UNITED NATIONS, CMC – Stating that, over the many years, representatives of Small Island Growing States (SIDS) have come to the Common Meeting to state the case for fairer remedy of their developmental wants and challenges by the worldwide neighborhood, St. Lucia on Friday stated that SIDS proceed to be “severely deprived by an unfair world monetary system that has amplified its inequities by the measurements and requirements it has employed to evaluate our growth.”
“We now have argued for particular and differential remedy as a result of we’re certainly totally different, certainly particular, and certainly distinctive in our sizes, economies, funds, social circumstances, and vulnerabilities,” stated St. Lucia’s Minister for Exterior Affairs, Alva R. Baptiste.
“And, regardless of our greatest efforts, it appears that evidently we have been merely participating in odes to the deaf as a result of there has hardly been the kind of concrete and elementary responses and actions to alter the principles and the techniques which were suppressing our developmental aspirations,” he added.
Nevertheless, Baptiste stated SIDS has continued in its advocacy and stored religion in multilateralism’s power and benefits.
Due to this fact, he stated St. Lucia is “happy to applaud” two current choices by the worldwide neighborhood that present an expectation that the distinctive vulnerabilities and explicit circumstances of his nation and different SIDS will obtain the particular consideration they deserve: The Fourth Worldwide Convention on Small Island Growing States that was held in Antigua and Barbuda and the current adoption by the United Nations, of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI).
Baptiste stated the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS (ABAS), which adopted a brand new 10-year plan of motion for SIDS, is “a daring new plan to present precedence on the worldwide stage to the sustainable growth wants of SIDS over the following ten years and maps out the character of the assist which the worldwide neighborhood should ship to attain them.
“By this agenda, the economies of SIDS could be reworked, so there should be no delay in its implementation and in delivering on the commitments made to liven up its provisions. This can not wait,” he careworn.
Whereas St. Lucia notes that the decision advancing the MVI requires its voluntary adoption, Baptiste urged the worldwide neighborhood to speedily undertake and implement the MVI, stating that it took the worldwide neighborhood 32 years to develop and undertake “this very important and crucial device for sustainable growth and world fairness.”
“Allow us to not wait one other 32 years to check and implement it,” he stated. The MVI should be used immediately. This can not wait!”
The St. Lucia Exterior Affairs Minister stated it’s pressing “as a result of the challenges going through our small, open, and weak economies are fairly complicated.”
He stated Caribbean economies have been stricken by quite a lot of interrelated and interlocking components over the previous twenty years, together with persistent fiscal deficits, excessive debt, and cussed structural rigidities.
He stated these interrelated components have been considerably exacerbated by exterior shocks, together with frequent and vital fluctuations in power costs, monetary crises, and, extra just lately, the COVID pandemic, the Russian-Ukraine warfare, and “the planet’s best existential risk: local weather change.”
On this regard, Baptiste stated there may be “a urgent want for fast motion to halt and reverse the gradual progress that’s being made on the difficulty of local weather change and local weather justice.
“This Common Meeting wants no reminders of the violent and damaging impression of local weather change and the extent of the peril during which the world, significantly SIDS, finds itself in consequence,” he stated, stating that St. Lucia is “significantly dismayed and dissatisfied that after years of advocacy by SIDS, to ascertain the Loss and harm Fund at COP28, the fund, which ought to have been activated in July this yr, is but to be operationalized.
“St. Lucia, due to this fact, urges these involved to swiftly and urgently operationalize the Loss and Harm Fund in order that SIDS can obtain well timed assist and on the dimensions required to get better from the disastrous impression of climatic occasions on their small economies and societies,” he added. “Additional, it’s important that on the forthcoming COP 29, the particular circumstances of SIDS are protected and operationalized throughout your complete Local weather Change Coverage agenda.”
In the identical manner, Baptiste stated the world should recompense SIDS for “the injustice of the local weather disaster that we’re struggling.
“These nations, which propelled their financial growth by the unholy and inhumane transatlantic slave commerce and slavery of our African ancestors, should pay reparations for this crime in opposition to humanity, which they inflicted upon the folks they introduced from Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas, in addition to on the indigenous peoples of these areas,” he stated.
Due to this fact, Baptiste reiterated the decision St. Lucia made on the 78th session of the UN Common Meeting – “that the UN ought to turn out to be seized of the query of reparations for the transatlantic slave commerce and slavery within the western hemisphere.
“Because of this, partially, our Caribbean civilization resents the present carnage in Gaza and the West Financial institution,” he stated, as a result of in Gaza, for the final yr, over 41,000 persons- the bulk being girls and kids – have been killed by an Israeli military within the title of self-defense occasioned by a terrorist assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, during which about 1200 individuals have been killed.
“St. Lucia condemns terrorism in all its kinds, by whomever and no matter commits it,” Baptiste added. “However humanitarianism has been misplaced within the carnage. Since October final yr, 289 help staff, together with 207 UNWRA crew members, have been killed in Gaza. As well as, greater than 110 journalists have been killed.
