Belize, 1995

There is, of course, a special

resonance to the congratulations we offer the President on

his election to this high post at the fiftieth session of the

General Assembly. In this watershed year, his job will be

particularly challenging. The delegation of Belize pledges

its fullest cooperation in helping to ensure the success of

his stewardship.

All the world is conscious of the historic significance

of this fiftieth anniversary year. And a lot of work has gone

into the process leading up to this session. We also at this

juncture, then, express our thanks to the President’s

predecessor, His Excellency Mr. Amara Essy, and those

whose job it has been to supervise and implement the

preparatory effort.

If this is a year of celebration, it is also a year of

reckoning. Inevitably, the jubilee has concentrated attention

as never before on our Organization. Can we withstand the

scrutiny we provoke? Is our record one that, on balance,

vindicates the vision of the founders? And in a world that

is almost unrecognizably transformed since 1945, are we

equipped for the changing role the United Nations must

now play?

Well over 100 States have come into being since

1945. The myriad issues that now dominate the global

agenda are attended by a host of problems. The duties and

burdens of the United Nations system have therefore

proliferated hugely. Can the United Nations cope? And are

we, the Member States, prepared to invest our enterprise

with the resources necessary to deal with the new realities.

These, it seems, are the questions most urgently in

need of answers.

In thinking of the future, though, we would do well to

look at the past. And I would wish briefly now to examine

our historical record, highlighting some issues of special

relevance to small countries such as Belize.

Just four days ago, Belize celebrated the fourteenth

anniversary of its independence. It was an independence

long delayed by the territorial claim of a neighbouring

country. But it the end it was an independence made

possible in no small measure by this Organization and its

role in world affairs.

One of the things that in the first place made our

aspiration for sovereignty realistic, was the seminal 1960

General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of

Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. And the

United Nations thereafter became our guiding star as we

steered our course between the Scylla of the historical

colonialism from which we were escaping and the

Charybdis of the recolonization that was inherent in the

territorial claim.

During the years of our independent existence, this

Organization has similarly continued to be a bedrock of

our viability. The principles enshrined in the Charter, and

the international legal order derived from those principles,

have been a welcome guarantee of our sovereignty. The

territorial claim has not gone away. But the norms

imposed by the United Nations, especially those requiring

pacific settlement of disputes among Member States, have

at least helped to keep it from confounding our integrity.

Who can doubt that, in one form or another, this

salutary experience of Belize with the United Nations has

been replicated by any number of small countries?

Because of the multiplication of new States, especially

since 1960, the international order has been characterized

by an unprecedented differentiation in underlying power

capabilities between the huge and the tiny. Very weak

States can, of course, never seriously hope to influence

international behaviour solely through the use of their

national power capabilities. What the United Nations has

done for us, then, has been to offer a plenitude of

sustenance via its many entities and constituent groupings.

In effect, the set of opportunities created by the character

of post-Second-World-War international organizations that

have been the United Nations and its progeny has made

sovereign equality a very real concept, power

asymmetries notwithstanding.

For small States, certainly, the political and

diplomatic vitality of the United Nations system is a

matter of undeniable fact. Nevertheless, the United

Nations should continue to enhance cooperation with

regional organizations, as it did last session when this

Assembly resolved to institutionalize cooperation with the

Caribbean Community. Belize was honoured to introduce

that resolution.

Likewise, the principle of inclusiveness should be

employed to ensure that States in the various regions of

the world, including Asia and the Pacific, are not

confined to incomplete participation in the international

order.

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I turn now to the economic sphere. The record of our

Organization is, I am afraid, rather less compelling. It is

true that various organs of the United Nations system —

the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

(UNCTAD), the United Nations Industrial Development

Organization (UNIDO), the Economic Commission for

Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — have

provided small States with an unprecedented forum for the

articulation of our concerns. Even now, Belize prepares to

assume its elected seat on the Executive Board of the

United Nations Development Programme. But continuing

large disparities in wealth between rich and poor countries,

the debilitating debt consuming us in the developing world,

the unemployment, the persistent poverty, speak volumes as

to the absence of sufficient progress on this front.

