Saint Lucia, 1993

May I at the outset

extend to you, Sir, my own and my country’s warmest

congratulations on your election to the presidency of the

General Assembly at its forty-eighth session. Your

assumption of the presidency is a singular honour for the

Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It marks the first

occasion on which a person from that region has been

elected to preside over the General Assembly. Your

presence here in the Chair therefore provides added

significance to the honour and privilege attached to the

opportunity presented to my country, also a CARICOM

State, to address this body. Knowing you as I do, Sir, I am

certain that your experience, wisdom and diplomatic skills

will guide our deliberations to successful and historic

conclusions.

Forty-eighth session - 11 October l993 17

The end of the cold war and the movement towards

democratization within the former Soviet Union and in

Eastern Europe, accompanied by the new level of entente

between the major Powers in the Security Council, have led

to a new paramountcy of this Organization in the conduct of

relations between nations. Many of the essential principles

of the Charter, too long suppressed in the presence of super-

Power rivalries, are now given the opportunity, within this

more conducive environment, to assume the importance for

which they were designed when first established as a product

of the wisdom of the founding fathers of this Organization.

The tendency towards globalization in economic, if not

in political, terms suggests an era within which consensus

and mutuality of approach will be essential for furthering

balanced and sustained global advancement. The ideal of

universality within the framework of this Organization

becomes even more important in this context. Now that the

grim obstacles which oppose the concepts of equality and

universality are being dismantled in South Africa, we are

hopeful that that country will soon be able to take its place

around this hearth of the family of nations.

It was also in furtherance of the spirit of universality

and its all-embracing purpose that Saint Lucia joined 11

other Member States of the United Nations in proposing the

inclusion of a supplementary item in the agenda aimed at

obtaining General Assembly agreement for the establishment

of an ad hoc committee to study the situation of the

Republic of China in Taiwan. That study would have

focused on the search for an equitable, rational and practical

solution that would enable the Republic of China in Taiwan

to become a full Member of the United Nations.

Unfortunately, this new but overdue initiative suffered a

temporary setback in the General Committee.

However, I find it difficult to envisage that a country of

21 million people, whose industriousness has contributed to

making their country the fourteenth-largest trading nation in

the world, can continue to be impeded from becoming a

Member of this Organization, where they will be afforded

the opportunity to discharge their international obligations

more fully. In keeping with its belief in the concept of

universality, Saint Lucia gives support to the Government

and people of the Republic of China in Taiwan in their

aspiration to become full Members of this world

Organization.

For many years now, the problems associated with the

Middle East have been considered intractable. That

unforgettable handshake, beamed to us in Saint Lucia live by

the wonders of satellite technology, was for us as much a

symbol of relief as it was a signal of hope - relief that it

perhaps marked the beginning of the end of the bloodshed,

suffering and hostility which have so plagued that region,

and hope that their end would bring us one step farther

along the path towards global cooperation through which the

future of humanity may eventually be rescued from a world

which has hitherto been seemingly drifting towards self-

destruction. My country wishes to convey its

congratulations to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and

Chairman Yasser Arafat on this bold and courageous step in

the cause of peace against odds which, until then, seemed

insurmountable. It is Saint Lucia’s wish that this event will

ignite the spark which kindles a beacon of peace to light the

region along its way to realization of its fullest potential.

The heroic efforts of President F.W. de Klerk and

African National Congress President Nelson Mandela in

South Africa must also be praised. They have remained

unintimidated by violence and endemic opposition in single-

mindedly spearheading the creation of the Transitional

Executive Council, which at long last gives an official say

to a majority too long disenfranchised by official oppressive

dictate. This progress allows Saint Lucia fully to support the

lifting of the remaining sanctions, as called for by Mr.

Mandela. With the recent agreement on Walvis Bay and the

expectation that free and fair elections will be held in April

next year, perhaps we can soon bring to a close this sad

chapter of our history.

However, Saint Lucia is less sanguine over the situation

in some other countries of Africa. The world recession has

had an adverse effect on export revenues and therefore on

their foreign-exchange earnings and debt-settlement ability.

In addition, political strife has tended to exacerbate these

difficulties. The success of globalization in its promotion of

world economic growth depends on development which is

shared. It is important that, in the understandable

enthusiasm to do everything possible to assist with the

transformation of previously centrally managed economies,

Africa not be allowed to become a casualty of the ended

cold war.

