The Bahamas, 2006

I congratulate Sheikha

Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa on assuming the presidency of

the General Assembly at its sixty-first session. I also

commend her predecessor, Jan Eliasson of Sweden, for

his outstanding performance as President of the

General Assembly at the preceding session.

I acknowledge and pay tribute to Secretary-

General Kofi Annan for his many years of dedication

to the United Nations. The Government and people of

the Bahamas are profoundly grateful to Secretary-

General Annan for all that he has done for the United

Nations, and I look forward to welcoming him one day

to the Bahamas so that we might thank him personally.

I also congratulate and welcome Montenegro as

the 192nd State Member of the United Nations and

convey the best wishes of the Government of the

Bahamas for the prosperity and welfare of all its

people.

The Bahamas stands for democracy, the rule of

law and the right to self-determination. In this very

body, before the Committee of 24 on decolonization,

our national leaders made the case for the

independence of our country. We were able to achieve

that in 1973, and ever since then successive

administrations have voiced the Bahamas’ support of

the same principles. I do so again today. In doing so, I

remind this body that the Bahamas and the region of

which it is a part are shining examples to all the world

of all of those principles. Within the next year, the

Bahamian people will again have the opportunity to

choose their Government in a general election based on

universal adult suffrage. There have been, within the

past year in our region, similar general elections in St.

Vincent and the Grenadines and Guyana. The Bahamas

does not support the use of the military in Government

or to overthrow legitimately elected Governments.

Wherever that occurs, it must be deplored and there

must be a return to constitutional democratic rule

within the shortest possible time.

In our foreign policy, the Bahamas believes in

peace with all nations and we seek to avoid ideological

battles. Ours is a policy that avoids extremism, while at

the same time letting our voice be heard for the

dispossessed. We have the right to be here to speak for

ourselves and to speak for those who cannot speak. Our

people have fought for their voice to be heard and they

will be heard.

My delegation welcomes the attempt by the

Security Council to increase the transparency of the

selection process in that body for the post of Secretary-

General by apprising the President of the General

Assembly of its proposed actions on this matter and on

the results of the straw polls. We would take this

opportunity to assure this body that whoever succeeds

to the post will have our support and cooperation.

It was just over a year ago that we adopted the

2005 World Summit Outcome Document that has

served as the road map for reform efforts over the past

12 months. The Bahamas, like other States Members of

this Organization, is pleased that a number of reforms

have been implemented. In that regard, we note the

Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights

Council. With regard to the Human Rights Council, we

hope that it will evolve as an entity dedicated to a

process of constructive dialogue and cooperation in

which all countries may participate on an equal

footing.

The Bahamas renews its commitment to the

Millennium Development Goals, and in particular to

universal education, fighting HIV/AIDS, equality for

women and cutting poverty in half by 2015. The

country’s international, award-winning Urban Renewal

Initiative has begun to address in particular the issue of

poverty in the Bahamas. The further reform of the

Economic and Social Council should lead to its being

17 06-53615

empowered to implement the internationally agreed

development goals and commitments to the eradication

of poverty, hunger and all other ills that continue to

plague humanity.

I turn now to the United Nations Global Counter-

Terrorism Strategy and the issue of regional global

security. We renew our commitments in that area.

However, as we have done for the past four years, we

want to take the opportunity to further define our

security interests as not being limited to the strategies

defined by a narrow view of counter-terrorism. We

believe that counter-terrorism strategies should be

informed by a much broader definition, namely, as

ensuring the stability of our societies as we fight our

vulnerabilities to drug traffickers, natural and

environmental disasters and poverty, and our

challenges with education and health care. In

particular, we call upon the developed economies in

our region and further afield to remember their moral

and legal obligations to stop the assault of small arms

on our societies, to cooperate in stopping the flow of

drugs through our region, and to work together with us

in declaring the Caribbean Sea and its environs to be a

nuclear-free zone. There must be a strategic alliance

between developed economies and those in our region

to ensure that those security vulnerabilities are

minimized, if not eliminated.

The Bahamas is greatly heartened by the fact that

Member States have agreed on the text of the

convention on the rights of persons with disabilities,

which is to be adopted by the General Assembly in the

months ahead. That landmark convention recognizes

the importance for persons with disabilities of their

individual autonomy and independence, including the

freedom to make their own choices, and it

acknowledges that those persons should have the

opportunity to be actively involved in decision-making

processes about policies and programmes, particularly

those of direct concern to them. That is an important

step in empowering not only persons with disabilities,

but also the neighbourhoods, communities, societies

and countries in which they live. For too long, persons

with disabilities have been marginalized in many

settings, depriving them of their rights as citizens and

depriving society of the many contributions they could

make in the exercise of their full and unimpeded

participation. The Bahamas plans legislation to further

empower the disabled during the current session of our

Parliament.

It has often been said that reform is a process and

not an event. We continue to support reform of the

Security Council so that it may more accurately reflect

the interests and balance of power in the realities of the

twenty-first century, including allowing small island

developing States to play a greater role in its activities.

It is our hope that, during this sixty-first session of the

General Assembly, we will see some significant

movement in the reform of the Security Council.

