On behalf of the
Government and people of Belize, I congratulate you,
Mr. President, on your assumption of the presidency of
the General Assembly at its sixty-third session. It is a
distinct honour for all Central American and Caribbean
peoples. I assure you of Belize’s fullest support during
your term of office.
I would also wish to thank your predecessor,
Srgjan Kerim, for the sterling manner in which he
presided over the sixty-second session. I also wish to
pay tribute to our very capable Secretary-General, who
works so assiduously to discharge the multifaceted
responsibilities of the United Nations.
Belize accepts with pride and humility the
invitation so kindly extended to us to share our vision
of how we should address the great challenges of the
day and how we can achieve the unity we need in order
to do so effectively.
Being a very small State in a world that has long
been characterized by greed, indifference, arrogance,
apathy, selfishness and myopia, Belize is no stranger to
crises. In our evolution from colonialism to
independence, we have had far more than our fair share
of them and we survived them all.
Thus, while we join in the consensus, so
forcefully articulated over the past week, that never has
there been a time in the recorded history of humankind
that the world has been beset at one and the same time
by so many crises of potentially catastrophic
proportions as it is today, we remain convinced that the
solution to those crises is not beyond the collective
wisdom of humankind. On the contrary, we are
convinced that our world leaders, who gathered within
these hallowed walls this past week, possess the moral,
intellectual and financial capacities to overcome the
present challenges and to secure the future of our
planet Earth and of all who dwell upon it. We therefore
look to the future with optimism.
My Government believes that there are a number
of preconditions that must be satisfied before we can
hope to successfully combat the challenges we face.
The first is the acceptance by all peoples that we are
our brothers’ keeper and that, as you, Sir, so poignantly
stated, “either we treat each other as brothers and
sisters or we witness the beginning of the end of our
human species” (, p. 5).
The second and equally important precondition is
the acceptance by all peoples that we are heirs to and
owners of the Earth and of all the resources thereon
and that no individual race or nation has a greater
claim to them than anyone else. And the third and
perhaps most important precondition of all is the
acceptance by all peoples that our planet as we know it
is not indestructible, that it can be mortally damaged, if
not destroyed, by what we do to it, and that none of us
would escape the consequences of such a tragic turn of
events.
The experience of our own country, Belize, bears
out the fact that the treatment we mete out to each
other determines to a large extent our own destinies.
The hardships and deprivations which Belizeans
suffered in the past and continue to suffer even today
have been caused in large part not by nature dealing us
a bad hand but by the human exploitation and
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selfishness of which we are the victims. Nature itself
has been bountiful to us — so much so that our
national poet, Samuel Haynes, who penned the lyrics
of our national anthem, was moved to begin one of the
stanzas with the following line, “Nature has blessed us
with wealth untold”.
Yet with all our abundant natural resources, it is
very doubtful whether we will, despite our best efforts,
be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
by the year 2015. We are not in a position to say today
with any degree of certainty that by 2015 all the
children in our country, boys and girls alike, will
complete publicly funded primary education. Nor can
we forecast that by 2015 we will attain gender equality,
reduce childhood mortality by two thirds and maternal
mortality by three quarters, and reverse the spread of
HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
The truth is that small countries like ours are not
the masters of our own destinies. We are severely
constrained in what we can do to advance our own
development agendas because we simply do not
possess and cannot readily access the human, financial
or technological resources needed to develop our
people and to secure our futures. And given the
predatory nature of the world we live in today, we will
never be able to attain those resources using our own
devices. We will most certainly need the assistance of
the international community. We live in an
interdependent world.
While the developed countries may possess all
the human, financial and technological resources we
lack, the crises which now confront us are making it
manifest that not even the richest and most powerful of
them can successfully withstand and combat the
catastrophic consequences of nature’s fury and man’s
excesses by relying on their own devices and
resources. They must join forces with the rest of the
world. That imperative was articulated by Mr. Gordon
Brown, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on
26 September in this very Hall (see ) when
he stated, in essence, that every global problem
requires global solutions, that we cannot solve the food
crisis, climate change and the pressures on resources
without involving Africa and the developing countries,
and that Africa and the developing countries are not the
problem but part of the very solution to today’s
problems.
What Gordon Brown speaks to and what many of
the leaders in this general debate have highlighted is
the global leadership challenge we face. In addressing
that challenge, we would propose that we first examine
how our multilateral institutions function. Joseph
Stiglitz in his book Making Globalization Work wrote
that:
“The nation-state, which has been the center of
political and ... economic power for the past
century and a half is being squeezed today — on
one side by the forces of global economics, and
on the other side by political demands for
devolution of power. Globalization — the closer
integration of the countries of the world — has
resulted in the need for more collective action,
for people and countries to act together to solve
their common problems.”
