It gives me extreme pleasure
to extend my congratulations to Mr. Miguel d’Escoto
Brockmann on his election. I read with keen interest
the United Nations news report of His Excellency’s
election as President of the General Assembly at its
sixty-third session. I note well what he said on 4 June
this year, following his election (see A/62/PV.99): for
08-52272 6
the United Nations to be more effective, it must be
what its name implies — an organization of nations
united, not nations dispersed or, even worse,
subjugated. Our nations must be united in the struggle
to democratize the United Nations, united in their
determination to preserve the world for the sake of
present and future generations from the scourge of war
among Member States, and from acts of aggression.
I congratulate him and the Vice-Presidents on
their election to lead the General Assembly. I believe
that Mr. d’Escoto Brockmann’s election, as a leader in
his own right, as a Christian priest and as a God-
fearing servant of the Republic of Nicaragua, to the
presidency of the Assembly is timely in these
challenging days.
May I also extend my appreciation to His
Excellency Mr. Srgjan Kerim for his successful leadership
of the General Assembly at its sixty-second session.
I am deeply honoured to be the first President of
the Republic of Vanuatu to address this Assembly,
since it is the first time that a Head of State of Vanuatu
has attended the United Nations since our admission to
the Organization in 1981. In this respect, please allow
me also to extend my congratulations to the Secretary-
General on his appointment and on his keen
commitment to revitalizing the United Nations.
I am humbled and privileged to stand before the
sixty-third General Assembly to share some words and
thoughts on behalf of the people of Vanuatu. Twenty-
seven years ago, on 15 September 1981, Vanuatu
became the 155th Member of the United Nations
family. On that same day, our first and longest-serving
Prime Minister and the founding father of our nation —
the late doctor, chief and priest, Father Walter Hadye
Lini — spoke to the Assembly in the name of the
people of Vanuatu, with pride, humility and gratitude.
He acknowledged the support of the United Nations
through the active concern and assistance of the
Special Committee of 24 on Decolonization.
Father Lini said that, because of that, the United
Nations has a very special place in the affections and
esteem of the people of Vanuatu. He also expressed our
nation’s debt of gratitude to a great number of the
countries represented in the Assembly, which assisted
our nation’s difficult progress towards independence.
In the same spirit I call on the United Nations to
continue to pursue the interests of those countries and
peoples that continue their struggle for freedom and to
win a permanent place among us. The United Nations
is the Organization of the family of independent
sovereign nations and peoples of the world. It must
stand firm to promote peace, security and equality
throughout the world.
The world’s majority has accepted the
phenomenon of climate change as a reality and no
longer an academic theory. From Kyoto to Bali, that
observation has been consistently repeated.
The increase in the occurrence of natural
calamities and their destructive powers are a stark
reminder of the increasing vulnerability of today’s
global environment, where nature respects no
boundaries. The severe impact of natural disasters will
constantly remind us of the harsh experiences and
critical development challenges confronting many of
the island countries.
I join my colleagues from the Pacific region in
our call to the international community for more
concerted action in addressing climate change as a
security issue. Unless the present trend of global
warming is reversed through sincere and concerted
international action through the United Nations
framework, some of our Pacific colleague nations will
be submerged. If such a tragedy should happen, then
the United Nations and its members will have failed in
their first and most basic duty to a Member and its
innocent people, as stated in Article 1 of the Charter of
the United Nations.
In 2003, Vanuatu’s economic growth rebounded
to 3.2 per cent from -2.6 per cent and -7.4 per cent in
2001 and 2002 respectively. Continued growth was
recorded in 2004 and 2005, with a published growth
rate of 5.5 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively,
driven mainly by growth in the service sector and, in
particular, tourism.
As members know, a dimension of the least
developed country (LDC) status is the tri-annual
review by the Economic and Social Council of the list
of least developed countries with the view to
recommending countries for graduation out of or
inclusion in the group of least developed countries. It
is in that regard that I wish to bring to the attention of
our Assembly to an area of serious concern to the
Governments of Vanuatu and of several other small
island developing States of the Pacific.
7 08-52272
It is our view that the current graduation rule
poses a systemic issue that could easily be resolved if
Member States were willing to recognize its
importance to countries such as Vanuatu and other
Pacific nations. The decision to graduate a country
from LDC status, in our view, must imply the
recognition of undisputed sustainable socio-economic
progress in the country. The criteria the United Nations
relies on to arrive at a decision are by and large sound
and fair, and I will briefly recall them: first, one
expects the country to enjoy a higher income per
capita; secondly, the country’s human assets or human
capital is expected to have made significant progress;
and thirdly, the country ought to have achieved greater
resilience to external shocks — in other words, to have
become less vulnerable economically.
A country is recommended for graduation if it
meets any two of those three criteria. In other words,
the graduation rule implicitly postulates that all three
criteria are equally important. If a country, no matter
how vulnerable, has risen to a level of per capita
income above $900, which is not difficult in a small
State, and enjoys improved human capital, it is
assumed that that country has become structurally
stronger and is now ready to pursue its development
efforts without LDC treatment.
Vanuatu and other Pacific countries believe it is
critical to recognize the vulnerability criterion as the
paramount criterion and accordingly give it
prominence. It is indeed the only criterion that
ultimately matters to small and vulnerable States such
as ours.
Vanuatu and other Pacific countries are deemed
eligible for graduation on the basis of their improved
per capita income and improved human assets. They
remain among the most vulnerable countries in the
world, both economically and environmentally, and
that must be recognized by the United Nations. Our
countries may graduate from LDC status because they
have achieved a higher per capita income performance,
even though the sustainability of that income is
constantly challenged by the high vulnerability of
island economies to shocks such as frequent cyclones,
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and sea-level rise.
