Solomon Islands, 1995

It is indeed fitting that

this historic fiftieth session of the General Assembly is

being presided over by Mr. Freitas do Amara of Portugal,

a distinguished teacher of law, an experienced

parliamentarian, and the founder of one of the major

political parties that helped to return vibrant democracy to

his homeland. He will meet the challenges of this office

with the intellect and skill that have marked his service to

his country and region.

His Excellency, Mr. Amara Essy, who presided over

the forty-ninth session of the General Assembly, has my

warmest appreciation of his leadership through a complex

agenda.

I salute the Secretary-General as well as the women

and men of the Secretariat, the specialized agencies and

other bodies of the United Nations for their extraordinary

work during this difficult time in the Organization’s

history.

I embrace the representatives of Palau, the newest

Member State — our sister in the South Pacific region.

We of Solomon Islands, a politically stable

democracy, live in peace, but we have known the cruelty

and havoc of modern war. Not only did the Battle of

Guadalcanal in the Second World War inflict damage on

our natural environment, leaving behind untold numbers

of dangerous armaments, but it caused adverse effects on

human and economic development as well. We number

less than 400,000 people of diverse ethnic origins, speak

some 87 distinct languages in various dialects, and live

together on hundreds of islands spread over 1600 square

kilometres of ocean. We live in a part of the world of

exquisite beauty with a delicate marine and forest ecology

that is critical to our well-being and survival.

From the perspective of my country, peace and

development are inextricably linked. The Agenda for

Development and the Agenda for Peace make this as clear

as the brilliant and pollution-free waters of our sun-

drenched lagoons. In his latest report on the work of the

Organization, the Secretary-General observed that

development:

“the foremost and most far-reaching task of our time

... must be seen in its many dimensions — in the

contexts of peace, the economy, environmental

protection, social justice and democracy”. (A/50/1,

para. 182)

Each is critical for development, but without peace the

other dimensions shrink like characters in stories for

children.

We applaud the Secretary-General’s efforts to

implement the Agenda for Peace. The development of a

framework for coordinating the planning and

implementation of complex field operations is welcome.

In its efforts to broker peace, the United Nations has

wrestled with seemingly intractable problems. Solomon

Islands, one of the least developed countries, living in

peace, gladly contributes its financial share to peace-

keeping and supports initiatives to protect United Nations

personnel and to aid civilian populations.

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Yet, ethnic strife and armed conflict rage in many

places with suffering and devastation beyond

comprehension. The violation of human rights continues.

Poverty saps the creativity and vitality of thousands of

millions. Vast numbers of children, especially female

children, do not have their basic needs met and many do

not survive infancy or early childhood. Solomon Islands,

which reaffirms its commitment to the Convention on the

Rights of the Child, applauds the work of the United

Nations Children’s Fund. Minimal education, illiteracy,

labouring in unspeakable conditions, prostitution and life on

the streets are the conditions of many children. The mass

media with an educational purpose have a powerful role in

changing all of this as Solomon Islanders living in

communities separated by the sea have learned. Moreover,

many of the world’s women continue to face serious

economic and social discrimination as the 1995 Human

Development Report to the United Nations Development

Programme demonstrates. The education of women in

Solomon Islands is critical to them, their children, their

families and the nation. Without it, sustainable development

and the levelling of population growth are unattainable

goals.

Solomon Islands applauds the steps taken by the

United States of America and the Russian Federation to

reduce their nuclear arsenals in accordance with Start I, on

the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms. We

look forward to agreement on and implementation of the

Treaty on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic

Offensive Arms (Start II).

Solomon Islands and its sister States in the Pacific

region fearfully watch the ominous nuclear-weapons tests

of France and the People’s Republic of China. We

especially deplore the fact that France is conducting them

in the South Pacific with its fragile marine ecology

essential to the lives of island peoples. Recent reports in the

French media indicate that the potential danger of these

tests is far greater than we have been led to believe. The

threats to people, animals and plants — even the genetic

foundations of life — are terribly real. Do we need

additional evidence of this after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Why are more nuclear tests really required? How valid is

the concept of nuclear deterrence now? If, as France claims,

nuclear-weapons explosions on Mururoa Atoll and

Fangataufa Atoll in French Polynesia are so safe, why not

set them off in the soil of the mother country? Its presence

in Polynesia and New Caledonia makes France our

neighbour in the Pacific where a post-cold-war redefinition

of the region is well under way. Do good neighbours

endanger the environment that sustains them? Are we not

gambling away the future of humankind at the nuclear-

weapons dice table? To the nuclear-threshold States, these

tests send the wrong signal. The Pacific is certainly the

wrong place; now, today, is the wrong time; and for

international cooperation, this is the wrong policy.

Global warming, as the intergovernmental climate-

change experts are now confirming, continues. The

consequences for the small island States are most serious,

including the potential impact of sea-level rise. They

threaten our agricultural and fish production, thereby

endangering our economy and undermining our ability to

develop. Clearly, this global problem requires a global

solution, but the industrial countries must take the lead if

joint solutions are to be successfully implemented.

