Saint Lucia, 1998

Mr. President, it is such

a pleasure that a distinguished son of our region should

preside over these proceedings. We wish you well and

pledge our full support.

This year we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the

birth of a Declaration which was predicated on the

assumption that the right to development is a human right.

The golden jubilee of the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights could not have occurred at a more timely juncture

in the history of international affairs. Article 23 of the

Declaration insists that everyone has the right to work, the

free choice of employment and protection against

unemployment. Article 28 boasts that everyone is entitled

to a social and international order in which the rights and

freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully

realized.

However, the trends that shape the international

order today, the issues that are affecting the destiny of

States, are running counter to the spirit of that

Declaration, and are, in fact, threatening and hindering

that right to development so nobly expressed 50 years

ago.

As the world enters the dawn of a new millennium,

the phenomenon of globalization characterizes the new

international order. There is no escaping the reality that

globalization is today a fact of life: the integration and

interlocking of systems of production, finance and capital

and trade, and liberalized markets that have shunned

national boundaries and have produced remarkable wealth

and economic growth.

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But there is an almost ominous ring about the word

“globalization”. It gobbles up the small plankton of

countries which cannot adjust to the frenzy of the market.

Globalization has not been all about wealth and prosperity

for all the nations of the world. For billions of people in the

developing world, it has used them and bypassed them,

when in reality, globalization should be about development

for all.

The 1997 United Nations Development Programme

report confirms that only a few fortunate countries had

benefited from globalization. Those countries which have

shared in the rapidly expanded world trade have seen their

own trade become a larger proportion of their gross

domestic product. But for 44 developing countries, with

more than a billion people, this key ratio had been falling

over the previous decade. Yes, the growth in financial

flows has been rapid, but its circulation has been

predominantly in the capital markets of the developed

world, while investment flows have coursed through only

a few developing countries.

The Asian Tiger economies, which had achieved

amazing levels of development and growth in a short space

of time, had been held up as models for the new age of

global free markets. However, the collapse of these

economies in 1997, coming three years after the Mexican

case, has reinforced fears that globalization has made the

world economy more volatile and more unstable. That even

such star performers would be battered so severely suggests

that vulnerability has increased significantly with

globalization. Foreign money can flee as quickly as it

comes in and leave countries in deep trouble.

Saint Lucia is one of those countries caught up on the

dizzy Ferris wheel of globalization, without the luxury of

the choice of being able to jump off or determine how the

wheel spins. Trade liberalization, the twin of globalization,

has not been kind to us, and the midwife of trade

liberalization — the World Trade Organization (WTO) —

has dealt us an even more unkind cut.

Last year, the head of our Government, Prime Minister

Dr. Kenny Anthony, in his address to the General

Assembly at its fifty-second session, complained of the

impact on Saint Lucia and the Caribbean of a ruling by the

WTO with respect to the European banana marketing

regime. That ruling, which was instigated by a few

complainant countries from the Americas, has the capacity

to lead to the social and economic destruction of a number

of small States in the Caribbean, like Saint Lucia, for which

bananas are a major vital export commodity. That ruling

tears at the heart of our development process, as it can

take away from us a system which allows us a

preferential market for a crop which is the backbone of

our economy.

Developing countries and many renowned jurists

have criticized the process pursued by the WTO in this

case, but what was equally worrying is that the panel did

not take into account the developmental, social and

environmental impact of the implementation of this ruling.

The WTO is not only to be a trade policeman, but is

supposed to contribute to improving standards of living.

Following the ruling by the WTO last year, that the

banana marketing regime was incompatible with its

regulations, the European Union had been trying to amend

the regime. The objective was not only to make it WTO-

compatible, but at the same time, to preserve the kind of

access it gave us to the European market — an access

essential for our economic development. Earlier this year

the European Union accepted amendments to the banana

regime which we are all convinced make it WTO-

compatible. We, the banana-producing countries of the

Caribbean, may have wished that some of the provisions

now adopted were different, but we are satisfied that the

new regime allows us the opportunity to continue to

survive in the market place and sustain our development

largely through our own efforts.

The European Union retained the special safeguards

of Lomé to enable us to market our bananas; and with the

Lomé Convention now in receipt of a WTO waiver, we

thought that we had been given the breathing space we

needed for orderly reform and diversification and for

adjustment to the new realities of globalization. But,

despite this, the United States and a group of Central

American countries are continuing an onslaught against

our banana industry.

One year after our Prime Minister appealed to this

body for good sense and sensitivity to prevail in the

settling of world trade disputes, in the consideration by

international institutions of the plight of the

disadvantaged, and in the conduct of strong and powerful

countries towards smaller and poorer ones, we return to

tell the Assembly that those who should have heeded this

appeal seem to have chosen not to hear it.

