Saint Lucia, 2001

Allow me first to

offer the congratulations of the delegation of Saint

Lucia to the President of the General Assembly on his

election. We wish to assure him of our full support for

the successful outcome of these deliberations.

As we meet with the global fraternity of nations

during this fifty-sixth session of the General Assembly,

Saint Lucia once more joins its voice with those who

have deplored and condemned the despicable acts of

terror of 11 September 2001, that so brutalized our

great host city, New York, and our host country, as they

cruelly and callously extinguished thousands of

innocent and vibrant lives. We are however heartened

by the universal resolve of all peace-loving nations to

rid the earth of the scourge of terrorism. We have

noted, too, how quickly and steadfastly some of these

nations have come together as a coalition in pursuit of

that endeavour and have embarked on a war against

terrorism.

We should, however, recognize that the defeat of

this type of terrorism, as laudable and desirable an act

as it may be, will not by itself create a greater

humanity or a better world. For there are billions in the

world today who have not been at war, but who have

not known peace; they suffer from other terrors. There

are millions, so many of whom are children, who

succumb daily to the horrors of malnutrition and

starvation. There are still millions of others who are

wasting away from disease. Thousands of people see

their human rights violated on a daily basis. We

therefore need to remind ourselves that there are many

other issues that have been engendering their own

brand of fear and conflict in the world today, and that

more often than not the underlying cause of such

conflict is the lack of economic and human

development.

If we are to attain greater humanity, and if we are

to create a better world, we must commit ourselves to a

greater collective responsibility towards all those other

issues. We must adopt the same rapid global militaristic

response to solving them as that in the new war on

terrorism. Some of these issues have been with us for

too long and by now should have disappeared from the

world agenda. Our fragile humanity cannot endure

another century of widening disparity between and

within nations. We can no longer withstand the silent

battle between the haves and the have nots. Humanity

cannot tolerate ever increasing disease, deprivation,

hunger, illiteracy, poverty, economic strife and war.

For the ideal of a greater humanity not to

continue to elude us, we must now found it on this new

attitude, this new vision, in which people everywhere,

nations everywhere, are galvanized into higher levels

of cooperation in pursuit of these common concerns, in

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particular concerns such as the guarantee of economic

and social security, sustainable development and

governance of the multilateral trading system. In this

new philosophy of cooperation, the United Nations

must play the central role.

It is from this perspective that Saint Lucia

reiterates its call for the adoption of a holistic approach

towards poverty eradication. Saint Lucia is firm in its

view that the United Nations is the only Organization

capable of pooling the requisite knowledge and

financial resources for global action against poverty.

International cooperation on poverty eradication must

give due consideration to, among other things, debt

forgiveness through concerted support for an improved

Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Debt

Initiative. It must ensure special and differential

treatment on a contractual basis for developing

countries and sustained financial support for the

Organization’s development programmes.

The HIV/AIDS plague, which continues to ravage

the world, also demands this new collective response.

Saint Lucia acknowledges that the United Nations has

already begun spearheading the global fight against

HIV/AIDS. The United Nations special session on

HIV/AIDS has done a great deal to raise global

awareness about the magnitude of the pandemic. Saint

Lucia also welcomes the establishment of the Global

AIDS and Health Fund, which is intended to increase

the ability of the global community to combat this

scourge. However, if humanity is to win the fight

against this twentieth century plague, the international

community must make available new and additional

financial resources towards research and the

development of affordable drugs. We stress that these

drugs must be cheap and widely obtainable. It is time

that corporations cease putting the acquisition of more

and more profit ahead of the health and lives of the

unfortunate who have been afflicted by diseases such

as AIDS. Are we not being inhumane when our

overriding objective is to make as huge a profit as

possible on the sickness of so many, rather than

ensuring that the essential drugs that they need to end

their suffering are easily available?

As we survey the multilateral trading system,

Saint Lucia continues to be concerned that the thrust

towards allowing market forces to totally determine the

scope, structure and outcomes of economic activity is

not being counterbalanced by mechanisms to fairly

distribute welfare gains and to protect the more

vulnerable, small States like Saint Lucia from the

consequences of market failure.

The perilous state of the banana industry in Saint

Lucia and the other Windward Islands of the Eastern

Caribbean is the painful outcome of that thrust, an ill-

advised policy of globalization and trade liberalization

at all costs. The charge of World Trade Organization

(WTO) incompatibility that was made against the

preferential trade regime, justly accorded to Saint

Lucia and other Agricultural Commodities Committee

banana-producing countries under the Lomé

Agreement, has brought about the near collapse of this

vital industry. Saint Lucia welcomes the recent

initiative by the United States for a new licensing

agreement for the trading of bananas on the European

market, an initiative that brought an end to the

debilitating banana war with Europe.