Solomon Islands is contributing to the quest for

international peace and security in a number of ways.

Towards disarmament, we have ratified the Treaty on the

Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and we

took an active part in the NPT Review and Extension

Conference, joining in the consensus to extend the NPT

indefinitely. We ratified the Treaty of Rarotonga

establishing the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.

Establishing nuclear-free zones is an important initiative

towards creating a non-proliferation regime in cooperation

with other States. Solomon Islands, along with others,

made two submissions to the International Court of

Justice on the legality of the use or threat of use of

nuclear weapons, a matter now before the Court.

Solomon Islands is participating in the process for

the completion of a comprehensive test-ban treaty by

September 1996. We believe that a comprehensive test-

ban treaty is the fulcrum upon which nuclear disarmament

will be raised from dream to reality. Ultimately,

disarmament is a question of courage and overcoming

fear. It begins within, and its achievement must come

from within as well — inside them and us, inside you and

me.

As for environmental issues, Solomon Islands is a

State party to the United Nations Framework Convention

on Climate Change and fully supports the Berlin mandate,

which includes the Alliance of Small Island States

protocol. With so much of our present and future

economy based on our forests and marine life, we

embrace the Convention on Biological Diversity, which

Solomon Islands acceded to this year, the Barbados

Programme of Action, the Nouméa Convention, and the

International Coral Reef Initiative. We support a global

programme of action to protect the marine environment

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from land-based activities. Concerned about the shipment

and importation of hazardous and radioactive wastes in the

South Pacific region, Solomon Islands endorses the Waigani

Convention recently adopted at the twenty-sixth South

Pacific Forum, held in Papua New Guinea, and calls for the

rehabilitation of former nuclear-weapon test sites and

assistance to the peoples who were forced from those

places.

We live in a world of disturbing, often cruel, contrasts.

These, sustainable development has to address. In his report

on the work of the Organization, the Secretary-General

states that

“development at its core must be about improvement

of human well-being, the removal of poverty, hunger,

disease and ignorance, ensuring productive

employment and the satisfaction of priority needs of

all people in a way that can be sustained over future

generations; ... the emerging consensus on the priority

and dimensions of development should find expression

in a new framework for international cooperation”.

(A/50/1, para. 182)

Solomon Islands views this emerging consensus as the

beginning of a new diplomacy that puts people at the heart

of development. The new diplomacy should work

vigorously to implement the programmes of action crafted

at the World Summit for Children, the Earth Summit, the

World Conference on Human Rights, the International

Conference on Population and Development, the World

Summit for Social Development, the Global Conference on

the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing

States and the Fourth World Conference on Women. After

Habitat II, in Istanbul next year, we do not require more

large conferences, for the time being at least. Rather, we

need international will and partnership, political

commitment, and thoughtful, decisive action to ensure that

these programmes of action are implemented.

As the Declaration of Barbados affirms,

“Small island developing nations are particularly

vulnerable to natural as well as environmental

disasters and have a limited capacity to respond to and

recover from such disasters.” (A/CONF.167/9, annex

I, part one, section III, para. 1)

Limited in size and with vulnerable economies, they must

depend on a narrow resource base and upon international

trade, without the means to influence its terms. Solomon

Islands and the other small island developing States require

international partnership and cooperation to achieve and

maintain sustainable development.

The new diplomacy based on people-centred

development has at its heart a spiritual dimension which

embraces the ideals of democracy, tolerance, peaceful

coexistence, justice and the rights of persons and peoples.

It cares for the environment and rejects greed and

intolerance. This new diplomacy will be a reflection of an

agenda for democracy and tolerance, which Solomon

Islands believes should be formulated to complete the

triad of agendas. Such an agenda ought to be a basis for

reforming the United Nations in general and the Security

Council in particular. For Security Council reform to

work, it must put people at the centre instead of a

dominating nation, group of nations or region.

Committed to democracy and tolerance, Solomon

Islands calls for renewed consideration of the exceptional

situation of the Republic of China on Taiwan in the

international context, on the basis of the principle of

universality and in accordance with the established model

of parallel representation of divided countries at the

United Nations. The Republic of China’s standing as the

fifteenth largest trading nation in the world, with the

twentieth highest gross national product and the largest

foreign-exchange holdings, its continuing assistance to

many developing countries and its efforts to strengthen

international economic cooperation are obvious and

cannot be ignored by the world’s highest forum. In

addition, the Republic of China’s contribution to world

peace and its unfailing support of United Nations

activities are undeniable evidence of its qualifications to

receive proper consideration for having a seat at the

United Nations. Solomon Islands therefore calls for a

renewed focus on the issue of readmitting the Republic of

China as a Member of the United Nations.

Solomon Islands believes in a United Nations that

calls for tolerance and works to practise it, a United

Nations that promotes the values of diversity, tolerance,

pluralism, peace, justice, solidarity and responsibility

towards others and unknown future generations. Here,

differences in race, religion, language and political

doctrine are not obstacles, but challenges to

understanding, compassion, insight and patience.

The only hope for humanity is world peace, to be

achieved by a change in attitude from one of “mine and

my world” to one of “we and our world”.

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