Belize, 2006

I stand before the

Assembly and renew the commitment of the

Government and people of Belize to the principles

enshrined in the United Nations Charter. We reaffirm

the pledge made by the father of the Belizean nation,

the Right Honourable George Price, when he said from

this rostrum:

“Belize, with the help of God and the

support of its people, will stand upright and will

do its duty to help bring peace, stability and

prosperity to our region and the wider circles of

our planet Earth.” (A/36/PV.13, para. 143)

Through you, Sir, we would like to congratulate

the President on her election and pledge the support of

my delegation for our important work at this session of

the General Assembly.

We express our solidarity with our Secretary-

General, whose imprint on this institution at this

critical time in international affairs will be appreciated

and remembered through the ages.

Belize became independent 25 years ago. It was a

different time then, in 1981. The cold war was being

waged. There was a clash of economic philosophies,

and countries were being forced to circle in one of two

orbits. But many countries did not; we proclaimed our

non-alignment and worked to establish a new

international economic order. We sought to create a

world which was fairer and more just and which put

people at its centre.

We never achieved that dream of a new

international economic order. In fact, in 1989, the wall

that divided not only a nation, but the entire social and

economic order of the world, came tumbling down.

The Berlin Wall was torn down nearly two decades

ago, but we have yet to tear down the most important

wall of all — the one that separates us into rich States

and poor States, wealthy and poor, developed and

developing.

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Almost 15 years ago, we were told that if we tore

down barriers to trade, opened up our markets to

foreign capital and imported goods, and privatized our

State-owned enterprises, our economies would grow by

leaps and bounds. We were also told that our partners

in the developed world would afford us greater access

to their markets, that our commodities would receive

fair prices, and that international financiers would

make capital readily available for us to borrow.

The question we now ask is: Are we better off

having adhered to that so-called development cocktail

prescribed by the Washington Consensus?

All is not well. In the Caribbean, 30 per cent of

people are living in poverty. In Latin America, the

figure is an obscene 40.6 per cent. Worse yet, 16.8 per

cent of the people in Latin America live in extreme

poverty. Fourteen of the 15 Caribbean countries are

among the most indebted emerging market countries.

In fact, seven are in the top 10, all with debt-to-gross

domestic product ratios of about 100 per cent. To quote

from a recent World Bank report:

“A closer inspection of the data leaves little room

for complacency about the world’s progress

against poverty. Indeed, the picture that emerges

is one of highly uneven progress, with serious

setbacks in some regions and time periods. And

we find that more people living near $2 per day

became worse off over the period than the

number who gained. Thus the number living

under $2 per day rose.”

In 2006, now more than ever we need a new

international economic order.

In 2001, members of the World Trade

Organization (WTO) adopted the Doha Development

Agenda. The ministerial declaration proudly

proclaimed:

“The majority of WTO members are developing

countries. We seek to place their needs and

interests at the heart of the Work Programme

adopted in this Declaration.”

The WTO sought to design a multilateral trading

system that was to “ensure that developing countries

secure a share in the growth of world trade that was

commensurate with the needs of their economic

development”. But let me tell members what our

reality, the Belizean experience with the WTO, has

been.

Since Doha, a panel set up by the WTO decided

that the European Union organization of its sugar

market was incompatible with WTO rules. To solve

that problem, Belizean sugar farmers now get paid less

for the sugar exported to the European Union. Simply

put, the WTO has made them worse off. Since Doha,

the European Union has liberalized its banana import

regime. That is supposed to make the regime WTO-

compatible. The statistics now show that imports from

non-African, Caribbean and Pacific countries into the

European Union have outstripped imports from the

Caribbean, and prices paid for bananas have fallen.

In the five years since Doha, our hopes have been

dashed, ambitions smashed and the development

dimension once again ignored. The accord reached at

Doha has been systematically dismantled with each

subsequent meeting, from Cancún to Hong Kong to

Geneva.

We say that there is something inherently wrong

with a system that promises development and delivers

lower prices for exports. We say that there is something

fundamentally unfair in a system that promises a

development agenda and delivers suspended

negotiations and less market access to small vulnerable

economies.

It is in such an environment, defined by

multilateralism and the primacy of the markets —

liberalism writ large — that small States in the

Caribbean operate. It is a system in which unknown

people sitting in unmarked rooms in Brussels and

Geneva make decisions that determine how many

boxes of bananas the Caribbean can export to Europe

and what price we get paid for our sugar.

At the end of the day, it is all about social justice

and social equity. Is something wrong with a picture in

which, of the 6 billion people on planet Earth, 1 billion

have more than 80 per cent of world income and

5 billion have less than 20 per cent? Something is

radically wrong with that picture. Our common charge

is to right that imbalance. The fight against poverty

cannot and will not be won with arms and instruments

of war. We need a new international economic order in

which the rights of people to jobs and fair wages and to

fair prices for commodities take precedence over rules

of trade that are inherently unfair and inequitable. And

small vulnerable economies like ours in the Caribbean

need special and differential treatment. Unless we

wage the fight against poverty, there will be no peace.

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In the absence of peace, insecurity prevails. Insecurity

encourages instability.

It is no wonder that, at this time, we find

ourselves in retreat, living in a culture of fear and

divided by a so-called clash of civilizations. A general

sense of lost hope is pervasive and the enthusiasm of

the new millennium squandered.

Here at the United Nations, our own concept of

dialogue among civilizations seems to be fast fading.

