Guyana, 2003

It is a great pleasure for me to

address the General Assembly under the presidency of

a fellow citizen of our Caribbean Community. Allow

me to extend our warmest congratulations and good

wishes to you, Sir, as you discharge the functions of

your high office.

I offer our esteemed Secretary-General our

appreciation for his astute and steadfast leadership in

these times of great challenge to the Organization. I

would also like to pay tribute to his dedicated staff,

many of whom have lost their lives in service to the

United Nations.

In 1953, the people of Guyana were allowed for

the first time to exercise their democratic franchise

under universal adult suffrage to elect the Government

of their choice. Today, 50 years later, my country has

learned, through the painful experience of misrule and

mismanagement, the vital importance of democracy to

our future as a nation. We recognize that to foster

development, reduce poverty and safeguard human

dignity, democracy must be allowed to grow and take

root. Having laid the basic foundation for good

governance through free and fair elections, we now

face the task of building a more prosperous and just

society.

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To that end, my Government has embarked on a

process of consultation and collaboration with all

sectors of our population, including political parties,

the private sector and non-governmental organizations.

Through the recent reform of the Constitution,

provisions have been made to enhance fiscal

transparency, provide greater inclusiveness and

guarantee the fundamental rights of our people. Those

measures include six independent commissions on

human rights, ethnic relations, women and gender

equity, indigenous peoples, the rights of the child and

public procurement.

Moreover, in an effort to foster greater social

cohesion in Guyana, we recently invited the United

Nations Special Rapporteur on Racism to visit and

engage the various sectors of Guyanese society so that

the international community can be informed of the

broad perspectives of our multicultural society and of

the several measures which the Government has put in

place to promote interracial harmony.

In further consolidation of the democratic

process, my Government has embarked upon a

programme to reform the justice and security systems

in our society by building capacity for the prevention,

investigation and resolution of crime and for the

improvement of the administration of justice. Much has

been accomplished in that area, but much more remains

to be done.

At the same time, we have taken several

development initiatives that will ultimately lead to a

better life for all our people. Among them are the

national development strategy and the poverty

reduction strategy. We have worked hard to provide

better housing, health and education facilities for our

people and have managed to make signal progress in

reducing poverty. And by stimulating investment, we

are creating new opportunities for development. We

now look to the future with the renewed hope that we

will be able to overcome the many challenges to our

political, economic and social progress.

However, in the face of a persistent debt burden,

drastically reduced development assistance and ever

present protectionist barriers, and in the prevailing

climate of international tension and uncertainty, many

developing countries, Guyana included, are made more

vulnerable, and prospects for growth are severely

impaired. The failure of the recently concluded Cancun

Conference does not make us sanguine about the

future. The international community is now hardly

likely to reach the Millennium Declaration targets that

were set by this Assembly three years ago.

The fate of nations, especially of those as small

as ours, lies not in our hands alone. The process of

globalization has made us acutely aware of the need for

greater interdependence and international cooperation

if we are to survive the many threats to our welfare.

That interdependence is the basis for multilateralism

and for the United Nations.

The Charter of the Organization reflects our

collective commitment to cooperate to promote peace

and development. However, we have yet to fully

honour that commitment. Regrettably, the world in

which we live now, while placing a high premium on

democracy at the national level, fails to live up to that

ideal in the international councils that shape our

common destiny. We are concerned at that double

standard, as the aspirations of humankind for peace,

security and development cannot be fulfilled without

the effective participation of all States in global affairs.

Especially disconcerting is the practice by some

countries and international financial institutions to rely

on anecdotal or partial information often from

questionable sources to assess the performance of a

given country. Needless to say, that can be very

damaging to the particular economy concerned, as it

effectively deters further aid and investment. Similarly,

we are concerned by the inordinate delay in the release

of development funds. The Heavily Indebted Poor

Countries Debt Initiative, which was conceived as a

means of assisting seriously indebted poor countries,

has been unconscionably delayed. Meanwhile, the poor

of our countries must face continuing hardship and

suffering. They cannot be held hostage for much longer.

The success of international cooperation, and

indeed of the United Nations system, will be determined

by how well they respond to the interests and concerns of

not only the powerful but also the powerless, and not

only of the rich but, most urgently, of the poor. If truth

be told, their record thus far leaves much to be desired.

It is therefore imperative that a credible and effective

system of global governance be established as quickly

as possible. That will require a more fundamental

reform of the United Nations, and indeed of the entire

multilateral system, than we have seen so far.

After several crises in the decade of the 1990s,

there was a strong call for reform of the international

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financial architecture to provide greater macroeconomic

stability. The urgency of the campaign appears to have

diminished, however, even though the threat of further

calamity remains. Attempts to strengthen the role of

the United Nations in the development process now lag

behind, denying our countries a greater say in the

decision-making process pertaining to issues that affect

our welfare. Nor have we been able to develop an

effective security system to protect countries,

particularly the weak and small, from encroachments

on their sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Our world continues to be subject to a wide array

of threats to international peace and security. We

recently witnessed a series of terrible human tragedies.

Many thousands have died as a result. If there is one

lesson to be learned, it is that violence accomplishes

nothing. Only through dialogue and negotiation,

bolstered by social justice, can lasting solutions to

those problems be found. It is therefore imperative that

the United Nations, the multilateral Organization to

which we all belong, be strengthened to effectively

promote peace and development.

It is time that the United Nations Security

Council, which has the primary responsibility under the

Charter for international peace and security, be made

more representative of the wider international

community. The Council must be expanded, and the

role of developing countries in that body appropriately

strengthened. To that end, Guyana is prepared to

support the candidacies of Brazil, India and an African

country for permanent seats on the Council, as well as

a suitable number of non-permanent seats for other

developing countries. That expansion will no doubt

enable it to better cope with the challenges that

conflicts, both old and new, pose to global peace and

development.

Neither the many speeches that we make nor the

several strategies that we occasionally devise in the

hope of building global peace and development will

ever accomplish much unless they are followed up by

appropriate action. Sad to say, our frequent

declarations of intent are not matched by deeds, a

failure that can be explained only by the lack of serious

purpose on the part of many Member States. We have

yet to transcend selfish national interests to reach a

higher plane of interdependence and multilateralism. I

urge the international community to rethink its policies

and to seriously consider the advantages of a more

balanced and equitable system of relations.

The world in which we now live calls for greater

international solidarity and cooperation, not less. We

must therefore ensure that those ideals are at the

forefront of our deliberations at the General Assembly

and that we take practical steps to ensure and

strengthen our common home, the United Nations.