Dilma calls for concerted action at various levels to deal with world crisis

In her speech as the first woman to open a United Nations General Assembly (“a female voice”), president Dilma Rousseff declared that this century was going to be the women’s century. And she pointed out that many important words in Portuguese, such as hope, life and soul, as well as courage and sincerity, were feminine nouns.

Dilma called the situation in the world delicate. She went on to say that if the international financial crisis is not controlled it could cause an unprecedented grave social and political rupture, with a possibility of serious imbalances among nations and peoples. Dilma pointed out that the problem was not only economic, but one of governance and political will. And she emphasized that all nations had a right to participate in the solutions, that the crisis was too serious to be left in the hands of only a few countries.

“There will not be a return of confidence and growth without coordinated efforts by the members of the UN and other multilateral organizations such as the G-20, the IMF and the World Bank. There must be clear signs of political cohesion and macroeconomic coordination,” she declared.

As for the solution, Dilma said there was not a lack of financial resources, but a lack of political resources and clarity of ideas behind the inability of the leaders of developed nations to find solutions. She said they seemed to be “trapped,” because they were unable to separate parochial interests from the legitimate interests of society as a whole.

She added that the challenge presented by the crisis was to substitute worn out theories, from an old world, with modern formulations for a new world: “We have to be united because we will all come out of this together – as winners, or as losers. …At this moment it is less important to find the causes of the situation, even though we know what they were, than it is to find collective solutions, sound solutions, and to do so quickly.”

Dilma also announced that Brazil was willing and able to assist other developing nations and that all nations had to join in the fight against world unemployment.