Please permit me, Sir, on
behalf of the Belize delegation to congratulate you on
your election to the presidency of the sixty-fifth
session of the United Nations General Assembly. As
much as our peoples share common values of peace
and democracy, your country and my own could not be
more different. Switzerland is landlocked with a land
mass twice the size and a population 25 times that of
my coastal country. Belize has a $1 billion economy
and Switzerland has a $400 billion economy. Nominal
gross domestic product per capita in Switzerland is
estimated at $67,000, while in Belize that figure is
roughly $4,000.
I bring up the differences between Belize and
Switzerland because they are illustrative of the stark
differences that epitomize today’s world. We in this
Hall tout sovereign equality, but we experience social
and economic disparity on a daily basis, across the
globe. Inequality persists between nations and within
nations. Poverty proliferates in the midst of plenty.
In my own country, although real output per
capita grew over the past 10 years, so too did the
proportion of Belizeans living in poverty. In other words,
we experienced growth without the commensurate
development of our people.
Belize accepts that development is a matter of
national responsibility. However, our contemporary
reality now renders questions that were hitherto matters
of national concern, matters of global concern. As a
consequence of globalization, the management
capacity of a State has diminished. Our macroeconomic
policy and fiscal capacity cannot adequately address
the multiple exogenous shocks occasioned, inter alia,
by the triumvirate of the financial, food and fuel crises.
Adequate and appropriate international support at
this time is therefore critical if we are to avoid drifting
further and further away from the attainment of our
development goals. In that connection, developed
nations urgently need to make good their promise to
deliver 0.7 per cent of their GDP for official
development assistance (ODA).
For Belize, meaningful international support is
becoming increasingly harder to come by because of
our designation as a middle-income country. While we
continue to benefit from ODA and foreign direct
investment in our quest to further integrate Belize into
the global economy, for the most part expensive
foreign and local commercial debt has in fact fuelled
the country’s development strategy.
Thus, in the past 15 years, Belize has built up a
high level of public debt, with high-cost long-term
financing. The ratio of public debt to GDP grew
steadily, from about 27 per cent in 1995 to 70.3 per
cent in 2008, with a peak of 87 per cent in 2005. That
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debt-led strategy, which was the model of many other
countries, will surely become an unwelcome and
unwanted burden for our children.
Perennial debt-servicing obligations constrain my
Government’s capacity to increase social investments,
especially in those areas where they are most needed. It
is therefore not surprising that Belize finds itself off
track in meeting Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) on poverty, hunger, education and the
empowerment of women. Considering the synergies
between Goals, slippage in one threatens the
achievement of others.
The terms of engagement between international
financial institutions and middle-income countries
must be revised if countries such as my own are to
break away from the vicious cycle of debt-led
development. While those terms will necessarily have
to provide for suitable risk-mitigation strategies, they
should not be so burdensome as to constrain our policy
space. They must respect the national ownership of our
development initiatives. International cooperation and
support therefore must complement, rather than dictate,
the way forward.
While Belize’s traditional donors have long
provided valuable assistance, for which we will always
be grateful, we are now benefiting from new modalities
of cooperation, which are yielding more direct and
immediate returns for our people. Belize’s cooperation
experience with Taiwan exemplifies a model of
cooperation based on partnership. With the help of the
Government of Taiwan, Belize has steadily developed
its capacity in agricultural research, aquaculture,
education and social-sector investment.
In the Latin American and Caribbean region,
cooperation has long been based on that approach.
Belize has benefited immensely from partnerships with
Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. Of special
significance is the cooperation in the health sector. In
fact, today the progress that we can claim on the
health-related MDGs is a testament, in part, to those
partnerships.
Beyond our hemispheric relations, we are forging
new partnerships. We recently received two years’
worth of emergency relief materials from the United
Arab Emirates, for which we are most appreciative,
given the frequency of hurricane visitations to our
shores in recent years. Through those partnerships,
Belize is being enabled to pursue its broader national
development objectives. Our experience is being
replicated the world over, as we see in other examples
of South-South cooperation. We need now to make
those partnerships the standard for global cooperation.
At the United Nations, we have long focused on
official development assistance as being synonymous
with global partnerships. That myopic view needs to be
broadened, and we must disabuse ourselves of the
donor-driven dialectic. The United Nations has the
responsibility to craft a new orientation, from a donor-
recipient culture to one of true partnership with mutual
respect.
As every speaker in this debate has emphasized,
in order for this institution to meet that challenge, it
must itself reform.
Current decision-making structures and
organization tend towards a North-South polarity. That
dynamic imperils cooperation and renders debate more
ceremony than meaningful dialogue. Over the 65 years
of the United Nations existence, our world has
changed. We are dealing with new realities. The
Organization is nearly universal, with 192 countries
represented here. The club of nuclear-power States has
expanded, and may yet continue to expand. Global
integration has deepened with technology, market
liberalization and the freer movement of capital. Our
interdependence has generated global systemic risks.
We need a United Nations that reflects more
equitable North-South representation and that can
effectively deliver. That means that the organs of the
United Nations must be reformed. The process of
decision-making must ensure coherence and be
inclusive. Above all, equity and justice must inform
our mechanisms for delivery. The reform we seek goes
much deeper than the changing of the guards; it is a
reform that would rebuild trust among each other and
confidence in the system.
Belize is crafting a twenty-first century vision for
a modern, green and sustainable economy predicated
on capacity-building, human dignity, human
development and innovation. Our Government is
working towards building domestic capital through
social investments, job creation, improved access to
credit and combating crime and violence.
To that end, we have launched project Restore
Belize, which encompasses a comprehensive anti-crime
initiative complemented by a socio-economic
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component aimed at restoring the social fabric of our
society through the provision of skills training,
continuing education for adults, infrastructure
development and fostering civic pride. We have
instituted school feeding programmes, subsidies for
students of secondary schools, seed programmes for
farmers and capitalization of our own development
finance corporation for onward lending to
entrepreneurs.
The Government has also undertaken a national
multiparty and multisectoral consultative process to
redefine our national development objectives in our
Horizon 2030 project. In addition, the Prime Minister
has established a council of science advisers to better
inform the Horizon 2030 process on the integration of
science and technology in the national development
agenda.
Belize is resolutely embracing its responsibility
for its national development. Our efforts are aimed
towards ensuring that we achieve the type of
development that genuinely affords all our people the
opportunity to realize their true potential with dignity.
To that end, we seek only empathy and partnership
from the United Nations, not charity.