Saint Lucia, 1999

As the curtain falls on

the twentieth century, this time-honoured institution, the

United Nations, rejoices in the presence of two

distinguished Africans at the helm. The outstanding

freedom fighter of Namibia, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab

occupies our presidential perch, while our principled,

purposeful and persuasive Secretary-General, Kofi Annan,

like the proverbial Ol’ Man River, keeps rolling along,

relentlessly serene in his pursuit of world peace and

human development. If Africa is the last impression of

the twentieth century, poetic justice demands that it must

be our first preoccupation in the twenty-first century. This

international forum must readjust the balance over

centuries. We must pay for our dereliction of duty over

Rwanda and the Congo. We must remove the remaining

vestige of apartheid, and we must make a quantum leap

in eliminating poverty and disease by addressing the

causes of poverty.

The Caribbean has always leapt over the restrictions

of size and resources to embrace the global vision of a

liberated world, and the liberation of Africa plays a

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seminal role in this process. Caribbean thinkers such as

Padmore, C.L.R. James, Professor Arthur Lewis, Dr. Eric

Williams and Dr. Walter Rodney have all sought to

sensitize the world to the catalytic role which Africa must

play in global development.

We recognize, however, that an essential condition for

fulfilling this role must be the overcoming of the

underdevelopment that plagues that continent. But if we are

to progress in that direction, we must first boldly admit that

disunity among the countries of Africa has much to do with

this condition. In an era when other geographic regions and

continents have been uniting for economic advancement,

the African continent remains divided. The time has come,

therefore, for the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to

go further than just making declarations of unity. Pan-

Africanism must not continue to remain stunted, as it was

at the threshold of the sixties. African leaders and statesmen

must show the resolve and the unwavering character of

Nelson Mandela, and give African children, born and

unborn, hope in the future of Africa.

In this regard, the results of the recent Algiers summit

of the OAU are therefore most welcome, for the summit

has demonstrated a new sense of urgency and commitment

on the part of the new leaders of Africa. The United

Nations must not fail to support this progressive

development. For our part, Saint Lucia, mindful of the

African heritage of our people, will exhort our Caribbean

colleagues to consider applying for associate status with the

OAU and to consolidate further our solidarity in the

African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) forum.

Our call for unity is not being sent only to our

brothers in Africa. It goes out also to all developing

countries, be they in the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia or

elsewhere. If we in the developing world are to have a

better future in the new millennium, if we are to obtain any

benefits from the new international systems that are

evolving around us, we cannot depend only on the goodwill

of the countries of the developed world. There must be

unity of action and purpose among us; there must be an end

to the in-fighting, the skirmishes, and the wars between us.

The South-South Summit in Havana next year will provide

an excellent opportunity for cementing solidarity on issues

of common concern and deciding on a forward-looking

agenda for the development of our people.

In the Commonwealth Caribbean, we the members of

the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) can be proud of

the 25-year integration movement in which we have been

engaged. We are in the process of completing arrangements

for the creation of a single market and economy and for

the establishment of a Caribbean court of justice that will

be the final appellate court for CARICOM member

countries. But, certainly, we must recognize that while we

have made progress, we have not gone far enough. In

October, the heads of Government of the Caribbean

Community will meet in a special session in Trinidad and

Tobago to consider the future governance of the

Caribbean Community. We urge the leaders of

CARICOM, in what will be their final meeting of the

century, to take decisions on the future of CARICOM that

will erase from the memories of West Indian people all

the hurt, all the pain, all the disappointments of our failed

attempts at closer political union during this century. Let

the occasion for their October meeting be the springboard

that catapults West Indians into what will truly be a new

era. Let our people enter the new millennium with a

CARICOM that will be fully integrated, economically and

politically.

We can extend this tableau to embrace the Non-Self-

Governing Territories of our region. My Government was

pleased to have hosted, in May of this year, the annual

United Nations seminar of the Special Committee on

Decolonization to review the economic, political and

constitutional developments in the remaining small island

Non-Self-Governing Territories. This highly successful

seminar brought together representatives from

Governments and non-governmental organizations and

experts from the Caribbean and Pacific regions. This

important activity resulted in the adoption by the Special

Committee of targeted recommendations in the

furtherance of the decolonization of these Territories. To

this end, we strongly support a second decade on

decolonization to focus on the socio-economic, political

and constitutional development of the remaining small

island Territories, which are integral components of both

the Caribbean and the Pacific regions.

But the realization of these regional goals turns on

the full emergence of Cuba as a vital and creative force

in the integration and development of the Caribbean. This

emergence is frustrated by the inability of the United

Nations to harness the political will to remove the

inhumane sanctions imposed by the United States on the

Cuban people, despite the successive overwhelming votes

religiously taken every year in the Assembly. At the fifty-

third session of the General Assembly, 157 countries

voted in favour of resolution 53/4 to end the economic

embargo against Cuba. The totally callous disregard for

the cumulative will of the Assembly is the touchstone

which characterizes the relationship between the super-

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Power leviathan and the 187 Lilliputian nations that talk

and vote in this forum. Where is the democracy of which

we speak? Where is the mutual respect for sovereign

nations? Where is the humanity?

The events in Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor have

drawn serious lessons for the international community. The

spectre of an effete United Nations looking on helplessly

while Member nations intervene unilaterally is a nightmare

on the eve of the new millennium. It is for this reason that

Saint Lucia strongly supports the call by Secretary-General

Kofi Annan for the United Nations to be empowered to

take action, whether militarily or otherwise, to stop crimes

against humanity.

