Belize, 1998

The election of the Foreign

Minister of Uruguay as President of this General

Assembly is very gratifying to our delegation and we are

sure that his enormous talents and experience will guide

us effectively through this critical session.

We also wish to acknowledge the contribution of his

predecessor for the admirable guidance he provided the

Assembly over the past year.

The inspired work of the Secretary-General,

Mr. Kofi Annan, has brought new life and meaning to the

United Nations, and we are grateful to him for his

dedication to the task of modernizing the Organization.

The commitment to ongoing reform and renewal in this

Organization and the new vision and energy injected by

the Secretary-General have resulted in a revitalized

institution that offers new hope.

In like fashion, the Belizean people demonstrated

their political maturity when they turned out in record

numbers a month ago to elect a Government committed

to setting a new and higher standard of governance to

take them through to the next millennium. We regard the

overwhelming mandate given to our new Administration

as a directive to transform our institutions and political

culture into more democratic, open and just instruments

for the welfare of all our people.

The work of reform and renewal is never-ending.

With regard to the reform of the Security Council, while

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we agree that this is urgently needed, we wish to urge all

Members to make every effort to ensure that the Working

Group produces a final package for the consideration of this

Assembly.

It is to the credit of the United Nations that many

more people in today’s world benefit from a culture of

democracy and the rule of law. The United Nations has set

the pace in providing the support necessary to build and

consolidate the institutions of democracy. Central to this

achievement has been the fact that the economic, cultural

and social aspects which underpin democracy have not been

ignored.

Perhaps the most powerful instrument for promoting

democracy has been the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, whose fiftieth anniversary we celebrate this year.

This basic document has been fortified over the years by

other commitments relating to second-, third- and fourth-

generation rights and to the rights of children, women and

indigenous people. Taken together, these commitments

constitute a challenge which we are all called upon to live

up to.

Belize is committed to pursue policies that lead to an

economic and social climate which nurtures the

development of our children and offers real opportunities to

our young people to be creative and productive and to

develop self-respect, self-reliance and a sense of belonging

to a community.

Our Government recognizes the value of education in

promoting gender awareness and improving the economic

situation of women, upon whom poverty casts a

disproportionate burden. Our policies for greater

employment, education in non-traditional areas and

microcredit facilities will all be driven by gender awareness

to foster greater access and opportunity for Belizean

women.

The International Decade of the World’s Indigenous

People has served to raise public consciousness of the

plight of peoples who for centuries have been

disadvantaged, exploited and marginalized. Our Government

takes seriously its duty to tangibly improve the quality of

daily life for indigenous people and will engage in

respectful negotiations with them in regard to their concerns

about land, natural resources and other matters.

The United Nations decolonization programme has

been hailed as one of the most successful of the

Organization’s undertakings over the past decades.

However, enjoyment of the fundamental right to self-

determination is still denied to the people of Western

Sahara and East Timor. Belize will continue to support

the work of the Special Committee on Decolonization to

ensure that these people are afforded opportunities for the

full expression of their will.

This year presents us with a telling irony: even as

we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of

Human Rights, we are painfully reminded that it is also

the fiftieth anniversary of the dispossession of the

Palestinian people. We continue to press for the full

recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to self-

determination and to establish an independent State,

respecting the independence and security of all the States

in that region.

We are likewise concerned about the fact that a

sister Caribbean nation continues to suffer from a policy

designed to isolate it, even as it continues to be the target

of terrorist attacks. The most fundamental human rights

of the Cuban people are thus being violated, and we urge

all concerned to work together with us in Caribbean

Community (CARICOM) and in the Association of

Caribbean States to bring an end to this situation.

Belize supports the efforts of the Republic of China

on Taiwan to participate fully in the work of this

Organization and its organs, as well as in international

financial and developmental institutions. The time has

come for us to respect the sovereign will of that

population, in conformity with the universalist principles

of our Charter.