The pursuit of this banana policy by the United

States and the Central American countries will expose the

economies of the Caribbean to severe and possibly

irreparable damage. This is a violation of our right to

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development — a right that the United Nations recognized

as an inalienable human right when it adopted the

Declaration on the Right to Development at the 97th

plenary meeting of the forty-first session of the General

Assembly on 4 December 1986. One year ago, our Prime

Minister, before this Assembly, called upon the United

States of America to re-examine its policies towards the

Caribbean, particularly its lead role in the challenge to the

banana marketing regime. We are now engaged in a

dialogue with the United States hoping to avert a

reconvening of the World Trade Organization dispute panel.

Once again we urge the United States and the other

complainant countries to apply the spirit of cooperation and

consultation to this situation so that we can find a mutually

acceptable solution to what they perceive to be the

problems.

Globalization must not be used by powerful States as

an excuse to condemn us to a permanent state of

underdevelopment and poverty. Already the rich nations of

the world appear to be using globalization as an excuse for

their withdrawal from active engagement in the battle

against poverty.

The scourge of poverty is not new, neither has it ever

been acceptable. What is unacceptable is that given all the

strides we have made this century in science and

technology, in the creation of vast oceans of wealth, we at

the same time have failed to reduce the levels of poverty

around the world.

Many people have enjoyed the benefits of supersonic

aircraft, 200-mile-per-hour trains, satellite telephones, global

television, the Internet and 24-hour markets. Yet, in the

same world and at the same time, there are millions who

have never ridden in a motor vehicle, used a telephone,

switched on an electric light or had pipe-borne water;

millions wholly unfamiliar with such everyday amenities as

refrigerators and television sets; millions who cannot read

or write; millions of children who do not go to school;

millions of infants who do not get enough food to survive.

A more vigorous effort to eliminate extreme

deprivation should surely be a high priority for the new

millennium. Saint Lucia believes this should be achieved by

the end of the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of

Poverty — by the year 2006.

Economic progress in recent decades has lifted large

numbers out of acute poverty, and success on this front has

been particularly notable in the populous country of China.

But there is no evidence yet that globally there has been a

decline in the number of those classified as “absolute

poor”: people whose incomes never rise above the dollar-

a-day threshold. These are reckoned to amount to 1.3

billion people, or one in every three persons in the

developing world. Nearly three fourths of these people

live in Asia, but the highest proportion of very poor

people is in Africa. The 1997 report of the United

Nations Development Programme states that the total

figure appears to be rising with population growth, except

in South-East Asia and the Pacific. But this was written

before the economic typhoon that battered such South-

East Asian countries as Indonesia in 1998, impoverishing

many millions of people in that region, and before the

serious floods in China had dispossessed so many people.

Yet most countries have failed to lift their aid

towards the level of 0.7 per cent of their gross national

product — the internationally agreed target set several

decades ago. In fact, aid from the G-7 countries fell in

1997 to just 0.19 per cent of their collective gross

national product.

The necessity for the rich countries to understand

that the new international order of globalization does not

consider the special circumstances of small States is

emphasized by the vulnerability of these small States to

other elements, such as natural disasters. The extreme

vulnerability of small island States, like Saint Lucia, was

graphically illustrated only last week in the Caribbean. In

just a few hours Hurricane Georges created havoc and

destruction in the northern islands of the Caribbean —

Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, the Virgin

Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and

others. In any one island, at least two decades of

economic development were blown away by two hours of

storm. That is the extent of the economic vulnerability of

these islands. As they struggle to rebuild their economies,

as their people try to reorganize their lives again, we

appeal to the Member States of the United Nations to be

generous in coming forward with assistance for their

redevelopment efforts.

In a world of an international order that is

uncompromising for small States, of inadequate attention

to the plight of the poor and to the harsh destructive

forces of Mother Nature, it is the United Nations that

must become a beacon and a haven for the small and the

powerless, for the hungry and the disadvantaged. It is in

the United Nations that they must find hope and comfort,

answers and solutions to their problems. For this,

however, there must be a United Nations that is as

sensitive to the danger inherent in small-State

24

vulnerability as it is to the horrors of nuclear warfare,

biological and chemical weapons and international

terrorism. International terrorism can take many forms. To

destroy a country’s economic base and thrust its people into

the slow death of unemployment, poverty and despair is as

horrendous as the instant killing of its citizens by a bomb

blast.

While we support the call for a strong abhorrence of

international terrorism, we must deplore equally abhorrent

acts of unilateral counter-terrorism. Such actions violate the

culture of peace and consensus which the United Nations

strives to inculcate.

There must be a United Nations with a greater

commitment to upholding and fulfilling the tenets of article

28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the

United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development.

There must therefore be further reform of the United

Nations to make it more democratic and more appreciative

of the voices of the majority, rather than the power of the

minority. Saint Lucia therefore supports the call by the

Secretary-General for continued urgent reform of the United

Nations, provided that it leads to a fairer, more caring and

more equitable institution.