Saint Lucia welcomes the finalization of the

demarcation of the boundary between Kuwait and Iraq,

which was accomplished by the Iraq-Kuwait Boundary

Demarcation Commission on 20 May this year. We also

welcome the adoption by the Security Council of

resolution 833 (1993), by which it guaranteed the

inviolability of the boundary between the two States. This

guarantee will serve as a deterrent against future conflict

between Kuwait and Iraq. It will also enhance stability and

security in the region. We call upon Iraq to respect the

terms of Security Council resolution 833 (1993) and other

relevant Security Council resolutions.

18 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

The firm resolve which this Organization, particularly

the Security Council, has shown in dealing with the

problems of the long-suffering people of Haiti is to be

commended. Since the adoption of General Assembly

resolution 45/2 of 10 October 1990, the United Nations has

continued to reflect the international community’s concern

and will in its several action-oriented decisions culminating

in the adoption of Security Council resolution 867 (1993) on

23 September of this year to deploy both military and

paramilitary forces in Haiti. With a return to democracy and

the application of the economic recovery programme

envisaged by the World Bank and the United Nations

Development Programme, it is hoped that Haiti will at last

begin to experience the economic development which has for

so long eluded it and which is an absolute imperative for

alleviating the long suffering of its people.

Saint Lucia is happy to have been able to contribute

actively to the process of democratization in Haiti. A team

of more than 30 Saint Lucians helped with the organization

of the electoral process and assisted in monitoring the

elections. Some 15 Saint Lucians are today serving as

monitors of human-rights abuses in that country. Saint

Lucia is therefore deeply anxious that the restructuring and

recovery process in Haiti should succeed, and we urge the

international community to maintain solidarity with President

Jean-Bertrand Aristide as he returns home to resume the

mantle of leadership of his country.

Saint Lucia is a small Caribbean developing island

State. If developing countries in general are in jeopardy,

then small Caribbean developing island countries are

exposed to double jeopardy. We are all trapped in an

international economic system which yields no quarter to the

problems and needs that are peculiar to us, and additionally

insists upon using a continental measuring rod as a gauge of

our development processes. Like castaways set adrift on the

world’s oceans, we have for some time been desperately

trying to catch the ears of those who happily stand on solid

ground. But our voices have somehow failed to carry in the

face of the biting winds of global change which have, almost

overnight, altered the very environment within which we

have been conditioned by history to survive.

It is true that the small Caribbean island developing

countries have in some cases registered important

development gains over the past 10 to 15 years, a period

which marks the attainment of sovereignty for these small

developing countries. But the gains, where they do exist,

have been achieved only by Herculean effort and should not

be interpreted as evidence that particular or even special

consideration in the granting of economic and technical

assistance is not now still needed to promote sustained

development. These gains are to be seen, rather, in the

context of the maxim: "One should help those who try to

help themselves". The graduation of the small Caribbean

island developing countries from the World Bank’s "soft

window" into net contributor status within the United

Nations Development Programme - a graduation determined

solely on the basis of an index of per capita income - is in

our case tantamount to helping a drowning man onto a raft

and then setting him adrift without a paddle.

Apart from having average per capita incomes that are

only two-thirds that of developing countries in general, the

small Caribbean island developing countries are burdened, as

a factor of scale of operations, by administrative costs which

are proportionately three times as high as that of continental

developing countries. With our natural resources limited in

quantity as well as diversity, the odds between success and

failure become marginal and purely a matter of the quality

of administration. Where no resource surpluses exist, little

room is left for mistakes. Yet, because of our small national

budgets and disproportionately high administrative costs, we

often find ourselves unable to afford the diversity and

quality of expertise required to broaden the odds.

In the case of my country, Saint Lucia, this already

precarious economic situation is now compounded by a

direct attack on the sole item of domestic exports which

virtually keeps us from sinking into the depths of economic

despair. As a primary agricultural state, Saint Lucia is the

largest producer of bananas in the eastern Caribbean. As

used here, however, "largest" is an extremely relative term.

World annual banana production is currently about 10

million tons, of which the small States of the Windward

Islands, comprising Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and

Saint Lucia, produce less than 300,000, Saint Lucia

producing about half of that quantity. Over 50 per cent of

the working populations of these islands work in banana-

associated enterprises. Both in Dominica and Saint Lucia,

more than 50 per cent of export earnings is derived from

banana exports. Our agricultural production is completely in

the hands of many small private farmers. There is no

Government banana-production ownership and there are no

latifundia. Because of topographical constraints that

adversely affect production costs, our banana industry has

been assisted to survive primarily through the umbrella of

modest preferential arrangements made available under the

various Lomé Conventions.

