YouSaid · the spoken record

Mia Amor Mottley

lines on the record: 91
first: 2018-09-24
most recent: 2023-09-24
sittings or episodes: 4
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The international community will ignore us at its own peril. We are the canaries. Regrettably, we are noticed only when it is time to garner votes or to support seats on the Security Council or when a person wants a candidate to head an international organization. It is indeed only then that real value is placed on us. One asks oneself how people can be so transparent and so lacking in dignity and conscience. As I had cause to do earlier this week, I would like to remind Member States that the Alliance of Small Island States represents 20 per cent of the membership of this body — 43 States — and our votes and our voices count. They count but our lives and our dignity count more. We are committed to taking the action needed to overcome the deleterious effects of what threatens to destroy us — climate change.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“The United Nations exists to identify the commonalities that will help us get past our working differences. As I said earlier, there is no progress without communication and there is no progress without talking to each other. If the consequences of not talking to each other are a little less sleep, then that is okay and we can accept it, but when the consequences are the loss of life and loss of livelihood, then we are in trouble. That is why there are those who believe that we are invisible because those who should know better and can do more are turning a blind eye with impunity. If the truth be told, how many times have we been ignored on too many matters? And I ask myself how many times are we really going to come and make the same speech from this rostrum? SIDS are the canaries of the international community.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“All of us in this Hall know that. It is for that reason that Barbados intends and hopes to host the fifteenth session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in October 2020. We will be the first small island nation ever to host UNCTAD. Barbados welcomes the unique opportunity to work with others, our partners, to shape the trade and development agenda of the Organization for the next four years, conscious that if ever small island developing States needed to be at the centre of those discussions, it is now in order to discuss trade and climate, trade and the blue economy and sustainable development for our people. We look forward to forming those critical partnerships with all United Nations Member States to make UNCTAD XV an inclusive and successful event.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“As a small nation, we are not only committed to multilateralism, we also understand that it is the one thing that protects our sovereignty and our ability to navigate in this world. It is our buffer against the display of might and it is our shield against tyranny. We continue to view the United Nations as an important mechanism for achieving international peace and security and sustainable development for all countries, but in particular for the most vulnerable. Historical examples have proved that national interests are best advanced by pursuing collaboration, partnership and a multilateral approach. No country trades or grows its economy on its own. A multilateral trading system and an international economic order that respond to the needs of all nations, even the smallest, are therefore of critical importance.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We ask for fairness, equity and the opportunity to take our legitimate place in the global community. That is all. That was the promise underpinning our membership of the Organization. I know that today I have a duty to acknowledge and commend the heroic efforts of the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who is swimming against the rising tide of anti-multilateralism and anti-globalism, navigating the dangerous currents of dwindling resources and resisting the efforts to set adrift all the excellent work done over the past seven and a half decades by leaders across the world and his predecessors to ensure development, peace and the dignity of the human family.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I reaffirm the strong opposition of Barbados to that unilateral action and even more so to the recent activation of article 3 of the Helms-Burton Act, imposing new restrictions and further exacerbating the situation. And to what end, I ask? The continued attempt to stop the people of Cuba from living with basic human dignity is unacceptable. It is time that the global community recognized that small island developing States are equal partners in the international arena and that our special development needs must be taken into account in multilateral forums. We contend that growth in the economies of developed States must not come at the expense of the very viability of small developing States. Small children have a phrase for that. They call it cowardice, bullying and crowding out.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I speak plainly and without fear because, since independence, the foreign policy of Barbados has been premised on the principle of friend of all, satellite of none. Barbados has therefore always remained and will remain proud to have Cuba as a treasured friend. Barbados established relations with the People’s Republic of China when others failed to. We may be small but we are principled. Our relationship with Cuba is based on a historical foundation rooted in solidarity, cooperation, complementarity and our common Caribbean civilization. We say that the long-standing economic embargo on Cuba continues to be a cause of serious concern.