I congratulate Mr. Abdulla Shahid on his election as President of the General Assembly. It is a great pleasure to see a representative of a fellow small island developing State (SIDS) presiding over the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session.
For a small island and low-lying coastal State like Belize, which three days ago celebrated 40 years of political independence, the world today is hostile and precarious. No one can deny that the planet is getting hotter. The facts are that July 2021 was the hottest month ever. Every one of the past four decades has been successively warmer than any preceding them since 1850. Global temperatures are now 1.2°C degrees warmer. Sea levels are rising. The global average sea level has risen faster since 1900 than during any other century in the past 3,000 years. Since 1900 we have seen an unprecedented number of droughts, which have also become more frequent and longer-lasting. Severe weather events are more common and devastating. In the past 20 years the number of major floods has more than doubled, while the incidence of storms grew from 1,457 to 2,034. Mother Nature is rebelling. She is reacting to our destructive tendencies and our refusal to take urgent corrective action. We can do better.
Our capacity to survive is currently being tested by the unrelenting coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. COVID-19 brought the Belizean economy to its knees. Unemployment reached 30 per cent as thousands of Belizeans lost their jobs. Gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 14 per cent. Our debt ballooned to 130 per cent of GDP. Many small businesses were shuttered. The poverty rate increased to 60 per cent. The impact of the pandemic has been swift, dramatic and devastating. The human toll has been deadly. Already 399 Belizeans have lost their lives to COVID-19. We have a fatality rate of 2.05 per cent. Thousands have been hospitalized so far. Our health facilities are overwhelmed, because they were unprepared for the surge in the admission of critical patients.
That is not unique to Belize. In order to confront the urgency of the pandemic, Governments across the globe reallocated funds to meet desperate needs. Loans
originally committed for development and climate change were diverted to cover emergency health needs and mitigate the impact on the unemployed. Massive additional borrowings became the new normal as lockdowns were extended. The Common Framework for Debt Treatments beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative failed to offer forbearance to most middle-income SIDS, including Belize, which are ineligible despite their unsustainable debts. At the same time, most of our countries had no recourse to concessionary financing to fund the immediate health response.
Belize’s commitment to conservation is ambitious. We recognize that our debt is unsustainable, and we will link it directly to conservation. We will exchange millions of dollars in debt for major commitments to marine conservation. It is our hope that 30 per cent of our exclusive economic zone will be designated a protected area by 2026, well before the year 2030. Furthermore, we will establish a marine conservation fund in perpetuity. We will proudly be at the forefront in this area, owing to our love for nature and respect for the environment.
With the advent of the vaccine, the Government has self-financed its acquisition from the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility and has also reached out to bilateral partners to solicit vaccine donations. It is vaccines from our South-South partners that have enabled the Government to roll out its national vaccination programme. The immediate global response has been slow and inadequate to the scale and depth of the health crisis. The disruption of supply chains has made access to much-needed COVID-19 therapeutics, diagnostics and personal protection equipment beyond the reach of many developing countries. Vaccine hoarding has reduced access to vaccines for developing countries, undermining COVAX and leading to deep and threatening inequalities, with 80 per cent of vaccines administered worldwide in high- and upper- middle-income countries and only 0.4 per cent in low- income countries. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the region worst hit by the pandemic, only about one-fifth of the population has received vaccines.
Despite those immoral inequities, countries with higher vaccination rates are about to administer booster shots to their already-vaccinated populations. That is not just unfair, it is simply disgraceful. It is undeniable that the world urgently needs to recommit to multilateralism.
Belize exists today because of the multilateral system. The support of Member States for our territorial integrity and right to self-determination was critical to the achievement of Belize’s independence. For us the multilateral system is indispensable. For that reason, Belize supports the Secretary-General’s thoughtful and forward-looking report, Our Common Agenda, which sets out a concise plan of action to accelerate the implementation of our agreed goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Despite the inclination to retreat towards nationalist tendencies, the truth is that whether we are talking about the health crisis or the climate crisis, the scale of the challenge, the magnitude of the impact and the urgency of the action required cannot be met by any one country alone. Inequality and vulnerabilities are also threats to the rich and strong. Our common future therefore depends squarely on our solidarity and on international cooperation and a strong and effective multilateral system. We must commit to finding solutions together to the common problems that we confront. Unbridled unilateralism must yield to a settled determination to respond to the major problems of our times with social justice.
Along with Guatemala, my country is pursuing a final and peaceful resolution of Guatemala’s claim to Belizean territory at the International Court of Justice. In the meantime, the 2005 agreement on confidence-building measures remains in effect and our bilateral relations continue to be based on mutual goodwill. We count on Guatemala to remain a constructive partner and rely on the international community to support us in addressing the daily challenges along the border that are inevitable between neighbours. If the multilateral system is to be our collective lifeline, it must be repurposed. I would like to propose four areas for reforming and strengthening it.
We call for a genuine commitment to addressing the systemic issues that undermine the achievement
of our agreed development goals. SIDS’ continued ineligibility for access to concessional finance leaves us in a vicious cycle of disaster- or crisis-recovery borrowing, leading to unsustainable levels of debt. That must be disrupted. A multidimensional vulnerability index is the indispensable tool for restoring rationality to access to affordable financing. We therefore welcome the work of the United Nations and other development partners such as the Commonwealth and the Caribbean Development Bank in developing a multidimensional vulnerability index that considers not only economic development but also the inherent vulnerabilities of SIDS — scale, geography and limited natural resources. We need to adopt a multidimensional vulnerability index now. We call on all international financial institutions and our development partners to use it. There is no alternative if our countries are to embark on a sustainable and resilient economic development path.