Saint Lucia once more wishes to place on record

its deep appreciation for the perseverance and fortitude

of the European Union, which stood by its international

obligations throughout these years of dispute. We

applaud the news just in from Doha that, after 18

months, a WTO waiver has finally been granted to the

Cotonou Agreement, thus paving the way for the

implementation of the new banana-marketing

arrangements. We hope that these recent developments

are not too late to save our industry. But the case of the

great banana dispute will always remain as a striking

testimony to the inequities of the liberalized trading

system.

Saint Lucia is also concerned about the actions of

several organizations, such as the World Economic

Council and the Organisation for Economic

Cooperation and Development (OECD), which seem to

be attempting to usurp the traditional roles and

functions of the United Nations and of national

Governments. In the face of the near demise of the

vital banana industry, Saint Lucia and the other islands

of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States

(OECS) sought to diversify their economies by

building on their competitive advantage in offshore

financial services. But OECD countries denounced our

efforts as being harmful to them, and resorted to

branding Caribbean offshore financial services as

havens for criminal activity. For us, this is a violation

of our territorial integrity, our sovereignty and our

economic rights. Saint Lucia accepts that it has an

obligation to ensure that its financial services are not

used by unscrupulous individuals and interests.

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However, Saint Lucia cannot, in all good conscience,

surrender its sovereignty to a governance system

imposed by a few.

In the face of these selfish actions by developed

countries and the myopia of globalization, the role of

the United Nations in bringing order into the system

has become even more pressing. Saint Lucia therefore

renews its call for a rebirth of the United Nations

system, not only as an organization concerned with

peacekeeping operations and humanitarian missions,

but also as an institution that is capable of effectively

governing the global economic system in a way that

ensures an equitable redistribution of the benefits of

economic growth. We need a United Nations that will

safeguard against global economic crises and promote

the adoption of sustainable developmental policies.

In that context, and with the emerging spectre of

a global economic recession, the upcoming United

Nations Conference on Financing for Development

becomes even more relevant, even more urgent. That

Conference is of enormous importance to the small

island developing States of the Caribbean, faced as we

are by low aggregate gross domestic product, low

domestic savings and investment capacity and

undeveloped financial markets. The development

agenda of the Caribbean region cannot proceed without

the requisite financing, nor can it be sustained without

an enabling international environment. We must all

therefore commit ourselves to ensuring the success of

the Conference.

Our renewed call for the rebirth of the United

nations is further prompted by the observation that it is

systematically being displaced as a source of guidance

and as a fount of collective wisdom on global issues.

We fear that if the United Nations continues to be

marginalized in determining global development

policies and strategies, then the concerns of developing

countries will be excluded from the global agenda. A

recent example of this is the decision not to include

issues relating to the implementation of the Programme

of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small

Island Developing States in the preparatory meetings

for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. We

see this as undermining the spirit of the United Nations

resolution that convened the United Nations Global

Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small

Island Developing States, held in Barbados in 1994.

Indeed, it was recognized then that the United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development had not

paid sufficient attention to the special circumstances of

small island developing States.

There are two other examples of United Nations

inaction that leave us very concerned. Saint Lucia

laments the adoption by the United Nations of a

watered down instrument on small arms. In small

island developing States like Saint Lucia, growing

economic instability has given rise to increased levels

of drug-related crime. In the Caribbean region, small

arms are used in most of the violent crimes that are

committed against our law-abiding citizens. The global

trade in small arms must therefore be stemmed in the

interest of peace and stability. A weak small arms

document was therefore not what we required.

We remain deeply concerned that the Plan of

Action for the first International Decade for the

Eradication of Colonialism did not result in the

decolonization of the remaining 17, mostly small

island, Non-Self-Governing Territories. Accordingly,

we request, as a matter of priority, that the necessary

resources and expertise be provided to implement the

long-standing resolutions on decolonization and the

critical analyses called for in the Plan of Action of the

present International Decade.

I close by extending on behalf of the Government

and the people of Saint Lucia, our warmest

congratulations to Secretary-General Kofi Annan and

the hard-working staff of the United Nations on the

recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize. We regard this

award as an eloquent testimony to the sterling efforts

of the Organization to build a peaceful world. At the

same time, we see the award as a challenge to the

United Nations to remain resolute in its commitment to

the multilateral framework and not to allow itself to

become incapacitated by inaction, especially where the

defence of human security is concerned.

We all recognize that the events of 11 September

have brought about a new era in world affairs and new

challenges for all of us, in particular for the United

Nations. In the times that lie ahead the United Nations

system must do more that it has done before. It must

resist the use of force in situations where wisdom is

needed. It must work harder at becoming a source of

hope to the hopeless and a reservoir of power to the

powerless. It must redouble its efforts to restore the

preservation of humanity as the highest of all ideals.

The horror of 11 September has shocked some of

us into establishing a coalition against terrorism. It is

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time for the tragedy of underdevelopment to shock all

of us into forging new coalitions for development. At

this juncture, let us use this United Nations, energized

by its Nobel award, to create these coalitions. Let us

build a coalition in defence of the wretched of the

earth — to end their hunger, to terminate their poverty,

to eradicate their diseases and to forever banish their

wretchedness.