St. Vincent and the Grenadines

For the second time in my tenure as Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, I have the pleasure and honour to welcome a distinguished son of our Caribbean civilization to the presidency of the General Assembly. Even as we thank your immediate predecessor for his service as the President of the General Assembly at its sixty-seventh session, we look forward to your tenure, President Ashe, with boundless pride and unbridled optimism. Mr. President, for this year’s general debate, you have chosen the theme “The post-2015 development agenda: setting the stage”. This is also the year in which you will lay the groundwork for the United Nations International Conference on Small Island Developing States, which will take place in Samoa next September. Your dual focus on the international development agenda and the peculiarities of small island States make this sixty-eighth session one of the most important in my country’s 33 years of membership in the United Nations. Let me first say that the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are deeply pained at the horrendous acts of terrorism recently committed in Kenya. I reaffirm yet again our solidarity with the Government and the people of Kenya. William Shakespeare cautioned that what is past, is prologue. Similarly, Mr. President, your invitation to consider the future of the international development agenda requires us to first consider the ways in which our recent and long-ago steps and missteps shape our future developmental challenges and opportunities. I begin with an unfortunate, inconvenient truth: our collective failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is largely rooted not in the shortcomings of earnest and hardworking developing countries, but in developed countries’ abject abandonment of Goal 8, “Develop a global partnership for development”. The Organization’s own MDG Gap Task Force noted in its report entitled “The Global Partnership for Development: The Challenge We Face” that the quest for such a global partnership experienced significant backsliding in 2013 and that “the political momentum for advancing international development cooperation seems to have waned”. Sixteen of 25 developed countries decreased their aid budgets last year, and official development assistance (ODA) contracted for the second consecutive year, the first such contraction since the creation of the MDGs. In a time of crisis, when assistance is most needed, ODA is itself in a deep and prolonged recession. The twists and turns by so many developed countries on this issue have been most disappointing. Without predictable flows of meaningful, non-discretionary assistance, the post-2015 development programme will remain, substantially, a fleeting illusion to be pursued but rarely, if ever, attained. At the same time, I applaud the efforts of those developed nations that take their ODA commitments seriously. I hail, too, a raft of other countries that are in a genuine developmental and functional partnership with us. These include Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Venezuela and Taiwan. Indeed, Taiwan, a country not washed by our Caribbean Sea, has been remarkable in its principled and practical conduct of intergovernmental relations. Surely the time has now come for this exemplar of the magnificent Chinese civilization to be permitted to participate fully in the work of the various agencies of this world body. Our debate on the future developmental agenda of the international community is taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing global economic and financial crisis. The global economy remains precariously poised, and for every nation that seems to have turned the corner, another plunges back into recession. The impact of the crisis on development has been palpable and has rendered the MDGs unattainable in many countries. Therefore, if we are to discuss the post- 2015 development agenda, we must also discuss the reform agenda of our outmoded international financial architecture, whose failings contributed to the current crisis, and whose continued stasis is a reckless invitation to future economic turmoil. Despite the challenges of the ongoing exogenous shocks, including natural disasters, and the encumbrances imposed by an insufficiently flexible international financial architecture, my country continues to make significant strides in our people-centred approach to development and poverty alleviation. This past June, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was one of 18 countries recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for having achieved the part of Millennium Development Goal 1 on halving the proportion of hungry people by 2015 — and we have reduced it to below 5 per cent — and the more stringent World Food Summit goal of halving the absolute number of hungry people by 2015. For a small, vulnerable country to achieve this task ahead of schedule and in the midst of this debilitating global economic and financial crisis is truly outstanding. We have done so while maintaining and advancing good governance, individual liberties and democracy in accordance with global best practices. But the ambitions of my Government are far greater than Goal 1 of the MDGs. Having more than halved hunger, we have now set our sights on the elimination of hunger altogether: to achieve zero hunger. We hope that the United Nations and the international community can partner with us effectively in fulfilling that historic ambition. Our policy goal of ensuring that no man, woman or child goes to bed hungry will have its own positive knock-on effects on poverty reduction, health and arresting the spread of chronic non-communicable diseases — which itself should also be of central importance to our post-2015 development agenda. As the Assembly is well aware, the roots of underdevelopment and exploitation extend much deeper than the recent abandonment of MDG Goal 8 by the bulk of developed countries. I arrived at this year’s general debate from the