I congratulate you, Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session, which is a special honour for the Maldives and for all small island developing and low-tying coastal States. I would also like to record Guyana’s appreciation to the outgoing President, Mr. Volkan Bozkir, who was tasked with navigating the Assembly during one of the most challenging years in modern history.
Our world is a troubled place. The peoples of our planet are living under a cloud of uncertainty. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has stomped across the globe, taking lives, wrecking livelihoods and paralysing economies. And looming large behind it is climate change, growing every day in its capacity to inflict even greater destruction and ruination than the coronavirus. Our citizens look to us, the representatives of the nations gathering here, to create conditions that will ease fear, erase doubt and give hope. Yet what they see are not nations united but nations divided. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described our situation well when he said,
“The pandemic has demonstrated our collective failure to come together and make joint decisions for the common good, even in the face of an immediate, life-threatening global emergency”.
The pandemic has exposed the shortcomings of our international system. It has revealed that the system continues to be undergirded by nationalism, which remains the prevailing force. After all these 76 years since the founding of the United Nations, it is not the collective well-being of our one planet and our one humankind that motivates us but selfish national interests. And in pursuit of that selfish nationalism, we overlook the truth of our shared cohabitation on one planet, one Earth, and ignore the reality that what affects one affects all.
If nothing in all the generations of civilization has taught us that nation-States are not islands unto themselves but are each part of the main, then the experience of the past two years should be a salutary lesson. The world will not progress without greed and war and with freedom unless we, the leaders of nations big and small, recall with commitment the values set forth in the Charter of the United Nations and resolve to be faithful to them.
The pandemic has wrecked the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which the members of this Organization adopted in 2015. Development gains have been reversed, poverty has expanded and inequality has widened. Increasing fiscal deficits, mounting debt, reduced fiscal space and external financial flows have imperilled the capacity of developing countries to attain the Sustainable Development Goals. Within those countries, the pandemic has upended growth, worsened unemployment and weakened health and education systems. Education regression is now inevitable, considering the long period in which our children have been forced out of the formal classroom and the challenges that many developing countries face in delivering education virtually.
Given those problems, economic recovery is essential to returning countries to the path of attaining the Sustainable Development Goals. But that recovery will be painfully prolonged and slow without
international support in the form of debt rescheduling, debt-service moratoriums and the provision of soft resources to reboot economies. My Government restates its call for increased resources to be made available to States on the basis of their vulnerabilities and not solely on the misleading measure of per capita income. If those essential measures are not implemented, growth in developing countries will not be restored, and neither will economic and social policies be realigned along the path set out in the 2030 Agenda. Rich nations will feel the repercussions, because developing countries are markets for the industrialized nations’ goods and services and sources for their raw materials. Poor countries cannot buy unless they have the means, and they cannot produce unless they have the capacity. Our world will become a damaged place, reverting to an era of avarice, conflict and plunder. Surely such a world — which now looms on the horizon — is one that all leaders should work to prevent, focusing their attention instead on advancing the progress of our one humankind through cooperation and mutual benefit. Surely that is the world we all want.
While poor and vulnerable countries will suffer longer and more intensely from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, rich countries have not been spared. Those who at the advent of the pandemic concentrated on making themselves secure now understand they will not be safe until we are all safe, because the virus does not know — or care — about ethnicity, age or geography. It will not heed borders. Belatedly, the rich have come to the realization that on our one Earth they need the cooperation of the poor to save themselves. We must all welcome that realization if it finally mobilizes the global cooperation and unified action that our world needs to survive. In that regard, my Government welcomed the Global COVID-19 Summit hosted by President Biden. We are pleased that it resulted not only in commitments for joint global action but also in the allocation of resources to achieve necessary and agreed objectives.
Similarly, we welcome the fact that earlier this month, the heads of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization met with the chief executive officers (CEOs) of leading vaccine-manufacturing companies to discuss strategies to improve access to COVID-19 vaccines in low- and lower-middle-income countries and in Africa. My Government is pleased that the heads of the international organizations and CEOs of the major pharmaceutical companies have formed a technical working group to exchange and coordinate information on vaccine production and delivery. These are welcome positive developments, even though they have come after millions have died and many more still live under the threat of death. The issue of access to vaccines has seen the world polarized. I know I speak on behalf of many leaders when I say that we must not now hurt our efforts to end the polarization of access to vaccines by implementing measures that divide us and curtail our movements based on the type of vaccines that people have taken. What our efforts should be focused on is ensuring full vaccination and addressing vaccine hesitancy. Millions took the vaccines that were available at a time of much uncertainty, and they are the unsung heroes. They must not now be the subject of restrictions based on the vaccine they took.
We hold out similar hope that the world’s worst emitters of the greenhouse gases that are threatening the welfare of all humankind will also come to the realization that in the end it will profit them little to emerge king over a world of dust. The promises of the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) in Paris have not been delivered. If emissions follow the trajectory set by current national commitments, we have a less than a 5 per cent chance of keeping temperatures well below 2°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and a less than 1 per cent chance of reaching the 1.5°C target set in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Large polluters have simply not kept their word, and mistrust now pervades the air. That is failure. It is also deception.
