YouSaid · the spoken record

Ralph E. Gonsalves

lines on the record: 84
first: 2005-09-24
most recent: 2012-09-24
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 rhetoric of change and hope may lack the cachet that it enjoyed hitherto, but we still believe that our peoples and Governments possess within them the courage and conviction collectively to change and materially improve the condition of our nations’ citizens. Let us at this sixty-seventh session of the General Assembly establish conclusively that that faith is well placed. We move with our burdens from yesterday. We go forward with our strengths and possibilities tomorrow.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“It is a call for principled and practical global action to address and resolve these problems. To do so, we stand ready to work with the President and with all States in this Assembly to effect meaningful change throughout our planet. As the great novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change”. Today, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines calls on this body, and on all nations assembled here, to harness that essential moral courage to produce change in a world whose potential is limitless, and whose problems are soluble.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Ours is an independence forged in the heroic struggles of our indigenous and Garifuna peoples against genocide and hardened in the fires of our resistance to slavery, indentureship, and colonial and neocolonial domination. Our strength, independence and sovereignty do not permit us to look to the United Nations or any other country or group of countries for the solutions to our own problems and challenges. However, as a small State in an interconnected world, we recognize that many of the difficulties we face have been born and incubated beyond our national boundaries. The United Nations therefore is our primary multilateral forum to address and confront those externally imposed challenges. My statement today is not intended merely to chronicle the global ills that have befallen Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. No.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The producers of firearms, as well as the source and destination markets for illicit narcotics, can and must cooperate to restrict and regulate the international f low of small arms, light weapons and ammunition. While we have failed in our initial attempt to forge an arms trade treaty, I call on members at this session of the General Assembly to redouble their efforts to negotiate a binding agreement in this matter before we reconvene next September. This year it is imperative, too, that the United Nations continue its focused work in the fight against non-communicable diseases, which the Caribbean Community has rightly placed at the forefront of the global agenda. The people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are strong and fiercely independent.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Let us set aside narrow, short-term interests and act as we are capable of acting: for the benefit and protection of all mankind. Another existential threat whose solution has fallen victim to United Nations paralysis is our common pursuit of a global, robust and binding arms trade treaty. In the Caribbean, over 70 per cent of homicides are committed with firearms, a remarkable statistic for a region that produces not one single gun or bullet. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has a largely unarmed constabulary and lacks a standing army, yet we struggle daily against an influx of illicit and untraceable firearms that pose a grave threat to our national security and way of life.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The survival of our islands is at stake, and the responsibility for immediate change lies undisputedly with those whose reckless pollution over generations has led us to the brink of catastrophe. In a different time and context, Winston Churchill inspired his people with the words “we shall fight on the seas and oceans... we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be”. Today, know this: We shall fight the rising seas and encroaching oceans and defend our islands’ right to exist at any cost. We call on all nations to join us in the fight, for that is a war that can still be won. Our negotiations to arrest climate change are not merely some arcane academic or diplomatic pursuit, and they cannot be treated as some interminable, run-of-the-mill United Nations process.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is angered by the continuing and inexcusable failure of the States assembled in this Hall to move decisively towards a meaningful and legally binding climate change treaty. Entire nations, represented here today as friends and equals, may simply cease to exist as a result of our inaction and political cowardice. Other nations, including my own, are already the victims of increasingly intense and frequent storms, hurricanes and weather events. These changes not only threaten our way of life but risk reversing our recent development progress. The islands of our planet are at war against climate change, warming temperatures and rising seas. That war is not a future event, it is a present-day and ongoing battle. As all of us in this Assembly are aware, it is a war that we are currently losing.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The fascinating rapprochement unfolding across the Taiwan straits between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan lends practical weight to the reasonable and overdue call for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the specialized agencies of the United Nations. My country and several others in the Caribbean and Central America bear witness to Taiwan’s principled conduct of its intergovernmental relations. Surely the time has now come for this exemplar of the magnificent Chinese civilization to be permitted to participate in the work of various agencies of this world body. Allow me to turn to certain existential challenges facing my country, my region, and the world.