The recent hurricanes in this part of the world
remind us of the destructive impact that such natural
phenomena have on the development process of island
countries and LDCs. Members may be aware that the
“island paradox” — when relative prosperity
overshadows high vulnerability — continues to be
disregarded, despite the repeated call for a reform of
the graduation rule that would make low vulnerability
a sine qua non or compulsory criterion.
This is not the first time that Vanuatu, in
addressing the Assembly, has called on the United
Nations to reform the way least developed countries
are identified. Some 11 years ago, in 1997, a former
Prime Minister called for an urgent review of the LDC
graduation criteria, which brought the United Nations
to introduce a vulnerability criterion, a fair and sound
move on the part of the Organization.
I reiterate Vanuatu’s plea for a reform of the
graduation rule and wish to point out that the reform
we are calling for is a mild and reasonable one, one
that could easily be adopted by the Economic and
Social Council and the General Assembly without
altering the main components of the established
methodology. We believe the time has come for the
United Nations to come full circle by making the same
criterion a superior one, so that no highly vulnerable
country is forcibly reclassified and bound to lose the
level of concessionary support of which it remains in
need. Such a reform would do justice to countries that
have not achieved the implied structural progress.
We are also urging experts from the Committee
for Development Policy to seriously consider the merit
of undertaking in-country visits to assess first-hand the
development experiences of affected countries rather
than making conclusions on statistical indicators that
are anomalous and theoretical.
In 2004, the Government of Vanuatu established
its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) National
Committee, which adopted a plan of action to
implement the MDGs. In its first report, in 2005, the
MDG National Committee concluded that Vanuatu’s
outlook for the achievement of the MDGs or their
respective targets was poor to fair. That can be
attributed to poor linkages to Government priorities
and inadequate allocation of resources to implement
the plan of action.
Nevertheless, we are pleased to report that in
collaboration with the United Nations Development
Programme, Vanuatu is endeavouring to put in place
mechanisms to operationalize its sector strategies by
identifying key issues and the required interventions to
address them, and defining the coverage of
08-52272 8
interventions and their costing. We believe that, if we
succeed in doing that, we will be able to accelerate
progress on the MDGs and that, come 2015, Vanuatu
will be able to provide a more positive report to the
Assembly.
At the Millennium Summit, the then Prime
Minister of Vanuatu, The Honourable Barak Sope
Maautamate, called on the United Nations to review
the legality of the United Nations action in 1962 to
endorse the New York Agreement to administer the
so-called Act of Free Choice over West Papua.
The Charter of the United Nations espouses the
principles that continue to guide the Organization’s
efforts in the process of self-determination. That
manifestation calls for recognition and respect for the
fundamental and inalienable rights of peoples and
territories still under colonial rule to determine their
future. We cannot champion democracy if the United
Nations continues to hang this blanket of silence over
the case of West Papua, in which the United Nations
itself takes part.
An issue of extreme national importance is the
question of submissions to the United Nations on the
extension of continental shelves. As with some other
smaller nations, technical capacity constraints and
financial resources have inhibited our progress on
submissions, and therefore we are requesting that the
United Nations consider extending the deadline for
submissions to enable countries like Vanuatu to
participate fully in the process. We call for the
understanding of our development partners and urge
them to consider providing funding for that important
exercise.
A side issue to the question of the extension of
continental shelves in relation to Vanuatu is that there
is a dispute between Vanuatu and the French Republic,
the former colonial authority, concerning our
continental shelves to the south of the nation.
On the question of reforms at the United Nations,
we believe that, in order to make the Organization truly
democratic, reforms are essential to make the Security
Council more representative of the membership as a
whole. In that respect, we believe that Japan and India
deserve permanent membership.
At this critical moment of global crisis, I recall
the aphorism underpinning the foundations of the
United Nations. It is taken from the book of the great
prophet Micah and is engraved on the walls of United
Nations Headquarters:
“They shall beat their swords into
ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more” (The Holy
Bible, Micah, 4:3).
It is no coincidence that the theme for this
Assembly is a much clearer manifestation of those
prophetic words, which the United Nations has
neglected over the years. As one of the smallest
Members of the United Nations family of nations,
Vanuatu reaffirms its commitment to building global
peace and security. We also remain committed to
supporting United Nations peacekeeping missions as
our modest contribution to that worthy cause.
Finally, we welcome 2009 as the International
Year of Reconciliation. We all hope and pray that it
will be a time for real compromises and political
goodwill. We encourage all members of our family of
nations to approach 2009 with open hearts. If we are to
turn the tide of tension and animosity, we must have
the courage to reconcile our differences and come
together in those dimensions that will enhance this
noble Organization’s role in peacebuilding and
development.
In closing, I would like to express the
Government of Vanuatu’s gratitude to all our
development partners who have generously contributed
to Vanuatu’s development efforts. In particular, we
wish to thank Australia, China, the European Union,
New Zealand, Japan, the United States of America and
France. We would also like to acknowledge the support
of other partners, including India, Turkey, South Korea,
Malaysia, Indonesia and Canada, as well as such
multilateral institutions as the World Bank and the
Asian Development Bank, and other United Nations
agencies.
Mr. Baugh (Jamaica), Vice-President, took the
Chair.
We are living in perilous times. In our Father’s
hands were we created, and to the hands of the leaders
of the world He has entrusted the responsibility to
ensure a world safe and just for all His peoples and
children. The world’s destiny is in our hands. That
must be our inspiration.
9 08-52272
May God bless the United Nations. May God
bless the sixty-third session of the General Assembly.
May God bless us all.