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

“As the Cuban poet and national hero José Martí once said, “It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing”. By that measure, the sins of omission and commission of the United Nations are manifold and manifest, despite its successes. Our collective multilateral and principled penance must be measured even more by our actions from this day onward. We must therefore now act together on each of the world’s enduring challenges. Each nation and each person has a vital role to play. An arrogance born of triumphalism that seeks to exclude so many who look askance at an imperial agenda must cease. The master poet from Martinique, Aime Cesaire, addresses this issue well in his famous Cahier d’un retour au pays natal: No race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence, on strength ... There is room for everyone at the convocation of conquests ...”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“There is no adequate justification for the continued exclusion of Taiwan from participation in the numerous global exchanges in the United Nations and other international bodies. We urge Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to accept and deal with Taiwan’s membership application in accordance with the Charter. Taiwan possesses all the attributes and qualifications for membership of the United Nations. Let it therefore be done. Furthermore, the United Nations must play its role in reducing tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Aggressive conduct must be restrained in a context where Taiwan is committed to peace and a comprehensive political dialogue. I shall conclude as the Assembly President began, by urging swift and effective multilateral action to tackle the challenges of the modern world.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“That is why aid-for-trade and a mobilization of resources must be on the agenda of multilateral organizations, to be used as an instrument for economic growth and capacity-building in developing countries. The recent launch of the MDG call to action by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is an initiative that my Government supports, and it may well act as a much-needed spur to get us back on track to achieving the MDGs by the target date of 2015. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines yet again pleads with the United Nations to permit Taiwan to be accorded its rightful admission to the United Nations and its specialized agencies. Taiwan, a democratic and progressive country of 23 million people, remains a legitimate and vibrant political expression of the ancient and magnificent Chinese civilization.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“At the same time, the development deliverables that the Doha Round promised to our countries which, like the Biblical manna, are urgently needed for our sustenance have yet to materialize, owing to the floundering negotiations of that Round. Let us recall that the first and last of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) speak, respectively, to the eradication of poverty and to global partnership for development. But for small and vulnerable economies the attainment of those two goals will be significantly compromised if the multilateral trade rules and provisions are not sufficiently accommodating to the special needs of countries like ours. Special and differential treatment for developing countries is vital to offset the potential losses that are occasioned by globalization and the liberalization of markets.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“A quest by some to establish a global hegemony in everything will never be able to erase or subjugate the legitimacy of the particularity of civilizations, including our Caribbean civilization. In that context, the call for an alliance of civilizations has our support. It is likely to be more uplifting and enduring than a quest for dominance by one over the other. The erosion of trade preferences at the multilateral level has brought with it new challenges to the small and vulnerable economies of the Caribbean, requiring Governments to engage in structural adjustments and fiscal calisthenics to keep our economies afloat.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“The homogenized, vapid and consumerist culture of the multinationals’ empire is exported worldwide, beamed directly to our computers, televisions, newspapers and cinema screens. It is devoid of context, yet rich in subtext. Its message, in a nutshell, is simple: our culture, our civilization, is better than yours. It is a subliminal message that too many of our people have unfortunately been accepting at a faster rate than the ability of our health care systems to adapt. Colonialist, imperialist, mindless and homogenizing globalization has wrought havoc. Its deleterious contemporary manifestations must be resolutely resisted. The acceptance of a core of universal human values does not mean a submission to the consumerism of any empire.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“In 2004, the six leading causes of death in the Caribbean were heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, injuries and hypertensive disease each of which claimed more lives in the region than HIV/AIDS. That looming health crisis, although largely self- inflicted, has an obvious global component. Globalization has spawned a creeping cultural hegemony and homogeneity with a distinct mass- consumption bias. Our home-grown Caribbean culture and our Caribbean civilization are being challenged and undermined by a shallow consumer ethic driven by multinational corporations whose sole interest is to create a standardized population of global purchasers. The explosion in media and information technology, for all its obvious benefits, has been an all-too-willing handmaiden to that cultural invasion.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“The United Nations must remain committed to alleviating the suffering of the men, women and children of Darfur. In the same vein, the Government and people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines stand unequivocally with the people of Myanmar in their current struggle for democracy and life without tyranny. The drama of war, the fight against global terrorism, insecurity and poverty, the struggle for reparation for the descendants of African slaves in the New World and the insidious impacts of climate change must continue to hold the collective attention of the General Assembly. But there are other eminently avoidable ills afflicting the developing world that also demand our focus. The Caribbean faces the worst epidemic of chronic non-communicable disease in the Americas.