Mr. President,
1. It is my honour to congratulate you on your election to the
Presidency of this the 59th Session of the United Nations General
Assembly, on behalf of the Prime Minister, Government and people of the
Commonwealth of The Bahamas. I take this opportunity to also
congratulate your predecessor, HE Mr. Julian Hunte of our sister
Caribbean State of St. Lucia, for his outstanding leadership of the 58th
session. His legacy is one of which we in the Caribbean can be proud,
and we wish him well in his future endeavours.
2. I would also like to pay tribute to the esteemed Secretary General
of this body for his stalwart defence of multilateralism and the rule of
law.
Mr. President,
3. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne, have ravaged the
Caribbean islands and parts of the United States. Lives were lost in
Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Cuba, the United States
and The Bahamas. The damage to homes, infrastructure, the interruption
to normal life and commerce compel us to stress the need for immediate
and dramatic measures to ensure reconstruction and rehabilitation. What
has been on offer to the region so far is woefully inadequate.
4. Our country's northern islands Grand Bahama and Abaco received
double hits. First there was Hurricane Frances that struck on 13th
September leaving hundreds without food, water, homes and power. Then
came Jeanne two weeks later over the same islands that were hit by
Frances, further exacerbating the problems. The Bahamas has many islands
and fortunately for us tourism facilities remain open in the capital,
Nassau, and facilities on other islands in the archipelago will be
operational shortly. This will not be the case in Grenada and Haiti.
Regional heads have called for an international donor conference to meet
the needs of all countries adversely affected by the hurricanes. The
Bahamas supports such a conference. We hope that emerging from that
conference, if not earlier, will be a moratorium on Grenada's debt
repayment. We also recommend a Regional Disaster Relief Fund be
established to support the reconstruction effort.
Mr. President,
5. The word ‘hurricane’ comes from a word first used by the
indigenous people of the Caribbean region, the Arawaks. This
pre-Columbian civilization must have seen the phenomenon so often that
it invented the word for it. That means it has been around for some
time, and is likely to be with us for some time to come. It behooves us
therefore to understand the phenomenon that we are facing including its
connection - if any - to climate change that low lying states have been
warning about. These facts also demand that our own societies should
better plan for the eventualities that we know have been and are going
to continue to be part of our lives. We cannot let lack of planning be a
possible cause of the undermining of our sovereignty in this way. The
world is soon wary and weary; the phenomenon of donor fatigue sets in.
We lose our dignity if we cannot be seen to help ourselves. But if as
the scientific evidence suggests, the hurricanes that we now experience
are related to climate change, it is clear that we cannot defend
ourselves alone. A major shift on the part of the most active polluting
countries is required. They must shift gears if the people in Small
Island Developing States (SIDS) are going to survive. It is a moral
imperative for them to shift gears. In this regard, The Bahamas welcomes
the preliminary moves by the Government of Britain toward putting
climate change closer to the top of the agenda. We urge them to continue
to use their influence on their friends to cause a major shift in
attitude. The implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action for the
Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States adopted at the
Global Conference in Barbados in 1994 becomes even more urgent. The
follow up meeting on this issue in Mauritius in January 2005 now takes
on even greater significance.
Mr. President,
6. In this context, I wish also to highlight the region's efforts to
designate the Caribbean Sea as a Special Area in the context of
sustainable development. We also reiterate our grave concern over the
serious threat posed to the security and economic development of
Caribbean countries by the transshipment of nuclear waste through the
Caribbean Sea, and continue to call on States involved in transshipments
to desist from this practice.
Mr. President,
7. The scenes of death and destruction from the hurricane that we
witnessed in Haiti over the last days reminded us of the political
turmoil that this country has endured during the past year. The Bahamas
extends its deepest condolences to the Haitian nation for this
tremendous and sad loss of life. The year, which began with the
celebration of the 200th year of their Independence on 1st January with
so much hope, in the celebration of the deeds of Toussaint L'Overture
fell quickly into the abyss of despair on the fateful evening of 29th
February. No one will ever know what truly happened on that night as an
elected President left his country with armed rebels nipping at his
heels but it filled the entire Caribbean with sadness. It raised the
spectre of mistrust of friends. That feeling has still not died, but we
must soldier on, if we are to help the people of Haiti achieve
democracy, economic upliftment; a just and fair society. The Bahamas
stands ready to do what it can to assist the people of Haiti in these
developments. Haiti sits ninety miles from our southern shores. Each
year thousands of migrants seek to enter The Bahamas illegally from
Haiti looking for a better way of life. We have practical reasons
therefore to ensure that justice and democracy prevail in Haiti. We echo
the call of all CARICOM countries for the return to democratic order in
Haiti and we pledge to help. We regret the failure of the Security
Council to act in a timely fashion when Haiti's friends begged for the
authority to intervene or to authorize an intervention. Perhaps this
failure heralds the need for its reform. The Bahamas supports such
reform efforts and awaits the report on reform of the High Level Group
appointed by the Secretary General. But the United Nations must never
stop trying and trying to address the issues that face Haiti, because
there is a moral imperative to eliminate hunger, poverty, disease and
discrimination. In this regard, we welcome the work of Presidents Lula
of Brazil and Chirac of France, Pope John Paul and other world leaders
in seeking to ensure that the moral imperatives to which we have
referred are placed at the forefront of the world's agenda. We must
never forget what Haiti has done for our region and for the world.