We must find a way to build a greater sense of security,

renew our faith in each other and deconstruct the walls

that divide. That can best be accomplished through our

work at the United Nations, and my delegation

commends our efforts in endorsing an integrated

approach to addressing the transition from conflict to

recovery with the establishment of the Peacebuilding

Commission. Together with the General Assembly and

the Security Council, the Commission should, in the

spirit of its constitution, help to answer those critical

questions related to the maintenance of international

peace and security and, above all, development.

In these times, when the rules that govern our

collective responsibility to international civility and the

comity of nations seem to be eroding along with

respect for international law, we must look to our

institutions to restore our common values.

We are reminded that the primary responsibility

of the Security Council is the maintenance of

international peace and security. The Charter, in giving

that mandate, specifies that the conferral of that

responsibility is to ensure prompt and effective action

when required. But as we have seen with the delayed

reaction to the recent events in Lebanon and the

occupied Palestinian territories, the Council failed to

discharge its mandate. The situation in the Middle East

necessitates prompt and effective action.

We acknowledge that the shortcomings in the

Council’s exercise of its mandate may be attributed to

its structural imbalances. Those imbalances are not

insurmountable and, indeed, call for reform. The

Council must reflect the current geopolitical realities.

Belize supports comprehensive reform of the Security

Council, including the expansion of membership in

both permanent and non-permanent categories, and

through the improvement of its working methods. We

detect a momentum for change and we are ready to

engage as equal partners to that end.

We now have a Human Rights Council that we

hope will be vigilant in its work to protect the rights of

those unable to protect themselves. We will be truly

civilized only when we stop the victimization of the

weak at the expense of the ideology of the strongest.

We must bring to an end the violence and death

of the innocent in Darfur. Our collective conscience is

stained by the genocide in Darfur. For every innocent

life that is lost to conflict and the denial of basic

human rights, we carry the scars of their oppression.

In Belize, we have started a dialogue on the

relevance of small States and the role we must play in

the maintenance of international peace and security. I

have invoked the idea that, in the global war on

terrorism, we in the Caribbean and Central America are

less important because we operate in a culture of peace

and respect for life, and that because most of us lack

the armies to join coalitions, we are seen as unwilling

or even irrelevant.

Yet our people feel the same fear as those in

larger countries; we suffer the economic effects that

others suffer and, dare I say, more so because of our

vulnerability due to our size. As people at risk, we

want to see the billions spent to make war used to bring

prosperity and hope to those who live in such despair

that they can be enticed into the spreading of terror. We

will not be dissuaded from our belief that violence and

destruction beget war. Only hope and sustainable

development can bear peace.

Today, in our sister Caribbean nation of Haiti, we

see the resilience of its people. In the turbulence of the

past few years, the people of Haiti have refused to

despair. Their desire to live in a democratic society

prevailed when they recently went to the polls to elect

a new Government. We must not suffer Haiti to slide

into irrelevance. We all owe Haiti our commitment to

nurturing its growth by building those institutions

necessary for a sustainable nation State.

At a time when the world has so much wealth that

$900 billion is being spent on military expenditure and

$300 billion on agricultural subsidies, but only $60

billion on development assistance, too many of our

people remain under the strangulation of poverty,

relegated to the dungeons of destitution and social

inequality. Yet we come to these occasions and speak

of our strong commitment to preserving the dignity of

all human beings. We speak of their rights and promise

to continue to foster dialogue. And when it comes right

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down to it, where the agreements count most the plight

of the poor is sacrificed to the bottom line, personal

wealth and political survival.

In the Caribbean, we cannot accept that and,

while we applaud the efforts of this Organization and

the work that has gone into defining agreed

development goals, including addressing the needs of

our poorest people, the protection of our environment

and efforts to promote meaningful sustainable

development, we must do more. Each child who goes

to sleep hungry contributes to the shame we must all

feel in failing to protect his or her basic rights. Each

person who dies of HIV/AIDS is a reflection of our

lost value for life, and every time the poor die for want

of food we have failed humanity.

Twenty-five years ago, as a newly independent

country, Belize was welcomed into the United Nations

assured of its territorial integrity and its equal place in

this community of nations. We earned our rightful

place by example and by commitment to this

Organization’s highest principles. In return, we

received the solidarity of all.

Our political independence will remain imperfect

until we find a peaceful and just solution to the

territorial claim of Guatemala to Belizean territory. We

remain committed to finding a solution that respects

our territorial integrity and honours our sovereignty.

Membership in the United Nations is an

affirmation of the will of sovereign peoples. The

United Nations has served as a platform for the

expression of that will for many of the nations

represented here today. Let us in turn ensure that the

United Nations remains a beacon of hope for all

peoples who continue the struggle, such as our brothers

and sisters in Palestine, Western Sahara, Taiwan and

the non-self governing territories.

We warmly welcome Montenegro to the family of

nations.

Our conversation began with my seeking answers

to the question of the relevance of Belize and other

small States in today’s global order. I find comfort in

the winds of change occurring in our Organization, a

change that will bring to this sixty-first session of the

General Assembly a new Secretary-General, and that

will continue the process of reform mandated in the

World Summit Outcome. We must, however, make

changes relevant to our time and true to our Charter.

Let us seize this opportunity and face the

challenges boldly together. For us in Belize, our minds

are imbued with the democratic process, our hearts

beat with social justice and our souls cherish the treasures of the spirit.