Any reform would mean very little, however, if it

did not ultimately translate into the well-being of the

people of this planet. In that vein, the Bahamas will do

its part towards the implementation of the global

partnership for development and the translation of that

partnership into not only effective international,

multilateral economic, trading, financial and

environmental governance systems and mechanisms,

but also into the proliferation of healthy, productive

households and communities that contribute to

increased global welfare and security.

We want to take this opportunity to recall our

concern about coercive measures by developed States

that adversely affect the trade in services in the

Bahamian economy and in our region generally. We

reiterate our call for levelling the playing field and for

a global forum to address how the issue of a level

playing field can be translated into international public

policy.

The Bahamas welcomed and participated in the

recent High-level Dialogue on International Migration

and Development. At that time, the Bahamas outlined

the many positive impacts that international migration

had made on its economy and cultural development.

However, the Bahamas also noted the many challenges

the country had experienced over the previous 60 years

in managing migration, including those related to the

prevention of irregular or unauthorized migration.

For the Bahamas, irregular or unauthorized

migration has given rise to considerable challenges in

the social and educational sectors, as well as to serious

national security issues. In this regard, the Bahamas

has pledged to work with our partners in the region

towards the establishment of a better way to match the

supply with the demand for migration in safe, legal,

humane and orderly ways, in order to maximize the

societal and human development potential of global

labour mobility, with the involvement of private-sector

and public-sector stakeholders.

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The Bahamas is committed to sustainable

development. To a small-island developing State, there

are few things more important than securing the

necessary assistance in order to build resilience against

the many hazards that afflict the country on a

consistent basis, including violent storms or hurricanes,

which pass through our region even more frequently as

a result of global warming. In this connection, we look

to our partners in the region, the hemisphere and

around the world to reduce greenhouse gases. We call

on those countries that have not yet done so to sign the

Kyoto Protocol. It is also imperative that we all

commit ourselves to the development of alternative

sources of energy, in order to become less dependent

on the current polluting technologies that supply our

energy needs but threaten our sustainability.

The Bahamas would like to take this opportunity

to once again congratulate the people of one of our

regional partners, Haiti, on the election and installation

of its democratically elected Government. It is

imperative that the international community do all it

possibly can to help Haiti establish stability and

security and promote sustained and sustainable

development within its national borders.

As I have stated on previous occasions, the

Bahamas, which sits some 90 miles over the seas to the

north of Haiti, has a special interest in its stability and

prosperity. Instability in Haiti is bound to cause

instability in the Bahamas. A significant proportion of

the population in the Bahamas is either Haitian or of

Haitian descent. A migration crisis resulting from

instability in Haiti will have an immediate effect on the

Bahamas. Such a crisis would be difficult for our

country to endure and, with the will of the Haitian

community and the support of the world community,

we believe that it can and should be avoided.

The Bahamas has always made known its support

for the people of Haiti and their aspirations for peace,

security and development. We have and continue to

take seriously our commitment to assist the people of

Haiti in taking charge of their destiny and placing their

country on the path to enduring democracy and

development. The Bahamas believes that it is therefore

imperative that the promised international financial

assistance to Haiti is delivered in a timely and efficient

manner.

I would also like to take this opportunity to signal

my Government’s support for the upcoming Caribbean

Community (CARICOM) and Caribbean Common

Market initiative to encourage the United Nations to

mark and commemorate the 200th anniversary of the

abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 2007.

Slavery and the concomitant slave trade together stand

as one of the most vicious violations of human rights in

recorded history. As the global sentinel for human

rights, the United Nations has a duty to highlight the

200th anniversary of the cessation of this crime against

humanity with a special event in 2007. We hope that

this initiative will receive the wide and enthusiastic

support of this General Assembly and indeed of the

wider United Nations community.

This commemoration will present an ideal

opportunity to pay tribute to peoples of African descent

across the entire spectrum of the diaspora who share a

common heritage and, having survived the middle

passage, have gone on to form the bedrock on which

the prosperity of many developed countries has been

built. For its part, the Bahamas plans to undertake a

number of commemorative events including a festival

of arts which will run from March 2007 to January

2008. During the festival, a different country or region

of Africa will be showcased each month as a means of

exposing Bahamians to the rich culture of Africa

through theatre, art, music and dance.

One of the other challenges that we will face

during this session is reaching agreement on the scale

of assessments for the apportionment of expenses of

the United Nations for the next triennium. We look

forward to engaging with other Member States to

achieve a scale of assessments that is broadly based on

the principle of the capacity to pay, and that it is

transparent, equitable and stable.

The Bahamas continues to believe that the

Charter of the United Nations constitutes a viable and

firm foundation on which the Organization can balance

and achieve its objectives to maintain international

peace and security and to promote economic and social

progress. I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm the

commitment of the Bahamas to the principles

enshrined in that universal document, as well as to the

ongoing process of reform, which seeks to more

effectively translate these principles into real peace,

security and sustainable development for all the

world’s inhabitants. While dramatic progress may

sometimes evade us, we must not be swayed from our

course, and we must remain confident that our

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activities and efforts will benefit future generations.

Now more than ever we need the United Nations.