Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz used his address to the 81st United Nations General Assembly on Thursday to call for a faster and more coordinated international response to organized crime, warning that criminal groups now command resources that allow them to outpace governments.

Speaking in New York, Paz said money from drug trafficking, smuggling and illegal gold mining poses a threat to democratic stability. Paz framed multilateralism’s response as too slow. “Multilateralism has to act much more quickly,” Paz said, criticizing lengthy procedures countries face when seeking resources from international organizations.

The Bolivian president tied those concerns to a recent domestic crisis that he said left the country with blocked roads for 53 days, disrupted access to healthcare and education and resulted in more than 20 deaths. He accused “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking groups of financing the unrest.

Paz distinguished between legitimate social protests and actions he said were intended to undermine the constitutional order. He said Bolivia responded to the crisis through dialogue and called for the same principle to be applied to international conflicts.

“They wanted confrontation, they wanted blood in the streets. We offered dialogue and the technology of peace,” Paz said.

The president used the same platform to highlight what he described as economic progress during his first 10 months in office. Paz said Bolivia’s international reserves increased from $51 million when he took office to about $1.2 billion and that his administration expects them to reach about $4 billion by the end of the year.

Bolivia is also looking to attract investment, technology and foreign capital to develop its strategic natural resources, including lithium, copper and tin, Paz said. But he argued that the country wants to avoid an economic model based solely on exporting raw materials.

The president said the global energy transition should also generate industrial development, jobs and added value in resource-producing countries. “Bolivia does not want to repeat the history of countries that exported their natural resources for decades and remained poor,” Paz said. “We do not simply want to extract minerals from the ground so that other countries can add value.”

Closing his address, Paz called for a stronger U.N. role in addressing political and security challenges, returning to the theme of multilateral coordination that opened his remarks.

“The United Nations must be the space that never abandons our nations,” Paz said. “This is the space for strengthening our democracies. This is the space for strengthening the fight against organized crime.”