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“It has also played a useful and constructive role in facilitating peace talks between Governments and armed rebel groups in Latin America. Those facts are not contested. Therefore, to label Cuba a State sponsor of terrorism, in any context, is to cheapen our shared global struggle against that insidious scourge. In his famous 1960 speech to the General Assembly, then President Fidel Castro observed that hysteria could go to any length and was capable of making the most far-fetched and absurd claims. That particular absurd and far-fetched claim, like the absurdity that undergirds the continued economic embargo against Cuba, is one that is best abandoned.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Our friends and brothers in the United States of America are unfortunately and disproportionately targeted by those repulsive killers, most recently in the deeply saddening murder of Christopher Stevens, the United States Ambassador to Libya, and some of his staff. We support unreservedly the determination of the United States to bring Ambassador Stevens’s killers to justice. At the same time, we are baff led by the continued reference to the Republic of Cuba in some quarters as a State sponsor of terrorism. The undisputed evidence is that Cuba neither supports nor harbours terrorists of any type. Indeed, the Cuban Government, itself a victim of orchestrated terror campaigns, has cooperated on numerous occasions with the Governments of both allies and ideological opponents in the fight against terrorism.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“We have bound ourselves together in the solemn goal of promoting peace, not fostering wars; of self-determination, not unilateral intervention; of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, not the callous disregard for the well-being of our fellow human beings. To depart from those principles, explicitly or by implication, would be to abandon the better angels of our nature and to succumb to the forces that made this institution necessary in the first place. The war against global terror is real, and it is being fought by all responsible States on multiple fronts. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is firm and unequivocal in its rejection of all forms of terrorist activity and its revulsion at the methods and twisted logic that accompany that barbarism.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“In the midst of the global upheaval, we have witnessed the aggressive re-emergence of those that would seek to reshape the world in their own image and to their own purposes. Would-be interventionists, unilateralists and hegemons, both new and old, have rushed to fill and exploit political vacuums, to settle ancient grudges and to strengthen their grip on global or regional power. It is a pattern that predates colonialism and the Cold War and one that once again brings into focus many of the United Nations founding principles. Those principles cannot be ignored, reinterpreted or sacrificed on the altar of poll-driven political expediency and electoral ambition.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Those productive and hard-working centres, and many others, have immeasurably enriched their adopted homes and provided needed remittances to relatives in the land of their birth. We remain grateful to those friendly States that have opened their doors and embrace to our migrants, and we view the ongoing, hassle-free movement of our peoples back and forth as the truest testament of our friendship and solidarity. The recent increase in regional conflicts and unrest around the world cannot be ignored. The hopefulness and idealistic optimism that were much in evidence during the early days of the so-called Arab Spring have been replaced by a cynical fatalism and rampant opportunism in many important quarters. In other continents, some nations flirt with border wars, while others grapple with insidious and barbaric terrorism.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“As we strengthen relations with our immediate neighbours, we remain deeply committed to our historical ties and traditional friendships. The bonds that we share with our friends in Europe, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States are as strong as they are mutually beneficial. As a multi-island nation, the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have always been highly migratory and outward- looking — so much so that even the words of our national anthem memorialize our proclivity for travel to distant lands. Many of the largest and most vibrant cities of our nationals exist not in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, but in major metropolitan hubs, including those in Brooklyn, Toronto and London.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The strength and genuine cohesion of those growing regional integration initiatives is built on a solid foundation of shared experiences and values, which deserve the support of the United Nations. The members of OECS and CARICOM are bastions of good governance, democracy and the rule of law, and we share those experiences and aspirations with our South and Central American sister States, which have also established unshakeable foundations of democracy and good governance after fitful periods of political unrest and foreign interference in the past. The upcoming 7 October presidential election in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is but one example of the manner in which that country and the region continue to institutionalize popular, participatory democratic systems that reflect and respect the will of the people.