Since the last general debate, the World Trade

Organization has come into being. In the Americas, the

Hemispheric Summit is now a matter of record. But we

note with regret that, even as liberalization advances, the

call of the disadvantaged for special and differential

treatment goes unheeded. This is accompanied by the

continuing volatility of the international trading and

financial systems, and the well-known vulnerability of small

countries to external shocks.

For us in Belize, negative economic trends among our

major trading partners have had a baneful effect. This, in

turn, has served to heighten our concern over the nature and

pace of globalization. The structural changes that fragile

economies need to make in order to be in step threaten to

swamp us. But no one seems to be paying attention.

Perhaps new forms of regionalism are the answer. One

arguable example is the new Association of Caribbean

States, which will create the world’s fourth or fifth largest

market area and of which Belize is the geographical centre

and the cultural bridge.

Yet it is essential, we contend, that the international

community exhibit full sensitivity to the condition of

smallness. We remain highly susceptible to changes in the

global marketplace; and adverse developments then impose

additional setbacks on us in the areas of competitiveness,

development finance and overall fragility. For Belize, the

recent crisis in neighbouring Mexico, starkly dramatized our

own precariousness.

Generally, we think, the impact of the events in

Mexico on the markets and economies of other countries

serves as a clear warning. It is foolhardy to believe that

inflexible social and economic formulas can be applied

uniformly to our differing circumstances. Heedless

adjustment and implacable time-tables might well

condemn small economies to extinction.

Indeed, many of our small countries have already

made strenuous efforts at stabilization and reform. We

have liberalized trade, reduced fiscal deficits and

privatized State enterprises. But where are the rewards?

We continue to be overcome by debt, by poverty and by

woefully inadequate social and physical infrastructures.

And our difficulties are exacerbated rather than solved by

the austerities that reduce government spending and

curtail our public sector investment programmes.

Time is not on our side, as economic and fiscal

orthodoxy bear inexorably down on us. Our constituencies

continue to press us: Where is the understanding of our

plight? Why is there is no capital inflow revival? What is

to be done about the alarmingly high rate of

unemployment? When will we see the special

mechanisms to assist us with retraining, the moulding of

new technologies, and the critically needed human

resources development? Can we ever seriously hope for

the dedicated financial resources that must underpin any

serious effort at diversification?

We are being told that this liberalization advance —

this march of the martinets — is the panacea for our ills,

but the evidence to the contrary is quite startling. For our

domestic producers, for our banana farmers, it is a bitter

joke. Global free trade, it seems to many of us, is like the

Holy Roman Empire: not holy, not Roman, not an

empire.

The Bretton Woods institutions certainly need to

demonstrate more creativity. Their too-rigid reliance on

the prevailing orthodoxy is choking us. Democracy in

small countries will not be worth a fig if this auto-da-fé-

type insistence on these articles of faith is not leavened

by a real appreciation of our peculiar needs.

It is in this context that we also call for this

Organization to promote true global cooperation in efforts

towards sustainable development. This shared quest must

be the essence of the economic relations and the

development dialogue between the North and the South

and among the developing countries themselves. My

Government certainly pledges full support for the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Unit on

South-South Cooperation, well exemplified by the Ruta

Maya tourism project of our Central America. We also

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call for support for strengthening the Alliance for the

Sustainable Development of Central America, a major

initiative for developing what we call our delicate filigree

isthmus. And we welcome such relationships as Belize’s

recently concluded joint implementation pilot programme

under the Climate Change Convention.

The overarching goal of our precursors was

“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of

war”.

Well, how have we been doing on that score?

In the sphere of peace and security, some grave

developments have taken place in various parts of the

world. In several places genocidal impulses have been let

loose, with predictably devastating results. Paradoxically

enough, the end of the cold war has resulted in an upsurge

of civil and territorial strife. Fratricidal conflicts have been

launched to the drumbeat of overblown notions of history

and dangerous concepts of ethnicity. For all the Assembly’s

efforts, we continue to experience a relative stalemate in

Cyprus and elsewhere. The Balkan conundrum still seems

intractable, though we note with encouragement that this

Organization has recognized that there is a limit beyond

which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Rwanda refuses to

go away.

