At the outset, please permit me to congratulate Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed on their reappointments, and the President of the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session on his election.
If I used the speech prepared for me to deliver today, it would be a repetition — a repetition of what the Assembly has heard from others and also from me. Equally, how many more times will we then have a situation where we say the same thing over and over again to come to naught.
We cannot do that anymore. I ask simply that we recall that three years ago, when I delivered my maiden speech (see A/73/PV.13), I indicated from this very rostrum and told the international community that the world appeared awfully similar to what it looked like 100 years ago.
Barbados made that position clear. Regrettably, we have not come to say, “We told you so”, but we have come to say that the needle has not moved and that we have not seen sufficient action on behalf of the people of the world. I am therefore not here to keep members long today, and I shall be very brief.
How many variants of the coronavirus disease must arrive before a worldwide action plan for vaccinations will be implemented? How many more deaths must it take before 1.7 billion excess vaccine doses in the possession of the advanced countries of the world will be shared with those who have simply no access to vaccines?
How much more fake news will we allow to be spread without States defending public digital space? We have come together with alacrity to defend the right of States to tax across the digital space, but we are not prepared to come together with the same alacrity to defend the rights of our citizens not to be duped by fake news in the same digital space.
And how many more surges must there be before we ask when the world will take action? None are safe until all are safe. How many more times will we hear that? How much more must we do before the global moral strategic leadership that our world needs comes?
How much more must global temperatures rise before we end the burning of fossil fuels? How much more must sea levels climb in small island developing States before those who profited from the stockpiling of greenhouse gases contribute to repairing the loss and damage that they occasioned, rather than asking us to deplete the fiscal space that we have for development to cure the damage caused by the greed of others? How many more hurricanes must destroy, locusts devour and islands be submerged before we recognize that $100 billion for adaptation is simply not even enough?
The answer is that we are waiting for urgent, global, moral and strategic leadership. How many more crises must hit before we see an international system that stops dividing us and starts to lift us up? How many more times must people come up to this rostrum and speak about the plight of the people of Cuba and Haiti and see very little being done to lift the floor of social development to give those people the right to pursue their legitimate ambitions? How many more crises and natural disasters must there be before we see that traditional conventions of aid mean that assistance does not reach those who need it the most and those who are the most vulnerable?
And how much wealthier must technology firms get? The top five technology firms have a market capitalization of S9.3 trillion — I did not say billion. How much wealthier must they get before we worry about the fact that so few of us have access to data and
knowledge and that our children are being deprived of the tools that they need in order to participate in online education?
The answer is that we have the means to give every child on the planet a tablet, we have the means to give every adult a vaccine and we have the means to invest in protecting the most vulnerable on our planet from a changing climate — but we have chosen not to. It is not because we do not have enough. It is because we do not have the will to distribute that which we have. It is also because, regrettably, the faceless few do not fear the consequences sufficiently.
How many more leaders must come up to this rostrum and not be heard before they stop coming? How many times must we address an empty Hall of officials in an institution that was intended to be made for leaders to discuss with leaders the advancement necessary to prevent another great war or any of the other great challenges of our humanity?
How many more times will we stand idly by and watch as women and men of colour — and women in general — are disproportionately attacked as they seek to lead international organizations?
And, yes, how many more times must great needs be met simply by nice words, and not have before us the opportunity to see the goodwill that is necessary to prevent nationalism and militarism?
The answer is that this age dangerously resembles that of a century ago — a time when we were on the eve of the Great Depression, when we were fighting a similar pandemic and when fascism, populism and nationalism were leading to the decimation of populations through actions that are too horrendous for us to even contemplate. Our world does not know what it is gambling with. If we do not control this fire, it will burn us all down.
As I said two years ago (see A/74/PV.9), this is not science fiction. We heard the Secretary-General make the same comment on Tuesday morning, “[t]his is not science fiction; this is our reality today.” (A/76/PV.3, p. 4)
If the truth be told, the Secretary-General’s speech said it all, but who will stand here and support him to give him and our institutions — whether the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the regional development banks or the relevant development institutions — the mandate to go forward if we continue to refuse to summon the political will to confront what we know we must confront?
I ask, who in this Hall will sign a new charter for the twenty-first century — not one designed for the next 75 years, because the world in which we live is moving too quickly? Let us try for the next 25 years to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, not the needs of the middle of the twentieth century in the aftermath of a world war that none of us can really relate to today. To paraphrase Robert Nesta Marley, who will get up and stand up for the rights of our people? Who will stand up in the name of all the millions of people who have died during this awful pandemic? Who will stand up in the name of all those who have died because of the climate crisis? Who will stand up for the small island developing States that need 1.5°C to survive on our way to the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change?
Who will stand up, not with a little token but with real progress? Who will stand up of for all those in our countries who continue to suffer the indignity of unemployment and underemployment and whose access to food is currently being compromised by increased food and transportation prices? Transportation, quite frankly, has been manipulated. It is not beyond us to solve that problem. If we can find the will to send people to the Moon and solve male baldness, as I have said over and over again, we can solve simple problems like letting our people eat at affordable prices and ensuring that we have the necessary transportation.
We have been told that democracy is what matters in our country and that democracy is fundamentally an issue of the majority and numbers. But why do we not count who stands up in here? Why do we not reckon with the numbers here? It is against that background that I say that this is not 1945, with 50 countries. This is 2021, with many countries that did not exist in 1945 and that must face their people — who want to know what the relevance is of an international community that only meets and fails to listen and talk to one another — and answer their needs.
It is against that background that I say that our voices must be heard and matter. Today Barbados calls at this dangerous fork in the road that the nation States of the Assembly and the people of the world must indicate in which direction we want our world to go and not leave it to the faceless few who have worked so hard to prevent the world’s ample prosperity from being shared with all of our people.
I ask everyone to support us, as we will introduce a draft resolution in the plenary to endorse the approach of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. When I met with him two days ago, I told him that we share the same philosophy and we want the same destination; the only issue is which road we take and what are the obstacles and potholes in the road that we must overcome.
I fear that we are leaving the General Assembly in need of another General Assembly, with real engagement to secure real progress. That is what the Secretary-General called for on Tuesday. I regret that the token initiatives will not close the gap. On Monday morning, I said to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom that I was a student in his country and that, as we got off the train, each time there would be a pre-recorded message that simply said, “Mind the gap.” Let us not only mind the gap but determine as a global community of nations that numbers matter and that we have the population and Member States to send the signal of the direction that we want our world to follow at this dangerous moment.
Let us do so with the calm assurance that those who live for great causes never ultimately fail, but we must summon the courage to do it. In the name of our people, I ask us to find the global, moral and strategic leadership. It must be global because our problems are global, moral because we must do the right thing and strategic because we cannot solve every problem of the world, but must solve those within our purview immediately.