Vanuatu, 2008

It gives me extreme pleasure

to extend my congratulations to Mr. Miguel d’Escoto

Brockmann on his election. I read with keen interest

the United Nations news report of His Excellency’s

election as President of the General Assembly at its

sixty-third session. I note well what he said on 4 June

this year, following his election (see A/62/PV.99): for

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the United Nations to be more effective, it must be

what its name implies — an organization of nations

united, not nations dispersed or, even worse,

subjugated. Our nations must be united in the struggle

to democratize the United Nations, united in their

determination to preserve the world for the sake of

present and future generations from the scourge of war

among Member States, and from acts of aggression.

I congratulate him and the Vice-Presidents on

their election to lead the General Assembly. I believe

that Mr. d’Escoto Brockmann’s election, as a leader in

his own right, as a Christian priest and as a God-

fearing servant of the Republic of Nicaragua, to the

presidency of the Assembly is timely in these

challenging days.

May I also extend my appreciation to His

Excellency Mr. Srgjan Kerim for his successful leadership

of the General Assembly at its sixty-second session.

I am deeply honoured to be the first President of

the Republic of Vanuatu to address this Assembly,

since it is the first time that a Head of State of Vanuatu

has attended the United Nations since our admission to

the Organization in 1981. In this respect, please allow

me also to extend my congratulations to the Secretary-

General on his appointment and on his keen

commitment to revitalizing the United Nations.

I am humbled and privileged to stand before the

sixty-third General Assembly to share some words and

thoughts on behalf of the people of Vanuatu. Twenty-

seven years ago, on 15 September 1981, Vanuatu

became the 155th Member of the United Nations

family. On that same day, our first and longest-serving

Prime Minister and the founding father of our nation —

the late doctor, chief and priest, Father Walter Hadye

Lini — spoke to the Assembly in the name of the

people of Vanuatu, with pride, humility and gratitude.

He acknowledged the support of the United Nations

through the active concern and assistance of the

Special Committee of 24 on Decolonization.

Father Lini said that, because of that, the United

Nations has a very special place in the affections and

esteem of the people of Vanuatu. He also expressed our

nation’s debt of gratitude to a great number of the

countries represented in the Assembly, which assisted

our nation’s difficult progress towards independence.

In the same spirit I call on the United Nations to

continue to pursue the interests of those countries and

peoples that continue their struggle for freedom and to

win a permanent place among us. The United Nations

is the Organization of the family of independent

sovereign nations and peoples of the world. It must

stand firm to promote peace, security and equality

throughout the world.

The world’s majority has accepted the

phenomenon of climate change as a reality and no

longer an academic theory. From Kyoto to Bali, that

observation has been consistently repeated.

The increase in the occurrence of natural

calamities and their destructive powers are a stark

reminder of the increasing vulnerability of today’s

global environment, where nature respects no

boundaries. The severe impact of natural disasters will

constantly remind us of the harsh experiences and

critical development challenges confronting many of

the island countries.

I join my colleagues from the Pacific region in

our call to the international community for more

concerted action in addressing climate change as a

security issue. Unless the present trend of global

warming is reversed through sincere and concerted

international action through the United Nations

framework, some of our Pacific colleague nations will

be submerged. If such a tragedy should happen, then

the United Nations and its members will have failed in

their first and most basic duty to a Member and its

innocent people, as stated in Article 1 of the Charter of

the United Nations.

In 2003, Vanuatu’s economic growth rebounded

to 3.2 per cent from -2.6 per cent and -7.4 per cent in

2001 and 2002 respectively. Continued growth was

recorded in 2004 and 2005, with a published growth

rate of 5.5 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively,

driven mainly by growth in the service sector and, in

particular, tourism.

As members know, a dimension of the least

developed country (LDC) status is the tri-annual

review by the Economic and Social Council of the list

of least developed countries with the view to

recommending countries for graduation out of or

inclusion in the group of least developed countries. It

is in that regard that I wish to bring to the attention of

our Assembly to an area of serious concern to the

Governments of Vanuatu and of several other small

island developing States of the Pacific.

7 08-52272

It is our view that the current graduation rule

poses a systemic issue that could easily be resolved if

Member States were willing to recognize its

importance to countries such as Vanuatu and other

Pacific nations. The decision to graduate a country

from LDC status, in our view, must imply the

recognition of undisputed sustainable socio-economic

progress in the country. The criteria the United Nations

relies on to arrive at a decision are by and large sound

and fair, and I will briefly recall them: first, one

expects the country to enjoy a higher income per

capita; secondly, the country’s human assets or human

capital is expected to have made significant progress;

and thirdly, the country ought to have achieved greater

resilience to external shocks — in other words, to have

become less vulnerable economically.

A country is recommended for graduation if it

meets any two of those three criteria. In other words,

the graduation rule implicitly postulates that all three

criteria are equally important. If a country, no matter

how vulnerable, has risen to a level of per capita

income above $900, which is not difficult in a small

State, and enjoys improved human capital, it is

assumed that that country has become structurally

stronger and is now ready to pursue its development

efforts without LDC treatment.

Vanuatu and other Pacific countries believe it is

critical to recognize the vulnerability criterion as the

paramount criterion and accordingly give it

prominence. It is indeed the only criterion that

ultimately matters to small and vulnerable States such

as ours.

Vanuatu and other Pacific countries are deemed

eligible for graduation on the basis of their improved

per capita income and improved human assets. They

remain among the most vulnerable countries in the

world, both economically and environmentally, and

that must be recognized by the United Nations. Our

countries may graduate from LDC status because they

have achieved a higher per capita income performance,

even though the sustainability of that income is

constantly challenged by the high vulnerability of

island economies to shocks such as frequent cyclones,

earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and sea-level rise.

