Tuvalu, 2012

It is my great honour and

pleasure to participate in the general debate of the

Assembly on behalf of the people and Government

of Tuvalu. As Tuvalu will commemorate the thirty-

fourth anniversary of its independence on Monday

next week, 1 October, let me take this opportunity to

acknowledge with profound appreciation the continued

assistance and support given us by the United Nations,

the international community and in particular our

traditional development partners in our pursuit of our

development goals.

The overarching theme, “Bringing about adjustment

or settlement of international disputes or situations by

peaceful means”, together with a myriad of core issues

that have been chosen for the Assembly’s sixty-seventh

session, is fully supported by Tuvalu. In view of

circumstances facing the world today, there is certainly

an urgent and critical need for the United Nations and for each Member State in particular to address those

issues, individually or collectively.

As a small and peace-loving nation, Tuvalu

welcomes and fully supports the important services

provided by the United Nations and other organizations

in the maintenance of peace and security around the

world, especially in conflict regions. We firmly believe

that the use of force through military or violent action

as a means for settling disputes and conflicts should be

avoided at all costs. It is also important that countries

involved in such disputes should be encouraged

and supported in discussing the root causes of their

differences among themselves in a non-confrontational

manner.

We concur fully with the President’s vision that

we cannot be defeated by terrorists, extremists and the

sponsors and supporters who back them. The world

we want to give our future generations is not one of

terrorism and fanaticism, or of proliferation of weapons

of mass destruction, maritime piracy, organized

crime, drugs and narcotic smuggling, child labour and

trafficking, slavery and religious intolerance. In the

United Nations, we strive for international peace and

security; that is the world we want to give to all future

generations.

Faced with globalized agendas, the United Nations

must cooperate and seek engagement with other

organizations and their memberships for partnerships

in development activities. The United Nations should

also seek to ensure participatory planning in the design

of any engagement so that we co-opt and work together

with the existing diverse fabric of our societies, whose

issues we are trying to address and assist with. The

United Nations should also align its programmes and

activities with those of the host country’s needs and

action frameworks, heeding the distinctiveness of our

membership.

When Tuvalu became the 189th Member of the

United Nations in September 2000, we were conscious

of the complexity and breadth of the United Nations

agenda in comparison with our relatively modest

capacity. Yet there was one issue that we were

confidently determined to bring to the fore. Does the

United Nations hear the plea of small island developing

States (SIDS) for fair treatment by the international

community?

Today, 12 years later, we consider this lasting

concern almost totally unanswered. That may sound surprising to some representatives, as we all tend to be

under the impression that much work, time and energy

has been spent over the past two decades for the benefit

of SIDS. Without going into detail on the state of the

SIDS agenda, I would like to make three observations

on the subject and outline Tuvalu’s intentions in the

same vein.

First, as much as we appreciate the work of

various United Nations departments and programmes

on SIDS, we observe that this work has been almost

entirely focused on stating and indefinitely reiterating

the challenges and problems SIDS are facing. We have

seen nearly 20 General Assembly resolutions on SIDS

adopted since the Global Conference on the Sustainable

Development of Small Island Developing States, held

in Barbados, and numerous reports of the Secretary-

General on the subject. Two United Nations conferences

on SIDS have been organized, and now new momentum

is gathering towards a third conference in 2014.

Secondly, there is no part of the SIDS work in the

United Nations that has ever generated international

support measures specially reserved for SIDS. In other

words, in 20 years the United Nations has not been able

to hear and answer the pleas our island States have been

making for special treatment. SIDS status and SIDS-

specific treatment are truly what our small island States

are in need of, just as the least developed countries

(LDCs) need the special treatment extended to them by

the international community.

Thirdly, we would like to reply to those, within and

outside the United Nations, who have been arguing that

the case for special treatment of SIDS is not and should

not be on the United Nations agenda, because special

treatment of SIDS would imply the existence of a SIDS

category, and apparently, we are told, SIDS cannot

be considered and dealt with as a special category.

Therefore, SIDS are only an abstract notion deliberately

kept undefined, because any clarity or debate on what

they are and what precisely could be done for them

would be too challenging or disturbing.

That seemingly accepted sense of SIDS work in the

United Nations does not match Tuvalu’s vision of what

the United Nations ought to be doing in support of those

countries. We believe that the time has come for us to

spell it out; the third decade of United Nations work on

SIDS should not be another round of lip service. That

will require a number of needed special international

measures for SIDS to be identified and, naturally also, that some order be put in the definition of SIDS,

as a necessary condition for making SIDS a genuine,

internationally accepted special category of countries.

Tuvalu greatly appreciates the decision taken

by the Economic and Social Council to note the

recommendation of the Committee for Development

Policy to graduate Tuvalu from the least developed

country category and to consider that issue at its next

substantive session in 2013. That will allow the Council

the opportunity for full consideration of the particular

challenges Tuvalu faces. In that regard, despite the

fact that Tuvalu has met two of the three criteria for

graduation from LDC status, there is an urgent need for

the United Nations to revisit such criteria in order to

reflect and capture the real situation of the economies

of the countries eligible for graduation.

