Belize, 2004

My delegation congratulates

you, Sir, on your assumption of the presidency. We

have every confidence that the fifty-ninth session of

the General Assembly will enjoy success under your

leadership. We would also like to acknowledge the

good work of your predecessor, Minister Julian Hunte

of Saint Lucia, whose efforts led to a new level of

enthusiasm within the General Assembly. In addition,

we recognize the tireless efforts of our Secretary-

General.

Events of the past months impel us to ponder the

importance of our Organization in the never-ending

struggle to secure a peaceful and dignified future for

the world. The United Nations was born to promote

those values that would unite humanity — values of

freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for

peoples and for nature — and thus transcend the

differences of the world’s cultures. And so it is these

United Nations large and small come to find, in the

words of our Secretary-General, common solutions to

common problems. And so it is that we the Member

States must ensure that the United Nations is effective

for our ends.

In Belize we understand that and remain a

legitimate partner in promoting principles such as

peace, the right to self-determination, social justice,

respect for human dignity, the rule of law, the right to

development and the protection of our environment.

We stand for those principles not just because of

the international instruments we signed, but because

they represent the best way to end poverty, illiteracy,

hate and ignorance, to stop the spread of terrorism and

to bring an end to inequality, oppression, and injustice.

For the overwhelming majority in the United

Nations, the solution to many of the world’s problems

can be found in the right of every nation to achieve

meaningful sustainable development. Accomplishing

such goals is not easy, but neither is it impossible.

Challenges to development abound — challenges

that make us inherently vulnerable — and we as small

States call on the international community to take into

account our vulnerability so as to ensure that policies

and measures relating to development correspond to

our social needs.

As a member of the Alliance of Small Island

States, my country underscores the importance of

addressing the special needs of such States through the

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implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action

for the Sustainable Development of Small Island

Developing States. An international meeting, which

will conduct a full and comprehensive 10-year review

of the Barbados Programme of Action, will be held in

Mauritius in January 2005, providing an opportunity

for the international community, especially the bilateral

and multilateral donors, to renew their commitments to

the Barbados Programme of Action.

Of special importance to us all is the issue of

climate change, and we must not flinch from taking

effective measures to address that problem; those who

seek to block effective solutions are creating conditions

for insecurity that would dwarf the threats currently

posed by terrorism.

In that context, we remind Member States of the

proposals first submitted to the General Assembly in

1999 to designate the Caribbean Sea as a “special area”

within the context of sustainable development. The

recent spate of hurricanes that have devastated our

region — especially Grenada and Haiti — and which

call for major efforts from the international community

to mitigate our losses, reinforce our contention that our

Caribbean Sea is as fragile as it is vulnerable and as

fragile as it is valuable to our social and economic

well-being, indeed to our very survival.

We call upon the Assembly to support us in our

just efforts to achieve the designation of the Caribbean

Sea as a “special area” during this session of the

General Assembly.

In addition to addressing the special needs of

developing countries, development policies must,

above all, be people centred. Coherent policies,

sustainable partnerships, sustained support and

ownership are critical factors for development. That

has never been as clear as in the case of Haiti. In the

words of our Secretary-General,

“the international community failed to develop ...

sustainable partnerships with the Haitian society

at all levels. The Haitian people were

insufficiently involved in the development of

policies that could move the country forward. ...

Financial aid did not bear fruit to the extent

expected because it was at times ill-targeted ...”

(S/2004/300, para. 6).

With the lesson thus learned, we have an opportunity to

influence a positive wave of development for the

people of Haiti.

In Haiti, we also have a clear example of the

inextricable linkage between development and security.

There, threats and challenges to peace and security

necessitate an integrated approach. My country hopes

that the Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on

Threats, Challenges and Change will embrace that

approach in its findings and recommendations.

While we condemn terrorism in all its forms and

manifestations and have joined international efforts in

the fight against terrorism, we are mindful that our

actions for the preservation of peace and security must

be consistent with international law and must be

respectful of the human rights and freedoms of all

peoples without discrimination, foremost among which

must be the right to self-determination.

For that reason, we shall remain strong

proponents of the right of the Palestinian people to a

secure and viable State. It is also for the same reason

that we support the Taiwanese people’s right for

representation before the United Nations.