Saint Lucia remains concerned at the systematic

weakening and marginalization of the United Nations. In

this regard, attention is drawn to its operational activities

and its development programmes, particularly the United

Nations Development Programme (UNDP). We call on

donor countries to reconsider the effects of the budget cuts

on regional and country programmes.

We need a United Nations that not only carries out its

peacekeeping and humanitarian capacities, but one that also

plays a central role in the governance of globalization and

trade liberalization to ensure that globalization is about

development.

Our common humanity must demonstrate itself in our

prompt response to natural disasters in each other's

countries. The people of Taiwan have been the most recent

victims of devastating earthquakes, which claimed the lives

of thousands of innocent people. We commiserate with

them. It is at such critical moments that the spirit of

brotherhood must emerge. There was a surge of hope at the

news that the People's Republic of China had pledged

assistance to the Taiwanese across the Taiwan Strait. Let us

hope that the Creator is working in a mysterious way to

bring about the peaceful and mutually agreeable

reunification of the Chinese people on this occasion of the

fiftieth anniversary of China.

Our own island State of Montserrat continues to

struggle to recover from the destruction caused by volcanic

eruptions. Yet the international community continues to

exclude this small island from concessional assistance on

the basis of its high gross national product per capita,

calculated from its small population and inflows of

assistance, mainly from the United Kingdom. The United

Nations, in particular the Committee for Development

Policy, must take the lead role in the revision of the criteria

for concessional assistance to include vulnerabilities and

qualitative data including openness of the economy and

economic shocks. The sustainable development of small

developing countries will remain a dream unless these

fundamental structural and systemic biases are addressed.

Saint Lucia is particularly concerned about the

exclusion of transnational corporations from the rules of

engagement the World Trade Organization (WTO) sets

for trade, since a large percentage of the financing for our

development comes from trade in one commodity. Saint

Lucia will continue to call for an integrated approach to

the consideration of trade and finance in the context of

the upcoming conference on financing for development

and for the participation of all actors, including the

Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, under the

leadership of the United Nations.

The dispute over the arrangements for the marketing

of bananas has been particularly distasteful. People in

member countries of the European Union are being

punished through sanctions by the United States for the

support of their Governments for the banana marketing

regime. That country continues to promote the interests of

its multinational companies involved in the banana trade

at the expense of smaller economies. There are at the

moment proposals on the table designed to put in place a

new WTO-compatible system for the marketing of

bananas in Europe. All parties, particularly producing

countries, are of the view that a tariff rate quota system

is the most viable regime for all concerned. A

continuation of the tariff rate quota is essential for

ensuring that the market continues to generate adequate

prices.

Yet the United States transnationals engaged in the

industry are instead promoting a simple or linear tariff

mechanism that will have disastrous effects for Caribbean

producers. Saint Lucia and other ACP countries have

expressed dissatisfaction with this recommendation. We

again implore all European Union member States to

revisit this choice and to consider its implications for

Saint Lucia and other ACP countries. We are inherently

unequal trading partners, and the WTO should not subject

small economies to liberalization and unbridled

competition on an equal footing with economies and

corporations far more advanced than they are and expect

them to survive. Saint Lucia again calls on the

international community, including the WTO, to

differentiate between trading partners and promote fair

trade through special and differential treatment, not on a

voluntary basis, but as a contractual obligation.

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Saint Lucia has been in the forefront of the fight for

the survival of small island States. To quote the words of

the President of the United States in his recent address to

the Assembly,

“We must refuse to accept a future in which one part

of humanity lives on the cutting edge of a new

economy, while the other lives at the knife edge of

survival” (A/54/PV.6).

Globalization has left us on the knife edge of survival.

We are thankful to Europe for empathizing with our

vulnerabilities, and we regret that they have attracted the

wrath of sanctions for their pains. Between the rhetoric and

the reality lies the gaping wound of disillusion and despair.

President Clinton rightly posed the question:

“Will globalism bring shared prosperity, or will it

make the desperate of the world even more

desperate?” (supra).

Saint Lucia can confidently attest to the truth that the

small States and the developing world are desperate, and

that their desperation is compounded by the fact that the

global preoccupation with money and markets is fast

destroying the values and sacred norms in our respective

countries.

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay”.

(Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village)

The decadence and moral turpitude that has taken over

our paradise of an island is unbelievable. The conspiracy

that threatens to decimate our bananas has left us with

tourism as a strategy for diversification. The twin monsters

of drugs and crime promise to overrun us, and the filth that

spews from cable television pours into our homes. Some of

these homes are nothing more than vile little hovels whose

inhabitants are sustained at night by religion and

unemployed by day. The decay is all-pervasive, and women

from nearby territories are imported to ply their sordid trade

in strip-tease joints.

We have lost our innocence; this is the surest legacy

that globalization has visited upon us. We cannot be

swayed by the rhetoric of partnership when the relentless

logic of globalization is geared to decimate, to marginalize

and to eliminate. The developing world must focus closely

on the Seattle Round and ensure that the wide sweep of

liberalization and open markets does not wash us away. If

the dogmatism and inflexibility of powerful States threaten

our survival, then we must band together in a “Trade

Union of the Poor” to seek justice and humanity. No

poison is a necessary drink, and we cannot be expected to

swallow globalization's cup of hemlock for the greater

glory of the shapers of the new millennium. We want a

new millennium shaped by all Member States, addressing

the needs and interests of all, and beneficial to all.

We share our apprehension with this body. We will

work in the embrace of its wise Charter, but we would

describe globalization in the words of the Irish poet

William Butler Yeats:

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

(The Second Coming)