Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 2009

At the outset, the Government and people

of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines take this

opportunity to extend deepest condolences to the

people of the Philippines and the Socialist Republic of

Viet Nam for the lives tragically lost in the wake of

tropical storm Ketsana. Our thoughts, prayers and

solidarity are with them as they grapple with that

catastrophe.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome

Mr. Treki to the leadership of the General Assembly at

its sixty-fourth session. His experience and abilities are

well known and respected, and he has our full support

in the coming year. Indeed, we in Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines are particularly pleased that the presidency

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has moved from Nicaragua, a country touched by the

Caribbean Sea, to a continent that is the ancestral home

of the vast majority of our citizens. We have, in

essence, kept the presidency within our extended

family. We trust that he will continue the exemplary

work of his predecessor, Father Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann, who fearlessly and tirelessly championed

the role of the “G-192” in addressing global

challenges.

We face many challenges within our international

community, but at their most basic, the majority are

symptomatic of a single underlying issue: a struggle by

the powerful to cling to their dominion long after the

legitimate bases of their power have faded. We find

ourselves in a world governed by outdated norms and

assumptions, and our failure to adapt has wrought

disastrous consequences on our peoples.

In his welcome and inspiring maiden statement to

the General Assembly last Wednesday, our esteemed

brother and friend President Barack Obama of the

United States correctly identified the challenges to our

multilateral unity as “rooted in a discontent with the

status quo” (see ). We wholeheartedly agree

and endorse that assessment.

It is a discontent with the status quo of a 63-year-

old Security Council, which continues to administer

our collective security unchanged and impervious to

the logic of a new world. It is a discontent with the

role, effectiveness and mandate of the 65-year-old

Bretton Woods institutions, which were created in a

bygone era to address bygone circumstances. It is a

discontent with a 49-year-old blockade on the noble

people of our neighbour Cuba, the continued illegal

application of which is illogical when viewed through

the prism of geopolitics, economics or

humanitarianism, and can be successfully explained

only by reference to narrow local political

considerations.

It is a discontent, even, with the stagnation of

efforts to change the status quo in other critical

respects: the eight years of unresolved negotiations of

the Doha Development Round, the 12 years of the

toothless commitments of the Kyoto Protocol, and the

seven years of unfulfilled Monterrey Consensus

promises to achieve a 0.7 per cent of gross national

product for official development assistance, a full 40

years after this modest percentage was first mooted.

Through it all, the geopolitical status quo

remains. The structural bases of international

interaction are distressingly similar to their decades-

old antecedents. Those structures were forged in the

fires of World War II, hardened in the frost of the Cold

War and entrenched by the legacies of colonialism and

exploitation. But World War II has long since ended,

the Cold War is relegated to history books, and the

reach of formal colonialism continues to recede. The

structures spawned by those historical episodes are no

longer valid.

Our discontent is born not only of stagnation but

also of exclusion. Although we have a seat in this

hallowed building, it is often the seat of a spectator in a

historical drama. The directors and actors script history

not in the General Assembly, but in other rooms and

locales, without our input or knowledge. In many

significant ways we are attendees, rather than

participants, on the international stage.

We are in the midst of a global financial and

economic crisis of unparalleled depth and scope. Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines played no part in the

reckless speculation and corruption that precipitated

this crisis, yet the people of our country are hard hit by

its effects. Our tourism industry is suffering,

remittances are shrinking, foreign direct investment is

scarce, and the spectre of unemployment is a real and

gathering regional threat. However, we are actively

excluded from the solutions to this problem.

Last week, we learned that the Group of 20

(G-20) anointed itself “the premier forum for our

international economic cooperation”. Saint Vincent and

the Grenadines is not a member of the G-20, nor were

we consulted on its ascension to the ranks of arbiters of

our economic fate. While there is an undeniable logic

to a small group of the world’s largest economies

meeting informally to thrash out matters that affect

only their own large economies, the logic fades in the

face of a crisis that has spread rapidly and

comprehensively to every corner of the globe.

