Speech by Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in the 79th session of the UNGA. teleSUR
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00:00Mr. President, your excellencies, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a magnificent exemplar
00:20of our Caribbean civilization. Despite the quarter-century of analysis, advocacy, and
00:30prescriptions set forth by leaders of small island developing states and international
00:38institutions charged with advancing the interests of CIDs, our travails are enduring in a global
00:47community largely disinterested in our well-being and that of small states generally. We in CIDs
00:56remain unequally yoked in a global community motivated by the baser instincts of the
01:05untrammeled power of money, ideology, guns, lethal weapons, territorial and global dominance. To be
01:16sure, the CIDs have made incremental advances in the global community and in the architecture of
01:26international relations. Nevertheless, for us in CIDs, it has been a situation akin to going up a
01:34dung escalator in which the dung escalator is moving at a faster pace than the upward baby
01:43steps. Frequently, it appears as though much of the powerful would wish the CIDs not to exist.
01:51But here we are, stubborn as the heavens. We are not going anywhere despite our massive
02:03vulnerabilities. Our people have a permanence in this world even if some of our lands wash
02:11away. We have a voice and we will continue to use it. We demand, as of right, a special support
02:22from the international community to address efficaciously the unique social, economic and
02:30environmental vulnerabilities of CIDs in the interests of the nearly 70 million people who
02:38permanently occupy the seascape and landscape of the CIDs and in the interests, too, of all the
02:45other 8 billion or so persons who inhabit Mother Earth. Small island exceptionalism ought to be a
02:54category embedded formally in international law and accorded most favorable treatment. Rather
03:04than securing a most favorable treatment, the CIDs are required to fight to maintain the special
03:13considerations which providence or serendipity has bestowed upon them. A case in point is the
03:21attempt currently by the International Development Association, IDA, to pit the most vulnerable,
03:29the CIDs, against the poorest countries in its quest to tighten the terms under which qualifying
03:36CIDs of a particular income level, such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines, obtain soft loans
03:43through the World Bank IDA nexus. In an event, why is the World Bank persisting with the single
03:53anachronistic and ill-designed metric of average per capita income in respect of vulnerable CIDs
04:03in the age of the Anthropocene as against a more comprehensive and sensible measure of a
04:10multi-dimensional vulnerability index? Your Excellencies, the unvarnished truth is that the
04:17developed countries have not kept their promises to the CIDs, except the most marginal ones.
04:26Importantly, the countries of the developed world, the major historic and contemporary emitters of
04:33greenhouse gases, have failed and or refused to keep their solemn commitments of restricting
04:41the global temperature at below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
04:48Unless there are drastic alterations in the patterns of consumption, production, life,
04:56and living in developed and large emerging economies, our planet is inexorably on a path
05:04to a proverbial hell in a handbasket. In the process, countries of an island or seaboard
05:12civilization are likely to be inundated by raging seas and enveloped in searing heat.
05:22On the matter of the financing of climate change, the developed countries which have the means
05:29and the major historic responsibility to contain this existential threat have been parsimonious
05:38and less than responsible in practice. Even today, the cynicism and doublespeak of several
05:45major developed countries is breathtaking in response to the quest of most of the global
05:52community to transform the international financial institutions as fit for purpose in today's world
05:59and for responsible, reasonable alterations in the actual modalities of climate financing.
06:08High representatives of most of these developed countries
06:11pay lip service in general to the innovative proposals, the Bridgestone 3 proposals endorsed
06:18by the Caribbean community, only to nitpick and delay in the particular on the progressive
06:26essentials. Brazenly, when these developed countries make a marginal concession,
06:34they trumpet it as a major advance so as to send the proverbial fool a little further.
06:42The Antigua and Barbuda agenda for SIDS adopted earlier this year
06:47encompass an action-oriented framework for the way forward. The recently adopted
06:53pact for the future by the United Nations General Assembly provides a wider and promising buttress.
07:00In our advocacy for the 39 SIDS, we embrace, too, the cause of the least developed countries
07:09and the landlocked developing countries, all 92 vulnerable countries in the United Nations system.
07:18Your Excellencies, growing material dissatisfaction grips increasingly large numbers of people in
07:26both the metropoles and the hinterlands in this highly interconnected world.
