56. It is indeed a great pleasure and honour for me to extend the congratulations of my Government to Mr. Arenales on his attainment of the high office of President of the General Assembly at its twenty-third session. At the same time I wish to place on record our deep appreciation to the outgoing President, the distinguished Foreign Minister of Romania, His Excellency Mr. Corneliu Manescu, for the way in which he has steered the deliberations of this body during the past session. I must confess to a sense of personal pleasure in offering these congratulations in my capacity as Minister of State for Caribbean and Latin American Affairs in the Cabinet of Barbados. Indeed I cannot help but feel that this high honour which has been accorded to Mr. Arenales in recognition of his distinguished talents, experience and diplomatic skill will be amply justified by his performance in the exacting role which he will be called upon to play during this session.
57. The country I have the honour to represent is distinguished from the majority of countries in the hemisphere by different traditions of government and by different ethnic and cultural affiliations. These differences are the result of a colonial past over which we had no control. Even before we gained our independence my Government began to take a hard look at that history and that past. With independence it became possible for us to put into practice the results of that examination. Barbados is now a member of the Organization of American States and is fully committed to its hemispheric destiny. For while it is not possible to unmake history, it is the prerogative of an independent State to choose at least some of the priorities of its future. We in Barbados are profoundly convinced that only through mutual co-operation at the regional level can our country and the other countries of Latin America hope to reach the goal of self-sustaining growth.
58. At the same time, my Government cannot pretend to be unconcerned when the aims of hemispheric co-operation are endangered by disputes and disagreements within the hemisphere itself. Such disputes impose crippling limitations on the capacity of the region to play its full role in world affairs and indeed restrict the individual States in their attempts to achieve solidarity within the hemisphere. One such dispute has been brought to the attention of the General Assembly by the Minister of State of Guyana in his address on 3 October 1968 [1680th meeting]. It is a dispute which threatens Guyana with the loss of nearly two thirds of its land area and, thus, with the loss of much of its potential for development. It is a dispute founded on a unilateral allegation which would set aside a boundary settlement that was accepted by the parties as being a "full, perfect and final settlement”, sixty-nine years ago. My Government deeply regrets that Venezuela has seen fit to reopen this matter and to take action culminating in the Decree of 9 July 1968, to which reference was made by the representative of Guyana. We hope that it will not be beyond the powers of the more influential States in the hemisphere, with the assistance if necessary of the United Nations, to put an end to a quarrel that has dangerous implications for the solidarity and security of the entire region.
59. I must now offer our congratulations to the Government and people of the Kingdom of Swaziland, our newest Member State, on its admission to the deliberations of this forum. Though greater in size and population than we are, Swaziland is also a small nation, whose presence we are sure will add immeasurably to the contribution which small States are making to the maintenance of international peace and stability. The independence of Swaziland is another blow struck in the fight against the twin problems of colonialism and racial discrimination. We pledge our firm support to the battle which this Assembly is waging for the liberation of the peoples of southern Africa. We are equally happy to learn of the attainment of independence of Equatorial Guinea and look forward to welcoming that country into our family of nations.
60. Our support of self-determination is not restricted to any one geographical region. Thus it is that my delegation finds it hard to understand why this Assembly should have treated the question of British Honduras so summarily during its last session. Are the aspirations of the people of that dependent Territory to freedom and self-determination not to receive the fullest consideration in all the organs of the United Nations? We are pleased by the recent statement by the United Kingdom promising an early conference to discuss independence for British Honduras. We shall be even more happy to be reassured that the Assembly of nations is watching vigilantly over the progress of the people of that Territory towards unfettered and uncompromised nationhood.
61. Then there is Southern Rhodesia. The rebel Government manned by a minority régime of unabashed racists has now been offered respectability by the Government of the United Kingdom. The gift has been tied together with gaily coloured ribbons of “constitutional reform", a technique at which the British Government considers itself a past master. There are “blocking quarters”, “cross-voting”, and “entrenched provisions", and we are told that the famous “six principles” remain sacrosanct.