Yet we hail now the breakthrough in Palestine, and we

again rejoice at the continuation of peace and stability in

South Africa. In Namibia, Mozambique and Angola, the

United Nations has assisted, or is assisting, in bringing civil

wars to an end.

In my own part of the world, the continuing United

Nations partnership with the people of Haiti is consolidating

reconstruction and democracy in that Caribbean country.

Despite the limitations on our resources, Belize is happy

now to be able to play a commanding role in the Caribbean

Community and Common Market (CARICOM) sub-unit of

the United Nations Mission in Haiti.

Likewise, the United Nations Observer Mission in El

Salvador is successfully overseeing efforts to cement the

newly minted peace. In Guatemala, the dialogue between

the URNG and the Government, begun under the auspices

of our Secretary-General, is proceeding apace.

My Government takes great satisfaction in the calm

that reigns almost universally on our continent, from

Hispaniola to Tierra del Fuego. The disappearance of

authoritarian Governments in Latin America and the

resolution of most of our internal conflicts is bringing

liberty and democracy to all our peoples. Our efforts can

therefore be committed fully now to the business of

fostering economic and social development, human rights

and the protection of the environment. As the first-ever

Defence Ministerial Meeting of the Americas confirmed,

our militaries are fully cognizant of the new role they

must play in supporting this process.

We therefore applaud the strong and clear views on

nuclear sanity expressed during the Conference on the

extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

and currently being reiterated. This delegation reaffirms

its own view that the parties to the NPT have now

invested in the nuclear Powers a trusteeship that those

Powers must zealously discharge.

At the same time, we must be equally aware of the

other danger: the continued production, trade and use of

all types of so-called conventional weapons that harm,

maim and kill.

In the context of more general concerns, we cannot

escape the overdue obligation to rationalize also the

structure of the Security Council, so that the veto is

tamed and equity and democratization take centre stage.

We continue to insist that all regions obtain balanced and

equal representation as permanent members; small

countries be brought into the Council’s decision- making;

and consideration be given to such devices as multipartite

seats or constituency groupings.

One final word on the question of peace and

security. The Secretary-General has stressed the multitude

of new demands for peace-keeping made upon the

Organization as conflicts erupt around the world. The

caution has been expressed that the increased burdens in

this regard should not displace the attention that economic

and social questions demand. Of course, the two are

interrelated. It is a truism that there can be no

development without peace. We would content ourselves,

then, with merely urging that we put in place a more

coordinated system to embrace peace-keeping and conflict

resolution as well as human rights and social and

economic development.

Also, the non-traditional threats to peace and security

must be addressed. In recent years we have witnessed

growing links among organized crime, drug trafficking,

terrorism and the spread of armaments. The dangers from

this phenomenon are all the more insidious for being

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novel. We must therefore quickly develop the international

cooperation measures to deal with it.

So, as this Organization completes its fiftieth year, we

in Belize are well convinced of its continuing vitality. The

jeremiads of those that bemoan its failures are not for us.

While we are not going to be Pollyannaish about what is

admittedly a mixed record, we see enough to be sanguine

about.

There is extraordinary cooperation on the part of

States, other political entities and non-governmental

organizations in the dozens of areas of substantive concern

of the United Nations organs; in the burgeoning,

multidimensional sphere of sustainable development; in the

territory where humane concerns and values, social ordering

and cultural norms coalesce; and in the field of

peace-keeping, of providing States and peoples with

security from violence and disorder.

Of course there is still a long way to go. And we will

never truly realize the vision of the founders unless

Member States agree to provide the future United Nations

system with adequate, reliable and predictable resources.

Let us therefore, during this our half-century session,

determine to enhance our effectiveness. Let us rationalize,

let us economize. Let us pay our dues in full and on time.

And let us intensify the quest for agreement on autonomous

financing for the Organization and for related activities.

Above all, let us dedicate ourselves to universality and

pledge to enlarge our image and re-energize the world. For

that day may still be greatly postponed when our

resolutions and decisions, rather than blood and iron, will

summarily determine the great international questions.

But in continuing efforts at global conflict avoidance,

we are still, if the Assembly will forgive the colloquialism,

the only game in town. In other words, true international

peace and security can only ever come by way of the

United Nations, which remains the last, best hope for

mankind.