Antigua and Barbuda, 2004

I stand

before the General Assembly of the United Nations

with an equal measure of pride and humility.

Of the more than 190 nations that make up the

United Nations, Antigua and Barbuda is among the

smallest in population and land mass. In the face of

these strikingly modest statistics, my humility in

standing at this renowned and universally respected

podium will be readily understood. The fact that

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Antigua and Barbuda is accorded the privilege to address

the United Nations today is obvious cause for pride.

On a personal note, I have just completed my first

six months as Prime Minister in the first term of the

party that was elected to govern Antigua and Barbuda

on 23 March of this year. It is, therefore, a particular

pleasure and a special personal privilege for me to be

afforded this opportunity to take the podium at the

fifty-ninth session of the General Assembly.

I take this opportunity to express my appreciation

to the Secretary-General for the kind sentiments he

graciously extended on the formation of my

Government. Considering that a single party had ruled

Antigua and Barbuda throughout the life of our 23-year

old nation, and for some considerable time prior to

that, my leadership and my Government are still in a

tender state of infancy. I therefore trust that, should I

be guilty of any lapse in protocol during my remarks,

you will blame it on my innocence.

The removal of a long-entrenched Government

makes 2004 a year of dramatic change and intimidating

challenge for Antigua and Barbuda. The United

Nations human development index ranks Antigua and

Barbuda in the high development scale. By virtue of

our per-capita income, Antigua and Barbuda is

designated a middle-income country.

Though it is self-evident that all countries are not

created equal, it is a fundamental purpose of the United

Nations to ensure a level playing field in the arena in

which small as well as large nations of the world

engage one another. I say this despite overwhelming

empirical evidence that size and might often come into

play without subtlety, without apology and sometimes

without sufficiently vigorous challenge in the affairs of

the United Nations.

The structure of the Security Council dramatizes

the reality that one nation, one vote, still has its

limitations. In this context, we might be tempted to

accept, as Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipul asserts in the

opening line of his book, A Bend in the River: “The

world is what it is”. I submit that the overarching

mission of the United Nations is to defy the status quo

and to work unrelentingly to transform the world from

what it is into what it can be. The logical and

particularly relevant concomitance to all of this is that

a fundamental function of the United Nations is to

assist small Member States like Antigua and Barbuda

to be all that we can be. We recognize that the United

Nations has been making every conceivable effort to

meet this mandate, most notably so under the

stewardship of our indomitable Secretary-General, His

Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan.

Not surprisingly, small societies like those of the

English-speaking Caribbean have become casualties,

not beneficiaries, of globalization and of the new world

economic order. The United Nations acknowledged this

in the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration

concedes that, while globalization offers great

opportunities, its benefits are very unevenly shared,

while its costs are unevenly distributed. It recognized

that developing countries and countries with economies

in transition face special difficulties in responding to

the challenges of globalization.

The Millennium Declaration defined the need for

policies and measures at the global level that correspond

to the needs of developing countries and economies in

transition and that are formulated and implemented

with their effective participation. It recognized a

collective responsibility to uphold the principles of

human dignity, equality and equity at the global level.

It affirmed a determination to deal comprehensively

and effectively with the debt problems of low and

middle-income developing countries through various

national and international measures designed to make

their debt sustainable in the long term.

Still, the reality confronts us that the views of all

other United Nations Member States are outweighed by

those of the five permanent members of the Security

Council.

Moreover, the world saw, not all that long ago,

effective marginalization of the United Nations in

defiance of rational concerns, strongly expressed, of

the general membership of the United Nations. I have

no desire to be trampled underfoot by the elephants

engaged in the historic battle that raged in this forum

before it moved to its still active theatre in the Middle

East earlier this year. I am, however, compelled to

wonder by what process the United Nations appears to

have ruled out a negotiated resolution of the ongoing

war in Iraq as an option.