Additionally, the G-20 faces a serious legitimacy

problem. Aside from the Group’s being non-inclusive

and unofficial, many of the countries at that table

represent the champions of the financial and economic

orthodoxies that led the world down the rabbit hole to

its current economic malaise.

Further, the G-20’s recent self-congratulatory

pronouncements of “mission accomplished” in the

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midst of this economic upheaval are of cold comfort to

the suffering peoples and countries of the world. While

the G-20 may claim that its actions have “worked”, and

claim a “sense of normalcy”, the people of Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines and our Caribbean region

are under no such illusions. The invisible hand of the

market is still clasped firmly around the throats of poor

people and the developing countries of the world. We

see none of the so-called green shoots that populate the

fantasies of discredited economic cheerleaders.

Indeed, the seeds sown by this crisis may produce

the strange and bitter fruit of increased poverty,

suffering and social and political upheaval. The crisis

itself, with its disproportionate impact on the poor, will

only widen and deepen the yawning gap between

developed and developing countries.

It is not merely the economic crisis against which

the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

continue to struggle heroically. Today, we face the

triple threat of being globalized, climatized and

stigmatized. We have already been globalized by the

World Trade Organization (WTO) out of our trade in

bananas, which, until very recently, was the engine of

our economic growth. We are on the verge of being

climatized out of our reliance on tourism as its

development substitute, as climate change wreaks

havoc on our weather systems, intensifies our

hurricanes, destroys our coral reefs, damages our costal

infrastructure and erodes our beaches.

Now, we face being stigmatized out of our

transition into financial services, as the G-20, the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development and other non-inclusive bodies seek to

scapegoat and root out so-called tax havens in a

pathetic effort to cast a wide and indiscriminate net of

blame across a swath of legitimate and well-regulated

countries’ development efforts.

We note the irony of hearing these paternalistic

prescriptions from the same countries that are unable to

stem corruption and mismanagement within their own

borders, where corporations recklessly squander

trillions of dollars and a single buccaneer investor can

make $50 billion — an amount greater than the

combined annual budget expenditures of the entire

Caribbean Community subregion — disappear into thin

air.

The unholy trinity of exogenous assaults on our

development prospects posed by globalization,

climatization and stigmatization cannot be ignored, nor

can the security threats engendered by the illicit trade

in firearms and narcotics. We in Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines find ourselves unfortunately located

between the supply of and demand for these poisons

and weapons, and their deleterious effects rip holes in

our cohesive social fabric. The Caribbean, which

produces not one single firearm or one single kilo of

cocaine, is awash in drugs and guns, and is now the

subregion with the world’s highest per capita murder

rate.

Our plight cannot be ignored. Indeed, we are

heartened that the United Nations Office on Drugs and

Crime, which inexplicably ended its presence in our

region, has now seen fit to reconsider its decision to

cede the Caribbean to drug cartels and murderers. We

hope that it represents a genuine and generous

recommitment to our regional challenges.

As a small archipelagic State, we, more than

most, are affected and threatened by the ravages of

climate change. We, more than most, recognize the

critical importance of a meaningful, measurable and

enforceable global compact on climate change.

However, we do not simply want to “seal the deal” at

Copenhagen, as posited by the sloganeers of the United

Nations. We want to seal the right deal, the just deal,

and the deal that ensures our continued survival. We

most emphatically will not seal a suicide pact that will

assure the elimination of small island States and our

way of life.

The Alliance of Small Island States has recently

issued a declaration that contains what we consider to

be the essential contours of any meaningful agreement

on climate change. We trust that our blameless position

on the front lines of climate change fallout will be

considered and respected in the global effort to seal the

deal. We cannot, as in the case of the world economy,

be excluded in any way from the solutions to a problem

that so fundamentally affects us.

