The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Tunisia to the United Nations Office at Geneva reaffirmed, on the sidelines of its participation in the 73rd session of the Trade and Development Board of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Tunisia’s ongoing demand to recover misappropriated assets and assets transferred abroad.
It also called for reform of the international financial system in order to help end the debt crisis that weighs heavily on the economies of many developing countries.
During the work of UNCTAD and the international bodies concerned with development issues, the Tunisian Mission stressed the necessity for all concerned states to cooperate seriously and to demonstrate genuine political will to facilitate the restitution to developing countries of funds diverted and transferred abroad.
These assets could thus be mobilized for development projects serving the populations and contribute to the fight against poverty without further increasing the debt burden, said to TAP News Agency Ramzi Louati, Acting Chargé d’Affaires at the Tunisian Permanent Mission to Geneva and to other international organizations in Switzerland, during a meeting in Geneva.
According to Ramzi Louati, the Tunisian Mission also called the countries hosting these assets to stop invoking procedural, judicial or legal obstacles preventing developing countries, including Tunisia, from recovering the diverted funds.
It estimated that the persistence of these obstacles constitutes an obstacle to the exercise of a legitimate sovereign right of these states.
Tunisia moreover called for reform of the international financial system to make it more just and equitable and to enable a better handling of debt-related issues that have strongly affected the economies of many developing countries.
In this framework, it reaffirmed its support for adopting a legally binding international pact on the right to development, for strengthening cooperation and international solidarity, for increasing financing devoted to development aid, as well as for facilitating the transfer of technologies to developing countries.