We all know that it is meaningless to talk about

human rights without addressing the fact that millions of

people are falling into poverty even as incredible

advances in science and technology make possible the

eradication of poverty. This tells us that something is

terribly wrong about the way the world economy is

managed. If some resisted this conclusion before, the

instability of the present world financial markets is surely

proof enough that unbridled globalization can have

serious negative effects on developing and developed

countries alike.

We must move resolutely to create a new and fair

management regime for the world economy. We support

the proposed United Nations conference on financing for

development, which should include consideration of social

factors and should seek to bring about comprehensive

reform of the international financial system.

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I speak for a country which has seen its prospective

base of prosperity whittled away over the past few years by

misguided economic policies, predatory politics and

financial mismanagement. Our Administration has inherited

a country where some 40 per cent of the people live in

poverty, where almost half of its children do not complete

primary school and where preventable diseases and infant

mortality are on the rise. We have committed ourselves to

an intensive integrated programme aimed at the elimination

of poverty, based on growth economics that will restore

investor confidence, stimulate economic activity and

employment and bring about more revenue for

development.

But the stark reality is that no matter how hard we try,

we cannot do it alone. We are, therefore, especially

encouraged by the words of the British Prime Minister,

Tony Blair, spoken to this Assembly a week ago, at the 7th

meeting:

“If we want to eradicate poverty, we also need to

ensure that the least developed countries benefit from

this global economy ... [by] letting them sell their

goods without imposing tariffs on them ... actively

helping them benefit from globalization ... [and]

rejecting any false allure of protectionism ... We also

have to ease the debt burden on the poorest countries.”

In this connection, we emphatically endorse the call of

the Durban Summit of Non-Aligned Countries for new

concessional financial flows to debtor developing countries,

in addition to debt cancellation and other debt relief

measures.

We are also witnessing progressive decreases in the

amount of aid flowing to the developing countries. And too

often we are victims of a trend in international agencies of

spending millions on endless studies and consultancies,

when what we need are concrete actions to solve the

problems we long ago identified.

We certainly welcome the work being done by the

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the

protection of our environment. Our population depends on

its forests and clean seas to survive. The pristine condition

of our natural resources affords us a competitive advantage

as a prime destination for eco-tourism, and their rational

management and use is the only guarantee for our

sustainable development.

Yet we have witnessed the wanton destruction of

forests by transnational corporations and the depletion of

marine life by galloping consumption that is heedless of

the fragility of our ecosystems and of the social

consequences. The 1998 Human Development Report

concludes that gross inequalities in consumption have

prevented over 1 billion people from meeting their basic

consumption requirements, a conclusion which led the

report’s coordinator, Richard Jolly, to call for patterns of

consumption that are socially responsible, are not

destructive of the well-being of others, are sustainable and

do not degrade the natural resource base and environment

for present and future generations.

As if the uneven effects of the globalization of the

world economy were not enough to try us, we are faced

with the even more destructive phenomenon of the

globalization of crime and mindless violence, especially

as manifested through the increased use of and trafficking

in drugs and money-laundering. My country is in the

unfortunate position of being along the way of the transit

trade to the country of greatest demand, and we daily

suffer the consequences in the ruined lives of our youth

and the increased incidence of crime. We are doing

everything possible to fight this scourge of mankind and

will cooperate fully with all regional and international

efforts aimed at the effective curbing of the drug trade

and its insidiously corrupting effects on our institutions

and way of life.

A world free of the curse of drugs, liberated from

the affliction of poverty, blessed with freedom and

democracy where people’s human right to a full and

dignified life can be pursued in peace: this, surely, is

what we are all striving for. Belize pledges to play its

part in that glorious struggle, even as we ask the United

Nations to continue to support the independence and

territorial integrity of our nation, whose people, like

human beings everywhere, seek only to assert their

absolute and inalienable right to human dignity.

In this search, we all need a vital and effective

United Nations — this unique expression of our common

humanity.