Mr. President,
9. While the fight against those who would subvert our democratic
values by attacks on civilian targets remains high on our agenda, we
must not allow the drums of war to drown out the calls of the world's
poor and disenfranchised. In 2000, we gave ourselves a set of goals with
respect to development with a human face, and we must all do what we can
to achieve them. The Bahamas has committed itself to the fight. We offer
our heartfelt condolences to the survivors of all who have lost their
lives in such senseless attacks, particularly in the United States,
Kenya, Spain, Tanzania and Indonesia. But we also admonish all states
that terrorism cannot be the excuse to limit freedom, and to dispense
with the very liberties that we are trying to defend and that form the
foundation of free and democratic societies. All of us must resist the
temptation to rely on detention without charges, without access of
families to legal representation, or to administrative decisions that
truncate rights without the right of a person to be heard. All states
ought to act with caution in putting in place rules and regulations for
travel, lest the denial of those rights cannot be defended by logic or
objectivity. This is especially so where we note that developed
countries argue in favour of free trade and globalization but deny the
benefits of that trade to legitimate travellers by administrative
discrimination and bureaucratic procedures and delay. The appeal
therefore is to bring some sense of balance before we lose the very
thing we seek to save.
Mr. President,
10. As a part of this overall process of reflection, my delegation
welcomes the high level reviews planned for 2005 of our commitments with
respect to social development and the advancement of women. We must
ensure that we undertake an unflinching examination of the progress made
in achieving the priority goals of the Copenhagen Programme of Action
and the Beijing Platform for Action to determine how far we have come,
and what remains to be done. It is critical that the outcomes of the
respective appraisals will acknowledge the gaps in implementation and
allow States and the international community as a whole to move forward
and achieve the timely and effective implementation of the commitments
undertaken at Copenhagen, Beijing and beyond. We must also make certain
that the results of our deliberations feed constructively and
synergistically into the high-level event in September 2005, so as to
ensure that no ground is left uncovered.
Mr. President,
11. HIV/AIDS continues to threaten to undermine decades and centuries
of progress in healthcare in developing healthy populations that
facilitate economic growth throughout the world. The Bahamas is a leader
in the fight against HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean region. We urge the
continued and unrelenting fight against the disease, to rescue the
world's developing nations from the clutches of this scourge. It must
take all of the political will and financial power of the world’s
nations to ensure that the scourge is brought under control and then
eliminated. In this context, The Bahamas welcomes the recent grant to
the Pan-Caribbean Partnership from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria. This grant will provide a much-needed infusion
of resources for prevention, care and treatment programmes. The Bahamas
also welcomes the convening of the June 2005 high-level meeting to
review the progress achieved in realizing the commitments set out in the
Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS. The Bahamas acknowledges the
pledge made by the United States to set aside fifteen billion dollars to
fight HIV/AIDS globally, including in Haiti and Guyana in the Caribbean
region.
Mr. President,
12. It is an inescapable fact that there can be no meaningful social
or economic development without security. For many of us in the
Caribbean in particular, this security is being undermined by the
activities of those trafficking in illicit drugs, illegal weapons and
undocumented aliens. By virtue of its geographical location, The Bahamas
is an unwitting transit point for such illegal activities. In the case
of illicit drugs, The Bahamas is neither a producer nor the final
destination for them. However, as a transshipment point, The Bahamas, as
do other transit countries, experiences the illegal activities
associated with this trade. These activities tend to undermine the
economic and social fabric of our nations. With regard to the illicit
trade in small arms, we therefore welcome the convening in June 2004 of
the first session of the open-ended working group to negotiate an
international instrument to enable states to identify and trace, in a
timely manner, illicit small arms and light weapons. This meeting was a
small but important first step in reaching agreement on an instrument on
tracing, to enable States affected by the illicit trade to more
effectively identify lines of supply, put measures in place to interdict
existing lines and prevent new ones, and to cooperate with other states
at the bilateral, regional and international levels. At the same time,
we continue to call on developed countries to take the same
extraordinary measures they use in seeking to stop drug trafficking into
their countries, to stop illegal small arms from reaching our shores
from their countries.
13. The Bahamas joins with other Caricom countries in voicing our
concern about the persistent attempts on the part of some of the
developed world’s unelected multilateral bodies to exclude developing
countries from decision-making and norm setting processes, thereby
undermining our economies. Chief amongst these is the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development. The decisions of these bodies are
not friendly acts. We repeat the call we made last year about the need
for a Global Forum to deal with these unfair practices. We welcome the
work that has been done in the Economic and Social Council of the UN to
redress the balance in favour of a level playing field. The arrangements
for dealing with international tax matters in particular are a source of
concern. We pledge to continue to work with the UN toward establishing a
world body that will deal with these matters in a fair and balanced way.
Mr. President,
14. Yesterday The Bahamas marked 275 years of continuous
representative, Parliamentary democracy. This then is a propitious time
to reaffirm The Bahamas’ commitment to the principles enshrined in the
Charter of this great Organization, which will stand as a guiding beacon
as we continue to chart a rocky, yet crucial, course towards peace,
security and sustainable development for all of the world’s
inhabitants. While progress may seem meager, we must not be swayed from
our course and we must remain confident that the benefits of our
activities and efforts will redound to future generations. Now more than
ever the world needs the United Nations.
I thank you, Mr. President.