But what United Nations? Last year our Minister

of Foreign Affairs confined his remarks to an urgent

call for the United Nations to recall and enforce the

principles on which it was founded, basic among which

is the principle of multilateralism — the most

fundamental conviction that led to its creation: that

States, on the basis of sovereign equality, conjointly

take decisions that secure a peaceful and prosperous

world for all.

Tragically, events since then have only

exacerbated the problem whereby powerful States take

the law into their own hands and act in total disregard

of the principles of the United Nations Charter and

indeed of international law. If we do not act together to

reverse that evil trend, we are walking — nay,

running — on the road to perdition.

Yes, we support the call of India, Japan, Brazil

and Germany for a permanent seat on the Security

Council, if there must be permanent seats. And to this

we would add the equally legitimate right of African

and Arab nations to be so represented. But the reforms

must go deeper. Why should any one country have a

veto power? Why should millions of the wretched of

the earth be left without an effective voice and be

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powerless to change the world to a more just one? And

why do we, who so effectively acted to end apartheid

in South Africa, tolerate the equally opprobrious

apartheid practised by the State of Israel against

Palestinians in their own land, murdering and

oppressing them without mercy and with impunity?

The year 2004 has been declared the International

Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and

its Abolition. Slavery was based on an exacerbated

racism; so let us honour that struggle by implementing

the Final Declaration of the World Conference against

Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related

Intolerance, held in South Africa in 2001.

Likewise we continue to support United Nations

efforts to bring greater visibility to the problems of the

world’s indigenous people during the International

Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. As the

International Decade draws to a close later this year we

call for a second decade to continue the work achieved

during the first decade and so to carry out and

complete the work that has not yet been completed.

In our own community of small States, we face

the most serious threat to our peoples’ security, caused

by the proliferation of small arms and light weapons

that claim the lives of so many of our people. These

arms come from countries that must be called upon to

live up to their responsibility to cooperate with us to

stem the flow of these lethal weapons and to enter into

legally binding agreements for the effective

registration and monitoring of transfers of these

weapons of widespread destruction. An international

convention to achieve this must be put on our agenda

urgently.

Another major issue for our region is the

continued attempt to isolate the sister Caribbean

Republic of Cuba and to strengthen an economic

embargo that has been condemned repeatedly by the

overwhelming majority of this Assembly. The entire

Caribbean Community is at one in its resolve to engage

Cuba in a constructive and mutually beneficial

partnership that brings concrete benefits to all our

peoples. The Cuban Government has, by its actions,

manifested its determination to fight against terrorism

in all its forms and from every quarter. For us in the

Caribbean, any call for “regime change” imposed from

outside violates every principle upon which the United

Nations Organization stands.

Belize has its own cause to promote. The United

Nations is well aware of the age-old and unfounded

territorial claim of Guatemala, and it has clearly and

unanimously called for respect for the sovereignty and

territorial integrity of Belize. We have endeavoured to

negotiate a just solution to this claim for decades, and

in the last four years we have been engaged in a

process under the auspices of the Organization of

American States (OAS), aimed at bringing this

anachronistic claim to an end. Agreements have been

made and broken, in the context of a Guatemala that

has proclaimed its desire to find a peaceful solution to

the dispute. Still no solution is in sight. The worst

scenario is for the claim to linger unresolved, thus

affecting the security and development of our people.

We welcome the remarks of President Berger of

Guatemala before this Assembly on 22 September,

when he advocated a final settlement of the dispute,

along with cooperation between our two countries to

improve the socio-economic conditions of both our

peoples. We certainly support this approach and will do

our part, as we have always done, to achieve those

noble goals. But cooperation does not substitute for

resolution of this age-old threat to the security and

prosperity of our people. We will, therefore, continue

to work within the OAS to develop an agreed process

that will bring finality to this matter, which will

undoubtedly redound to the benefit of the peoples of

both Belize and Guatemala and contribute to the peace

and security of the region. In the search for bringing

this longstanding dispute to an end, we place high

hopes on the role of the Group of Friends that has been

agreed by both parties to reach this objective, and we

look forward to its greater input and support to the

process.

The challenges we face in the world today are not

all unique to our generation. Some are the result of our

refusal to learn from the mistakes of the past; others

are entirely of our making. Yet, if we are to look at

those values that unite us and we are determined in our

desire for good, we will find that working together

brings us ever closer to amore just and peaceful world.