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“While recent developments including the Security Council resolution 1769 (2007), authorizing the establishment of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur, and the recent appointments of Rodolphe Adada as the Joint African Union-United Nations Special Representative for Darfur and General Martin Luther Agwai as Force Commander are somewhat encouraging, let us not delude ourselves: the force on the ground is still insufficient, its mandate is ambiguous and its emerging presence is years too late. For too long we have looked the other way. We in the United Nations have caused the world to wonder about the relative worth of a Sudanese or Rwandan life versus an Israeli, Chinese, American or European life. What is happening in Darfur is genocide. Let us call it what it is.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“For example, the use of corn to produce ethanol is driving up the price worldwide of grain, beef, chicken and milk. The poor will suffer unless a prudently balanced approach is adopted. The United Nations has a vital role to play in that regard. As a proud citizen of the Republic of Macedonia, the President is all too familiar with the terrors wrought by wars born of ethnic conflict. It is my earnest prayer that his personal experience will lend urgency to what has been the seemingly heartless neglect on the part of the United Nations, in practical terms, of the genocidal campaign being waged in Darfur.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“The Fund should be a source both of disaster relief and of the technological and infrastructural support needed to adapt to climate change. The developed States Members of the United Nations can no longer afford to view the increasingly frequent and intense natural disasters as individual events, capable of narrow prescriptive solutions and subject to the vagaries of donor fatigue. They must live up to their obligations, both legal and moral, to assist the developing world in dealing with challenges that were born in the smoke-belching factories and car-clogged highways of the polluters. The quest for energy self-sufficiency and environmentally friendly energy consumption has led to a rush towards the production of ethanol in some countries. This, however, requires careful thought and sensible implementation.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“In any event, the environmental damage caused in producing quality bananas for the European Community over the recent decades is ignored by those whose consumerist demands engender further environmental damage. The solutions to the problem of climate change are multifaceted, but an indispensable component must be the adoption by the States parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of the climate change Adaptation Fund for environmentally challenged African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Pacific States. The Fund would put flesh on the skeletal commitments of the Convention on Climate Change, which compelled developed countries to provide additional financial resources to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of global warming.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, for example, the overwhelming majority of our hard-won infrastructural developments, by way of geographic necessity, lie mere inches above sea level and perilously close to the coastline. Through absolutely no fault of our own, the physical manifestations of our emerging post-colonial State can be obliterated by inexorably rising sea levels. The Caribbean’s vital banana industry, already buffeted by the winds of iniquitous globalization, has been repeatedly devastated in recent years by increasingly intense hurricanes, which have placed a hitherto dominant economic sector on veritable life support.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“The recent focus by the United Nations on the issue of climate change and global warming is a welcome development. It is the prayer of humankind that this belated momentum has not come too late to reverse the damage already inflicted on our planet. After all, we are short-term caretakers of the Earth, and it is our sacred duty to preserve it for future generations. This is a great cause of our time, and we must not be timid or doubtful in the face of any great cause. I would like to remind the General Assembly that, 15 years ago, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change recognized that global warming would have a special impact on small States, countries with low-lying coastal areas and countries with areas prone to natural disasters.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Kerim’s presidency, should never sacrifice principle for an ignoble practicality, but should instead be suffused with a fairness that views the world through the eyes not of imperial tsars, indifferent diplomats or apathetic agencies to whom suffering is but a television event easily erased with the flick of a remote-control button but through the eyes of the vast majority of the world’s citizens, who struggle daily for survival, who dodge bullets in their backyards, who coax a meagre living from parched and exhausted soils and who have been globalized to the brink of extinction. It is not idealistic or naive to assert that engaged, fair and genuinely concerned States working together can solve the seemingly intractable problems besetting our imperfect planet. Our problems are largely man-made; so too are the solutions.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“But it is at this moment, as the philosophy of unilateralist misadventure is in its death throes, that a modern, multilateral United Nations must seize the day, fill the vacuum and live up to the noble and immutable principles of its Charter. That modern and multilateral United Nations, under Mr.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“It is with a profound sense of anticipation that I welcome Mr. Kerim’s assumption of the presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-second session. In accepting the presidency, he succinctly outlined an exciting raison d’être for a modern, active and engaged United Nations, namely, a focus on multilateral cooperation to combat the challenges of globalization, climate change, terrorism, immigration and sustainable development. I have every confidence that, under his enlightened presidency, the General Assembly will fashion positive, tangible and creative solutions to those global challenges. Our recent history has taught us that triumphalist, imperialist unilateralism is a consistent cause, but an infrequent solution, to the problems confronting today’s world.”