The theme of exclusion is equally applicable to

our friends in Taiwan. The United Nations and its

specialized agencies must find ways to ensure the

meaningful participation of the 23 million people of

Taiwan. Just as their economic strength has merited

inclusion in the WTO and the universality of global

health challenges have logically compelled their

participation in the World Health Assembly, so too

should the global reach of climate change merit their

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meaningful participation in the United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The interconnected networks of global air travel

and our shared safety concerns similarly mandate the

participation of Taiwan in the International Civil

Aviation Organization. The Government and people of

Taiwan have advanced a reasonable and responsible

policy of engagement to usher a new era in cross-strait

relations. The international community can and should

encourage and reward this fledgling rapprochement

with meaningful participation in the relevant

specialized agencies.

Any cursory analysis of the excluded and the

included, of the discontented and the defenders of the

status quo, will quickly reveal that many current

inequities are rooted in our colonial history and that the

struggle for geopolitical balance and inclusiveness is

indeed the last struggle of decolonization as we, the

former colonial territories, remain excluded from the

inner sanctums and power structures that were

established by and for the colonizers in a time long

since passed.

On 27 October this year, Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary of

independence. However, we recognize that

independence is a process, not a one-time event. Our

independence journey continues today. Thirty years

after gaining formal independence, we retain the Queen

as our Head of State, and our highest judicial appeals

travel from our shores to the United Kingdom to be

decided by Her Majesty in Council. While we cherish a

special, modern and respectful relationship with the

United Kingdom, we do not intend to tarry on colonial

premises a moment longer than is necessary.

Even as we wage a wider war of attrition against

geopolitical colonialism, our citizens are preparing to

vote on a new and home-grown constitution that will

break the chains of outmoded dependence and place

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines firmly on its two feet

as a truly independent republic. This new proposed

constitution, the product of six years of open,

transparent and inclusive public consultations, is

testament to the political maturity of our people and to

the value of locally tailored solutions to externally

imposed impediments.

In a similar manner, our brothers and sisters in

the developing world, including Cuba, the Bolivarian

Republic of Venezuela, Turkey, Mexico, Malaysia,

Iran, Libya, Brazil and many others, have forged new

links and bonds of friendship, cooperation and

solidarity with our country that go beyond historical,

geographical or colonial linkages. We value these

friendships and partnerships as important additions to

our traditional and treasured allies in the United States,

the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Canada and the

European Union.

Just as our myriad bilateral friendships and

partnerships span geographic, economic and

ideological divides, so too must our multilateral

cooperation be inclusive and participatory. We can no

longer maintain the illusion of holding hands in

artificial solidarity across the moats and turrets of

structural and systemic inequalities. Modern

multilateralism cannot proceed on the bases of the

included and the excluded, of the political haves and

have-nots, nor can token assimilations of individual

developing countries serve to mask the necessity for

deep structural changes to existing power

arrangements.

We urge our brothers and sisters who have gained

limited access to the halls of power to not only be a

voice for their excluded brothers and to not only

remember where they came from, but also to view

themselves as the tip of the spear, the thin edge of the

wedge that will use their newfound privileges to

dismantle these structures from within, even as we

continue to make our presence felt outside the citadels

of stasis and indifference.

Psalm 118 of the Bible teaches that the stone that

the builder rejected shall become the cornerstone. We,

the poor and developing countries of the world, are the

stones that the builders of this body refused and

ignored. In rebuilding and revitalizing, either we will

become the cornerstones of this institution, or this

edifice of multilateral cooperation will crumble into

irrelevance and illegitimacy.

Addressing the economic crisis, poverty and

development is not an academic exercise. Climate

change is not a theoretical event. Reform of global

governance is not a diplomatic parlour game. They are

the clear and present dangers of our time, and they

reflect the need for the real and inclusive participation

of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Caribbean and

the developing world. They represent also a need to

reflect and address our discontent with the status quo

perpetuated for far too long.

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We stand now in the autumn of our discontent,

but, as Gandhi said, “Healthy discontent is the prelude

to progress”. The challenge of the discontented is to

rise above ancient animosities and artificial

balkanization to achieve the clarity of vision, unity of

purpose and political will to finally and successfully

storm the castles of stagnation and status quo and to

drive our peoples, our politics and our planet into a

new era of genuine inclusiveness, equity and

meaningful, people-centred progress.