The recent hurricanes in this part of the world

remind us of the destructive impact that such natural

phenomena have on the development process of island

countries and LDCs. Members may be aware that the

“island paradox” — when relative prosperity

overshadows high vulnerability — continues to be

disregarded, despite the repeated call for a reform of

the graduation rule that would make low vulnerability

a sine qua non or compulsory criterion.

This is not the first time that Vanuatu, in

addressing the Assembly, has called on the United

Nations to reform the way least developed countries

are identified. Some 11 years ago, in 1997, a former

Prime Minister called for an urgent review of the LDC

graduation criteria, which brought the United Nations

to introduce a vulnerability criterion, a fair and sound

move on the part of the Organization.

I reiterate Vanuatu’s plea for a reform of the

graduation rule and wish to point out that the reform

we are calling for is a mild and reasonable one, one

that could easily be adopted by the Economic and

Social Council and the General Assembly without

altering the main components of the established

methodology. We believe the time has come for the

United Nations to come full circle by making the same

criterion a superior one, so that no highly vulnerable

country is forcibly reclassified and bound to lose the

level of concessionary support of which it remains in

need. Such a reform would do justice to countries that

have not achieved the implied structural progress.

We are also urging experts from the Committee

for Development Policy to seriously consider the merit

of undertaking in-country visits to assess first-hand the

development experiences of affected countries rather

than making conclusions on statistical indicators that

are anomalous and theoretical.

In 2004, the Government of Vanuatu established

its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) National

Committee, which adopted a plan of action to

implement the MDGs. In its first report, in 2005, the

MDG National Committee concluded that Vanuatu’s

outlook for the achievement of the MDGs or their

respective targets was poor to fair. That can be

attributed to poor linkages to Government priorities

and inadequate allocation of resources to implement

the plan of action.

Nevertheless, we are pleased to report that in

collaboration with the United Nations Development

Programme, Vanuatu is endeavouring to put in place

mechanisms to operationalize its sector strategies by

identifying key issues and the required interventions to

address them, and defining the coverage of

08-52272 8

interventions and their costing. We believe that, if we

succeed in doing that, we will be able to accelerate

progress on the MDGs and that, come 2015, Vanuatu

will be able to provide a more positive report to the

Assembly.

At the Millennium Summit, the then Prime

Minister of Vanuatu, The Honourable Barak Sope

Maautamate, called on the United Nations to review

the legality of the United Nations action in 1962 to

endorse the New York Agreement to administer the

so-called Act of Free Choice over West Papua.

The Charter of the United Nations espouses the

principles that continue to guide the Organization’s

efforts in the process of self-determination. That

manifestation calls for recognition and respect for the

fundamental and inalienable rights of peoples and

territories still under colonial rule to determine their

future. We cannot champion democracy if the United

Nations continues to hang this blanket of silence over

the case of West Papua, in which the United Nations

itself takes part.

An issue of extreme national importance is the

question of submissions to the United Nations on the

extension of continental shelves. As with some other

smaller nations, technical capacity constraints and

financial resources have inhibited our progress on

submissions, and therefore we are requesting that the

United Nations consider extending the deadline for

submissions to enable countries like Vanuatu to

participate fully in the process. We call for the

understanding of our development partners and urge

them to consider providing funding for that important

exercise.

A side issue to the question of the extension of

continental shelves in relation to Vanuatu is that there

is a dispute between Vanuatu and the French Republic,

the former colonial authority, concerning our

continental shelves to the south of the nation.

On the question of reforms at the United Nations,

we believe that, in order to make the Organization truly

democratic, reforms are essential to make the Security

Council more representative of the membership as a

whole. In that respect, we believe that Japan and India

deserve permanent membership.

At this critical moment of global crisis, I recall

the aphorism underpinning the foundations of the

United Nations. It is taken from the book of the great

prophet Micah and is engraved on the walls of United

Nations Headquarters:

“They shall beat their swords into

ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more” (The Holy

Bible, Micah, 4:3).

It is no coincidence that the theme for this

Assembly is a much clearer manifestation of those

prophetic words, which the United Nations has

neglected over the years. As one of the smallest

Members of the United Nations family of nations,

Vanuatu reaffirms its commitment to building global

peace and security. We also remain committed to

supporting United Nations peacekeeping missions as

our modest contribution to that worthy cause.

Finally, we welcome 2009 as the International

Year of Reconciliation. We all hope and pray that it

will be a time for real compromises and political

goodwill. We encourage all members of our family of

nations to approach 2009 with open hearts. If we are to

turn the tide of tension and animosity, we must have

the courage to reconcile our differences and come

together in those dimensions that will enhance this

noble Organization’s role in peacebuilding and

development.

In closing, I would like to express the

Government of Vanuatu’s gratitude to all our

development partners who have generously contributed

to Vanuatu’s development efforts. In particular, we

wish to thank Australia, China, the European Union,

New Zealand, Japan, the United States of America and

France. We would also like to acknowledge the support

of other partners, including India, Turkey, South Korea,

Malaysia, Indonesia and Canada, as well as such

multilateral institutions as the World Bank and the

Asian Development Bank, and other United Nations

agencies.

Mr. Baugh (Jamaica), Vice-President, took the

Chair.

We are living in perilous times. In our Father’s

hands were we created, and to the hands of the leaders

of the world He has entrusted the responsibility to

ensure a world safe and just for all His peoples and

children. The world’s destiny is in our hands. That

must be our inspiration.

9 08-52272

May God bless the United Nations. May God

bless the sixty-third session of the General Assembly.

May God bless us all.