“We are confronted with a host of serious challenges that are testing the relevance of the UN and the resolve of its member states to work together,” said the Prime Minister Lyonchen Jigmi Y Thinley. He was addressing the 63rd session of the UN general assembly in New York on Friday.

These challenges, he said threaten to undermine what we have achieved collectively and as individual states and slow the progress in the pursuit of the millennium development goals.

Lyonchen Jigmi Y Thinley also highlighted Bhutan’s unique transition to a democracy, the development philosophy of gross national happiness, global issues like global warming, the rising food and fuel price, poverty, and terrorism.

The Prime Minister Lyonchen Jigmi Y Thinley said democracy came to Bhutan not by the traditional way of struggle and violence. Nor did it come by the will of the people. Bhutan became a democracy by the persuasion and personal efforts of a king who worked consistently over 30 years to establish the prerequisites of a democratic culture and institutional arrangements.

Lyonchen Jigmi Y Thinley said the world’s crises are the outcomes of a way of life that is dictated by the powerful ethics of consumerism in a world of finite resources.

The Prime Minister also spoke about Gross National Happiness and the need for a holistic alternative paradigm for meaningful and sustainable development that places the wellbeing of the individual and community at the centre and gives cause for true happiness. Source: BBS