62. A small nation like ours, in which different races have learned to live together in peace and joint endeavour, suffers a particularly exquisite kind of anguish when it contemplates the fate of millions of Africans in the southern part of that troubled continent. It used to be fashionable not so very long ago for publicists in the West to speak of “darkest Africa”. Is there anything in Africa darker than the chronicle of white racism in South Africa, in Namibia and in Southern Rhodesia? The family of nations is now being called upon to acquiese in the handing over of four million Africans to the mercies of a quarter of a million non-Africans who have shown no disposition at all to “reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person", to quote from the brave words of the preamble to the Charter of this Organization. The Government and people of Barbados do not intend to acquiese and we hope that the Members of this Organization, weak or powerful, large or small, will not acquiese in the sale of 4 million human beings for a mess of parchment and £50 million.
63. Perhaps because mine is a small nation with no vested interest in aggrandizement or aggression, our commitment to the United Nations as the key instrument for the maintenance of international peace is total. Perhaps because mine is a poor nation scratching a bare living for its people in the infertile fields of commodity agreements, the daily wastage of the world’s wealth in Viet-Nam and in the stockpiling of armaments and in arms races arouses in the Government and people of Barbados a genuine horror.
64. This commitment and this horror have led my Government to give its whole-hearted support to the efforts during the last session of the Assembly to obtain an international agreement on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is somewhat dispiriting to find that some of those same Powers that chivvied and shooed nations like mine into this ark should now themselves be hesitating on the brink of actual ratification of the treaty.
65. We have also supported the effort, so brilliantly and tirelessly spearheaded by the Government of Mexico and its representatives to create a nuclear-free zone in Latin America. Indeed a few days ago we signed and ratified the Treaty of Tlatelolco. But my delegation must say to this twenty-third session of the General Assembly, as we said to the twenty-second, that a partially nuclear-free zone is not a nuclear-free zone. So long as there is one country in that zone which is not bound by the international contract, then that contract comes dangerously close to being a futility. The refusal of Venezuela to countenance signature by Guyana of the Latin American denuclearization treaty is, in essence, a threat to the security of the hemisphere. My Government must hope that this is no more than a temporary obstacle; our hemisphere cannot afford a thermonuclear loop-hole.
66. We cannot believe that national independence and the exercise of sovereignty must be subordinated to considerations of ideology. This would be to deny the very basis upon which this Organization is founded. Even in the days when my country was directly under colonial control, we took for granted a certain freedom to experiment with the social order. The flagrant intervention of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries in Czechoslovakia in August has shocked and horrified the people of Barbados, as it has the people of many small countries throughout the world. Once more we see a great Power asserting, in the crudest way possible, its conviction that strength, technological superiority and the dictates of its own brand of ideology place it above the law, and above any considerations of international morality.
67. A succession of crises, beginning at least as far back as 1956, seem to be bringing the world inexorably towards a real politik based on a tacit demarcation of spheres of influence. A country like mine must hope that this reading of developments in international relations is radically wrong; “spheres of influence" sounds to us ominously akin to the bad old concept of “balance of power", and any undergraduate knows what the world has suffered in the name of that wicked, immoral euphemism for the law of the jungle.
68. It was none other than this concept that was at the heart of the “scramble for Africa” in the late years of the last century. Our own decade has seen what might be called "the scamper from Africa" with its obverse side of economic imperialism which some have called neo-colonialism. It is not difficult to see the traces of this virus in the suffering of our brothers in Nigeria today, in the internecine conflict which may set back by two generations the development of the most populous country in the African continent. We, the newly independent countries, ignore at our own risk the virulence of the spores left behind by departing imperialism. Many of the people of the Caribbean and of Latin America have roots in Nigeria, as the Assembly well knows; for us it is a family tragedy of universal proportions.
