Marshall Islands, 2012

I bring the Assembly the warm

greeting of “Yokwe” from the Marshall Islands.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands was born first

in the hearts and minds of the Marshallese people, but

we also forged our nationhood under the auspices of the

United Nations f lag. The United Nations is truly our

second home. Our unique story, from United Nations

Trust Territory to Member State, deserves ref lection

by the international community, two decades after we

were welcomed as a United Nations Member.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will

be reviewed in three years’ time. The Marshall Islands

is now firmly committed to making stronger progress,

especially with regard to achieving full access to

adequate education and decent employment and to

ensuring a sustainable environment. The MDGs are

not distant figures or statistics. The MDGs are in the

faces of our Marshallese children; the MDGs are in our

classrooms and hospitals. One of the most immediate

and necessary steps is to better integrate our bilateral

and regional development pathways with the MDGs, to

ensure that all efforts move in the same direction and

towards the same common goals.

As the Asia-Pacific region rises in the global

spotlight, so also must the Marshall Islands. Our

national future is still within our grasp, and our future

need not be so difficult if we and our partners undertake

the hard actions needed to change it.

Today, the Marshall Islands commits to being a key

success story in the Pacific. We will move with specific

actions to make firm and measurable progress towards

the MDGs and towards economic independence resting

on an expanded private sector, especially in regard to

our primary drivers of fisheries and tourism. We simply

have no other alternative but to rewrite our future.

We look to the future with targets in mind instead of

generalities. I have asked my Government for specific,

quantifiable development goals. I have also asked my

Government to list the necessary actions, to be taken by

ourselves and by our partners, needed to achieve them.

Today I am encouraging bilateral partners, especially

our closest partners, as well as the Secretary-General and the Pacific Islands Forum and its regional agencies,

to respond. Next year I hope to present the Assembly

with a report not about our plight but about our progress.

It is easy, and indeed rightful, to place blame on

the international community, especially concerning

climate change and fisheries, spheres where the open

political assurances of our partners too often fall victim

to their own self-interest once the negotiating doors

close. Yet the ultimate burden for achieving greater

national success must be on the Marshall Islands

Government and the Marshallese people. However

unfair multilateral outcomes may be to the smallest

nations, we must and will do whatever is in our national

power to assure a viable future. Nothing will stand in

our way.

The Marshall Islands is far from alone. Many

nations in the Pacific islands region share similar

challenges. Our collective Pacific progress must be a

key pillar of the 2014 global conference on small island

developing States, to be held in the Pacific. The next

summit of the Pacific Islands Forum will be held next

year in the Marshall Islands, and this meeting will

reveal firm and dramatic progress not only towards

basic social and environment goals, but also how a very

real expansion of public-private partnership will be

jump-started in the Pacific.

Since 1954, Marshallese leaders have visited the

United Nations to address the ongoing impact of the 67

nuclear tests conducted on our lands during our status

as a United Nations Trust Territory. That is our first

foreign policy issue, and it is more than a historical

legacy. It is a contemporary reality for our local

communities. The United Nations authorized many of

those tests through two resolutions, in 1954 and 1956,

which also made assurances of our basic human rights

and our full and safe return to our land, while today too

many Marshallese remain nuclear nomads, still unable

to safely resettle. While I acknowledge the important

efforts taken to date, the half-life of radioactive material

remains for generations, and much more needs to be

done.

But today, for the first time since the trusteeship

resolution of 1956, the United Nations has finally spoken.

Earlier this month, Mr. Calin Georgescu, Special

Rapporteur on human rights and toxic wastes, presented

his report regarding the nuclear testing programme

in the Marshall Islands (A/HRC/21/48/Add.1) to

the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The Special Rapporteur has presented significant findings that

indicate that the pain, mistrust, progress and failures

of the Marshallese people over decades have a human

rights dimension and that the international community

must respond with more than silence. The Marshallese

people have paid too heavy a price for the only instance

in which the United Nations explicitly authorized the

use of nuclear weapons.

I urge all relevant actors — the United States and

the wider international community and its agencies — to

join with the Marshall Islands and the Pacific Islands

Forum members in welcoming the Special Rapporteur’s

specific recommendations as a way forward to ensure

progress on regaining the very human rights that

should never have been lost. The Special Rapporteur’s

report must not be allowed to only collect dust on the

shelf; it should instead be a foundation for new efforts,

particularly with key international agencies. We have

no more time for well-worn accusations. The Marshall

Islands must not fail to advance the human rights of its

own citizens. Where old solutions have not worked, we

must not fail to find new ones.