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) also furthers the cause of Caribbean integration with important implications for trade and the free movement of people. Our State is a proud member of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which has created bonds of socioeconomic solidarity and cooperation among Caribbean, Central and South American States. The Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, the Association of Caribbean States, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States are also home-grown manifestations of our peoples’ desire to forge linkages and partnerships with our regional brothers and sisters.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“In the immediate post-colonial phase of our national development, the nations of the Caribbean and Latin America often have had stronger and closer relationships with distant colonial Powers and developed nations than we did with the countries in our immediate neighbourhood. After centuries of colonial conquest, settlement and exploitation, our deepening bonds of friendship, cooperation and integration within the Caribbean and Latin America are a fundamental manifestation of our States’ growing independence and political maturity. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines enjoys membership in a number of interconnected circles of regional integration. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is in an economic union with a shared currency, judiciary and nascent representative Assembly.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Likewise, reparations for the genocides committed against indigenous peoples and for African slavery must continue to be pursued vigorously on our international agenda. All of that and more is achievable by the United Nations. Thus, our collective will can bear fruit abundantly through the strengths and possibilities of wise leadership, peaceful dialogue among and between sovereign nations, international cooperation and regional compacts. Closer to home, our developmental and political partnerships increasingly reflect a spirit of strengthened regional integration and greater South- South cooperation.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“It is always wise to remember that the greatest exercise of power is restraint in the use of that power. That is true within and between nations. It is the surest way for the malevolent across the globe to be accorded no space to flourish and to be defeated. It is within this context that the text of a prosperous, safe, independent Palestinian State must be written alongside a secure State of Israel, living in friendship and non-belligerence. This is a matter of grave urgency; the injustice meted out to Palestine must end now. So, too, must continue our global quest for interfaith dialogue and an alliance of civilizations, initiated by the Governments of Qatar and Turkey, respectively. Similarly, let us not forget our pledge of solidarity to Haiti.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Often unacknowledged is the abiding truth that each people possesses its own history, its own legitimacy, its own nobility and its own trajectory for further ennoblement. Unfortunately, the power of some to define things globally distorts these elemental truths. It is well known that the lion’s view of history does not coincide with that of the gazelle or the lamb; the elephant and the ant do not see things eye to eye. But human beings possess the capacity to go beyond the limitations of the animal kingdom. That is fundamentally why we have gathered together under the rubric of the United Nations, with a Charter so uplifting and magnificent in its ideals and purposes as to constitute the best hope for the human race. Arrogant and unbridled power, from whatever source, is thus to be contained.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The discerning acknowledge that a transition is at large, but immense challenges arise immediately from at least four pertinent queries: first, is the transition manageable, or must it be played out in a chaotic manner? Secondly, assuming that the transition is manageable, how is it to be managed in the most efficacious way, and in whose interest? Thirdly, is this transition a dead end? And fourthly, given that the transition itself, like all human conditions, is dynamic, what is the destination of this transition? It is a truism that men and women make history not in circumstances of their own choosing, but in those which they meet, which they inherit, and which emerge on their watch. Noteworthy is the fact that the histories of nations and the ghosts of the dead weigh heavily on the brains of the living.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is thankful to the nations and organizations that have found it possible to continue extending their hand in cooperation with our people, even in difficult economic times. The support and assistance of those States and organizations is a mark of their friendship, solidarity and strong global citizenship. The prolonged global economic uncertainties have propelled the international economy into a dangerous new phase. Even the International Monetary Fund has so concluded. In the process, the crisis has found the principals wanting, even unaware of the extant condition, with no clear idea as to the way forward. In both economics and politics, the ancien régime is passing.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Within the United Nations system, the current budget for peacekeeping dwarfs the resources allocated to fostering development, even as we recognize that most conflict is rooted in underdevelopment. The age-old pledges of development assistance have been skirted, and their fulfilment delayed, by States that cite their own struggles with the global economic fallout. As a result, even as we contemplate post-2015 sustainable development goals, it is painfully apparent that the Millennium Development Goals will not be met across large swaths of our planet. The poor, especially in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, can hardly be expected to wait any longer for relief and sustainable development.