Saint Lucia also strongly supports the statement

delivered by Indonesia on behalf of the G-77 at the high-

level dialogue on globalization held here recently and the

growing consensus that there is urgent need for global

governance of financial and trade matters. Indeed, because

of its universal membership and success in promoting

international cooperation for development, the United

Nations is the best vehicle to foster agreement on standards,

norms and regulations for the new financial order of the

twenty-first century.

The building of a new international financial

architecture for the twenty-first century cannot be done

piecemeal or by a few exclusive States. It requires global

participation, coordinated by the United Nations. Saint

Lucia therefore calls for a global conference to address this

issue similar to that held on matters pertaining to the

environment, population and housing.

But reform must not be confined only to the United

Nations. In a world of trade liberalization which is not

friendly to small States, the guardian of the free market

process must itself be reformed. Saint Lucia therefore

reiterates its call, first made to the fifty-second session of

the General Assembly last year, for reform of the World

Trade Organization (WTO) and in particular its dispute-

settlement procedures. A revisiting of the WTO began in

Singapore, where developing countries had to assert the

limits of WTO interventionism.

What is additionally required of the WTO now was

outlined by Prime Minister Mr. Kenny Anthony when, in

his capacity as Chairman of the Caribbean Community

(CARICOM), he addressed the recent meeting of heads of

State of the Non-Aligned Movement in Durban, South

Africa. He said:

“More generally, the WTO must now take urgent

steps to implement the agreement at Singapore, for

a special regime for the least developed countries

and those who share the characteristics of fragility.

It is time that values like fairness and equity asserted

their legitimacy in the ethically neutral world of

globalization and liberalization.”

Saint Lucia firmly believes that despite the actions

of developed countries, we in the developing world can

ourselves assert and protect our right to development if

we engage in greater cooperation among ourselves. We in

the Caribbean have for years been engaged in an

integration movement which has strengthened our

capacity to deal with the challenges of international

relations. Indeed, this year Saint Lucia was proud to be

the host nation for the celebration of the twenty-fifth

anniversary of the Treaty of Chaguaramas, which created

the Caribbean Community.

As we embark on the next quarter of a century,

Saint Lucia pledges to work for even greater union in the

Caribbean Community and closer association between all

the countries of the Caribbean Sea. It is for this reason

that Saint Lucia welcomes the recent initiatives that have

brought Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti into a

closer relationship with CARICOM as we seek to forge

a new partnership with the European Union. In this

connection, Saint Lucia calls for the understanding that

Cuba is a Caribbean country and that closer relations with

other Caribbean countries is a natural evolution which

must not be perceived as being hostile to the interests of

extraregional Powers. We call too for the lifting of the

economic embargo against Cuba and for its reintegration

into the inter-American system. It is only through

dialogue and consultation, not through conflict and

hostility, that problems are permanently solved.

Saint Lucia also welcomes the recent meeting in

Durban between the Caribbean Community and the

Southern African Development Community, which laid

the basis for the future strengthening of relations between

25

the two regions. We applaud also the decision by the heads

of State of the Non-Aligned Movement to hold a South-

South summit and their decision to convene a standing

ministerial committee for economic cooperation in 1999, to

address the challenges and opportunities of globalization.

Our efforts to realize our right to development can

enjoy fulfilment only if they take place in an atmosphere of

world peace and harmony. We cannot prevent nuclear

genies from popping out of bottles unless we destroy all the

bottles with a treaty designed to eliminate all nuclear

armaments. The existence of exclusive nuclear clubs is an

open invitation to nations which are excluded.

We in the Caribbean continue to call for the Caribbean

to be recognized as a zone of peace. We also call for

respect and support of the initiative of CARICOM for the

Caribbean Sea to be declared a special area in the context

of sustainable development. Saint Lucia, therefore, like

other Caribbean States, continues to register its opposition

to the use of the Caribbean Sea for the trans-shipment of

nuclear waste by some great Powers. While

some of those Powers can sustain a nuclear accident,

given their size and population, a small island of a few

hundred thousand people certainly cannot. The best

guarantee we can obtain against a nuclear accident in the

Caribbean Sea as a result of the trans-shipment of nuclear

waste is not the assurances of the countries engaged in

the practice, but a halt to the practice itself.

As we call for international recognition of our right

to determine what kind of place we wish our region to be,

and as we assert our inalienable human right to

development and call upon others to respect that right by

withdrawing their challenge to the lifeblood of our

economy, we urge the rich nations to recognize the

insensitivity of globalization, and we ask the international

community to take as an example that great international

leader, President Nelson Mandela. As we seek to establish

a new, more humane international order for the coming

millennium, an order that will truly reflect the spirit of

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let us

remember the moral leadership that he has given us.

Nelson Mandela taught us that holding steadfast to

principle and insisting on justice can produce change even

in the most intransigent of systems.

The world has become a global neighbourhood, and

we must insist on living by brotherly principles and

values. The focus for moral leadership might have shifted

to the developing world, with Nelson Mandela and Fidel

Castro as the twin peaks of international inspiration. It is

their lifelong struggle for human rights that must become

the touchstone for our developmental goals in this

anniversary year.