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“That is why Barbados readily agreed to the request by Norway, and I salute my colleague, the Norwegian Prime Minister, who just left the rostrum, to host the talks between the Venezuelan parties. We salute the Government of Norway for walking the walk and taking leadership in facilitating those talks. We also regret that the talks have broken down. We remind people that dialogue remains critical if there is to be a meaningful outcome and benefit for the Venezuelan people and its neighbours not only on the Latin American continent but in the Caribbean Sea, because people forget that Trinidad and Tobago is less than seven miles from the coast of Venezuela. Our Caribbean Sea must remain a zone of peace. We will fight for that.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We do not take sides, but what we know is that one cannot elevate war over dialogue. The people of Venezuela must be allowed to decide their own future in accordance with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, that is, the principles of non-intervention, non-interference, the prohibition of the threat or use of force and respect for the rule of law, human rights and democracy. It is regrettable that other multilateral organizations have not followed their own charters. That is what makes the actions of the Secretary-General of the United Nations even more laudable for refusing to breach the Charter and take actions even though Member States have hurried to recognize the unelected.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I cannot stand here today without talking about Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which has become the smallest nation in the world ever to be elected to sit on the Security Council. We are proud of them. In addition — and I want to speak to this — when CARICOM was confronted with the unfolding situation in Venezuela, I accompanied the then-Chair of CARICOM, the Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, to meet in this building with the Secretary-General in January of this year. We also met with many delegations. Some said that we were wasting our time and some said that the time for talk was already over. We said then, as we say now almost nine months later, that the time for dialogue can never be over in a world that wants peace and prosperity.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“That is why too many people the world over have become cynical about Governments and the benefits they can bring to them. The fuelling of the greed of a few threatens to undermine what little gains we have made since independence, and we judge ourselves harshly because independence is a recent phenomenon for us. Others, who have taken 150 years to get to where they are, are still stumbling and falling, and they want to judge those who have had less than 50 or 60 years to operate in a world that has not been made in their image and that does not reflect their interests? That is the fate of simply too many. Despite our small size, the 14 countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) have been able to play leadership roles of international import.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We want an equitable and just international order that is truly built on the principles of justice and fairness for all and not just for some. We want a United Nations that recognizes that at 74 years old, we must be able to have difficult conversations as mature people and solve problems. Many in the developing world were persuaded or required to abandon policies that were designed to transform the majority of our populations, and that were then fashioned to conform to a consensus that was settled in Washington and named for it. That, ultimately and regrettably, was about the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a very few. That is the reason for the growing inequality that we have seen in the world over the past few decades.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We do not want to be mendicant, and we will not be. What we want — no, what we need — is the fiscal and policy space to achieve sustainable development, to be nimble, to adapt and innovate in ways that enable us to be true and faithful to the task of bringing prosperity to our people or, as is the theme of this session of the Assembly, to eradicate poverty, educate our people and include all so that some are not outside and others inside. We want an international order that recognizes that there must be different policy prescriptions to suit the circumstances that each of us has, and we can still be friends — small and large, North and South, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, all different races and all genders.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I suppose people feel that because we have talked so long about Belize and Guyana and Cuba, we can continue to talk about climate change and those other things and that it is okay for it to be just another check mark on a General Assembly speech. Those are all threats to our stability, the stability of the people in our lands. But since last we met, other instances and circumstances not of our making have arisen that may yet destabilize us. We say it over and over, and we ask who is listening. But we do not come only with tales of woe. The Caribbean has produced excellence, it really has. It has produced Nobel laureates, sportsmen and artists who have excelled and are the best in the world of their type, leaders who have inspired previous and current generations. We do not come here as a proud people asking for handouts.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Then there is the illicit flow of weapons, which has meant that the ease with which people can go into public spaces and shoot and kill others is now just another item on the news. We promote profit in the manufacturing and trade of guns weapons, and through the non-communicable diseases that strike down our people in the most insidious ways because we allow diets that promote the prosperity of a few multinational corporations to become the norm of the day through the food that we eat and the lives that we live. Within our own community, Belize and Guyana continue to face challenges to their territorial integrity.