07:33Noticeably, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Things are falling apart.
07:43The centres cannot hold, and the cascading effects are ripping the world asunder.
07:50The best of all lack conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
07:56Creative resistance and reconstruction are the banners under which ordinary men and women across
08:05the globe are draping themselves. Sadly, in the North Atlantic countries,
08:12there is a growing and dangerous constituency for an illiberal, even a neo-fascist option
08:22of looking forward to an illusory past in search of making again their countries
08:29unalloyed mythical paradises of unrivalled dominance. They are looking forward to a past
08:37that never was. At the same time, even a modest middling social democracy is on the retreat,
08:46because this old political shell of the post-1945 global order can barely contain the erupting
08:54contradictions within and outside it. A search for new modalities is emerging, but not yet
09:01fully formed, in part because the old order is unprepared to relinquish, cede or share power,
09:09even as it realizes that it cannot continue to rule in the old way. But the new is yet to be born,
09:17and the forces of change lack a sufficiency of strength to deliver satisfactory alterations.
09:25Your Excellencies, the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the conflicts in the Yemen,
09:33Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the threats across the Taiwan Strait,
09:39and empires' designs on revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela, the violence and more in Haiti,
09:45and such-like disruptions of the peace globally, all have specific origins and contexts.
09:52But they are all reflective, too, of a failure of multilateralism,
09:57a hamstrung United Nations framework, and a derogation from the fundamental precepts
10:03of the Charter of the United Nations. Large, powerful nations,
10:11singly or in allied combinations, have a propensity to seek dominance. In this milieu,
10:20opportunistic or servile alliances emerge or persist, as the particular circumstances admit.
10:29It all degenerates into emanation politics of the madhouse. Hypocrisy,
10:37disinformation and folly reign supreme. Your Excellencies, in this context arises the trope
10:46of the neoliberal global order that the principal contradiction in today's global political economy
10:52is between democracy and autocracy. Still, all the self-serving shibboleths
11:01and gloss of this fictional construct will not wash away the unrepentant sins of the past
11:09or the cruel impositions of the present. The blinding truth is that the central
11:15contradiction in today's political economy is not between democracy and autocracy.
11:21The main contradiction has been, and still is today, that which resolves around the
11:27fundamental material questions of who gets what, when, where and how.
11:34It is centrally about the struggle or competition for ownership, control and distribution of
11:40material resources, which constitute the basis for regional or global hegemony.
11:47Everywhere, more and more, the poor, the hungry, the marginalized, the disadvantaged
11:53are clamouring and organising for a different and better future. Not an unacceptable past,
12:02not a present without possibilities of upliftment, but for a future beyond unbounded elements.
12:12Your Excellencies, sadly, in our region, we have been experiencing the lived reality
12:20that the imperial ghost of Monroe still stalks the marbled halls of the citadels
12:29of a neighbouring great country, of extraordinary possibilities
12:34to the detriment of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
12:39No country in our hemisphere can reasonably be considered a security or a threat to this great
12:45nation. Yet St Vincent and the Grenadines and other Caribbean countries have been damaged
12:53collaterally and directly in significant material ways by the weaponizing of the financial system
13:02and the unjust unilateral coercive sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, which are in breach
13:09of international law. I am pleading with our friends for an amicable reset of these troubled
13:17relations in the interests of peace, mutual respect, justice and prosperity. The international
13:25community continues overwhelmingly and rightly to demand the end of the unilateral sanctions,
13:33the embargoes and unfair declarations about state sponsorship of terrorism and more made against
13:41Cuba. Your Excellencies, on July the 1st, 2024, the Category 4 hurricane burial battered St
13:50Vincent and Grenadines, Grenada and Jamaica. Since the dawn of the 21st century, this is the 12th
13:57significant natural disaster to have struck my country. Hurricane burial has adversely affected
14:06one-fifth of our population and has caused economic damage amounting to one-third of
14:12our country's gross domestic product. The relief recovery and reconstruction processes
14:19are underway. On behalf of the government and people of St Vincent and Grenadines,
14:24I thank all countries and organizations, including the United Nations, that have come to our aid in
14:31the aftermath of the hurricane. Unfortunately, for the recovery and rebuilding processes,
14:37we are essentially on our own. We have had to seek significant loans to rebuild
14:44our physical infrastructure and 5,000 houses, to provide income support for affected persons
14:50and to mobilize production support for the agricultural, fishing and tourism industries.