2007-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 62 (2007)
“Further, we urge the United Nations to take the lead in promoting constructive dialogue and friendly engagement between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan. Bellicose conduct across the Taiwan Strait cannot be condoned in a world striving for enhanced peace and collective security. Let me end by expressing the hope that the United Nations may achieve, in the next 60 years, greater and greater success in its goals of bringing hope to the hopeless, providing food for the hungry 15 and spreading peace, stability and sustainability for now and forever. Let this not be the road less travelled.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Our relationship has been exemplary and is characterized by mutual respect, solidarity and a desire for international peace, in accordance with the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. Taiwan, a magnificent political expression of the Chinese civilization, has partnered beautifully with Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a component of our Caribbean civilization. We unequivocally support the quest of Taiwan to be represented at the United Nations and other international bodies. It is unfair, unreasonable and irrational to exclude a country of 23 million persons, with a thriving economy and a nobility of purpose, from the United Nations.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Some appear not to appreciate the necessity and desirability of small States, such as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, seeking, and oft-times finding, more economic and political space to enhance their capacity to address more efficaciously the harsh winds from the external political economy and to do so in the interest of our people’s humanization. No one has anything to fear from us. None of our friends can reasonably ask us to adopt their enemies as our own. It is part of our quest to get adversaries to speak sensibly to one another and resolve their differences, particularly if they are our neighbours. We pick fights with no one; and we do not pick other people’s fights. One of the best and most loyal friends over our country’s 25 years of independence has been the Republic of China on Taiwan.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, with its CARICOM partners, is anxious to welcome Haiti back into the organs of our regional body. But it would be a betrayal of all that we hold dear to ignore the interruption of democracy, the abuses of human rights and the breakdown of law and order merely to appease perfidious power. We support the work of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), while believing that the United Nations forces have neither the manpower nor the resources required to perform the miracle that they have been entrusted to conjure. From time to time, one or more of our traditional friends and allies have shown displeasure at one or more of our decisions in the field of international relations.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“The so-called Government, implanted without any mandate from the people, has neither the political will nor the popular support to undertake the measures necessary to return that poor, traumatized country to some semblance of normalcy. There has been no serious effort at disarming the gangs that roam the towns and countryside and practice mob justice. Political victimization continues apace with the cruel detention and violation of the human rights of former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, the most glaring example; while, on the other side of the coin, the decision of the Supreme Court to quash the sentences of 15 thugs from the Front for Advancement and Progress in Haiti (FRAPH), convicted of involvement in the 1994 Raboteau massacre, has all the elements of political motivation.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Grenada is a case in point. It was laid waste in September 2004 by Hurricane Ivan, but its recovery effort has been slowed by the focus on the more recent catastrophes from nature in South Asia, Niger and the southern United States. Grenada still cries out for massive international assistance. We must help. There is still an enduring need, even after the television cameras have gone elsewhere. This applies, too, in relation to man-made disasters, such as in Darfur. The ever-deteriorating state of affairs in our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) neighbour Haiti demonstrates vividly the inherent dangers of meddling with the democratic process. Since I spoke on the issue, more in sadness than in anger, one year ago, the situation has disintegrated.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“After all, natural disasters respect no territorial boundaries or power blocs; calamities from nature have a studied ideological neutrality. They are the same sad songs heard from ancient times by emperor, vassals 14 and clown; and in modern times, increasingly by the rich and the poor. But they afflict the poor more disastrously than any other group. This matter demands urgent international attention. The pain and anguish evoked by President George Bush in his most recent speech on the Katrina disaster must surely move to concerted international action even those who stand amid the alien corn. A sustained, coordinated response is needed if we are to avoid an ignoble “disaster fatigue” that treats a natural disaster in one country as a momentary distraction from normalcy, as television images determine, until the next one arrives.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“The recent occurrences in Asia, the Caribbean and the southern United States of devastating storms and hurricanes, and in Africa, of terrible droughts, demand a more coordinated and rational approach internationally to issues of climate change, disaster preparedness, and post-disaster rehabilitation. By and large, there have been ad hoc national, as distinct from international, approaches. To the extent that international mechanisms exist for prompt and appropriate relief work, they are clearly inadequate for the tasks at hand. This is undoubtedly an area in which the United Nations and one or more of its agencies or associate institutions ought to be able to make a significant difference to the well being of real flesh-and-blood people.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“These splendid commitments and undertakings, like all words, must be made flesh if they are to signify anything. To be sure, heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard will be sweeter in uplifting action. In this regard, I reaffirm, without here repeating, all that I stated in my speech to this body last Friday, 16 September, on the development agenda focused on the Millennium Development Goals and a sustainable condition beyond them for countries like my own. Certainly, a fair resolution to the banana trade impasse in Europe must be fashioned without condemning our poor banana farmers and workers to further penury and misery.