69. For us, one of the more positive aspects of international life has been the observance of this year, 1968, as the International Year for Human Rights. It would, perhaps, be too much to expect that the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should have become the focal point of government policies throughout the world. At the same time, we must confess to disappointment at the evidence, in this year of celebration, that there is very little to celebrate, that in too many countries fundamental human rights have received only marginal attention from the policy makers.
70. Last year we approached the discussions of the second session of UNCTAD with genuine optimism. There was much brave talk of points of crystallization, centres of gravity and such, all suggesting that the time had come when all the Member States of this Assembly, despite their differing ideological viewpoints or stages of development, were ready to make a concerted effort towards the fulfilment of resolution 2296 (XXII). In this same resolution this Assembly decided to consider at its twenty-third session the results of this conference. What results? If there is one word which sums up our feelings on this marathon confrontation, that word is “disappointment".
71. After the “Second UNCTAD”, the gap between what the richest nations are ready to promote and what they are actually prepared to deliver yawns as large as ever. We are now faced with the threat of a retreat from the principles enshrined in the Charter into a phase of new isolationism. Countries like my own cannot but feel dismay at the delay in concluding international commodity agreements, when the problem of export instability strikes at the core of their economic existence.
72. My delegation has made its stand clear on the need for fundamental change in the pattern of world economic relations. The effects of years of systematic pillage by the colonial Powers cannot be undone overnight; it is daunting now to find that those same nations which have been the major beneficiaries of those wicked years are shirking their responsibility to assist in the rehabilitation which is necessary with the plea of “pressing domestic problems” as their excuse.
73. I would not wish this Assembly to believe that the Government and people of Barbados are standing, hat in hand, waiting for largesse from the carriages of the rich. Self-help is one of the ruling concepts in our policy. In the Caribbean area there are many countries and territories of like mind with us. Barbados is proud to have played a leading role in the establishment of the Caribbean Free Trade Association.
74. But our aspirations are not limited to our own development and that of the countries closest to us by reason of history, geography and sustained association. We have closely followed similar efforts on the mainland of Latin America, and we are convinced that the way to self-sufficiency for our region lies in total economic integration.
75. I wish to place on record the deep appreciation of my Government for the work which the United Nations Development Programme, the specialized agencies, and our regional Economic Commission for Latin America have been carrying out in my country. Small States have no choice but to accept the challenge of manipulating their environment, and to co-operate with larger nations to acquire the technology on which such a task is dependent. My Government deeply appreciates the efforts of the United Nations Development Programme in the evaluation of the resources of the sea around us, and in the training of our nationals in the techniques of its exploitation.
76. A somewhat unedifying debate has been pursued during this decade, so optimistically named the United Nations Development Decade, as to whether the rich countries should devote one per cent of their national income to assisting the poorer countries with their development or whether it should be one per cent of their gross national product.
77. A look at the figures of the outflow of capital from developing countries to the developed countries puts this argument in proper perspective. Indeed, I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Organization on the impressive work of information and research it has carried out successfully over the years. That work has contributed fundamentally to the destruction of some of the more dangerous illusions under which countries without the necessary skills or data might have laboured. We now know a little more about the nature of that half-chimerical substance called “aid". It is therefore easier for us to assess the results of the Kennedy Round and to put that exercise in a realistic perspective.
78. The principle that friendly relations and co-operation among States must be based on the respect of equal rights and self-determination of peoples is enshrined in the Charter of this Organization. My Government attaches the
highest importance to that principle. Thus, my Government has paid close attention to the work being done by the Special Committee on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States since its admission to this Organization even though my country had not attained the essentials cf nationhood when the General Assembly resolved to undertake a study of these principles.
79. It is our earnest hope that those efforts will result in the codification and progressive development of accepted legal principles for friendly relations and co-operation. My Government must voice its firm conviction of the perpetual need for respect for the principles set forth in the United Nations Charter and regards the task of formulating the content of principles on which friendly relations among States may be established as a commendable effort which should soon be brought to fruition. We would wish to see those principles formulated in the light of a universal concept of justice based on the objective of creating a world community in which international law and an international standard of conduct are safeguards to justice and to liberty.
