Vanuatu joins other
delegations in congratulating you, Mr. President, on
your election to preside over the General Assembly at
its sixty-sixth session. My delegation vows our full
cooperation, and believes that, with your leadership,
we will conclude a successful session.
9 11-51372
Allow me to also acknowledge the leadership of
your predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Joseph Deiss, for
his exceptional guidance and for the considerable and
important achievements of the previous Assembly
session.
In the same spirit, on behalf of my Government, I
take this opportunity to congratulate His Excellency
Ban Ki-moon on his re-election to the post of
Secretary-General and to commend him on his vision,
leadership and tireless efforts in moving towards
achieving the common interests of all humanity.
I would also like to take this opportunity to
congratulate the Government and the people of the
Republic of South Sudan on the birth of their new
nation on 9 July. Vanuatu recognizes the sovereignty of
South Sudan, and offers the young nation our full
support.
The theme of this year’s General Assembly
session, “The role of mediation in the settlement of
disputes by peaceful means”, calls for more creative
and feasible peaceful multilateral solutions to many of
our long-standing disputes that, unless resolved
peacefully, will have far more extensive global
consequences. The settlement of disputes by peaceful
means is central to the United Nations system, as
enshrined in the United Nations Charter and in
numerous international conventions and treaties. In that
context, we, like many others, encourage our brothers
and sisters in Israel and Palestine to continue the
peaceful negotiations that will ensure regional and
global stability. We also call upon the United Nations
to visit the framework with which it fulfils its
mediation mandates and to develop closer partnerships
with mediation actors within regional groups. To
succeed as responsible nations of this global village,
we must continue to cultivate an environment that
thwarts the seeds of bitterness, hatred and vengeance.
In establishing the United Nations in 1945, many
nations, great and small, entrusted it with the
responsibility to assist in maintaining international
peace and security, developing friendly relations
among nations, and promoting social progress, better
living standards and human rights. However, 66 years
after the founding of this multilateral Organization, the
world that we live in is far from the ideals for which its
inception was intended. Across the globe, people from
all walks of life continue to be subject to colonial rule,
death threats, arbitrary detention, torture and worse,
and are killed for exercising their rights to freedom of
expression. Untold crimes against humanity and other
human rights atrocities still continue.
While we reaffirm our faith in multilateralism,
with the conviction that bilateral diplomacy cannot
substitute for multilateralism, we also believe that our
nations have a greater need of a more robust
multilateral system that is swift and efficient in
responding to the multitude of challenges that members
of this highly esteemed system, acting unilaterally,
would be hard done to defeat. We are delighted to note
that one of the four priorities of the President of the
General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session is to
continue the work on the reforms within the United
Nations.
In that context, this year’s establishment of the
Change Management Team within the Organization, in
particular, is a step in the right direction. That initiative
comes at a time when members of this body are calling
on the United Nations to play a more prominent role in
a period of rapid change and financial restraint in
building a culture of transparency, accountability, good
governance and enhanced democratic participation, and
to achieve efficiency and results.
As regards the Security Council, Vanuatu is
steadfast in its belief that reform measures must
provide for democratic and geographically strategic
representation in both the permanent and the
non-permanent membership to reflect the realities of
this century. We continue to lend our invaluable
support to the candidacies of the many countries vying
for membership within the non-permanent seat
category of the Security Council. We hope that
sustained reforms will help to boost the Security
Council’s peacekeeping role and to increase efficiency
and transparency in promoting the universal standards
and common values and customs that form the basis of
global security and development. At this juncture, let
me acknowledge the work of the peacekeeping and
nation-building missions of the United Nations in
supporting new countries, such as Timor-Leste, South
Sudan and others, in their nation-building.
On 9 September 2011, we marked the tenth
anniversary of the twin towers bombing that wreaked
havoc in the city of New York and claimed more than
3,000 lives. Such acts of terrorism can never be
justified, whatever the causes they claim to be
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advancing and to whatever grievances they claim to
respond.
Despite international efforts to counter terrorism,
major threats remain. Indeed, the world cannot sit idly
by, watching the forces of evil threaten humanity’s
right to peace and security. Terrorism cannot and must
not be allowed to flourish. Vanuatu condemns, in the
strongest possible terms, all forms and manifestations
of terrorism, and calls on all countries to join forces to
fight against its evil ideologies, activities and financing
in order to make the world of tomorrow a safer place.
All countries must work closely in eliminating that
scourge.
