Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 2003

The fifty-eighth session of the General Assembly

affords me the special privilege, honour and pleasure of

congratulating you, Sir, on your assumption of the

office of President of the General Assembly. As a

distinguished son of our neighbouring island, Saint

Lucia, you do great honour to your country and to the

whole Caribbean Community family. I take great pride

in what you, Sir, a fellow Foreign Minister and my dear

friend, have accomplished, and trust that, under your

astute leadership, this fifty-eighth session will chart the

right course, which will enable the Organization to

fulfil the expectations of mankind for a secure,

peaceful and prosperous world. Who knoweth but that

by some divine order you have come to the presidency

of this body at such a time as this.

Let me first express, on behalf of the Government

and people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,

deepest sympathy to Secretary-General Kofi Annan

and the entire United Nations family on the loss of

Sergio Vieira de Mello and other United Nations

personnel in the terrorist attack in Baghdad. Those

dedicated United Nations workers strived for peace and

justice for the people of the world. They lived for that

cause, and, tragically, they gave their lives for that

cause. We share the pain of this loss and the

bewilderment over it, and pay tribute to all those

United Nations staff members who put duty before self

in the service of mankind.

My Government acknowledges with appreciation

the sterling work being done in difficult conditions all

over the developing world by United Nations agencies,

from peacekeeping and the restoration of democracy to

development cooperation and humanitarian aid. I also

wish to single out for particular mention the United

Nations Development Fund for Women and the United

Nations Population Fund. We urge Member States to

continue to give support and assistance to these

organizations, which make such a difference,

particularly in the lives of women and children, in the

poorest sectors of the world.

We have heard speaker after speaker, over the

course of the past week, suggesting that the United

Nations is in crisis. Many have proposed solutions for

the rectification of this unhappy state of affairs. It is

my Government’s contention that the General

Assembly needs to retake its place as the central

platform of the Organization, because it is the only

truly democratic arm of the United Nations. In this

regard, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines intends to

participate fully in the ongoing debate on reform which

will be led by you, Mr. President, and we are hopeful

that, with your able guidance, some real progress can

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be made in this fifty-eighth session. Of particular

concern to small missions like my own is the volume

and variety of work between September and December

every year. The way the work of the General Assembly

is designed makes it difficult for us to make the kind of

contribution that we would wish for the effective and

efficient operation of the Organization. The Secretary-

General said in his report on the revitalization of the

General Assembly:

“The proliferation of meetings and official

documents places excessive demands on both the

Secretariat and Member States. Many smaller

Member States now find it practically impossible

to play a meaningful role in even the most crucial

activities of the General Assembly and the

Economic and Social Council”. (A/57/387,

para. 23)

If the work of the General Assembly could be

redesigned so as to spread the work load more evenly

throughout the calendar year, it would enable small

missions like that of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

to participate fully in the work of the Organization.

The debate on the reform of the Security Council

is fraught with many difficulties and challenges. It is

my Government’s view that the simple enlargement of

the representation on the Security Council may not by

itself necessarily lead to greater democratization of that

body. No matter how many reform theorems are

advanced, the will has to come from the permanent

members of the Council that wield the veto. My

Government has already urged an increase in the

membership of the Council, both permanent and non-

permanent, but it seems to us that as long as the veto

continues to exist, the Council will not be truly

representative of the wishes of the States Members of

this Organization and multinational diplomacy will be

endangered. The Government of Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines makes so bold as to say that the solution

may also well lie in the removal of the power of veto,

to allow for more democracy, greater participation,

openness and transparency. Only then, perhaps, will

this Organization regain its integrity and respect.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines cherishes the

relationships that it enjoys with all countries, both large

and small, represented here at the United Nations. The

United Nations Charter confers that freedom of

representation on all peace-loving and democratic

States. Yet my country continues to be deeply troubled

that Taiwan is still being excluded from this body.

While we seek to make the United Nations more

efficient and effective through much-needed reform,

we can advance the cause and the call for reform by

making the United Nations more inclusive through the

admission to membership of Taiwan and its 23 million

people, who have no voice in the United Nations.