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“We have little interest in esoteric arguments about the role of the State in economic activity, because, historically, our national Governments have been a force for good in the stimulation, diversification and growth of our economies in tandem with the private and cooperative sectors. While we welcome and solicit assistance and consultations with the relevant institutions and organizations, such consultations ought to be free of the type of textbook orthodoxies or formulaic prescriptions that are inapplicable to our times and circumstances. Our path to development must be our own. The cause of development, as a goal and as a right, has suffered from the neglect of the international community in recent, post-crisis years.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Central to our urgent re-examination and reconfiguration of the existing economic apparatus is the recognition that our modern context and individual national characteristics do not lend themselves to strict classical or Keynesian economic prescriptions or their variants. In the case of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and our Caribbean neighbours, our peculiarities of small size, openness and vulnerability require uniquely home-grown economic policies that are rooted not in any prevailing ideology or fashionable theories from outside, but in a sensible, flexible and focused practicality.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Our hard-won development gains are in jeopardy, and our settled political stability is in possible peril. The international community cannot ignore our plight based on a distorted calculus of middle-income status and relative prosperity, or on simplistic, even offensive, stereotypes of Caribbean paradises. Small, highly indebted middle-income developing countries, like those in the Caribbean, which are very vulnerable to natural disasters and international economic convulsions, have special concerns which the international community is obliged to address properly, in partnership with the peoples of our region. External shocks derived from nature or the workings of an uneven, casino capitalism, are not merely episodic to our Caribbean; they are a constant feature of our regional economies.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“In our Caribbean region, the global economic and financial meltdown continues to be felt most acutely by the poor, the youth, the elderly and the vulnerable, who bear no responsibility for the rampant financial speculation and unregulated movement of capital that spurred the crisis. Today, four years into an externally imposed meltdown which has produced negative or marginal growth across the Caribbean, our region is forced to contemplate the implications of a potential “lost decade” of development. Our region is not immune to the economic pressures and fissures that have turned other parts of the world into tinderboxes of social unrest and political upheaval. Our citizens, who have nobly struggled under the weight of externally sourced contraction, austerity and hardship, are not possessed of limitless patience or endurance.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Our noble battle of ideas will descend into a battalion of excuses; of blame-sharing and buck-passing; of soundbites disguised as insights. Such a future, which we are on a path to realize, would do a disservice to our respective States, our international obligations, and the proud history of the United Nations. We would, by our impotence, acquiesce to the possible obsolescence of this Organization, as peoples and Governments would, justifiably or not, turn elsewhere for the solutions to global challenges. Such a future can and must be vigorously avoided, in the interest of our peoples’ collective advancement and humanity.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“Today, we are not merely spectators watching a moment of global change; rather, we are nations in the valley of decision, confronted with two questions that we must answer: “What is our vision of tomorrow’s post-crisis, post-conflict world?” And: “How, collectively, can we achieve that vision?” Our avoidance of these fundamental questions threatens to set our Assembly adrift and rudderless, shirking responsibility and afraid of action. We must resist the temptation to bury our heads in the shifting sands of meaningless resolutions while we studiously disregard our imperative quest for a unifying principle and purpose. To succumb to such a temptation would be to condemn this institution to a future marked not by new ideas, but new rationalizations.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“We embraced popular, home-grown calls for political change. And we scanned the economic horizon for encouraging signs of recovery and growth. Today, global optimism, though still enduringly present, is in scarcer supply, as the international community has encountered the challenges of a new world and found itself wanting. Our global structures, including the United Nations, are faced with changes of a scope, scale and rapidity that substantially outpace our ability to react, partly exceed our capacity to respond, and demand a level of courage, principle and decisiveness that is not sufficiently matched by our political will.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“My country extends heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Vuk Jeremić on his assumption of his responsibilities as President of the General Assembly at this crucially important session. We also express our appreciation to his predecessor, Mr. Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser of the State of Qatar, who left an indelible mark on the General Assembly. We meet again in the quest for development, equity, and peace. Last year, our debate took place against the backdrop of rapid, often violent, geopolitical change, as well as continuing economic instability and uncertainty. Last year’s general debate, though marked by winds of change and clouds of uncertainty, was not without hope and optimism. Member States anticipated meaningful progress at the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development. We predicted a robust and legally binding arms trade treaty.”
