I would like to begin by
congratulating His Excellency Mr. Sam Kutesa,
former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Uganda, on his
election to the presidency of the General Assembly at
its sixty-ninth session. I would also like to take this
opportunity to thank His Excellency Mr. John Ashe
for his leadership of the Assembly at its sixty-eighth
session, and to salute Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
for his continued efforts to promote peace, security and
development throughout the world.
Dominica is among six small independent States in
the Caribbean that, together with three non-independent
small island territories, constitute the Organization of
Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The OECS States are
not simply small island developing States (SIDS), they
are very small island developing States, and therefore
among the most vulnerable members of the United
Nations family. Twenty years after the adoption of the
Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable
Development of Small Island Developing States, and
10 years after the approval of the Mauritius Strategy
for Implementation, most of the commitments made
to promote sustainable development in SIDS have yet
to be delivered. However, we remain hopeful that the
recently concluded third United Nations Conference on
Small Island Developing States, held in Apia, Samoa,
will have been a watershed moment for SIDS. We
expect the draft outcome document of the Conference
(A/CONF. 223/3) to create a new basis on which to
address the implementation gaps that continue to
stymie any movement towards sustainable development
in SIDS.
I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate the
Government and people of Samoa on hosting a major
international conference. Their tenacity, determination
and commitment are a demonstration of what can be
achieved by SIDS, despite the many challenges they face.
One major outcome of the Samoa Conference was the
historic establishment of an all-SIDS — that is, SIDS-
SIDS — initiative aimed at creating an international
organization to serve as a platform for the development
of sustainable energy in SIDS, known as SIDS DOCK.
On 1 September, a treaty formally establishing SIDS
DOCK as an international organization was opened for
signature. Twenty of the 30 members of the Alliance
of Small Island States have signed on to the treaty. As
Chair of the SIDS DOCK Steering Committee, the
Government of Dominica wishes to thank the host
country, Samoa, the other Member States that are
signatories to the treaty, our partners — Denmark,
Japan, the United Nations Development Programme, the
World Bank, the United Nations Industrial Development
Organization, the Clinton Foundation, the secretariat
of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme, the
Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre — and
the SIDS DOCK secretariat and all the volunteers for
making that historic event possible.
Unfortunately, the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) and the post-2015 agenda have not progressed
at a pace that those of us in the SIDS group would have
liked. Almost 15 years since the Millennium Declaration
was adopted (resolution 55/2), only a few countries
in the developing world have registered tangible
gains. The majority continue to wait for the promised
improvements in their living conditions. Nonetheless,
Dominica has been able to meet most of the MDGs,
notably in reducing poverty, improving access to
education, ensuring environmental sustainability and
building strong bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
Our progress in poverty reduction has been noted by
the Caribbean Development Bank, which stated in its
2009 report on Dominica that
“the level of poverty in Dominica has fallen from
39 per cent in 2003 to 28.8 per cent in 2009.
Absolute poverty, as measured by the indigence
rate, has also declined from 10 per cent in 2003 to
3.1 per cent in 2009.”
Our achievements in education have also surpassed
the targets set by the MDGs. Recognizing the
importance of education to our development agenda,
Dominica continues to make major investments in
improving access to quality education for our people.
To date, we can boast of universal access to education
at the early childhood, primary and secondary levels,
and access to post-secondary education is available to
all secondary-school graduates.
Dominica has always been guided by the principle
of the sustainable use of its natural resources and
the protection of its physical environment. For those
reasons, Dominica has been called the “Nature Island
of the Caribbean”. We therefore have much that we can
share with the United Nations family on the subject of
the sustainable use of natural resources. In our efforts
to protect and ensure environmental sustainability
and to rid our country of its reliance on fossil fuels for
generating electricity, the Government of Dominica has
invested, and continues to invest, in renewable energy.
Today about 20 per cent of the island’s electricity needs
are met from “clean” hydropower.
Additionally, however, the Government has been
pursuing the development of the country’s geothermal
resources. To date, the Government has invested
over $20 million in geothermal development. The
first production and reinjection wells have been
completed, and the results of the flow tests indicate
that the geothermal reservoir has a capacity to generate
sufficient electricity for domestic consumption and
for export to the neighbouring French territories of
Martinique and Guadeloupe. The first plant for purely
domestic consumption is expected to be commissioned
in 2016.