Today, there are forces at work, urged on by

multinational business interests, which would seek to wrest

from us even the minuscule share - just 2 per cent of the

market - which has enabled our economies barely to weather

an increasingly hostile economic environment. In order to

Forty-eighth session - 11 October l993 19

attempt to secure that end, they have also mounted initiatives

in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), in

the European Court and within various international forums.

Apart from the serious social consequences which cannot but

follow a demise of the banana industry in these islands, it is

also to be recognized that, in order to purchase goods and

services from those very sources which advocate measures

calculated to bring about that demise, we must first earn the

foreign exchange to be able to do this. It can only be hoped

that, in the end, sympathetic understanding will prevail over

intransigence in the determination of this vital issue.

In this post-cold-war era, ideological considerations

have given way to political initiatives in the determination of

the direction of official-aid flows. The weight given to

foreign policy in deciding on foreign-aid flows means that

assistance is not always necessarily directed towards areas of

greater need, but is directed, rather, to areas with issues

which are politically topical. With a modest per capita

income which threatens the little remaining access it has to

concessionary assistance, with official financial flows

directed elsewhere, and with the main export commodity

under attack, Saint Lucia is left to wonder whether there is

in existence a concerted intention to marginalize small island

countries or whether it is merely the accident of present

world conditions that bears this responsibility. In any event,

the effect remains the same.

Political gain cannot be sustained in the absence of

complementary economic progress. Where world economic

advancement is isolated in its impact, political gain in world

terms will continue to prove transitory and incapable of

being sustained. It is true that the world has seen an

impressive political transformation in a rather brief period of

time in terms of a transition to democracy and a new degree

of cooperation in the United Nations at the level of the

Security Council. But if the price of these political gains is

an exacerbated marginalization of the small developing

countries, they will undoubtedly soon be dissipated in a sea

of economic troubles and the social disruption which

experience suggests must follow as a consequence.

The urgency of the international debt crisis may have

been defused, but developing-country debt, after reaching a

brief plateau, is again on the rise, approaching $1.5 trillion.

This situation is made more difficult by the drag on world

economic output, which is being caused partly by the

dislocation of economies of the former Soviet Union and

Eastern Europe. An expansion of world trade, coupled with

the recovery of commodity prices, lies at the foundation of

a solution to this problem. That is why we in CARICOM

are seeking to establish trading and other economic links

with our neighbours in the Latin American region and are

looking to participate in economic-cooperation initiatives

within the Americas and elsewhere.

Population growth in the developing countries, too,

though it has maintained a relatively steady rate for over a

decade, continues to increase in numerical terms, accounting

for 93 per cent global population growth, which is now

about 93 million annually. The balance between economic

and population growth must be stabilized in the interest of

human progress.

We approach the twenty-first century with world

changes which have been as rapid as they have been

bewildering. The ensuing challenge which lies before small

countries such as ours, daunting as it is because of our

slender resources, is to develop the necessary resilience to

enable us to adapt to these changes. I am of the view that

incorporated within the idea of universality is the concept of

common progress and the need to ensure that an

environment is created within which world-embracing

advancement becomes possible.

In this context, the United Nations cannot be expected

to micro-manage global change; as the pre-eminent global

20 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

Organization, its resources must be enhanced to allow it to

play an even greater role as a fulcrum, both in the traditional

spheres of activity and in new areas created by the new

order of things. The United Nations is, accordingly, seen as

playing an expanded role in the economic welfare of

developing countries, including the development and

application of further initiatives to address constraints

imposed by smallness and island status.

We look forward to the Secretary-General’s agenda for

development, with the expectation that it will seek to address

the new problems and challenges which have arisen even as

some of the old issues have been, or are in the process of

being, put to bed.

Let me assure the Assembly of Saint Lucia’s pledge to

continue to cooperate fully within the institutions of the

Organization to further its objectives for the betterment of

humanity. What we lack in financial resources we can

perhaps make up in human resources. The fact that Saint

Lucia has produced two Nobel laureates in this generation is

indicative, I believe, of our ability to cooperate in the

common pursuit of the noble purposes of this esteemed

Organization.