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“In the name of the people who have sent us here and who expect us to create the new industries that can transition them from coal, from destructive behaviour, from diesel- and gasoline-powered cars, we must change how we build and how we transport ourselves. We can make that difference. It is within our power. It is within the political will of the leaders. The time to act is now. Never in the history of humankind has one generation had such responsibility to protect this planet. Unfortunately, today the Caribbean also finds itself on the front line of too many other major challenges. That is why I constantly ask who sees us and who hears us. We continue to be confronted by the problems of blacklisting, which pale in significance when compared to climate change but which destroy our financial sector.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Where is the constructive action by the countries responsible for carbon emissions that believe that it is okay to continue to build coal-power plants and not decommission them, and that do not understand that the world is providing us with prospects of new industries and new jobs while enabling us to save the world for our young people? Do they not see what is happening? Why are they not acting? Do they not care? We are told, and I believe the science, that we are the last generation that can deal with this existential threat, which comes week by week — this past weekend it was Tropical Storm Karen. In the Atlantic we were lucky that Jerry and Humberto did not go the way of Dorian. How many more must stand on this rostrum? How many more must speak in the corridors of power?”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I find it ironic that after our Climate Action Summit on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released another special report on oceans and the cryosphere stating that some of the more severe consequences of climate change can no longer be avoided. How many times have we been told this? How many times has science reinforced that our very survival is threatened? Some will go up into high altitudes and remain there as if that can insulate them — but for how long? The destructive behaviour continues. Today in this Hall, I ask the Assembly, where is the moral leadership of our world?”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We have been discussing the challenge of climate change for more than three decades, from the time when small island developing States first raised the global alarm in 1988. The Commonwealth gave us a vulnerability index in 1989. The Barbados Programme of Action on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States came 25 years ago, followed by the Mauritius Strategy of Implementation and the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway. How many more? How much more talk? And we are still here today, some of us singing the same chorus as if many among us were deaf and blind.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“The question — and each of us here knows it — is whether it will be in time for our people who live in small island developing States. Will our small States survive this climate catastrophe before humankind finally finds the solution that can halt and reverse climate change? It is we in the Caribbean and the Pacific — small islands in the oceans of the world — who are on the front line. But as I say all the time, make no mistake, because others are in line behind us. As we would say in my own country, “Today for me, and tomorrow for you”. What is really preventing us from following the science — science, by the way, that is exceedingly compelling? I ask that we as leaders be real — real with ourselves, our people and the young. It is about political will. That is it, nothing more and nothing less.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“We are facing those problems in our own nation today, from drought to sargassum. And while hurricanes may be viewed as heart attacks, sargassum and droughts are truly like diabetes — insidious and wearing us down. It is the world of our children that is absolutely at risk. Last Friday, young people of the world across 150 countries chose to champion the cause of climate justice. Greta Thunberg spoke from this rostrum, and she must be comforted and told that when humankind cannot answer, it will attack. People play the man and not the ball. I want to say that for me it is significant that when young people engage in battle, the war is usually won. We saw that in South Africa, and we will see it now in the battle against climate change. I am therefore confident that the battle will be won.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“Denying the existence of climate change does not diminish its reality. I want to take this opportunity to join my fellow leaders on this platform in expressing my country’s deepest sympathy and empathy with our brothers and sisters of the Government and the people of the Bahamas, following the awful devastation visited on them by Hurricane Dorian on the islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama. That catastrophe represents an unfortunate new normal for many people in small island developing States (SIDS). From my own firsthand knowledge, I can say that it was horrific. The world in which we live can no longer ignore the reality of climate change. It is not about hurricanes and floods. It is about droughts, wildfires, sargassum and our ability to provide drinking water, feed our people and provide them with shelter.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“At the outset I would like to congratulate Mr. Tijjani Muhammad-Bande on his election as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-fourth session, and to pledge Barbados’s support throughout his tenure. I also want to thank his predecessor for her able and astute leadership over the course of the past year. Like other delegations, Barbados supports the very timely theme of this year’s session: “Galvanizing multilateral efforts for poverty eradication, quality education, climate action and inclusion”. We could not have chosen a more relevant and appropriate theme. Barbados has premised its own development on education and inclusion so that we can eradicate poverty from our landscape. But while we have made good progress, our gains are being jeopardized by one main challenge that we all know only too well, that of climate change.”