Today, the lack of progress on disarmament and
non-proliferation, cornerstones of global security, is
disturbing. The world’s nuclear Powers must fulfil
their vows to meet their obligations under the Treaty on
the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to take
decisive and practical steps towards irreversible
disarmament. Only then will the proliferation of arms
reverse.
My people welcome the strenuous efforts of
President Obama and other world leaders, working
together at the vanguard to advance negotiations on
denuclearization. The very recent events in Japan’s
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster clearly show that
whatever safeguards are in place, there can be no
absolute guarantee that those can withstand the
unforgivable ferocity of Mother Nature. They are
important lessons for us.
Four years after the global financial crisis began,
in 2007, the economies of many developed countries
continue to struggle, stirring financial markets
worldwide with fresh fears of impediments, default and
possible recession. For small developing countries,
such as Vanuatu, the rise in food prices, high fuel costs,
soaring commodity prices, fears of a global recession,
as well as the other unforeseen effects of the global
financial instability and uncertainty that remain in
many developed countries, are having multifaceted
consequences.
Such developments, coupled with the ongoing
effects of climate change and natural disasters,
continue to threaten the economies of small island
nations, and to undermine all efforts towards the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to ensure that
sustainable development is achieved.
Vanuatu has made some progress towards
achieving the MDGs, but much more needs to be done
by pooling our own resources at the national level and
by engaging the international community in
coordinating efforts so as to achieve our MDGs.
The convening of this year’s thematic group on
non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is indeed timely.
In my country, it is estimated that approximately 75 per
cent of deaths each year are related to NCDs.
Furthermore, the immediate causes of the NCD
epidemic — tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical
inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol — are
becoming increasingly widespread in our society,
especially in urban areas. Those self-inflicted diseases
are, therefore, becoming a major barrier to our socio-
economic development and to achieving healthy
islands and the MDGs.
At this point in time, my country is undertaking,
for the first time, a national NCD STEPS survey to
determine and to better understand the burden and the
extent of NCDs and their determinants in our
communities so that we can better target our
intervention efforts in future. Early this year, Vanuatu
launched its revised NCD strategy and policy for the
period 2011 to 2016 to guide our implementation
efforts in the coming years. We have also implemented,
over the years, many key NCD strategies to empower
our people to increase control over their health and its
determinants, with the assistance of our development
partners, such as the World Health Organization, the
Australian Agency for International Development and
the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
In terms of economic performance, Vanuatu’s
economy grew at an unprecedented average rate of
6 per cent between 2003 and 2008. Economic growth
has since weakened, mainly as a result of exogenous
shocks felt during the ongoing global financial crisis.
That has had a negative impact on Government revenue
in the past few years, adding further strain on the
economy. That said, the need for significant increases
in financial support from development partners remains
pressing. The announcement of a considerable increase
in credit facilities at the Group of Twenty London
summit in 2009 was welcome news. However, the
reassertion of those financial commitments and swift
action need to be rigorously followed up by the donor
community.
11 11-51372
The previous assessment by the United Nations
Committee for Development Policy of Vanuatu’s
development status as a least developed country has
showed a progressive pace in development. While
graduation may be imminent, I must underscore, before
the Assembly, that most challenges of the small island
developing States are permanent. The challenges of
smallness, the distance to major metropolitan markets,
extreme vulnerability to natural disasters and climate
change, the sea-level rise and vulnerability to tsunamis
all constitute permanent characteristics of our island
nations. It is therefore important for the United Nations
to ensure that multilateral mechanisms for graduation
and a transition package must not be detached from
those permanent realities. We are delighted that the
President of the General Assembly has vowed to pay
special attention to vulnerable States such as ours.
Climate change and ocean acidification remain
the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security
and well-being of the peoples of the Pacific,
particularly for small low-lying Pacific islands. High
greenhouse gas emitting industrialized countries must
start to embrace and to accept the common but
differentiated responsibilities in historic contributions
to climate change.
As the former Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum,
I, along with my fellow leaders of the Pacific Island
nations, particularly welcome the historic visit of
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to the Pacific. I call
on the United Nations to undertake more senior
missions to the Pacific region so as to establish a more
comprehensive understanding of how susceptible the
people of the Pacific are to the adverse impacts of
climate change and sea-level rise, as embodied by the
case of Kiribati.
I call on leaders of advanced nations to renew and
honour their pledges to finance, in particular, efforts to
help the most vulnerable communities to address their
adaptation needs in order to ensure that island nations
survive the impending global disaster that climate
change may afford. An increased global fund to
strengthen the capacity-building efforts of vulnerable
communities, in particular, to integrate climate change
into economic policies and actions, is pressing.