Taiwan is an exemplary global citizen that maintains

friendly relations with almost every country in the

world. We would wish for this Organization to be the

catalyst that promotes constructive dialogue and

friendly engagement so that the Taiwan situation can

be resolved in a peaceful, just and equitable way to the

benefit of the entire global family.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is proud to be a

State party to the Rome Statute of the International

Criminal Court (ICC). We believe in the fundamental

role that the ICC has to play in our collective quest for

peace and the promotion of the rule of law and justice.

We are determined to uphold its integrity.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is proud of our

contribution to the emerging Caribbean civilization.

Let me quote from a recent speech by our Prime

Minister, The Honourable Ralph Gonsalves:

“The reassembling of the African, Asiatic and

European fragments forms the basis of our very

Caribbean civilization itself, which is at once

shaped and yet evolving. Fundamentally, too, our

Caribbean civilization, like all civilizations, has

been built on labour — the producers — and the

contours of the society fashioned by the social

organization of labour”.

My small country has made the painful

transformation from colonialism to independent

democracy in 25 short years. Our people chose not the

path leading to war and conflict, but rather opted for

the highway of democracy, racial harmony and respect

for human rights conducting us to peace, tranquillity

and future prosperity. But we are hampered in our

quest. My country, like others in the region, is in

danger of losing an entire generation to the scourge of

HIV/AIDS. We need the help of the international

community in the fight against this dreaded disease for

the preservation of our society.

Our banana industry, which is the engine that

drives our economy, is shortly to succumb to the greed

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of certain multinational companies, with the active

assistance of the World Trade Organization. Without

the banana industry, whose doomsday rapidly

approaches, our hardworking peasant farmers will

become just another casualty of globalization. The

European Union mandates that its sugar farmers get

paid 50 euros per tonne — or five times the world

market price. Their farmers then dump their product on

the market, thus depressing prices for farmers

elsewhere. So we may shortly have to bid farewell to

the sugar industries of developing nations like

Barbados, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Mozambique

and Guatemala. The United States of America spends

more than $3 billion dollars of its taxpayers’ money

every year to subsidize its cotton growers. This,

naturally, signals death to the cotton farmers of

Burkina Faso, Benin, Mali, Chad and other developing

nations. How can the developed world, which

continues to subsidize its farmers and which touts

globalization as the cure for all economic ills, continue

defending the indefensible?

Cancún, as we all now know, was an abysmal

failure. We went there hoping to be led into the

Promised Land — only to find ourselves lost and

abandoned in the wilderness. We will continue our

crusade for economic stability and democratic harmony

in our country, but it is self-evident that we need the

help of the developed part of the world in order to be

viable. It will benefit no one if small countries like

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are marginalized and

left to flounder. We are a vulnerable country. The

reasons why small island developing States are

especially vulnerable are too well known to be repeated

here. Our requests for special and differential treatment

in the WTO are completely justified and, for the most

part, largely ignored.

My Government is cognizant of the fact that

terrorism threatens us all. We are therefore fully

engaged in the process of implementing Security

Council resolution 1373 (2001) — a process which has

stretched our limited resources. The oft-repeated

promises of help in this process are proving to be, like

so many other promises made within these hallowed

halls, just that — promises. Yet we read with grave

concern in the New York Times just last week that,

between them, two of the giants of this Organization

export arms worth nearly $20 billion every year — the

majority, of course, to developing nations. What do

arms do in developing nations? They are the fuel that

feeds the flames of conflict and terrorism.

Unless we can collectively find the courage and

wisdom to tackle the problems of poverty, disease and

despair, all the weapons in the world will not prevent

the spread of terrorism. We need to move beyond using

the United Nations as a talk shop and come together as

responsible nations to tackle the root causes of

terrorism.

The security which the poorer nations of the

world desire is obtained not through the force of arms,

but in relief from burdensome debt, employment

opportunities, shelter, food, clean water, a healthy

environment and access to medical care and life-giving

drugs.

Despite its imperfections, the United Nations is

the forum that gives us hope. Let us work together so

that we can bequeath to our children and to our

children’s children an Organization that can be used, in

the words of the Secretary-General, to save succeeding

generations from the scourge of war, to reaffirm faith

in fundamental human rights, to establish the basic

conditions for justice and the rule of law and to

promote social progress and better standards of life in

larger freedom.