I stand before the
Assembly and renew the commitment of the
Government and people of Belize to the principles
enshrined in the United Nations Charter. We reaffirm
the pledge made by the father of the Belizean nation,
the Right Honourable George Price, when he said from
this rostrum:
“Belize, with the help of God and the
support of its people, will stand upright and will
do its duty to help bring peace, stability and
prosperity to our region and the wider circles of
our planet Earth.” (A/36/PV.13, para. 143)
Through you, Sir, we would like to congratulate
the President on her election and pledge the support of
my delegation for our important work at this session of
the General Assembly.
We express our solidarity with our Secretary-
General, whose imprint on this institution at this
critical time in international affairs will be appreciated
and remembered through the ages.
Belize became independent 25 years ago. It was a
different time then, in 1981. The cold war was being
waged. There was a clash of economic philosophies,
and countries were being forced to circle in one of two
orbits. But many countries did not; we proclaimed our
non-alignment and worked to establish a new
international economic order. We sought to create a
world which was fairer and more just and which put
people at its centre.
We never achieved that dream of a new
international economic order. In fact, in 1989, the wall
that divided not only a nation, but the entire social and
economic order of the world, came tumbling down.
The Berlin Wall was torn down nearly two decades
ago, but we have yet to tear down the most important
wall of all — the one that separates us into rich States
and poor States, wealthy and poor, developed and
developing.
7 06-53615
Almost 15 years ago, we were told that if we tore
down barriers to trade, opened up our markets to
foreign capital and imported goods, and privatized our
State-owned enterprises, our economies would grow by
leaps and bounds. We were also told that our partners
in the developed world would afford us greater access
to their markets, that our commodities would receive
fair prices, and that international financiers would
make capital readily available for us to borrow.
The question we now ask is: Are we better off
having adhered to that so-called development cocktail
prescribed by the Washington Consensus?
All is not well. In the Caribbean, 30 per cent of
people are living in poverty. In Latin America, the
figure is an obscene 40.6 per cent. Worse yet, 16.8 per
cent of the people in Latin America live in extreme
poverty. Fourteen of the 15 Caribbean countries are
among the most indebted emerging market countries.
In fact, seven are in the top 10, all with debt-to-gross
domestic product ratios of about 100 per cent. To quote
from a recent World Bank report:
“A closer inspection of the data leaves little room
for complacency about the world’s progress
against poverty. Indeed, the picture that emerges
is one of highly uneven progress, with serious
setbacks in some regions and time periods. And
we find that more people living near $2 per day
became worse off over the period than the
number who gained. Thus the number living
under $2 per day rose.”
In 2006, now more than ever we need a new
international economic order.
In 2001, members of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) adopted the Doha Development
Agenda. The ministerial declaration proudly
proclaimed:
“The majority of WTO members are developing
countries. We seek to place their needs and
interests at the heart of the Work Programme
adopted in this Declaration.”
The WTO sought to design a multilateral trading
system that was to “ensure that developing countries
secure a share in the growth of world trade that was
commensurate with the needs of their economic
development”. But let me tell members what our
reality, the Belizean experience with the WTO, has
been.
Since Doha, a panel set up by the WTO decided
that the European Union organization of its sugar
market was incompatible with WTO rules. To solve
that problem, Belizean sugar farmers now get paid less
for the sugar exported to the European Union. Simply
put, the WTO has made them worse off. Since Doha,
the European Union has liberalized its banana import
regime. That is supposed to make the regime WTO-
compatible. The statistics now show that imports from
non-African, Caribbean and Pacific countries into the
European Union have outstripped imports from the
Caribbean, and prices paid for bananas have fallen.
In the five years since Doha, our hopes have been
dashed, ambitions smashed and the development
dimension once again ignored. The accord reached at
Doha has been systematically dismantled with each
subsequent meeting, from Cancún to Hong Kong to
Geneva.
We say that there is something inherently wrong
with a system that promises development and delivers
lower prices for exports. We say that there is something
fundamentally unfair in a system that promises a
development agenda and delivers suspended
negotiations and less market access to small vulnerable
economies.
It is in such an environment, defined by
multilateralism and the primacy of the markets —
liberalism writ large — that small States in the
Caribbean operate. It is a system in which unknown
people sitting in unmarked rooms in Brussels and
Geneva make decisions that determine how many
boxes of bananas the Caribbean can export to Europe
and what price we get paid for our sugar.
At the end of the day, it is all about social justice
and social equity. Is something wrong with a picture in
which, of the 6 billion people on planet Earth, 1 billion
have more than 80 per cent of world income and
5 billion have less than 20 per cent? Something is
radically wrong with that picture. Our common charge
is to right that imbalance. The fight against poverty
cannot and will not be won with arms and instruments
of war. We need a new international economic order in
which the rights of people to jobs and fair wages and to
fair prices for commodities take precedence over rules
of trade that are inherently unfair and inequitable. And
small vulnerable economies like ours in the Caribbean
need special and differential treatment. Unless we
wage the fight against poverty, there will be no peace.
06-53615 8
In the absence of peace, insecurity prevails. Insecurity
encourages instability.
It is no wonder that, at this time, we find
ourselves in retreat, living in a culture of fear and
divided by a so-called clash of civilizations. A general
sense of lost hope is pervasive and the enthusiasm of
the new millennium squandered.
Here at the United Nations, our own concept of
dialogue among civilizations seems to be fast fading.
