Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 2010

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

welcomes, Sir, your ascension to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its sixty-fifth session with a great

deal of anticipation. As one of the primary architects of

your own country’s membership in the United Nations,

you have demonstrated your belief in the importance of

this institution and its role in the modern international

context. As you stand on the shoulders of the giants

who have preceded you in this role, we are confident

that you will ably apply your unique set of skills and

experiences to the advancement of our complex

agenda.

We are also excited by the theme that you have

proposed for your tenure as President of the General

Assembly, namely, reaffirming the central role of the

United Nations in global governance. It is a theme that

resonates loudly with Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines, and indeed with many of the small and

marginalized States that form a significant part of the

192 members of the General Assembly.

We small States have emerged as some of the

most jealous and zealous guardians of the United

Nations Charter. This vigilance is born of principle and

necessity. The Charter is the document that guarantees

our place in the Assembly as the sovereign equals of

every other country of the world. The United Nations

remains the only venue that affords us both a seat and a

voice in global affairs. To Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines, the United Nations must be the centre of

global governance because it is our only option for

global governance. There are some States that

fortuitously find themselves in the inner sanctums of

the Security Council — and the Group of Eight (G-8),

and the Group of Twenty (G-20) and the Organization

for Economic Cooperation and Development. For

them, the centrality of the United Nations may vary

with the political winds or the shifting sands of great

power intrigue. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has

no such luxury. We cannot take our ball and go home,

to play on other fields and interact in other forums. The

United Nations is all we have. Its centrality in global

governance, for us, is therefore an essential and

indisputable truth.

You assume the leadership of the General

Assembly, Mr. President, at a time when the centrality

of the United Nations role is being challenged as never

before. Various organizations and small groupings of

States, with selective membership and opaque modus

operandi, have coalesced to become global decision-

makers and shapers of our post-Cold War existence.

For our purposes, it is irrelevant whether these

groupings have formed to respond to or to precipitate

the declining effectiveness of the United Nations.

However, the fact is that in the face of global crises of

economy, climate, trade and reform, we have been

tested and we have been found wanting. We face the

real threat of devolving into a mere talk shop, an

amalgam of unwieldy bureaucracies or a toothless

rubber stamp of decisions taken elsewhere. To avoid

such an ignominious fate, we must actively defend our

role and legitimacy as the global centre of international

governance and decision-making. Permit us the

opportunity to offer a few simple suggestions to assist

in achieving this goal.

First, for the concept of global governance to

have meaning and relevance, we must inject some

measure of consistency and predictability into the rules

9 10-55408

that govern our family. Saint Vincent and the

Grenadines is committed to the international rule of

law and the role of the institutions that advance the

rule of law and adjudicate international disputes.

Governance is ineffective if the rich and powerful

among us can place themselves beyond the ambit of

timely compliance with rules and decisions.

In that regard, we cite the case of the ongoing

dispute between the United States and Antigua and

Barbuda on the issue of online gaming, which has

already been adjudicated in Antigua and Barbuda’s

favour by the World Trade Organization (WTO). We

urge those two countries — both strong friends of Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines — to quickly arrive at a

just and equitable resolution of this matter. Our region

was the unfortunate, and no doubt unintended, victim

of WTO rulings that have gutted our once-thriving

banana industry and threatened to stall that crucial

engine of our development. The case against banana

tariffs was successfully brought to the WTO by the

United States, which does not grow a single bunch of

bananas. We are confident that our friends will honour

this relatively minor gaming ruling as we have been

compelled to adapt to previous paradigm-shifting

decisions.

Secondly, the resolutions adopted and decisions

taken by the General Assembly must have some worth

beyond the paper upon which they are printed. In the

dusty archives of our body are hard-fought decisions

and resolutions on Palestine, on human rights and on

the economic crisis. We have made annual near-

unanimous calls for an end to the Cuban embargo.