Recent authoritative research by the Royal Institute of International Affairs paints a grim picture of the future. It forecasts that cascading climate impacts can be expected to kill far more people than COVID-19 — from hunger, intense heat, flooding and more pandemics caused by increases in pests and diseases. It concludes by saying that when combined with heat waves and drought, those impacts will likely drive unprecedented crop failures, food insecurity and migration. All of this will drive political instability and greater national insecurity and fuel regional and international conflict. Small island States and continental countries with low-lying coastlines such as Guyana would be the first to feel the full brunt of the impending disaster. Yet our countries are among the lowest producers of greenhouse-gas emissions, contributing the least to the harmful and destructive effects of climate change. That is not only unfair, it is unjust.
The burden of reducing emissions is not being borne equitably. Small island developing and low- lying coastal States are punching above their weight in response to the global climate threats. Guyana is a net carbon sink. Our forests absorb far more carbon than is produced from human activity. But we have not folded our hands and sat back in satisfaction that we have done enough. We have continued to contribute meaningfully to reducing global environment missions and decarbonizing the world’s economy, even though our country is now an oil and gas producer. Apart from containing the carbon-dioxide emissions connected to the industry, we continue to pursue a path of developing energy from sustainable sources. In the circumstances, we feel we have the right to insist on a fair system of burden-sharing.
We must devise innovative and creative ways by which the world should act to avert the catastrophe that climate change so plainly portends. The twenty- sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 26), to be held in Glasgow in a few weeks’ time, is the right and timely place to start. The worst emitters must make binding commitments in Glasgow to end their profligacy. They should also scale up their contributions to help small and vulnerable economies to build up resilience to the prolonged effects of the damage that has already been done. Failure to do so will shatter any confidence that the people of the world may still have that polluting nations will do the right thing. COP 26 — not COP 21 — will become the defining moment at which the future or fate of humankind is sealed. The peoples of the world will be watching.
Guyana looks towards a post-pandemic era that will reset international relations by curbing territorial avarice and embracing peaceful cooperation. In that regard, we want to draw attention to the continued overt threats that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been making to Guyana’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Just recently, an agreement was announced in Mexico City by which the contending internal factions in Venezuela renewed a baseless claim to two thirds of Guyana’s territory. We have responded in clear terms. And I will repeat our response now in this hallowed Hall in which nations of the world meet in peace and cooperation. Guyana cannot be used as an altar of sacrifice for the settlement of Venezuela’s internal political differences. While my Government welcomes efforts to bring about domestic harmony within Venezuela, agreements that defy international law and processes cannot be a basis for mediating that harmony. Guyana does not promote the use of violence or threats to settle disputes. In a 1966 agreement signed in Geneva, Venezuela consented to allow the Secretary- General to decide on how to settle the controversy. The Secretary-General decided on the International Court of Justice. Both parties are therefore bound by the Court’s jurisdiction and ultimate decision.
We remain concerned about the Palestinian- Israeli conflict. Guyana restates its solidarity with the Palestinian people and their desire for a dignified existence in their own homeland in accordance with a two-State solution. The international community must act to meet the legitimate concerns of the Palestinians, who have suffered for far too long.
The strained relations between the United States and Cuba are also a matter of deep concern to our region. We believe firmly that normalizing the relations between Cuba and the United States would have a beneficial effect on peace in the hemisphere and greater prosperity for all.
I turn now to my own country, Guyana, which is a land of many ethnicities drawn from its Amerindian people, people transported from Africa in the genocidal slave trade, people from India who were indentured to labour in a new land, people from Europe who migrated at a time of want and persecution and people from China who were also brought to work on the plantations. They came with different religions, cultures and perspectives. In the collective of their diversity, the people of Guyana are representative of the peoples of the world. While politically driven conflicts arise occasionally and differences have been exploited for narrow political purposes, my Government is convinced that the richness of our people’s diversity is a gift to our nation. We continue to build a nation that draws on all aspects of its cultural roots to establish citizens who enjoy equal opportunity in all aspects of our society, a nation that is secure in itself and strong in its outlook. Our intention is to make Guyana an example for the world, utilizing the strength of our diversity for a single tapestry of one nation that is indivisible, strong, secure and prosperous. My Government has set its foot firmly on the ladder to climb to that pinnacle of success. We are confident that as we foster peace and prosperity within our country, respect human rights, uphold democracy and the rule
of law, and abide with our Constitution, we will achieve those noble goals.
It is against that background of ambition for my country that my Government embraces the vision set out in the report of the Secretary-General entitled Our Common Agenda. We embrace his view that our nations must be driven by solidarity, which he has so eloquently described as
“the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country [however powerful] can solve its challenges alone.”
Our Common Agenda provides a framework for the emergence of a post-COVID-19 era, addressing the world’s fragilities, injustices, inequalities, conflicts, the eradication of poverty, the banishment of racism and gender discrimination, as well as a framework for the realization of ecological justice. Guyana looks forward to seeing a revitalized United Nations spearheading the thrust towards a new era in international relations, in which the world emerges as a better, fairer and stronger place for all humankind.