Dominica’s development achievements in general,
and the attainment of the MDGs in particular, have
been realized through the strong, visionary and
compassionate leadership of Prime Minister Roosevelt
Skerrit and his Cabinet, complemented by our hard-
working citizens and the kind cooperation of our
development partners. Our partnerships with the
European Union, the United States of America, Japan
and other developed countries have all contributed
significantly to the progress we have been able to make
thus far. The recent approval by the World Bank of the
Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience, which will
undertake a number of infrastructure projects designed
to transform Dominica into a climate-resilient and low-
carbon developing country and is expected, among other
benefits, to positively impact agricultural productivity
and food security in our rural communities.
South-South cooperation with partners from
developing countries, notably the People’s Republic of
China, Cuba, Morocco and Venezuela, and from the
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, has
been able to complement the decreasing assistance from
traditional partners. We embrace all our development
partners and look forward to the deepening and
strengthening of our partnerships for the benefits of all
our people.
In spite of those achievements, we are a long
way from where we aspire to be. The spectre of the
deadly Ebola disease and the scourges of HIV/AIDS
and non-communicable diseases has the potential
to significantly impact our people and threaten the
gains made so far by small island developing States.
Therefore, that myriad of challenges calls for collective
global action to protect the gains that small island
States like Dominica have been able to achieve over the
past two decades and to lay a path for development that
is sustainable and people-focused.
Additionally, the impact of climate change remains
an existential threat to the people throughout the world
who call small island States their homes. The location,
level of development and vulnerability of our islands
make them very susceptible to the impact of climate
change. Very often, we refer to climate change and its
effects as a phenomenon that is to impact our global
community at some future date. The unfortunate
reality is that SIDS have already been suffering from
the impact of climate change. The increasing severity
of storms and hurricanes is becoming more prevalent,
and with every strike the extreme weather claims lives
and threatens our development efforts. According to a
2008 publication by the United States National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, the Caribbean has
the second-greatest risk of hurricanes in the world.
The report also highlights the increased frequency of
tropical cyclones in our region.
The islands of the Caribbean are also prone to
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, torrential
rains with accompanying landslides and flash
flooding. We in the Caribbean have therefore been on
the receiving end of the impact of climate change for
decades. A case in point is the impact of Hurricane
Ivan, a category-3 system that devastated the island of
Grenada on 7 September 2004. Hurricane Ivan exposed
the vulnerability that is inherent in SIDS. Twenty-
eight lives were lost and 18,000 people were left
without shelter, food or belongings. A post-Ivan study
conducted by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean
States reported that:
“The macro-economic assessment of the damages
caused by Hurricane Ivan, which wreaked havoc
on Grenada, inflicted damages totalling $1 billion,
more than twice the value of that country’s GDP”.
In more recent times, on 24 December 2013, a time
outside the traditional hurricane season, the Caribbean
islands of Dominica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent
and the Grenadines were severely affected by a trough
system that brought with it heavy rains and high
winds. That slow-moving weather system left behind
approximately $128 million worth of direct damage.
Within less than 12 hours, each of those countries
suffered significant loss: Dominica — $17 million, or
3.4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP); Saint
Lucia — $19 million, or 1.4 per cent of GDP; and Saint
Vincent and the Grenadines — $93 million, or 12.8 per
cent. The indirect impacts, which include the loss of
agricultural production and interruptions in other
economic activities, such as tourism, would increase
the overall effect significantly. The most devastating
hurricane to hit Dominica in living memory was
Hurricane David, on 29 August 1979, a category-5
hurricane that left the island devastated as if by war,
resulting in 43 deaths and with all public utilities,
infrastructure, 60 per cent of homes, roads and sea
defences totally destroyed.
Such natural disasters affect the daily lives of our
people and significantly retard our efforts to bring
about social and economic development. We therefore
call on all States Members of the United Nations to
take immediate actions to approve a legally binding
agreement to reduce the impact of climate change. The
climate change agenda must be an integral part of the
post-2015 agenda.
The creation of wealth and the generation of
economic growth are essential for the eradication of
poverty and the improvement of the quality of life of our
people. However, economic growth and development
should be inclusive and sustainable. The creation of
jobs and the delivery of social services should touch
the lives of all our people, especially the indigenous
people, the elderly, the disadvantaged, the disabled, the
vulnerable, and those people who are excluded from
mainstream society. The development of agriculture,
tourism, the energy sector and industry should therefore
be inclusive and sustainable.
