Tuvalu

It is my great honour and pleasure to participate in the general debate of the Assembly on behalf of the people and Government of Tuvalu. As Tuvalu will commemorate the thirty- fourth anniversary of its independence on Monday next week, 1 October, let me take this opportunity to acknowledge with profound appreciation the continued assistance and support given us by the United Nations, the international community and in particular our traditional development partners in our pursuit of our development goals. The overarching theme, “Bringing about adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations by peaceful means”, together with a myriad of core issues that have been chosen for the Assembly’s sixty-seventh session, is fully supported by Tuvalu. In view of circumstances facing the world today, there is certainly an urgent and critical need for the United Nations and for each Member State in particular to address those issues, individually or collectively. As a small and peace-loving nation, Tuvalu welcomes and fully supports the important services provided by the United Nations and other organizations in the maintenance of peace and security around the world, especially in conflict regions. We firmly believe that the use of force through military or violent action as a means for settling disputes and conflicts should be avoided at all costs. It is also important that countries involved in such disputes should be encouraged and supported in discussing the root causes of their differences among themselves in a non-confrontational manner. We concur fully with the President’s vision that we cannot be defeated by terrorists, extremists and the sponsors and supporters who back them. The world we want to give our future generations is not one of terrorism and fanaticism, or of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, maritime piracy, organized crime, drugs and narcotic smuggling, child labour and trafficking, slavery and religious intolerance. In the United Nations, we strive for international peace and security; that is the world we want to give to all future generations. Faced with globalized agendas, the United Nations must cooperate and seek engagement with other organizations and their memberships for partnerships in development activities. The United Nations should also seek to ensure participatory planning in the design of any engagement so that we co-opt and work together with the existing diverse fabric of our societies, whose issues we are trying to address and assist with. The United Nations should also align its programmes and activities with those of the host country’s needs and action frameworks, heeding the distinctiveness of our membership. When Tuvalu became the 189th Member of the United Nations in September 2000, we were conscious of the complexity and breadth of the United Nations agenda in comparison with our relatively modest capacity. Yet there was one issue that we were confidently determined to bring to the fore. Does the United Nations hear the plea of small island developing States (SIDS) for fair treatment by the international community? Today, 12 years later, we consider this lasting concern almost totally unanswered. That may sound surprising to some representatives, as we all tend to be under the impression that much work, time and energy has been spent over the past two decades for the benefit of SIDS. Without going into detail on the state of the SIDS agenda, I would like to make three observations on the subject and outline Tuvalu’s intentions in the same vein. First, as much as we appreciate the work of various United Nations departments and programmes on SIDS, we observe that this work has been almost entirely focused on stating and indefinitely reiterating the challenges and problems SIDS are facing. We have seen nearly 20 General Assembly resolutions on SIDS adopted since the Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, held in Barbados, and numerous reports of the Secretary- General on the subject. Two United Nations conferences on SIDS have been organized, and now new momentum is gathering towards a third conference in 2014. Secondly, there is no part of the SIDS work in the United Nations that has ever generated international support measures specially reserved for SIDS. In other words, in 20 years the United Nations has not been able to hear and answer the pleas our island States have been making for special treatment. SIDS status and SIDS- specific treatment are truly what our small island States are in need of, just as the least developed countries (LDCs) need the special treatment extended to them by the international community. Thirdly, we would like to reply to those, within and outside the United Nations, who have been arguing that the case for special treatment of SIDS is not and should not be on the United Nations agenda, because special treatment of SIDS would imply the existence of a SIDS category, and apparently, we are told, SIDS cannot be considered and dealt with as a special category. Therefore, SIDS are only an abstract notion deliberately kept undefined, because any clarity or debate on what they are and what precisely could be done for them would be too challenging or disturbing. That seemingly accepted sense of SIDS work in the United Nations does not match Tuvalu’s vision of what the United Nations ought to be doing in support of those countries. We believe that the time has come for us to spell it out; the third decade of United Nations work on SIDS should not be another round of lip service. That will require a number of needed special international measures for SIDS to be identified and, naturally also, that some order be put in the definition of SIDS, as a necessary condition for making SIDS a genuine, internationally accepted special category of countries. Tuvalu greatly appreciates the decision taken by the Economic and Social Council to note the recommendation of the Committee for Development Policy to graduate Tuvalu from the least developed country category and to consider that issue at its next substantive session in 2013. That will allow the Council the opportunity for full consideration of the particular challenges Tuvalu faces. In that regard, despite the fact that Tuvalu has met two of the three criteria for graduation from LDC status, there is an urgent need for the United Nations to revisit such criteria in order to reflect and capture the real situation of the economies of the countries eligible for graduation. We believe that treating the case of Tuvalu the same way one deals with other countries is a denial of what decades of United Nations advocacy have set in place. It would be something akin to the principle of equal treatment, namely, the principle of special treatment, which is precisely the foundation of the very existence of LDC status. If the geographical limitations and extreme vulnerabilities of Tuvalu do not