As we prepare for the Conference of the Parties
to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (COP 17) talks in Durban, my
Government urges all delegations to work tirelessly to
pledge to a second commitment period of the Kyoto
Protocol. Durban must advance all aspects of the
climate change negotiations and devise strategies to
operationalize the COP 16 decisions if any concrete,
balanced and ambitious outcomes are to yield results.
Colonialism and all forms of imperialism must be
addressed by the United Nations, for one of the reasons
why the United Nations system was created was to
develop friendly relations among nations, based on
respect for the principles of equal rights and the self-
determination of peoples. Therefore, colonial rule is
obsolete and must be addressed with new drive and
vision. The United Nations, as well as the international
community, must continue in their efforts to address
issues of decolonization in those Non-Self-Governing
Territories that still yearn for freedom.
The mandate of the Special Committee on
Decolonization must be strengthened. All means should
be accorded to the Committee to allow it to magnify
the suppressed voices of the peoples in all Non-Self-
Governing Territories that are still under the control of
administrative Powers, especially where serious human
rights violations are reported.
My country, Vanuatu, was the last in the Pacific
region to be decolonized. Since our independence in
1980, we have continued to speak out for the
inalienable rights of the colonized indigenous peoples
of Oceania and in certain parts of the Asian region,
where either administrative or colonial Powers still
retain authority.
My Government also calls upon the United
Nations to ensure that the demands for French
Polynesia’s right to self-determination are not rejected.
We, along with many other Pacific island nations,
support calls for the reinstatement of the French-
administered Territory with the United Nations Special
Committee on Decolonization. That would be the first
major step in the process of their self-determination.
Vanuatu encourages the French-administered Territory
of French Polynesia and, in the same spirit, that of
New Caledonia to continue to seek meaningful
dialogue with France in order to find ways to ensure
that the freedom of the colonized peoples of Oceania is
fully realized.
Enshrined in the core principles of the United
Nations Charter, the Organization must guarantee
universal respect for the human rights and fundamental
freedoms of all the oppressed. The universal pursuit of
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democratic reform, good governance and adherence to
human rights conventions have often concealed the
suffering of many people, denying them their right to
decide their destiny without fear or reprisal. The
United Nations must step up its efforts to exercise their
freedom from the tentacles of foreign rule, so
troublesome a misgiving in these modern times.
One day, all the indigenous peoples of Oceania
and beyond must reach their goal of freedom, a
destination promised to all humanity and a right that
the Creator endowed upon all peoples and that no
earthly Power can deny, to determine where they live
and to be self-ruled in free association with the
international community of nations.
Let me take this opportunity once again to
reiterate to this eminent Assembly our serious concerns
over the infringement by foreign forces on the political
freedom of many of our nations today, a right denied to
the people of the land to exercise their freedom to
control their lands, a freedom denied by the injustices
of the global world order that demarcated many of our
lands, dividing peoples, families and cultures and
disconnecting us from the traditions of our ancestors.
Denying the right of a country to exercise its political
freedom over its maritime territorial boundaries and
preventing the indigenous people of a country from
exercising their culture and traditional linkages with
integral part of its lands, sovereign since time
immemorial, remain one of the greatest crimes of our
times. We are therefore calling on the United Nations
to ensure that our fundamental rights can be exercised
in all parts of our territory.
As the world unites in addressing some of the
major challenges of our times, the lifting of the
economic embargo on Cuba is long overdue. Denying
the good people of Cuba from fully participating in the
global economy is inhumane. T is high time that the
Cuban people be allowed to enjoy their rights and
freedom as an independent and sovereign nation.
It is time that we all revisit the aspirations and the
ideals with which the United Nations system was
created and join forces to weed out injustice,
colonialism, poverty, hunger, war crimes, terrorism and
the like in the hope of creating a peaceful and secure
world for generations to come. All nations, great and
small, must respect each other’s sovereignty, for that is
the way to achieve trust and to ensure a dignified
confidence among all friends gathered around the table
of the United Nations.
I also welcome Fiji’s commitment to full and
democratic elections by September 2014. As a Pacific
neighbour, such as announcement is timely.
In conclusion, I wish to take this final
opportunity to express my gratitude to Vanuatu’s
development partners for the support that they provide
in building our economy. I believe that more can be
done to help small vulnerable island countries like
Vanuatu to address the rising challenges confronting
them.
Leaders of the world, the resounding echoes of
history drum in our ears and remind us of what must be
done tomorrow. The global forces driving the changes
that will shape our future must beckon towards a world
where people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, beliefs,
faiths, cultures, traditions and origins can live in
harmony and peace, as brothers and sisters.