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REMARKS BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL
MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
CELEBRATING U.N. DAY ONE WEEK LATER
31ST OCTOBER 2005
Today we celebrate the 60th anniversary
of the founding of the United Nations.
This ceremony is one that comes a week after the actual
anniversary date because the country was battened down last week as
Hurricane Wilma visited our shores.
Today, as we mark the day, we remember all of the victims of the
hurricane, and our thoughts and prayers go with them as they face this
trying time in their lives. We
must pledge to them today our renewed commitment to help them make their
way through.
The United Nations is an important world body, one
that The Bahamas is proud to be a part of.
It is the voice through which the small and the dispossessed can
find expression in forums throughout the world.
The Bahamas participates and benefits in its bodies
from the General Assembly to the International Labour Organization, the
United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Education,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, to
name but a few.
I wish to thank the team of the Commonwealth of The
Bahamas for their untiring efforts at our mission in New York where the
United Nations is headquartered. The
team is headed by Ambassador Paulette Bethel and she is joined by Frank
Davis, Nicole Archer, Tishka Frazer, Charo Walker and the members of the
support staff. They deserve
our thanks and commendation.
It was at the United Nations some five years ago
that we commit ourselves to particular goals that have become known as
the Millennium Development Goals. We
renewed that commitment just this year in September.
The goals are well within reach and some are already surpassed.
Amongst them are: a commitment to gender equality, to have access
to universal primary education, a commitment to sustainable development,
attacking the HIV/AIDS pandemic, cutting poverty in half by the year
2015 to name just a few.
As you know we in The Bahamas are high up on the
human development index, right at number 50 of the countries in the
world. So we have
accomplished much but we know also that there are people in this land of
plenty who do live below the poverty line, some 9.3 per cent of them by
the most recent survey done for The Bahamas. It
is a commitment to that goal that I would wish to address in some
measure today.
The Government under Prime Minister Perry Christie
has implemented the Urban Renewal Programme.
This is in part a commitment to the goal of eliminating poverty
in The Bahamas. There is
also the work of the special fund for entrepreneurs, which is
administered through the Ministry of Finance which allows citizens of
The Bahamas to access funding for small to medium size projects.
There is also of course the national scholarship programme which
provides loans for deserving students to further their tertiary level
education.
I should also mention and salute Dr. Perry Gomez
and his team and all those who work tirelessly in the pioneering work in
The Bahamas in fighting HIV/AIDS.
We think that these and a raft of other measures
that are to come will fit neatly into our millennium development goals.
We believe that our tourism product is being developed as well,
consistent with the goal of sustainable development.
I did that short synopsis simply to show how the
United Nations is not very remote from our lives.
That is what our diplomats do for us overseas, that is what the
United Nations does for us. It
is the ultimate protector of our security in so many ways.
By our continued membership we renew our commitment to peace and
goodwill to all men.
Let us therefore remember today what a commitment
to peace means, and how we have an obligation to ensure that the work of
the United Nations is continued and supported around the world.
Thank you all.
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