Then our documents are dutifully filed away to be

ignored by dissenters or resuscitated in future sessions

with, at best, incremental advancement. As long as

General Assembly decisions and resolutions remain a

buffet from which Member States can selectively pick

and choose, our role in governance will continue to be

hamstrung. Member States must take the sovereign

decision to honour the will of the international

community not because they have to but because it is

the right thing to do. If we continue to champion the

decisions with which we agree while disregarding all

others, we are not participating with good faith in the

deliberations of this body and we are doing violence to

the very concept of a community of nations.

Nor should States manipulate the concept of

consensus to make it a virtual veto on United Nations

action. Consensus must always be a central goal, but

never a barrier, to decisive action by the General

Assembly. Necessary, desirable and urgent action

cannot be sacrificed on the altar of consensus.

Democracy demands that, when consensus cannot be

achieved, the recorded will of the majority should be

respected.

Thirdly, we must hold every nation to account for

commitments that have been voluntarily taken. Much

has been written and said about donor fatigue, which is

shorthand for the limited attention span of multilateral

and bilateral donors when confronting systemic

development issues. Much less has been said about

commitment fatigue: the developing world’s

exasperation with oft-made but seldom-honoured

commitments. But make no mistake, fatigue has set in,

as we grow increasingly tired of waiting for the 0.7 per

cent of gross national income promised by the

developed world at the International Conference on

Financing for Development in Monterrey in 2002, the

billions pledged at the G-8 Summit in Gleneagles for

the doubling of aid to Africa, the $10 billion in

ironically titled fast-start funding that was to

materialize this year for climate change adaptation and

the $1.1 trillion promised by the G-20 in April 2009.

To Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, therefore, it

is puzzling how some of our friends and development

partners can suffer from donor fatigue when they have

yet to donate what was originally promised. It is

similarly confounding when, reflective of this

supposed fatigue, donors attach so many conditions

and bureaucratic impediments to unlocking assistance

that it becomes all but inaccessible. Small States like

ours have neither the capacity nor the desire to

establish entire bureaucracies dedicated solely to

navigating the administrative labyrinth of irregular and

unpredictable aid flows. Nor are we interested in the

upkeep of armies of foreign consultants, who seem to

be the primary beneficiaries of some international

development efforts.

Commitment fatigue morphs into anger when

considered in the context of the Haitian people in the

wake of the indescribably devastating earthquake of

12 January. In March this year the United Nations held

an inspiring donors conference, in which over

$10 billion was pledged for Haiti’s recovery from the

earthquake. Today, six months after that conference,

and eight months beyond the earthquake, a pathetically

miniscule percentage of those pledges has actually

been delivered. While less than 20,000 temporary

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shelters have been built to date, over 1.5 million

Haitians are still living in tents. A few days ago, we

learned that women and children living in tent cities

were killed when heavy rains and winds struck Haiti.

No one can claim that this result was unexpected, as

we in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have

been sounding alarms for months about the dangers

inherent in the imminent rainy season. To survive a

catastrophic earthquake only to be killed by rain is an

unfathomable tragedy. The entirely avoidable deaths of

those women and children will remain a stain on the

collective conscience of this body and on our

membership. Talk is cheap, even when it is the heady

talk of billions of dollars. Commitments made must be

commitments kept. We must hold to account those who

repeatedly make empty promises.

Fourthly, we must cede no ground to the creeping

encroachment of non-inclusive, non-transparent and

non-representative groupings. We have no doubt that,

for example, the G-20 has a useful and even essential

role to play in the global economy. There is an

undeniable logic to a small group of the world’s largest

economies, almost all of which are our close friends,

meeting informally to thrash out matters that affect

only their large economies. However, the logic fades

somewhat in the face of a crisis that has spread rapidly

and comprehensively to every corner of the globe.