Stiglitz continued that
“while the nation-state has been weakened, there
has yet to be created at the international level the
kinds of democratic global institutions that can
deal effectively with the problems globalization
has created.”
There is no disputing that the interests of the
developing countries are poorly represented and dealt
with in the present global institutions. That is clearly
manifested in the multilateral trade and financial
institutions, where negotiations are closeted in green
rooms and where the fundamental democratic principle
of one vote per country is subverted in a system that
determines voting rights based on economic power. If
the developing countries are to become developed, it
will be imperative to revisit those structures and
transform them into institutions that are representative,
transparent and democratic.
In addition to the systemic issues that must be
addressed, we must also tackle the crisis of
implementation. If we consider the numerous
conferences and summits that have been convened to
craft global responses to development, sustainable
development, financing for development, trade, climate
change and more recently the food crisis, there is no
want of commitments and common objectives.
The Millennium Development Goals promised to
the world’s peoples that we would take concerted
action to improve the quality of their lives. The
Monterrey Consensus promised a new global
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partnership that would support those efforts to
eradicate poverty and promote sustainable economic
growth and development. The Doha Ministerial
Declaration promised to put the needs and interests of
the developing countries at the heart of its work
programme.
But we know from the reports that our progress
towards the realization of the MDGs has been slow and
uneven that the realization of the Monterrey
commitments has been dismal particularly on the part
of developed countries and the international financial
and trade institutions, and that the Doha Development
Round has collapsed. Indeed, were these commitments
not set down on paper, one might question their very
existence.
We also know that the failure of the full
implementation of our global commitments is not for
want of resources but for want of compassion and
empathy. Globalization may have forced the world into
a closer relationship, but at the political level it has not
managed to calibrate national interests vis-à-vis global
interests. We therefore still act only when it is in our
narrow self-interest to do so.
However, the current crises are signalling clearly
that we can no longer subsume the global interests
under our own. The challenges we face clearly
demonstrate how our fates are intertwined. As leaders,
we must start now, with a sense of urgency, to take the
necessary action to deliver on the promises of
development. More importantly, we must commit to
submitting our actions to international oversight.
The United Nations must play the pivotal role in
addressing the global leadership crisis. Belize holds the
view that the way forward is for the United Nations to
concentrate its efforts on convincing the leaders and
peoples of the developed world that the security,
development and well-being of all peoples of the world
afford the best guarantee for their own security, safety
and development and ultimately their very survival. It
is our conviction that the adoption of that view by the
developed world would prove to be the catalyst for
achieving the unity that the world now needs to be able
to address successfully the challenges of our day.
To that end, the United Nations must be
strengthened so as better to serve to monitor the
implementation of the globally agreed commitments.
Its universality must be reinforced with the
participation of all relevant stakeholders in its
elaboration of responses to our threats and challenges.
In that regard, my Government wholeheartedly
supports the participation of the Republic of China on
Taiwan in the United Nations specialized agencies.
Finally, its decisions must carry the full weight that
impels action.
The United Nations still represents the great hope
for all our peoples. The principles upon which it was
founded and the objectives for which it was formed are
no less relevant today than they were in 1945. For my
own country, our membership in the United Nations
secured the hope of peace, security and development,
even as we continue to struggle with a long-extant
claim to our territory. It provides the framework within
which we can peacefully settle our differences. Today,
the Governments of Belize and Guatemala have an
opportunity finally to settle that dispute by juridical
means, specifically through referral to the International
Court of Justice (ICJ). We have reached a major
stepping stone, but we are not deluded by the
challenges ahead. Not only must we negotiate a
compromise for the referral of the matter, but the
question of taking the claim to the ICJ must be put to
national referendums in both countries. The road to the
ICJ and the final resolution of the territorial difference
will undoubtedly have many high tolls. Belize appeals
to the international community through the United
Nations for its continued solidarity and support.
Sixty years ago when we adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, humanity had been
wrested from the throes of war. The Declaration
confirmed in article 1 that
“All human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason
and conscience and should act towards one
another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
The global conscience was awakened and alerted,
because our forebears knew that continued disregard
and contempt for human rights and freedoms would
lead to barbarous acts between peoples and nations.
They foresaw the advent of a world in which human
beings would enjoy freedom of speech and belief and
freedom from fear and want, and proclaimed those
freedoms as the highest aspirations of the common
people.
My Government holds an unflinching
commitment to those values and aspirations. We are
still soldiers in the battle for freedom, equality and
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justice, but in fighting that battle we no longer need the
crude instruments of war. Instead, we have as our
weapon the power of the rule of law, cooperation and
friendship between peoples and nations and an abiding
faith in multilateralism. Let us be so guided.