It is lamentable that, in meeting the unique needs

of vulnerable small States and microeconomies, the

United Nations is routinely sidelined in international

trading relationships and development processes. The

United Nations is not recognized as a key catalyst in

defining the world economic order and international

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trading arrangements in the twenty-first century. That

agenda is understood to be directed by entities such as

the World Trade Organization, the Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the

Financial Action Task Force, the International

Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Two of those

organizations are assemblies of a small number of

wealthy nations that do not necessarily attach adequate

priority to the vulnerability of small States and

economies in transition.

We are not all convinced that those organizations,

whose decisions can well determine the destiny of

small States like Antigua and Barbuda — and the now

desolate Grenada and Haiti — are sufficiently responsive

to the special needs of small Caribbean States.

Indeed, the instances in which small countries of

the Caribbean have been targets of the OECD and the

mighty United States are vivid in our consciousness.

Super Power intervention in traditional arrangements

between Europe and the Caribbean for bananas and

sugar has been no less devastating, and it has certainly

been farther reaching than Hurricane Ivan’s savage

demolition of Grenada. The OECD offensive against

what were termed “harmful tax jurisdictions”,

manifestly discriminated against international financial

centres in the Caribbean. Our responses to this

challenge were responsible and effective.

We would like to think that the English-speaking

Caribbean countries are model nations in the family of

man. We represent a zone of peace in a world shattered

by internecine and international wars. We maintain

exemplary parliamentary democracies. With a few sad

exceptions, we in the Caribbean change our

Governments by the ballot, and by no other means.

Though we are small, we are overwhelming in

human worth. The Commonwealth Caribbean gave

Bob Marley to the world. We gave Nobel Laureates

Arthur Lewis, Derek Walcott and Vidia Naipaul to the

world. We have given our music to the world in the

form of reggae, calypso, soca and steel band. We have

enriched the cuisines of the world. We have given the

fastest female track athletes to the world. We have

contributed to the standard of academia around the

world through the export of many of our finest minds.

We have been blessed with the most desirable

beaches in the world, and we welcome the world to

share our beaches and our incomparable natural

environment. Our islands represent green points of

light on a globe convulsed by callous attitudes to the

environment among certain developed countries, and

among countries in transition, as well.

Small though our nations may be, we are mighty

warriors in strong and effective alliances with the

United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and other

nations in the war against the international narcotics

syndicates.

I deem it my country’s civic responsibility to

remind this body of our duty to fulfil our role as

outlined in the preamble of the United Nations Charter,

to be the central area for harmonizing the actions of

nations in achieving international cooperation in

solving issues of a humanitarian nature.

Today two nations within the Caribbean region,

Grenada and Haiti, have been devastated by natural

disaster. Some 90 per cent of Grenada’s housing stock

has been destroyed. Civil society is in deep trauma.

The economy has been wiped out and the Government

is completely immobilized. This means that there is an

ineffective authority.

More than 1,000 persons have just died in Haiti

in the wake of Hurricane Jean, with the figure expected

to double in days. The dead are being buried in mass

graves to prevent a health epidemic. Homes and crops

have been destroyed, with floodwater lines on

buildings measuring up to 10 feet high. Survivors in

Haiti’s third largest city, Gonaives, are hungry, thirsty and

increasingly desperate. United Nations peacekeepers and

aid agencies are stretched to the limit.

Grenada and Haiti are now suffering a condition

comparable to a massive military bombardment.

Against this backdrop, I urge the United Nations —

every nation, large and small — to intervene in those

two Caribbean countries devastated by recent

hurricanes. They are certifiable disaster areas.

An adequate response from all of us, and even

more so from the developed countries, to the plight of

Grenada and Haiti would be a quantum leap to recovery

and reconstruction for them and the best option to ease

the suffering of their battered and distressed people. We

must act quickly. We must act now.

If I may be so bold, I would like to say that my

country, Antigua and Barbuda, is a veritable United

Nations in microcosm. It has become home to a

relatively larger proportion of immigrants from

Caribbean countries than has any other Caribbean

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State. On any day, on any street in St. John’s, Antigua

and Barbuda’s capital, you will hear virtually every

Caribbean inflection, English and Hispanic. You will

also hear accents from China, Syria, Lebanon, Europe

and Africa. Indeed, we are celebrating Antigua and

Barbuda’s unique diversity with the construction of a

Caribbean Festival Park that will be a permanent

showcase and celebration of the essence of the entire

Caribbean region.

