Bangladesh has remained actively involved with NAM and the Commonwealth. Given our experience with recurring natural disasters, our delegation to the Commonwealth Summit in 2005 proposed the formation of a Commonwealth Program for Natural Disasters to facilitate cooperation for capacity building, emergency preparedness and risk management. We also played a critical role in securing CHOGM support for duty-free and quota-free access for LDC exports into the developed and other developing markets. This was critical for formulating our bargaining stance at the Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting of WTO.

Bangladesh is an active member of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). The Hon'ble Prime Minister led the Bangladesh delegation to the Summit held in Makkah in November 2005 and the OIC Special Summit in Kuala Lumpur last month. In her statements, Hon'ble Prime Minister underscored the need for dialogues among different civilizations to promote understanding, mutual respect and tolerance. She reiterated Bangladesh's anti-terrorism stance and urged the Summit to condemn all acts of terrorisms.

Bangladesh also plays an active role in the Asia Cooperation Dialogue forum. I attended all five ACD ministerial meetings and highlighted our ideas on economic cooperation among Asian countries. In the context of our Look East Policy, our participation in ACD along with BIMSTEC and the Kunming Initiative has been constructive and useful. We recently joined the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which should be considered a milestone in our multilateral diplomacy.

In terms of regional cooperation in South Asia, Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman's vision in the launching of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has always been recognized and appreciated by all. The successful hosting of the 13th SAARC Summit in Dhaka has added prestige in our multilateral diplomacy. With strong focus on economic cooperation and eradication of poverty, the Summit not only adopted the SAARC Development Goals, but also established the SAARC Development Fund (SDF). The Summit also decided to include Afghanistan as the new member of SAARC. The recent decision at the SAARC Ministerial Meeting held in Dhaka to include Japan, China, ROK, US and the European Union as observers of SAARC testifies to the global interest in our Grouping.

Our participation in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) is based on the imperatives of economic diplomacy. Under our Chairmanship, the BIMSTEC Ministerial Meet in Dhaka last year laid the groundwork for a regional FTA for trade in goods.

Distinguished guests,

Our foreign policy imperative, in various multilateral fora, is to assert our identity as a tolerant Muslim democracy where all faiths practice religion and express opinion without intimidation and fear of reprisal. Not only are we one of the fastest growing economies of the world, we are also an economy with strong emphasis on social justice, poverty alleviation and income equality. Furthermore, our success in advancing the MDGs has been impressive.

We are often tempted to equate multilateralism with the IMF and the World Bank, which deal with foreign aid and development assistance. This is rather misleading because aid only constitutes a small fraction of everything else that happens in multilateral diplomacy. We are no longer an aid dependent nation - our reliance on foreign aid has declined from nearly 7% of our gross national income in early 1990s to less than 2% in 2004. However, we do need trade and we do need foreign direct investment to sustain economic growth. We are concentrating our efforts in WTO not only to seek special and differential access to the markets in the developed countries, but also to identify and eliminate all non-tariff barriers so that a more equitable trading regime is established. Not surprisingly, it is often the non-tariff barriers that impede our export potentials.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that multilateralism is one of key means to pursue our foreign policy objectives. Our national interest can be better served through various multilateral fora with a level playing field on the basis of sovereign equality and mutuality of interests. Success of our multilateral diplomacy depends on strong negotiating skills and broad knowledge base available to our negotiators. I believe that courses like the one offered by the BEI would facilitate the creation of a pool of Bangladeshi experts knowledgeable in multilateral affairs.

With these words, I wish all graduates of this course a bright future and successful career.

Thank you.