80. There is a well-known dictum that the price of liberty is unceasing vigilance. The small nation, steadfast in the pursuit of equity and justice in international relations, conducted in an atmosphere of respect and of peace, must guard against the sneaking growth of novel conceptions of international law which serve merely as a thin veneer to hide the creeping twilight of new imperialisms.
81. Today, despite the continued existence of divisive forces in each major area of the international scene and the threatening onset of new disturbances, there is still room to view with tempered optimism the prospect of the fulfilment of those ideals on which this Assembly was established.
82. At least once a year, and occasionally more than once in each year, it is the heavy responsibility of the representatives who speak in this forum to adumbrate exhaustively the several problems which beset the States whose
spokesmen they are. Each speaks for his country, setting forth the hopes and grievances of a Member State. From these deliberations we try, with frequently disappointing results, to pluck flowers of safety from the nettles of danger. We must never weary of trying. We dare not disband. Even if laws are silent amid the clash of arms, we must shout above the din that, while we strive for a world of peace, we would rather endure a world in disarray than have no world at all. Peace must, therefore, be at all times our first concern. We must somehow try to bury those turbulent egoisms which have been woven into the fabric of the Nation State and which distract, derange and dethrone the peoples of the world from that sovereignty over their environment which it is their business to uphold.
83. Unfortunately, however, the peoples of the world are often ill-served by the international posturing of the great Powers. So long as nuclear diplomacy remains the ultimate reality in world affairs, so long as humanity cowers and skulks in the shadow of terror, blinded by the dust blown back from the nuclear charioteers, we cannot hope to teach the illiterate, to employ the jobless, to heal the sick, to house the homeless or feed the hungry.
84. Yet it is the illiterate, the jobless, the sick, the homeless and the hungry who, in the persons of their distinguished champions in this Assembly, constitute the conscience of mankind. These inarticulate hundreds of millions of our fellow men look to this Assembly to rescue them from their long torment, firstly by securing for them a peaceful world and secondly, by bringing to their easy reach within that world all those boons without which the independence of their countries will continue to be poor, solitary, brutish and short.
85. The country and people who speak through me in this forum entertain no illusions about the world in which they now exercise their sovereignty. We are not terrified of the great Powers, because we are convinced that the contradictions within their several systems, despite their monopoly of terror, will soon, to the advantage of the rest of mankind, cut them down to size. We are a small, under-developed nation whose citizens manipulate with accustomed ease a democratic system in which those elected to govern are proud to be the servants of the people and would scorn to be their masters. Since in our country no one is above the law, we naturally bring this entrenched experience with us to the council of nations. The people of my country cannot, therefore, admit the preposterous contention that they, together with the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America, must continue to loiter around the enclaves of a few nations, while these nations, already sated, drench us with advice, sometimes wrong-headed and often gratuitous, about the backwardness of our populations and their propensity to multiply.
86. In short, the people of Barbados would like to see and read for themselves that clause in Adam’s will which has bequeathed to a score of nations most of the bread of the world and has contemptuously flung all the stones of the world to the others. Without even reading that clause in Adam’s will, we are prepared to denounce it for the clumsy forgery it is. In this conviction my delegation makes the plea in this Assembly of equals that there is little time left to redeem the substantial pledges which this Assembly, by its mere existence, has made to mankind. My delegation feels that some of the States represented in this place might with profit consult their consciences and ask, in the words of a famous American poet:
“Who hath given to me this sweet?
“And given my brother dust to eat?
“And when will his wage come in? ”
87. Let us, therefore, be united in the quest for achievement of these goals of amelioration of our human condition. I pledge you, Mr. President, the unstinting support of my Government in your enlightened contribution to this
effort.