I have chosen to use this opportunity to urge the

United Nations General Assembly to petition powerful

nations and agencies of the world for a review of the

policy of penalizing small States that achieve a

measure of success in the process of guiding their

economies to growth and their citizens to better lives.

Is it not ironic that, only in the area of development

funding, achieving “graduation” is rewarded with

punishment? Development funding dries up; technical

aid is more difficult to access when small States begin

to show signs of prosperity. The effect of this is really

to pull out the carpet from under small States the

moment they stand up. Small developing States will

never be insulated against external shocks.

The international security measures mandated by

America’s post-9/11 Patriot Act have inflicted an

inordinate financial burden on the small economies of

Caribbean member States. We have been compelled to

finance security infrastructure for which we had no

provisions. With intensified security concerns in the

United States, Caribbean countries are confronted with

increasing waves of deported felons from the United

States. This carries the risk that, among these

deportees, there might well be prime recruits for

organized crime and narco-trafficking. Caribbean

societies are simply not equipped to respond

effectively to those challenges.

Among member countries of the Organization of

Eastern Caribbean States, Antigua and Barbuda is

considered to be relatively affluent. The grim reality is

that Antigua and Barbuda is confronted with an

economy that has been experiencing sustained decline.

The country has been accumulating crippling debt. We

are uncovering disturbing levels of unemployment,

particularly among our young people. This can well place

a significant proportion of our youth at serious risk.

Many of these concerns are common to small

States of the Caribbean. Policies and rules are made in

organizations controlled by the powerful few. This

brings us to the contradiction that, as small States strive to

be all that we can be, we are penalized for our success.

Policy makers in the developed world, donor

countries and multilateral donor agencies should not

take our natural and physical attributes as barometers

of our economic and social development.

In this age of globalization, where the emphasis

is on bigness, being small is definitely a disadvantage

of major magnitude. Small economies cannot easily

diversify production. Jobs are concentrated in a limited

number of industries — namely, agriculture, tourism

and services. Tragically, we are now encountering a

situation where our unemployed young people are

easily induced into the drug trade.

Given that the Caribbean region is a recognized

drug trans-shipment point between Latin America and

the United States and Europe, the attraction of easy

money and effective marketing to youth by drug dons

make this job opportunity very attractive to the youth

of the Caribbean region.

My party, the United Progressive Party, campaigned

on a platform of transparency, accountability and

integrity in every functional aspect of government, and

throughout the society as a whole. As a demonstration of

my Government’s seriousness in combating corruption, I

tabled anticorruption and integrity legislation in our

Parliament during our first six months in Government.

My Government and the majority of the people of

Antigua and Barbuda are committed to every option

that will support our dedication to good governance in

our country.

I challenge the United Nations to stand by the

tenets of the Millennium Declaration, which call for

equity among nations, large and small. There is a

compelling reason for this call.

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are

currently engaged in three separate sets of negotiations

that will seriously impact the economies of our

countries and the welfare of our people. To date, there

have been no concessions afforded to the special needs

of small States in our negotiations with the European

Union, on the Free Trade Area of the Americas and

with the World Trade Organization. Not everyone

engaged in these negotiations appears to be in

sympathy with the fundamental goals of the United

Nations Millennium Declaration.

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If affirmative action is not to be proffered to

Antigua and Barbuda and other small States of the

Caribbean region and the world, let us at least be

spared punitive suspension of whatever special

facilities enabled us to move our economies forward.

Antigua and Barbuda thanks this General

Assembly for the opportunity to propose that, in

keeping with the letter and the spirit of the United

Nations Millennium Declaration, small States, such as

those of CARICOM, should be afforded the promised

opportunity to be beneficiaries of globalization and the

new world economic architecture, instead of leaving us

casualties, as we must now be accurately described.