Caribbean’s first-ever regional conference on reparations for native genocide and slavery, which was held in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. That stirring and uplifting regional conference was the first step in the Caribbean’s quest to address and redress a psychic, historical, socioeconomic and developmental wound that is, for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), 14 nations wide and 400 years deep. The genocidal oppression and suffering of my country’s indigenous Callinago, the Garifuna and enchained Africans have been rightly adjudged to have been a horrendous crime against humanity. Accordingly, the collective voice of our Caribbean civilization ought justly to ring out for reparations for native genocide and African slavery from the successor States of the European countries that committed organized State-sponsored native genocide and African enslavement. The awful legacy of those crimes against humanity — a legacy that exists today in the Caribbean — ought to be repaired for the developmental benefit of our Caribbean societies and all our peoples. The historic wrongs of native genocide and African slavery and their continuing contemporary consequences must be righted and repaired, in the interests of our people’s humanity. European nations must partner in a focused, special way with us to execute that repairing. The demand for reparations is therefore the responsibility not only of the descendants, in today’s Caribbean, of the Callinago, the Garifuna, the Amerindian and the African. It is undoubtedly an agenda for all of us to advance, promote, concretize and execute. The European nations that engaged in conquest, settlement, genocide and slavery in our Caribbean must provide the resources required to repair the contemporary legacy of those historic wrongs. That is undoubtedly a special pillar in the post-2015 development agenda. That repairing of the mind, of collective memory, of our economies and of our societies is part and parcel of the rebirth, the redemption and the further ennoblement of our Caribbean, our indigenous populations, our African descendants and, indeed, of Africa. I say to the Assembly that the struggle for reparations represents, immediately, a defining issue for our Caribbean in the twenty-first century. It promises to make both Europe and the Caribbean more free, more human and more good-neighbourly. CARICOM recently decided, quite rightly, to place the quest for reparations at the centre of its development agenda. I am also compelled to speak today on a contemporary injustice that is entirely within the capacity of the Assembly to address. In 2010, negligent, or even reckless, United Nations peacekeepers contaminated a Haitian drinking water supply, which led to an outbreak of cholera that killed 8,000 innocent Haitians and infected 600,000 others. There is no longer any scientific dispute that the United Nations is responsible for the outbreak, as has been conclusively established in the relevant reports. Prior to the United Nations negligence, Haiti had not seen a single case of cholera in 150 years. There are more cholera-infected persons in Haiti today than in the rest of the world. I continue to be deeply disturbed by the callous disregard of the United Nations of the suffering it has wrought in a fellow CARICOM country, and by the shameful and legalistic avoidance of what is a clear moral responsibility on the part of the United Nations. Accordingly, I call on Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to acknowledge unambiguously, and apologize for, the Organization’s role in that tragedy and to take immediate steps to compensate the victims and their families. Anything less will further undermine the moral authority and credibility of this institution. Sixty-eight years ago, our predecessors conceived of a grand experiment, a commitment to bind the world together in a collective quest for peace, justice and development. Over time, we have established a body of rules, laws and expectations that add flesh to the principles that undergird the Charter of the United Nations. Now, we are engaged — explicitly and indirectly, willingly and reluctantly — in a reassessment of that grand commitment. Today, the actions of a small subset of powerful nations shake the very foundations upon which the Assembly was built and threaten to bring the temple down upon the heads of those of us who still subscribe to the original tenets of our institution. Properly conceived and universally adhered to, international law is the bulwark against impunity, unilateralism, and Great Power triumphalism. Today, there are those in the Assembly who hold a curious view of international law, as something that must be imposed against others but which has limited applicability to themselves. To some in the Assembly it seems appropriate to disregard international law in the very enforcement of their distorted view of international law. Clearly, such conduct is unacceptable, for the simple reason that it threatens the continued legitimacy of our entire multilateral system. Small, vulnerable States, by definition and necessity, are those most reliant upon an enforceable body of equitable international law within an effective system of multilateral diplomacy. It is no surprise, therefore, that small States like my own have emerged as some of the strongest defenders of multilateralism, sovereignty, diplomacy and the rule of law. We view it as our responsibility to sound the alarm when this institution threatens to depart from the founding principles that bind us together. According to basic reason and historical experience, no nation is intrinsically superior to another and no people are innately better than nothers. To be sure, there are cultural and social differences, but being different does not imply a condition of being better or worse. One nation may be more powerful than another, but that circumstance should never permit the powerful to ascribe arrogantly to themselves, in laughable vanity, the doctrine of exceptionalism. Inevitably, that