If our multilateral system is to remain credible, it must have the capacity to induce action. For far too long, too many global problems have been allowed to fester and become crises. The entire world is now experiencing the consequences of our inaction in the form of catastrophic droughts, fires, floods and more frequent and intense hurricanes that continue to affect and set back our small, open and dependent economies. The latest scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lays the blame firmly on human activity.
Belize, like other SIDS, is on the front lines of a climate crisis for which it is not responsible. Belize incurs annual losses of close to 4 per cent of GDP due to natural disasters. We therefore felt an obligation to put forward an ambitious revised nationally determined contribution. Belize’s nationally determined contribution covers new targets in both adaptation and mitigation. It is naturally aligned both to our national development plans and the Sustainable Development Goals. We have set some ambitious targets, including forest restoration and the expansion of mangroves, as well as achieving 75 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2030. The nationally determined contribution also pledges that we will transition to a hybrid and electric public transportation system, increase the resilience of coastal communities and strengthen the adaptive capacity of agriculture, health and tourism.
Belize is committed to developing a long-term strategy aligned with achieving net-zero global emissions by 2050. We are doing our part, and we expect the developed countries and major emitters to do theirs. Indeed, ambitious commitments from the Group of 20 alone could keep us on a path to limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. The twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is our last best hope to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. We call for a ramping-up of collective ambition so that global emissions are reduced by 50 per cent by 2030. Developed countries and those in a position to do so must provide the financial, technical and capacity building support to enable us to fulfil those pledges. That includes meeting and exceeding the $100 billion pledge made in Copenhagen 12 years ago. Additional support must also be provided for the loss and damage being incurred through the extreme and slow-onset climatic events that we are already experiencing.
Flexibility and responsiveness are critical if our multilateral system is to have relevance at moments of crisis, as well as to ensure equity and fairness in global responses. COVAX, the multilateral mechanism for vaccine distribution, has been unable to truly respond to the needs of its subscribers. The undermining of COVAX through export bans, vaccine hoarding and predatory purchasing has resulted in extreme inequality in access to vaccines. Of the more than 5.7 billion vaccine doses administered globally, 73 per cent has been given in just 10 countries. COVAX has had to cut its forecast by 25 per cent for the distribution of vaccines for 2021. Belize has no delivery date for its next COVAX shipment. As the Director-General of the World Health Organization has said, the longer vaccine inequity persists, the more the virus will keep circulating and changing, the longer the social and economic disruption will continue and the higher the chances are that more variants will emerge that render vaccines less effective. The health and recovery of all of us depend on the ability of our system to rapidly respond to the needs of all countries. The multilateral system must be more effective in protecting the rights of all people. Too many remain marginalized and excluded, weakening the social contract and eroding trust in the ability of our multilateral system to deliver.
The persistent call of the General Assembly over three decades for an end to the illegal embargo against the Cuban people has been ignored. Cubans have been forced to carve out their sustainable development under the burden of the illegal and unilateral economic,
commercial and financial embargo. The new measures imposed by the previous United States Administration, now continued and widened by the present one during a pandemic, are unbelievably cruel and inhumane. They bring suffering to millions of innocent people and do not reflect the goodwill of the people of the United States of America. Nevertheless, Cuba has made significant sacrifices to help others around the world, including Belizeans.
Our Palestinian brothers and sisters continue to suffer under Israel’s oppressive apartheid and illegal occupation. Belize fully supports the aspirations of the Palestinians to an independent State, within its 1967 borders and with all attendant rights, including the recognition of East Jerusalem as its capital and the right of return.
The Sahrawi people are similarly being prevented from exercising their right to self-determination. We urge the relevant parties and the international community to support them in their efforts.
Belize is also deeply concerned about the situation in Haiti and about the regional and global inaction on offering a genuine and substantive programme of support. We are alarmed at the inhumane treatment of Haitian refugees who are risking their lives by traversing two continents for a better future. We therefore call on the United Nations to galvanize action among its Member States and its development system in order to support the development of a Haitian-led solution, restoring its stability and security.
Our multilateral system must also be inclusive, harnessing the capacity of all States to scale up international cooperation where it is most needed. Belize has benefited greatly from its diplomatic partnership with Taiwan, which is based on our shared values of democracy, freedom, human rights and the rule of law. Taiwan has provided tremendous assistance to Belize in the form of medical supplies and financial support, ensuring that Belize is better equipped to combat COVID-19 and conduct a post-pandemic recovery. Belize calls for Taiwan’s inclusion in the United Nations and its specialized agencies, which will not only further enhance global cooperation and partnership but also manifest the enshrined principle of the United Nations that is universality.
It is crystal clear that the confluence of crises facing the world can be addressed only through solidarity, international cooperation and multilateral approaches.
Let us not return to this great Hall in September 2022 to lament further inaction. Let us not return next year to once again decry unilateralism, nationalism and failed collective action. No, we must move forward together. We can defeat COVID-19, but we can only do so together. We must save the planet from the irreversible effects of climate change, but only if we act collectively and urgently. Together, we can reform the world’s financial architecture to guarantee debt relief, make available affordable financing and adopt a multidimensional vulnerability index. Together we must lift billions out of poverty and provide affordable housing, education and health care. Failure is not an option. We believe in the power of humanity and in the noble spirit of humankind. We have confidence that we can and will make the world a better place. The people of Belize and the citizens of the world expect nothing less.