justify special consideration, what is the purpose of special and differentiated treatment, the cornerstone of international cooperation? Obviously, countries are acutely uneven and unequal, and treating them on the basis of a one-size-fits-all paradigm would simply be wrong. Tuvalu looks forward to the continued understanding and support of members of the Economic and Social Council on the question of its graduation from the LDC category. Tuvalu also accords the highest priority to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Tuvalu has passionately pursued those Goals, and we sincerely thank the donor community for its invaluable support, be it in-kind or financial. As we progress to the end of the MDGs in 2015, we continue to seek such partnerships so as to ensure that the MDGs are achieved fully and effectively as we anticipate the transition to the sustainable development goals. We are also fully committed to the strategic implementation of the essential dictates of the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, the Mauritius Strategy for its further implementation, and the Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011-2020, and seek the cooperation of development partners to provide, in a timely and predictable manner, financial and technical support to ensure their successful implementation. We have repeatedly called on developed and emerging countries and their partners to take a leadership role in reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions and to help small and poor countries like Tuvalu in their mitigation and adaptation activities. Tuvalu’s security and nationhood are continuously being threatened by the adverse impact of climate change, especially by sea-level rise. Much has been said and documented on the root causes of climate change and its negative consequences for many countries, not just the most vulnerable small island States like Tuvalu. Yet the ongoing global pleas to address such consequences have so far fallen on ignorant, if not deaf, ears. Our smallness and lack of natural endowments, as well as being only four metres above sea level, leave us extremely vulnerable to natural shocks, particularly to the effects of climate change and sea-level rise. As is well known, sea-level rise and f looding threaten Tuvalu’s limited agricultural production, undermine food security, and increase our vulnerability to supply disruptions. We therefore support advances and urge perseverance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol as the primary international, intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change in order to give substance to international agreements. As a sea-locked country, we in the Pacific have offered the resources of our vast oceans to be utilized by developed countries. We ask the partner countries to be more responsible and to reward us as guardians with the appropriate compensations that are conducive to our development needs, as well as environmentally recompensing. Domestically, Tuvalu is pursuing energy efficiencies, development strategies and goals that are both green or blue and sustainable. We have challenged ourselves to be 100 per cent renewable in 2020 in our energy sector. We could miss the mark, but we will not be comforted by remaining inactive, be it in our vision or in our action. We have asked developed countries to reduce carbon emissions; we will do the same at home, regardless of scale contrasts. With the advent of technology, Tuvalu seeks the donors’ assistance in realizing their pledges to establish early-warning systems pertaining to tsunamis or tropical cyclones in order to mitigate any risk and subsequent cost to Tuvalu. Tuvalu wishes also to offer its established trust fund protocols to the United Nations and development partners’ funding mechanisms for climate change adaptation as innovative financing instruments and architecture for channelling such resources to Tuvalu. Our trust funds are governed by international agreements and renowned worldwide as transparent and accountable mechanisms with high international standards of accounting and governance. Many suggestions for enhancing the role of the United Nations have been documented. We also continue to hear from the experts and technical advisers of the development of alternative energy drives and technologies, be they solar, wind or wave. In our region, and I believe in many other remote areas, we ask how we can get those new technologies to be readily available and price-effective to the membership of the United Nations, especially LDCs and SIDS. We therefore urge the United Nations and the Secretariat to act as facilitators of such developments and to expedite technology transfers, where appropriate, to bring our many words and resolutions to fruition. Our collective and global efforts to have peace and security as a prerequisite for the stability needed for global economic growth, sustainable development and social progress will be meaningless if the United Nations continues not to recognize and acknowledge Taiwan’s significant contribution and efforts towards the East China Sea peace initiative for regional stability and peace. Furthermore, Taiwan’s continued contribution to the international community as one of the committed development partners and responsible stakeholders in achieving the Millennium Development Goals should be recognized and accepted by the United Nations system as a valuable contribution to our collective efforts. In that regard, Tuvalu calls upon the United Nations subsidiary bodies, especially the International Civil Aviation Organization and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to recognize and allow Taiwan to participate in and contribute meaningfully to their meetings and activities without reservations. Incidentally, any legitimate claim for new nationhood or independence, be it in the Pacific region or the world over, should be supported, as colonialism in any form is contradictory to the United Nations Charter, just as any form of discrimination by race, gender or belief is not accepted in a civilized, modern and free world. I conclude by asking that the United Nations continue to cooperate in an unprecedented way. The United Nations must work together more enterprisingly and reform our strategies to conform to new developments, contemporary innovations and issues. Holding and hosting meeting after meeting is a good engagement strategy and directs our activities. However, delaying the implementation of resolutions is detrimental, as resolution after resolution is shelved or deferred until they are redundant. The United Nations Charter, I believe, is premised on timely actions and achievements to gauge whether we are effective and sustainable or merely validating our inactivity. I wish the President, the Secretary-General and all our membership every success in the sixty-seventh session of the General Assembly.