14:56I am appealing to the international community, our dear friends, to assist us,
15:01not with further burdensome loans, but with requisite grants. The recovery and reconstruction
15:07after every natural disaster increased sharply our debt burden. Countries like ours have contributed
15:16little or nothing to global warming and man-made climate change, yet we suffer largely alone
15:23on the front lines. This cannot be fair. It cannot be just. Do we have to choose
15:31death or debt? D-E-A-T-H or D-E-B-T? Which one we have to choose?
15:40Your Excellencies, the Caribbean community, the African Union, the community of states
15:45of Latin America and the Caribbean, their diasporas and all fair-minded persons globally
15:51have been insisting that the European nations responsible for native genocide
15:56and the enslavement of African bodies pay reparations for the consequential legacy
16:01of underdevelopment. This issue of transformative reparatory justice will not go away until it is
16:10appropriately addressed. Your Excellencies, the suffering and pain of the Haitian people
16:17continue to weigh heavily on the consciences of our Caribbean. Through the efforts of the Haitian
16:23people in tandem with the regional and international communities, especially CARICOM, the USA,
16:30Canada and Kenya, a measure of progress has been made on some fronts, but immense challenges remain
16:37in the humanitarian, security, political and economic spheres. The building of a free,
16:43democratic, peaceful and prosperous Haiti demands commitment and concerted action from
16:49all the relevant stakeholders in pursuance of solutions devised by Haitians and led by Haitians.
16:57Haiti fatigue is not an option for the international community.
17:01Your Excellencies, in our Caribbean, there is a growing challenge of violent crime
17:07involving the combustible mix of imported guns and bullets, illegally exported marijuana
17:14and the trafficking of cocaine from South America. It is evident that this challenge
17:19demands much closer cooperation, operationally, between all the countries concerned in the
17:25Caribbean, North America, South America and Europe. In the Middle East, the collective punishment
17:34meted against the Palestinians in Gaza and the continued illegal occupation of Palestinian lands,
17:42including in the West Bank, amidst a company in state terror by an Israeli regime,
17:50in total defiance of international law, is utterly unacceptable.
17:55Surely, despite the complexities of the problems at hand,
17:59this United Nations, especially the Security Council, ought to summon the courage and will
18:04to stop the carnage and facilitate a lasting peace and security.
18:10Your Excellencies, in the Far East, the prospect of a disruption of the tenuous peace across the
18:16Taiwan Strait is alarming. The quest for hegemony and the denial of a people's inalienable right
18:23to self-determination are wrong in the East as it is in the West. Bullying is objectionable in the
18:30West as it is in the East. Unilateral coercive action by a big power in the East
18:38is contrary to international law as it is surely in the West.
18:43St Vincent and the Grenadines continues to urge that Taiwan be allowed to participate fully in
18:49the specialized agencies of the United Nations, including those pertaining to health,
18:55air and sea transport, climate change, disaster preparedness and global policy.
19:04Your Excellencies, it appears that there have been recently some positive movements in the
19:12long quest to effect a judicious and just reform of the United Nations Security Council.
19:21It is evident to all reasonable persons that reform of this body is long overdue.
19:27As the chair of the L69 Group, St Vincent and the Grenadines will continue its advocacy
19:34for an inclusive, more comfortably effective representative and relevant Security Council.
19:40Excellencies, we know that a better world is possible. On the United Nations rests our hopes
19:47for a better world for peace, justice, security and prosperity. Let us also act in accord
19:57with our responsibilities, obligations and means. Please, let us not desecrate our future. Thank you.
20:09We were listening to the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves.
20:20Among other key topics, he highlighted that the developed countries of the world have failed to
20:25keep their commitments to meet emission targets and have worsened the unequal harm caused by
20:30climate change. We will continue bringing you the latest on this and major topics around the world.
20:35Stay tuned with TELUS for English.