We must find a way to build a greater sense of security,
renew our faith in each other and deconstruct the walls
that divide. That can best be accomplished through our
work at the United Nations, and my delegation
commends our efforts in endorsing an integrated
approach to addressing the transition from conflict to
recovery with the establishment of the Peacebuilding
Commission. Together with the General Assembly and
the Security Council, the Commission should, in the
spirit of its constitution, help to answer those critical
questions related to the maintenance of international
peace and security and, above all, development.
In these times, when the rules that govern our
collective responsibility to international civility and the
comity of nations seem to be eroding along with
respect for international law, we must look to our
institutions to restore our common values.
We are reminded that the primary responsibility
of the Security Council is the maintenance of
international peace and security. The Charter, in giving
that mandate, specifies that the conferral of that
responsibility is to ensure prompt and effective action
when required. But as we have seen with the delayed
reaction to the recent events in Lebanon and the
occupied Palestinian territories, the Council failed to
discharge its mandate. The situation in the Middle East
necessitates prompt and effective action.
We acknowledge that the shortcomings in the
Council’s exercise of its mandate may be attributed to
its structural imbalances. Those imbalances are not
insurmountable and, indeed, call for reform. The
Council must reflect the current geopolitical realities.
Belize supports comprehensive reform of the Security
Council, including the expansion of membership in
both permanent and non-permanent categories, and
through the improvement of its working methods. We
detect a momentum for change and we are ready to
engage as equal partners to that end.
We now have a Human Rights Council that we
hope will be vigilant in its work to protect the rights of
those unable to protect themselves. We will be truly
civilized only when we stop the victimization of the
weak at the expense of the ideology of the strongest.
We must bring to an end the violence and death
of the innocent in Darfur. Our collective conscience is
stained by the genocide in Darfur. For every innocent
life that is lost to conflict and the denial of basic
human rights, we carry the scars of their oppression.
In Belize, we have started a dialogue on the
relevance of small States and the role we must play in
the maintenance of international peace and security. I
have invoked the idea that, in the global war on
terrorism, we in the Caribbean and Central America are
less important because we operate in a culture of peace
and respect for life, and that because most of us lack
the armies to join coalitions, we are seen as unwilling
or even irrelevant.
Yet our people feel the same fear as those in
larger countries; we suffer the economic effects that
others suffer and, dare I say, more so because of our
vulnerability due to our size. As people at risk, we
want to see the billions spent to make war used to bring
prosperity and hope to those who live in such despair
that they can be enticed into the spreading of terror. We
will not be dissuaded from our belief that violence and
destruction beget war. Only hope and sustainable
development can bear peace.
Today, in our sister Caribbean nation of Haiti, we
see the resilience of its people. In the turbulence of the
past few years, the people of Haiti have refused to
despair. Their desire to live in a democratic society
prevailed when they recently went to the polls to elect
a new Government. We must not suffer Haiti to slide
into irrelevance. We all owe Haiti our commitment to
nurturing its growth by building those institutions
necessary for a sustainable nation State.
At a time when the world has so much wealth that
$900 billion is being spent on military expenditure and
$300 billion on agricultural subsidies, but only $60
billion on development assistance, too many of our
people remain under the strangulation of poverty,
relegated to the dungeons of destitution and social
inequality. Yet we come to these occasions and speak
of our strong commitment to preserving the dignity of
all human beings. We speak of their rights and promise
to continue to foster dialogue. And when it comes right
9 06-53615
down to it, where the agreements count most the plight
of the poor is sacrificed to the bottom line, personal
wealth and political survival.
In the Caribbean, we cannot accept that and,
while we applaud the efforts of this Organization and
the work that has gone into defining agreed
development goals, including addressing the needs of
our poorest people, the protection of our environment
and efforts to promote meaningful sustainable
development, we must do more. Each child who goes
to sleep hungry contributes to the shame we must all
feel in failing to protect his or her basic rights. Each
person who dies of HIV/AIDS is a reflection of our
lost value for life, and every time the poor die for want
of food we have failed humanity.
Twenty-five years ago, as a newly independent
country, Belize was welcomed into the United Nations
assured of its territorial integrity and its equal place in
this community of nations. We earned our rightful
place by example and by commitment to this
Organization’s highest principles. In return, we
received the solidarity of all.
Our political independence will remain imperfect
until we find a peaceful and just solution to the
territorial claim of Guatemala to Belizean territory. We
remain committed to finding a solution that respects
our territorial integrity and honours our sovereignty.
Membership in the United Nations is an
affirmation of the will of sovereign peoples. The
United Nations has served as a platform for the
expression of that will for many of the nations
represented here today. Let us in turn ensure that the
United Nations remains a beacon of hope for all
peoples who continue the struggle, such as our brothers
and sisters in Palestine, Western Sahara, Taiwan and
the non-self governing territories.
We warmly welcome Montenegro to the family of
nations.
Our conversation began with my seeking answers
to the question of the relevance of Belize and other
small States in today’s global order. I find comfort in
the winds of change occurring in our Organization, a
change that will bring to this sixty-first session of the
General Assembly a new Secretary-General, and that
will continue the process of reform mandated in the
World Summit Outcome. We must, however, make
changes relevant to our time and true to our Charter.
Let us seize this opportunity and face the
challenges boldly together. For us in Belize, our minds
are imbued with the democratic process, our hearts
beat with social justice and our souls cherish the treasures of the spirit.