Dominica therefore joins the rest of the Caribbean
Community in calling for development partners to
conduct their macroeconomic and trade policies in a
way that facilitates opportunities for SIDS to promote
economic growth, shrink existing income gaps, reduce
the levels of poverty and achieve their development
aspirations. Those policies should include, but not be
limited to, a change in the criteria for the graduation
of SIDS from preferential access to multilateral
concessionary financing. The new criteria must take
into account the inherent vulnerabilities of SIDS
and the need for building resilience to the impact of
climate change and the vagaries of the global financial,
economic and trading systems. Therefore, any measure
that inhibits any State Member of the United Nations
family from becoming fully integrated into the global
financial and trading system should be removed.
In that vein, the economic embargo against our
brothers and sisters in Cuba continues to be of concern
to us in the Caribbean. That unilateral action by the
United States of America against our sister Caribbean
island, whatever the excuses might have been 55 years
ago, cannot be justified today, nor can the suffering
of our brothers and sisters in the Republic of Cuba,
as a result of their exclusion for 55 years from the
world banking and trading system, be defended. It is
well established that, whatever the objectives were 55
years ago, they are not likely to be achieved through
the continuation of the embargo. The Government of
Dominica therefore calls on the United States to heed
the call of the General Assembly to lift the embargo
against Cuba and to support the full integration of the
Cuban people into the global financial and trading
systems.
The embargo notwithstanding, the Cuban people
continue to make a tremendous contribution to human
development across the globe. For decades, Cuba has
been training doctors, nurses, engineers and other
professionals, deploying them to provide technical
assistance to developing countries as part of its South-
South cooperation. Cuba also offers professional
training in various disciplines to thousands of students
from all over the developing world.
Cuba continues to add its voice in the fight against
terrorism and drug trafficking in the Caribbean and the
rest of the world. It is for that reason that Dominica
fails to comprehend the continued listing of Cuba as
a State sponsor of terrorism. We therefore call for the
removal of Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor
terrorism. Our efforts in the region should be focused
instead on combating the real threats to global peace
and security.
Similarly, the events unfolding in Ukraine are
a proxy tug-of-war between the European Union and
the United States, on the one hand, and the Russian
Federation, on the other. The Ukrainian people are the
victims of the contest, which is a throwback to the Cold
War.
The United Kingdom, when confronted with the
question of Irish nationalism in 1918, resolved the
matter through the ballot box with a county-by-county
referendum on the future of Ireland. Most counties opted
for independence, but five counties opted for continued
union with the United Kingdom. Three years later,
the island was partitioned into the Republic of Ireland
and Northern Ireland, the latter remaining part of the
United Kingdom. The United Kingdom currently faces
the question of Scottish independence. Once again,
only last week on 18 September, the United Kingdom
resorted to the ballot box to decide the matter. While the
supporters of the campaign in favour of independence
will be disappointed by the results, the real victors are
not the supporters of the campaign for continued union
with the United Kingdom but democracy itself.
With that experience, the United Kingdom is
uniquely placed to counsel the European Union, the
United States, Kyiv and Moscow about how to grant
the people of Ukraine the same opportunity to decide
their destiny for themselves, according to their regional
preferences and without coercion either from the East
or from the West. Such an approach would end the
paralysis in the Security Council, thereby creating a
real partnership among the United States, the Russian
Federation and China and enabling the United Nations
to fulfil its mandate to assist in conflict resolution,
combat the greatest threats facing the world today,
namely, armed conflict and terrorism, and create a
more peaceful international community.
In conclusion, I wish to reiterate to the General
Assembly that the impact of climate change is a
major threat to the development efforts and to the
very existence of small island developing States. The
incidence of severe weather conditions, including
coastal erosion and sea-level rise, continues to impact
island States in the worst ways possible. Our ability
to survive depends not only on the individual and
collective actions taken by SIDS, but also on the actions
of the rest of the international community.
A legally binding outcome to the climate change
negotiations is a critical component in a series of
actions to be taken by Member States. That should be
buttressed by a post-2015 agenda that includes poverty
eradication, increased access to education and training,
health care, potable water and sanitation, and promotes
sustainable and inclusive economic development.
The outcomes of the third United Nations
Conference on SIDS in Samoa should serve as a blueprint
for the growth and development of SIDS. That should
include the restructuring of the international financial
and trading architecture so that the vulnerabilities and
special circumstances of SIDS are taken into account.
That new configuration will allow for the development
of SIDS through sustainable agriculture, tourism
and inclusive industrial development. However, such
efforts must be propelled by sustainable energy that
maximizes the use of renewable SIDS-appropriate
energy resources in the most energy efficient manner.
Finally, I wish all participants in this sixty-ninth
session every success in their deliberations.