2012-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 67 (2012)
“The poetic summation of the American poet Robert Frost is apt: “I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.” Let us choose with courage the road less travelled by. Each of us can make a difference, accordingly.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“It is my sincere prayer that this body will hew more closely to the principles of multilateralism and the sovereign equality of all States, and resist any pressures for the United Nations to devolve into a playground for the triumphalist ambitions of presumptive super-Powers. Mr. President, you sit at the helm of a body entrusted with the well-being and safekeeping of humanity. We have gradually strayed from the noblest of our goals and increasingly paid only lip service to problems that are well within our ability to solve. In countless spheres, we have promised action. Let us now keep those promises for the good of our global family.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“In this globalized and interconnected world, it is no longer possible to divide the planet into competing hemispheres or to completely quarantine or indeed blockade ideological foe from friend. We must guard against the return of discarded philosophies and learn from the recent past, in which developing countries were used as pawns and proxies for the hegemonic ambitions of others. Our multipolar experiment is too young for the developing and globalizing world to return to the old rhetoric and recriminations that invariably blossom into violence and death, most often visited on the peoples of developing countries.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“To the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, disarmament means not the eradication of nuclear weapons, which we lack the will and resources to build, but the elimination of small arms, which threaten to shoot holes in the fabric of our democracy and compromise the values of our civilization. We are assailed by guns, which we do not build, and by deadly narcotics such as cocaine, which we do not produce. The United Nations must act to protect the innocent victims of the world from the scourge of small arms and light weapons. In recent months, I have been profoundly troubled by the creeping return of cold war rhetoric to the language of international and hemispheric discourse.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Similarly, the cost of adaptation to the changes wrought by our industrialized brothers and sisters must be borne adequately and responsibly by those who have so profoundly altered our global environment. Hurricanes remind us in the Caribbean of our existential oneness. Accordingly, the effort of Caribbean nations to fashion a more perfect union is to be fully supported as a vital strategic necessity. The geographic happenstance that has placed the innocent people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the path of increasingly intense storms has also located 08-52272 36 us unfortunately between the supply and demand that fuel much of the West’s narcotics trade. As a result, our scarce resources are increasingly being diverted to stem the tide of drugs and small arms flowing through our region.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Taiwan should be encouraged on its path to peace by permitting its meaningful participation in the specialized agencies of the United Nations. Much as Taiwan’s vibrant economy is recognized through its participation in WTO, there is no compelling reason why its equally vibrant people should be denied participation in the World Health Organization and other specialized agencies. The Caribbean is in the midst of its annual hurricane season and the awesome winds, sea surges and torrential rains of Gustav, Hanna and Ike have brought the issue of climate change into sharp relief. It is a matter of life and death to the people of the Caribbean and other small island developing States.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Countries like ours are therefore forced to scour the globe for friends willing to partner with us for the development of our people, while others would rather sit in judgement of our development decisions and priorities than rise to offer a helping hand. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines once again pleads with the international community to be cognizant of the plight of Taiwan’s 23 million people. Even though the United Nations historical neglect of the Taiwan issue has not been a source of pride, the Government of Taiwan has acted responsibly and without confrontation to subordinate many of its legitimate political claims into efforts aimed at reducing cross-Strait tensions, promoting peace and building relations with the People’s Republic of China. The United Nations must now act to ensure the survival of that fledgling rapprochement.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Six years ago, world leaders gathered in Mexico and gave birth to the Monterrey Consensus, in which they pledged their objective to eradicate poverty, achieve sustained economic growth and promote sustainable development as we advance to a fully inclusive and equitable global economic system. I prayed at the time that the Conference would not devolve into a dragon’s dance upon a decorous platform of the finest diplomatic language which few are determined to embrace for action. Six years later, Monterrey is remembered as the site of grand, unfulfilled commitments to the developing world, much as Africa recalls the empty promises of Gleneagles. The four decade-old promise to devote 0.7 per cent of gross national income to official development assistance remains more illusion than reality.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“However, the evidence to date suggests that the international community has inadvertently institutionalized and entrenched poverty within a system of global winners and losers. The ironically titled Doha Development Round looks less and less like a negotiating process and more and more like a suicide pact within which the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the major economic Powers want everything and concede little or nothing to the poor and developing nations of the world. The solutions to our economic crises hinge upon genuine negotiation and compromise in the interests of the world’s least privileged. We are ill-served by benign neglect, unequal enforcement and concepts of welfare colonialism. The recent troubles in the world’s premier financial and banking countries exacerbate the profound challenges facing developing nations.