vain ascription swiftly degenerates into an embrace of the damning path of the rightness of unilateral force, rather than an uplifting multilateral force of rightness. Flagrant examples of a continuing disregard for international law abound. Surely, it diminishes a great nation such as the United States of America to continue with what I consider to be a myopic vendetta against Cuba by way of an illegal, outdated and hurtful economic blockade and the absurd declaration that Cuba is a sponsor of terrorism. All right-thinking persons across the world justly demand that the United States end the economic blockade against Cuba and remove its name from the unilaterally drawn up list of States that allegedly sponsor terrorism. It makes no sense whatsoever for international law to become a prisoner of domestic politics and the vain glories of a Great Power. Similarly, the plight of the Palestinian people is being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, with a disregard for the opinions of almost all of humankind. The issue certainly entails enormous complexities but, unless it is resolved satisfactorily, sustainable peace in the Middle East will remain unattainable. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines hopes that current moves towards serious negotiations will bear fruit in line with the principles and mandates that have been spelled out repeatedly in various United Nations resolutions. At the same time, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is very impressed by the efforts of the President of the United States to embrace diplomacy rather than military intervention in pursuit of a political settlement in Syria. The Syrian community in my country, rightly and anxiously, looks forward to peace in its troubled homeland. Only the extremists will benefit from a prolonged civil war. Still, peace cannot be sought reasonably when a precondition of regime change is advanced. All sides in the conflict must make real compromises in the interests of the Syrian people as a whole. There is one emerging issue of consequence that needs to be addressed. It concerns the deeply disturbing recent reports of the widespread and unrestrained spying that has allegedly been conducted by the United States of America against a number of countries, including its staunchest allies. Indeed, there are reports that the practice of such electronic espionage is rife, even within the halls and offices of the United Nations. We strongly reject such activity as illegal, a violation of diplomatic conventions and an affront to the comity of nations. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines believes the agenda for appropriate corrective action in that regard, as outlined earlier this week by the President of Brazil, to be fair, reasonable and achievable by the international community. As we continue our collective journey in the quest for greater and lasting global peace, we are reminded that wars do not erupt only between countries, but also within them. We also know that some of the highest numbers of violent deaths occur in countries that are apparently at peace. This year, the international community has recognized that genuine and lasting peace between and within nations, cities and villages cannot occur in an environment that allows an unregulated trade in small arms and light weapons. The Arms Trade Treaty, which Saint Vincent and the Grenadines signed on the very first day that it opened for signature, is far weaker than we would have liked. Nonetheless, we consider it to be an important first step in regulating the illicit flow of small arms and light weapons worldwide, particularly into the Caribbean region, where the tide of guns is often accompanied by torrents of narcotics as they make their way to markets in other countries. I am deeply disappointed at the international community’s endless, rudderless and seemingly vacuous negotiations on climate change. Our failure to achieve meaningful progress on this matter of existential urgency is inexcusable. Vulnerable countries like Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are on the front line of climate change and are already bearing the brunt of the increasing fallout of global warming. Meanwhile, the major emitters and historical polluters pay callously insincere lip service to our plight. For them, combating climate change is a question of dollars and cents, not life and death. They are only too happy to see the multilateral process fail, so that they can retreat into ineffectual and painless national commitments. But those stubborn obstacles to progress must no longer be allowed to stand in the way of the survival and development of vast swaths of our planet. I applaud the initiative of the Secretary-General to convene a high-level event on climate change in the hope that such a meeting will give our meandering negotiations impetus and direction. The post-2015 development agenda will not survive global warming if it goes unchecked. It is also high time for genuine negotiations in good faith and for meaningful resources to assist in mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change. In conclusion, I would like to recall that the Charter of the United Nations begins with the phrase “We the peoples of the United Nations.” It is not “We the rich peoples”, nor “We the militarily powerful peoples” nor “We the peoples of large countries”; but “We the peoples” — of the entire world, the whole membership of this institution. The United Nations does not exist to confer benefits to select groups, but to secure peace and development for all. If we are to set the stage for the future of development, that stage must be inclusive so that all nations and peoples have a significant part to play and a stake in the outcomes. Let us make ourselves worthy successors of the ennobling, humanizing vision of our venerated founding fathers and mothers. I shall be saying this ages and ages hence: two roads diverge in the woods, and I have chosen the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.