That is why Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

noted with concern the G-20 statement from Pittsburgh

a year ago, which proclaimed, “We designated the

G-20 to be the premier forum for our international

economic cooperation”. Our esteemed friend and

brother, President Obama of the United States, repeated

these sentiments from this podium a few days ago

when he stated, “we made the Group of 20 the focal

point for international coordination” ().

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines was not

included among the “we” who established this role for

the G-20 in Pittsburg. Indeed, we, like 172 other

Member States, were not admitted to the meeting, we

saw no agenda and we read no minutes of the decisions

that were taken. As dedicated champions of the Charter

of the United Nations, we also note that Articles 1 and

55 of that document designate the United Nations as

the forum for international economic cooperation and

solutions.

Indeed, our caution towards the G-20 can be

found in President Obama’s very endorsement of it. I

shall quote again from his statement of a few days ago.

He said, “because in a world where prosperity is more

diffuse, we must broaden our circle of cooperation to

include emerging economies — economies from every

corner of the globe” (ibid.). We could not agree more.

In the wake of the worst financial crisis since the

Great Depression, 172 economies should not be locked

out of economic discussions, waiting anxiously on the

doorstep of the G-20 for signals and policy shifts that

affect our continued survival. We in the Caribbean

have been disproportionately and devastatingly

affected by the crisis, which we played no role in

creating. Yet we have been forced to rely on friendly

nations as interlocutors on our behalf. We remain

convinced that the deliberations and past decisions of

the G-20, from its misunderstanding of the precarious

vulnerabilities of small, highly-indebted, middle-

income countries to its draconian outlook on offshore

financial services — would have benefited from our

perspective.

We therefore call on the United Nations

membership to give meaning to the words of our

Charter and to re-establish our body as a forum for

meaningful solutions and cooperation on economic

matters. We must reinvigorate the work of the

Economic and Social Council. We must renew the

mandate of the ad hoc working group to decisively

follow up on the issues contained in the Outcome of

the Conference on the World Financial and Economic

Crisis and its Impact on Development (see resolution

63/303, annex).

Good global governance must therefore be

premised on global inclusiveness. This is our fifth

point: no corner of the world should be excluded from

participation in our global family.

In that regard, we once again highlight the case of

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 the

meaningful participation of Taiwan in the United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The interconnectedness of global air travel, and our

shared safety concerns, similarly mandate the

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participation of Taiwan in the International Civil

Aviation Authority. This is not the case of a tiny

non-governmental organization, to be allowed or

denied meaningful participation on some bureaucratic

whim. This is a legitimate and vibrant expression of

the ancient and noble Chinese culture, with a

population 200 times greater than that of Saint Vincent

and the Grenadines.

The Government and people of Taiwan have

advanced a reasonable and responsible policy of

engagement to usher in a new era in cross-Strait

relations, and have an enviable record of development

cooperation and assistance around the world. The

international community can and should encourage and

reward this responsible global citizenship with

meaningful participation in the relevant specialized

agencies.

Similarly, urgent and more inclusive reform in the

membership of the Security Council is the litmus test

of our verbal commitments to governance, reform and

revitalization. There is simply no justification for the

continued exclusion of the entire African continent or

other significant and influential emerging powers from

permanent membership in the Security Council. The

defenders of the status quo may soon find that they are

protecting an increasingly irrelevant and illegitimate

institution.

However, we feel that the Council is too

important to be allowed to whither into obsolescence.

Reform and expansion of the permanent and

non-permanent membership of the Security Council,

including the provision of dedicated non-permanent

membership for small island developing States, is an

imperative that is long past due.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is proud to have

announced its candidacy for a non-permanent seat on

the Security Council for the 2020-2021 term. If

successful, we would be the smallest country ever, by

population, to occupy such a position, and only the

fourth of CARICOM’s 14 United Nations Member

States to assume such a responsibility. Our bid is

premised on the historical exclusion of CARICOM

States and small island developing States from this

critical body, and the value that we believe our

presence and perspective will bring to the Council’s

deliberations.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines makes

miniscule monetary and military contributions to the

United Nations. But our contribution to the

maintenance of international peace and security is

measured in our historical aversion to wars, our culture

of tolerance, peace and plurality and the perspective of

a small State that understands that peace is not always

best achieved with millions of dollars or armed

enforcers, but often with dialogue and small but

meaningful peacebuilding actions. Our contribution is

succinctly captured in our national motto, which,

translated from Latin, reads simply “Peace and

Justice”.