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“It represents the human face at the confluence of countless systemic flaws and poorly conceived strategies, including trade barriers, the mad rush to biofuels, adverse climate changes and anaemic development assistance. Any meaningful attempt to alleviate the suffering of the poor and hungry people of the world must start with those systemic issues and resist the urge to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease and its causes. The banana farmers of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines continue their heroic struggles to eke out a living in the face of international corporate greed, thinly disguised as principled globalization. Our farmers, tradesmen and private sector are still waiting for the oft-promised opportunities that supposedly accompany globalization.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“While Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has confronted the crisis with a creative national food production plan that mixes agricultural incentives with education and assistance, our local measures are only ameliorative and cannot totally insulate us from what is largely an imported problem. We are again buffeted by the winds of unequal trade liberalization, in which the agricultural subsidies of developed States force our own nascent 35 08-52272 agro-industries into an uncompetitive demise. We are witness to a world where crops are grown to feed cars while people starve, and where climate change ruins age-old farming and fishing livelihoods. The so-called food crisis that we now face is but a symptom of deeper structural flaws in our global economic system and consumerist culture.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“How can I turn from Africa and live?” The conflict in Darfur is over five years old, and the time has long since past for genuine international action to halt that unspeakable human tragedy. While I congratulate the General Assembly on finally clearing the way towards intergovernmental negotiations on Security Council reform, it cannot be an illusory or insincere process. The credibility of the decisions made by the United Nations in the name of peace and security hinges on the existence of a Security Council that is democratic and representative of the regional and development diversity of our body. As we are all well aware, the scarcities and escalating prices of basic foodstuffs have already led to riots and political instability worldwide and within our own Caribbean Community.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“Today, one year later, I am shocked by our collective failures in Darfur. Last month, Force Commander Martin Luther Agwai compared his role to that of a boxer in the ring with his hands tied behind his back, because his promised force of 26,000 personnel is still less than 10,000 strong. I thus reflect as to whether our promises of “never again” and our commitments to the memories of one million Rwandans mean anything, as the blood of hundreds of thousands of Africans again stains the soil of the continent and our collective conscience. As a people whose past and future are inextricably interwoven with the continent, we, the citizens of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, ask ourselves, in the words of the Caribbean Nobel Laureate from Saint Lucia, Derek Walcott, “How can I face such slaughter and be cool?!”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“I have no doubt that the principles concealed in the language of “mandate review”, “system-wide coherence” and “revitalization” are important, and doubly so to the professional diplomats who look inward rather than outward and who lose sight of the forest for the trees in their endless quest to choreograph the dancing of ever more angels on the head of a pin. One year ago, I stood at this very podium and denounced the failure of the international community to end the genocide in Darfur. One year ago, there were promising, though belated, signs that the United Nations was finally beginning to act decisively in this regard. One year ago, I stated that “the force on the ground is still insufficient, its mandate is ambiguous and its emerging presence is years too late” (A/62/PV.10, p. 15).”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“However, the work that we have entrusted to the United Nations is compromised by apathy and inaction by too many of us and by the crippling pursuit of narrow self-interest by a handful of powerful countries. In this session, we have an historic opportunity to reassert the relevance and credibility of this body by keeping the promises that we have made to ourselves and the world. The United Nations is charged with tackling the weighty problems that beset the world, not with the refinement of the art of impotent diplomacy.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“President, have already concluded: that the United Nations, as the supreme multilateral institution of a profoundly troubled and iniquitous world, can and must do more, in the form of decisive action, to improve the condition of our planet, the living conditions of the less fortunate and the safety of our global family. The late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia once stated: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” There can be no doubt that the right-thinking and civilized peoples of the world are aware of the challenges facing us and of the path to peace, prosperity, and progress upon which we must collectively embark.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“I am comforted by the knowledge that he has a full appreciation of the 08-52272 34 majesty of our landscape and seascape, the opportunities and challenges facing our region, and the nobility of our Caribbean civilization. Mr. President, your dream that another world is possible, as courageously outlined in your inaugural presidential statement, is both timely and prescient. I wholeheartedly endorse your call for frankness, democratization and a focus on the needs of the poor, all under the redemptive and transformative rubric of love and solidarity with our fellow human beings. It is in that spirit of love and frankness that I come before the Assembly today. In all candour, I must affirm what you, Mr.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“At the outset, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines expresses its solidarity with the people of Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica and the United States of America, who have been savagely battered in quick succession by Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Within the Caribbean and our America, the heroism, bravery and resilience of the Cuban, Haitian and Jamaican people and ordinary Americans are a well-documented source of pride to us all. We wish you all, the afflicted nations and peoples, a speedy recovery, and we stand with you in your rebuilding efforts. Allow me to express my pleasure in noting that the presidency of the General Assembly is now held by a man whose native shores are kissed by the magnificent Caribbean Sea.”
2008-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 63 (2008)
“We know now that the sun turns around our Earth, lighting the parcel designated by our will alone ... [and that] every star falls from sky to Earth at our omnipotent command.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)