We believe that treating the case of Tuvalu the

same way one deals with other countries is a denial

of what decades of United Nations advocacy have set

in place. It would be something akin to the principle

of equal treatment, namely, the principle of special

treatment, which is precisely the foundation of the

very existence of LDC status. If the geographical

limitations and extreme vulnerabilities of Tuvalu do

not justify special consideration, what is the purpose

of special and differentiated treatment, the cornerstone

of international cooperation? Obviously, countries

are acutely uneven and unequal, and treating them on

the basis of a one-size-fits-all paradigm would simply

be wrong. Tuvalu looks forward to the continued

understanding and support of members of the Economic

and Social Council on the question of its graduation

from the LDC category.

Tuvalu also accords the highest priority to the

attainment of the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs). Tuvalu has passionately pursued those Goals,

and we sincerely thank the donor community for its

invaluable support, be it in-kind or financial. As we

progress to the end of the MDGs in 2015, we continue

to seek such partnerships so as to ensure that the MDGs

are achieved fully and effectively as we anticipate the

transition to the sustainable development goals.

We are also fully committed to the strategic

implementation of the essential dictates of the Barbados

Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development

of Small Island Developing States, the Mauritius

Strategy for its further implementation, and the

Istanbul Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2011-2020, and seek the

cooperation of development partners to provide, in a

timely and predictable manner, financial and technical

support to ensure their successful implementation.

We have repeatedly called on developed and

emerging countries and their partners to take a

leadership role in reducing their greenhouse-gas

emissions and to help small and poor countries like

Tuvalu in their mitigation and adaptation activities.

Tuvalu’s security and nationhood are continuously being

threatened by the adverse impact of climate change,

especially by sea-level rise. Much has been said and

documented on the root causes of climate change and

its negative consequences for many countries, not just

the most vulnerable small island States like Tuvalu. Yet

the ongoing global pleas to address such consequences

have so far fallen on ignorant, if not deaf, ears.

Our smallness and lack of natural endowments, as

well as being only four metres above sea level, leave

us extremely vulnerable to natural shocks, particularly

to the effects of climate change and sea-level rise. As

is well known, sea-level rise and f looding threaten

Tuvalu’s limited agricultural production, undermine

food security, and increase our vulnerability to supply

disruptions. We therefore support advances and urge

perseverance with the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol

as the primary international, intergovernmental forum

for negotiating the global response to climate change

in order to give substance to international agreements.

As a sea-locked country, we in the Pacific have

offered the resources of our vast oceans to be utilized

by developed countries. We ask the partner countries

to be more responsible and to reward us as guardians

with the appropriate compensations that are conducive

to our development needs, as well as environmentally

recompensing. Domestically, Tuvalu is pursuing energy

efficiencies, development strategies and goals that are

both green or blue and sustainable. We have challenged

ourselves to be 100 per cent renewable in 2020 in our

energy sector. We could miss the mark, but we will not

be comforted by remaining inactive, be it in our vision

or in our action. We have asked developed countries to

reduce carbon emissions; we will do the same at home,

regardless of scale contrasts.

With the advent of technology, Tuvalu seeks

the donors’ assistance in realizing their pledges to

establish early-warning systems pertaining to tsunamis

or tropical cyclones in order to mitigate any risk and subsequent cost to Tuvalu. Tuvalu wishes also to offer

its established trust fund protocols to the United Nations

and development partners’ funding mechanisms for

climate change adaptation as innovative financing

instruments and architecture for channelling such

resources to Tuvalu. Our trust funds are governed by

international agreements and renowned worldwide as

transparent and accountable mechanisms with high

international standards of accounting and governance.

Many suggestions for enhancing the role of the

United Nations have been documented. We also

continue to hear from the experts and technical

advisers of the development of alternative energy

drives and technologies, be they solar, wind or wave.

In our region, and I believe in many other remote areas,

we ask how we can get those new technologies to be

readily available and price-effective to the membership

of the United Nations, especially LDCs and SIDS. We

therefore urge the United Nations and the Secretariat to

act as facilitators of such developments and to expedite

technology transfers, where appropriate, to bring our

many words and resolutions to fruition.

Our collective and global efforts to have peace

and security as a prerequisite for the stability needed

for global economic growth, sustainable development

and social progress will be meaningless if the United

Nations continues not to recognize and acknowledge

Taiwan’s significant contribution and efforts towards

the East China Sea peace initiative for regional

stability and peace. Furthermore, Taiwan’s continued

contribution to the international community as one of

the committed development partners and responsible

stakeholders in achieving the Millennium Development

Goals should be recognized and accepted by the

United Nations system as a valuable contribution to

our collective efforts. In that regard, Tuvalu calls

upon the United Nations subsidiary bodies, especially

the International Civil Aviation Organization and the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change, to recognize and allow Taiwan to participate

in and contribute meaningfully to their meetings and

activities without reservations.

Incidentally, any legitimate claim for new

nationhood or independence, be it in the Pacific region

or the world over, should be supported, as colonialism

in any form is contradictory to the United Nations

Charter, just as any form of discrimination by race,

gender or belief is not accepted in a civilized, modern

and free world. I conclude by asking that the United Nations

continue to cooperate in an unprecedented way.

The United Nations must work together more

enterprisingly and reform our strategies to conform

to new developments, contemporary innovations and

issues. Holding and hosting meeting after meeting is

a good engagement strategy and directs our activities.

However, delaying the implementation of resolutions is

detrimental, as resolution after resolution is shelved or

deferred until they are redundant. The United Nations

Charter, I believe, is premised on timely actions and

achievements to gauge whether we are effective and

sustainable or merely validating our inactivity.

I wish the President, the Secretary-General and

all our membership every success in the sixty-seventh

session of the General Assembly.