We are not only a small island State, but truly a

large-ocean nation. Our sustainable fisheries represent

a primary pathway to the very economic strength

and social development I have just called for today.

Yet our aspirations are too often undermined by the

narrow commercial self-interests of those nations at the

Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission that

might otherwise seek to embrace us as close political

partners. For us, our collective Pacific development is

not an isolated issue bound in technical jargon. It is the

very hope and economic survival of our entire nation,

and indeed the whole Pacific region. We realize only a

penny of true benefit for every dollar of fishing activity,

and despite scientific warnings, pressure on key fish

stocks has only increased, not diminished. Decades of

global lip service at the United Nations to sustainable

development seems to be lost on some of our fishing

partners.

The parties to the Nauru Agreement have become

a watershed political movement, recently achieving

certification of a sustainable fishery by the Marine

Stewardship Council, which is perhaps the largest such

fishery in the world. In the Pacific, we are already

deep into advancing the very sustainable development

measures agreed to at the United Nations Conference on

Sustainable Development (Rio+20), and we are growing

our own Pacific-driven commercial brand. It remains to be seen if key distant-water fishing nations will

continue to join us in forging a landmark sustainable

fishery or if they will choose to be left on the sidelines.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is among

the low-lying nations in the world, and sea-level-rise

projections of more than a metre pose complex risks to

our future statehood, risks that we are only beginning

to unpack and address. Last year’s watershed agreement

on the Durban Platform, prepared at the 2011 United

Nations Climate Change Conference, has moved the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change (UNFCCC) into a new chapter of a single,

legally binding protocol applying to all nations by 2020.

It has also redoubled urgent efforts needed to close the

global mitigation gap. The time for endless North-

South division is now over, and the all-too-predictable

finger-pointing must end.

But the world can no longer wait for negotiators.

We must do more than pat ourselves on the back if

we are serious about reducing the risks to our future.

More action is needed by all nations and all actors in

all possible settings and negotiation forums. As the

Marshall Islands, we have a national energy plan and

UNFCCC target to cut our own emissions, boost our

efficiency and pursue new technology, such as ocean

thermal energy conversion, which can make us a

carbon-negative nation. I ask the rest of the world, will

it also meet us in increasing that ambition? Will it come

soon enough?

Climate adaptation poses perhaps the most complex

challenges for a low-lying nation, but we must overcome

them nonetheless. We cannot rely only on an uncertain

architecture of global climate finance to address the

very critical adaptation efforts that will be necessary

for our continued survival. In the large scale — up to

$100 billion a year — of the future Green Climate Fund

and other efforts, our relatively modest needs can easily

be overlooked. Our increasingly urgent needs on the

ground can no longer be met with paper studies and

disconnected pilot projects. Yet the Marshall Islands is

at present heavily reliant on international assistance. We

have little other means to provide for adaptation. The

growing belief, however wrong, that we must finance

some of our own adaptation efforts is perhaps the most

compelling reason to rapidly expand our private sector.

We must also create financial security through the debt

for adaptation swap being pursued by the Marshall

Islands and other small island nations. The United Nations cannot fail the needs of the most

vulnerable nations and must better harness the efforts

of all necessary actors. The Marshall Islands urges

other nations to facilitate the meaningful participation

of Taiwan within the United Nations system and the

international community. Taiwan should be able to

participate as an observer in the UNFCCC and the

International Civil Aviation Organization, as it does

in the World Health Assembly, and its potential for

meeting the MDGs should be recognized.

The international community must not fail to act,

not only to address long-term threats, but also to ease

the most immediate security concerns. Recent tension

in the broader Pacific Rim is an important matter for

the Pacific Islands region, which can grow only when

there is security and stability. I urge that those issues,

including that of the East China Sea, be peacefully

addressed through an inclusive dialogue involving all

key actors.

The smallest nations in the world, many of which

are in the Pacific, are beginning to play important and

unique roles on the international stage. But nations

such as the Marshall Islands also depend greatly on

firm multilateral action. Accordingly, they must be able

to rely on the United Nations and its Members for more

than symbolism. It is decisive and bold leadership that

are so urgently needed in this international hour.