Sixthly, and most important, we must never be

shy to use this institution to operationalize our

commonly held ambitions for a better world and to

tackle the global issues of our day. Too often, we spend

time lowering, rather than rising to meet, the

expectations of a world that is clamouring for our

collective leadership.

Our continued failures to achieve a binding

solution on climate change mitigation and adaptation is

a case in point. In the months since the painful lessons

of the so-called Copenhagen Accord, devastating

floods in Pakistan and heatwaves and fires in Russia

have shown us once again that no nation is immune

from the reach and impact of climate change. But the

vulnerability of large nations to ruinous hurricanes,

floods and fires does not approach the very unique and

specific existential vulnerabilities of small island

developing States. For, while all States are vulnerable

to natural disasters, only small island developing States

are threatened with being wiped off the map entirely

and ceasing to exist.

As such, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is not

interested in the lowering of expectations as we head to

Cancún. The need for a binding and meaningful

agreement on climate change cannot be deferred

indefinitely. We view with disgust the transparent

attempts to measure the financial or political cost of

doing what must be done to save our planet. We are

threatening to destroy our own world, as we

shamelessly squabble over dollars and degrees. If we

fail in this endeavour, history will look most

unfavourably on the narrow, short-term interests that

we placed ahead of our own survival.

In a similar vein, and in the interest of time, Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines echoes and adopts as our

own the proposals enunciated by our CARICOM sister

States for prompt action on the global challenges of

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non-communicable diseases, small arms, narcotics and

transnational crime, the decade-old Doha Development

Round of trade negotiations, international cooperation

in tax matters and concessional assistance and debt

relief for middle-income island States. We cannot allow

narrow ideological agendas to distract us or detract

from the accomplishment of these tasks, upon which

there is broad agreement.

Finally, a crucial component of the overarching

principle of sovereign equality is that of sovereignty

itself. We believe wholeheartedly that, in the words of

the great Caribbean singer and poet Bob Marley,

“every man has a right to decide his own destiny”. We

therefore reject, with equal fervour, any foreign or

outside interference in the democratic processes of

independent States. This is a principle upon which we

are unyielding. In many of our small countries, it takes

only a few minor mercenaries, or ideologically

misguided or misinformed millionaires, to

fundamentally threaten the fabric of our fragile

democracies. Unfortunately, those interlopers are often

aided and abetted by those unpatriotic opportunists

who see sovereignty as a fungible commodity, to be

bartered and traded to the highest nefarious bidder for

short-term political gain.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is populated by

a proud and noble people, with a history of fierce

struggle for freedom and independence. There is a steel

in the psyche of our Caribbean civilization and its

Vincentian component; a steel forged in the fires of

slavery and genocide and beaten on the anvil of

colonialism, exploitation and resistance. Our small size

belies our indomitable spirit. We possess an

independence that undergirds Cuba’s heroic resistance

to an unjust and internationally condemned blockade.

We have a strength that informs the nobility of the

Haitian people’s response to unimaginable tragedy. We

lay claim to a resilience that is etched in our collective

history, and reverberates in the names of our region’s

national heroes, such as Nanny, Garvey, Bussa, Martí,

and Chatoyer, to name but a few. Our democracies can

be neither bought, sold nor intimidated. And our

commitment to the democratic inclusiveness of the

United Nations and the supremacy of its Charter is

similarly unshakeable.

It is against that backdrop, Mr. President, that you

will find Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to be a

strong ally in your efforts to re-establish the central

role of this body in matters of global governance.