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“There are reams of paper commitments in the Mauritius Strategy adopted by the International Meeting to Review the Implementation of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, in the Barbados Programme of Action and in the outcome document of the twenty- second special session of the General Assembly. We realize that the just-concluded United Nations High-level Plenary Meeting has undertaken to promote greater international cooperation and partnership for the implementation of the solemn commitments through, among other things, the mobilization of domestic and international resources, the promotion of international trade as an engine for development and increased international financial and technical cooperation.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“But we must set about doing so immediately with conviction, resolution, solidarity and dignity. The alternative is apocalypse now. No difficulties, no hardships, no crises, can justify terrorism. Terrorism wounds the poor and disadvantaged ever so much. Its barbarism must continue to be resisted by civilized peoples and nations internationally. No space must be given to terrorism. A small multi-island nation like Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has a bundle of special needs. We are, therefore, encouraged by the collective recognition by all the Member States of the United Nations that special needs and vulnerabilities attend small island developing States. We are heartened, too, by the reaffirmation of the Member States’ commitment to address these special needs and vulnerabilities.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Modern communications, including the revolution in information technology, have connected the world as never before. Yet, that very enhanced connection breeds, justifiably, a great impatience among those who are most disadvantaged. Economic adjustment has to be made more swiftly. Time is of the essence, but that very swiftness engenders socio- economic dislocation, which poses immense difficulties for political management. Those profound challenges require a series of measures, including more official development assistance more speedily disbursed, a fair system of international trade, international peace based on tried and tested principles of international law, appropriate reformation of the United Nations and its associate institutions, and a more tolerant and educated population worldwide.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Cultural imperialism distorts the mind, but in that very distortion the seed of its rejection germinates, blossoms and bears a bitter and even chauvinistic fruit. The presumed solutions of the powerful have been shown, historically, to be mirages. Surely, there must be a better way. Nelson Mandela has taught us that. Together, we are the world; we are the future. But of all time, only the future is ours to desecrate; the present is the past, and the past is our fathers’ mischiefs. Underlying all of this is a seemingly intractable socio-economic product of modern globalization — the contradiction between, on the one hand, a growing inequality in income distribution globally and, on the other, the increasing commonality of consumption patterns.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“Along the way, the majesty of faith becomes metamorphosed, in too many of the world’s inhabitants, into a believer’s extremism. Man’s reason cannot quite fathom, this side of eternity, the evil which extremism breeds. That is an enduring conundrum of our times which, in this earthly city, we, amidst all our limitations and weaknesses, must seek to address appropriately with all our possibilities and strengths, but without the baggage of economic, military or cultural imperialism. Economic imperialism muzzles the mouth with the food that it eats to live and thus builds resentment in that very mouth that eats, and even more so among those who receive no food to eat. Military imperialism 13 begets armed resistance in which a triumph is but a pause in its impermanence.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“The larger and more powerful nations are gripped by an unreasonable fear which, in the process, constrains them from being reasonably fair. Less powerful nation-States and those which are small and weak internationally often beat their collective chests with an unbecoming self-righteous purity that restrains them from knowing or understanding what impurity is, even within themselves. So, an unwholesome stand-off results. Meanwhile, around us all, there is a carnival of misery, a festival of guns. A Caribbean poet laureate tells us that the faces of men and women are strained and anxious. Many, if not most persons, become sceptical — nay, cynical — of the grand efforts of the world’s leaders. They search instead for an amazing grace which makes the blind to see and the wretched to be saved.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“We in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines accept unequivocally the fulcrum around which the outcome document of the High-level Plenary Meeting revolves, namely, to create a more peaceful, prosperous and democratic world, and to undertake concrete measures to continue finding ways to implement the conclusions of the Millennium Summit and other major United Nations gatherings so as to provide multilateral solutions to the problems which touch and concern development, peace and collective security, human rights and the rule of law, and the strengthening of the United Nations. Yet the outcome document, though certainly a codified and presumably consensual package, falls short of what is truly demanded by these extraordinary, challenging times in the first decade of the twenty-first century.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)
“The sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations coincides with the commemoration of my country’s twenty-fifth year of independence. The preamble to the Constitution of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines reaffirms that our nation is founded on the belief in the supremacy of God and the freedom and dignity of man. Our national motto, Pax et justitia — Peace and justice — symbolizes both our reality and our dream. The universal ideals which inspired the founding fathers of the United Nations are those which prompted the lofty proclamations in my nation’s Constitution. The United Nations Charter taught us a truth, as though engraved on a tablet of stone, that while some sleep to dream, we must dream to change the world for the better.”
2005-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 60 (2005)