2019-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 74 (2019)
“I say simply that we cannot plan our affairs, or those of our people, on the basis of luck. It must be on the basis of policy and decisive action, but above all else on the basis of caring and empathy. I ask the world to pause — pause — and let us get this one right, because it is not about Governments anymore. It is about people.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“The baton has been passed from leader to leader, but it is time now for us in this Hall and in my country to recognize that that baton must be held firmly, because the storms, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and fires threaten to take the baton from us. I pray that the United Nations recognizes that the year 2020 is but 15 months away and that there will be a point of no return. This is not a science-fiction movie. This is not a cartoon. And if I ever thought that it was a fantasy, what transpired in the last 24 hours across the different poles of the world has reminded me that it is not. I leave here to cut short my trip so that I can go home to my country. Some may say that, in spite of the flooding, we were lucky that tropical storm Kirk did not do greater damage. Two weeks ago in San Francisco, it was Isaac.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We need the world to recognize that the graph that showed the tipping points must not serve to reinforce our greatest fear, namely, that the world believes that we are dispensable. For that was how we felt a century and more ago. I raise the question in the same way that I understand that our principles must remain constant. Fifty-two years ago, the first Prime Minister of Barbados stood at this rostrum and articulated a principle that binds us still today, namely, that we in Barbados shall, in the conduct of our international relations, forever be friends of all and satellites of none (see A/PV.1487). That is absolutely still our principle, but the world in which we live is no longer the world that existed when he delivered those comments.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“I truly pray that this world does not need to see greater calamity or greater loss of life to understand what is required of each and every one of us, as we stand in trust on behalf of the people whom we represent and who demand decisive action. We are not expected to achieve it all. The Talmud says that we are not even expected to complete the task, but we are not at liberty to resile from it. We in the Caribbean and in the Pacific need the world to look again at a commitment to a change of no more than 1.5° C, because 2° would be calamitous. We need dedicated financing for development in accordance with the Addis Ababa Action Plan, which speaks about small island developing States.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“That may be tolerable for certain things, but it cannot be acceptable for the issue of climate change. That is a matter of life and death for us. We stand here conscious that, in many respects, today’s world looks like the world of 100 years ago — the world that my grandparents inhabited, with its concentration of wealth, inequity and disposition to nationalism and xenophobia. And what did that lead to 100 years ago? It led to two world wars and an atomic bomb. I repeat, it led to two world wars and an atomic bomb. There are some who might say that it was the occurrence of those wars that gave rise to the United Nations, because the circumstances at that time forced nations to agree when they might otherwise not have agreed.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Who will hear us, and on whose platform will we be able to call not just upon the Governments of the world but also on the people of the world? For what is clearly required now is a behavioural change so that we can constrain the madness that is taking place and restore global governance so as to counter the unilateral actions of many. We ask ourselves, how do our citizens feel that we must come here year after year and make the call year after year as we do? From Barbados we come here and we speak about the embargo against the people of Cuba — year after year — almost as if it were pro forma. But it is not pro forma for the people in La Habana or Santiago. We speak about territorial disputes but we see no major gains with respect to them.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“But to that is added the removal of the insurance policy of the United Nations — an Organization that may not be well known or popular by name among our citizens, but an organization nevertheless without which we could not have made the gains that we have made with respect to the reduction in childhood mortality, with respect to the billions of people being lifted out of abject poverty, or with respect to us being able as a world to create zones of peace, as we hope our Caribbean region will always be, not like in previous centuries, when it became a theatre of battle. The United Nations matters to us. It protects the small, it constrains the large and it gives us the ability to be able to plan for the future in that corridor of stability. When multilateralism is taken away from us, what are we left with and who is left to protect us?”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“We as small States need a corridor of stability. We simply do not have the buffer to be able to withstand the shocks of international economic and financial crises. We do not have the ability to withstand climate shock, or the capacity to come to grips with the pervasive nature of chronic NCDs. Those are the things that destabilize us.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“That is what happened when de-risking from correspondent banking became the order of the day in the past few years, as if it were possible to cut a region off from access to trade and expect it to be able to pay for goods and services, despite the fact that its banks can no longer have relationships with banks outside its borders. The only time people were treated like that before was in the previous century when we separated persons out of the general population as lepers. But the countries that come here to the United Nations as sovereign countries begin to ask themselves, do we now live in a world where the mighty manoeuvre to make the majority into minions? Or is this still a world that was promised to us in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, upholding respect for the dignity of all?”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“But what does that mean against the backdrop of a world that is not prepared to put the funding in place to be able to stop the worst aspects of climate change? What does that mean to people who have to rely on a Green Climate Fund because their per capita income or their capacity to provide for their people is simply not there? Is this a sterile environment, or is this an environment that recognizes that, mighty or small, we in this world must protect each other? As a small State we are accustomed to being treated sometimes as if we did not exist.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“But when we make those arguments in forum after forum after forum, we are met with stern faces and a determination that our per capita income — as if that were the real factor in how people eat and how people move and how people sleep — should now preclude us from being able to have access to the very funding needed to protect our people from the worst ravages of the storms, earthquakes and fires that beset us. I ask this global community to pause and reflect. As we learned when we went to San Francisco two weeks ago for the Global Climate Action Summit, time is truly running out on us. We will make the decisions that we have to make on a national level. We have committed to banning single-use plastics and styrofoam starting in April 2019. We will try to become a fossil-fuel-free country by 2030.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“There are those who would wish that I would speak on denuclearization, and our voice will be heard on that issue, as the statement that I originally planned to deliver will be distributed. There are those who would wish that we should also speak on a matter that is gravely affecting our community — chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) — and we shall speak on that continuously in other forums, because it is affecting one in every four of our citizens. There are those who would want me to speak also about the graduation of middle-income countries to a status where we have lost access to finance, which, ironically, affects our ability to adapt our environments, economies and societies to confront climate change and its vagaries.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“How many more speeches must we listen to before we realize that agreements are necessary to fund the effort to address climate change, as well as agreements to cap our emissions. We cannot accept a change of 2°C, because a change of 2° means a rising sea level of 1.5 to 2 metres for our islands. For islands like ours much of our economy is based on our coasts. The international community must begin to understand what it will be like for us by the end of the century. Matters pertaining to migration and security will become ever more pressing in this world if we do not put a stop our growing emissions. I have therefore come here today not to talk about a wide range of issues.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“For a change of 3° Celsius and under, for which we are now on course because of our inability to take decisive action, the Arctic, the Antarctic and Greenland, as well as the coral islands and their people — the people of the region from which I come — are at terrible risk. For us it is about saving lives; for others it is about saving profits. We have reached the stage where we ask the global community to recognize that what is at stake is simply not an academic debate. It is simply not a question of the profits of multinational corporations. But the evidence is clear and decisive that it is the lives and the livelihoods of our people that are at stake. I ask the Assembly, how can we just listen to speech after speech after speech about the problem?”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“As Heads of Government, we have asked the international community to address those issues, both in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and as we come to twenty-fourth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, against the background of climate change consisting of a warming of as much as 2°C. But two days ago, at the One Planet Summit, a graph was shown that has haunted me for the past 48 hours. That graph spoke to the fate of the world with respect to the tipping points for a warming of 3° Celsius and under, for 3° to 5°, and for over 5°.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Last year the Prime Minister of Dominica stood at this rostrum within days of the passage of a hurricane so violent that to describe it as a category 5 hurricane would be to do injustice to what the people of Dominica were exposed to (see A/72/PV.19). The Assembly heard my colleague the Prime Minister of Antigua speak earlier of the fact that over $140 billion in damage has come to the Caribbean region as a result of those weather systems. I therefore ask the interpreters today to bear with me, because it is impossible to deliver a speech that is focused on anything else other than our reality in the Caribbean, our reality in the Pacific islands, our reality in the world in which we live.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Those events include the transit of a tropical storm across my own country that we thought would have passed us by, only to have floods hit many of our communities overnight, the onslaught of that same storm on our sister country, Saint Lucia, an earthquake off the shores of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Dominica this morning, which did not affect land but destabilized those islands, an earthquake and tsunami off Indonesia earlier today, and a typhoon that is about to deal a blow to the people of Japan. Those events are of great concern because the world in which we live is a very different world from the one we have known. I ask myself, what does all that matter?”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)
“Let me begin by congratulating Ms. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés on her election to preside over the General Assembly at its seventy-third session, and in particular for being the fourth woman in the 73-year history of the United Nations to receive the high honour of being elevated to the position of President of the General Assembly. However, I would like to pause at this stage, because I came here with a speech that is impossible for me to deliver given the events that have happened in the past 24 hours in the world in which we live and that cannot be ignored.”
2018-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 73 (2018)