“This warfare in Palestine, what some have known as genocide, no matter it’s referred to as, should be dropped at an finish immediately, for the world has no future with it,” he continued, stating that “year-in year-out, since its independence, St. Lucia has been calling for the popularity and institution of a Palestinian State. Nevertheless, there proceed to be pointless impediments to this accomplishment. I respectfully submit that this pointless undermining of Palestinian statehood is, to a big extent, the foundation trigger of the present Israeli/Palestinian battle.
“Israelis and Palestinians need to reside side-by-side in peace. Nevertheless, peace for Israel should not come on the expense of the Palestinian folks, nor can a everlasting ceasefire be primarily based on the whims and fancies of Israel; it should be predicated upon significant and sincere negotiations – using the instruments of diplomacy,” he stated. “Therefore, no state ought to turn out to be materials accomplices to aggression in opposition to the Israeli and Palestinian folks as a result of the answer just isn’t far-fetched or unreachable. The Palestinians should be allowed to train their proper to self-determination to have their state and full membership of the United Nations alongside the State of Israel by UN Resolutions that return to 181 of 1947 and embrace Decision 3236 of 1974, which reaffirmed the unassailable rights of the Palestinian folks to self-determination, nationwide independence and sovereignty, and the best of the Palestinians to return to their properties and property.”
The St. Lucia Exterior Affairs Minister stated the one option to safe a simply and peaceable future within the Center East and for Israel to have safe borders is for the Palestinian folks to reside in their very own internationally acknowledged homeland.
“The appropriate to self-determination is a common proper,” he stated. “And the Palestinians are not any exception! The folks of Palestine can not wait!”
Baptiste stated it’s this similar proper, which says that the folks of Ukraine should be allowed to decide on their future and that Russia should finish “this unwarranted warfare in opposition to Ukraine and restore and respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
He stated it’s this similar proper of self-determination, “which dictates that the heroic folks of Cuba have a proper to find out their path to political, financial and social growth and that the financial embargo imposed on Cuba for the final 64 years by the USA is prohibited, unjust and inhumane.
“It should be ended forthwith, in accordance with the various resolutions of the UN Common Meeting from 1992, which have rejected that embargo completely and overwhelmingly. The folks of Cuba can not wait,” stated Baptiste, utilizing a recurring chorus.
Additional, he stated Cuba’s emphasis on medical internationalism as its central overseas coverage goal, in addition to its non-involvement in armed conflicts overseas, “invalidate Cuba’s inclusion on the US’s checklist of nations sponsoring terrorism.”
As a substitute, on condition that Cuba’s various mannequin of growth has offered vital social advantages to the Cuban folks, coupled with its emphasis on medical internationalism, Baptiste stated it must be on an inventory of nations “performing collectively for the development of peace, sustainable growth, and human dignity for current and future generations. Nobody should be left behind!”
He stated it’s this similar proper to self-determination that claims the 23.5 million folks of the Republic of China in Taiwan have the best to be members of the UN and different worldwide organizations and that UN decision 2758 of 1971 doesn’t preclude Taiwan’s inclusion and participation within the United Nations system.
“We consider that Taiwan, with the twentieth largest financial system on the planet and with its essential function in technological growth and world commerce, has a lot to supply from which the worldwide neighborhood can profit,” he stated.
Baptiste additionally stated that the best to self-determination states that the Individuals and Authorities of the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela should be allowed to conduct their inner affairs with out sanctions imposed upon them by different states.
He stated the scenario in Haiti “stays unstable and deeply regarding, though some political advances have been registered by the efforts of CARICOM’s Eminent Individuals Group of three former prime ministers.
Nevertheless, he lamented that the worldwide neighborhood has solely offered 14 % of the assets required for the Multilateral Safety Assist Mission for Haiti (MSS).
Baptiste welcomed the President of Kenya’s announcement this week that it’s going to deploy 600 extra safety forces to Haiti by November, thanking the Authorities of Kenya for its assist of the Haitian folks.
He stated the funding required for humanitarian help in Haiti can be “woefully in need of its goal.”
Baptiste, due to this fact, referred to as upon all different nations that had pledged to help Haiti to urgently and instantly fulfil their commitments to take action.
Given the previous, to safeguard the longer term, he stated: “We now have to be ready to take motion now, this second, this very minute, at the moment, on sure points which are important for a peaceable and sustainable future, and we can not and should not be selective about which declarations of the Pact or the rules of the Constitution of the UN that we are going to respect and once we will achieve this.”
With the Summit of the Future convening this week and the theme guiding the deliberations of this 79th Session of the Common Meeting, Baptiste stated, “The worldwide neighborhood has seemingly come to grasp that it might probably not procrastinate, not delay, the actions wanted to safe a greater future for mankind.
“Allow us to, for as soon as, due to this fact, flip our phrases into actions,” he careworn. “The time for motion is now. The time to make multilateralism genuinely work, not only for SIDS however for all of us, is now. The time for reform of the Safety Council is now. The time for Local weather Justice for SIDS is now.
“The time to finish the conflicts, the genocides, the wars, is now,” Baptiste added. “The time to present the youth of this planet, the folks of tomorrow, the hope and the alternatives to higher themselves is now. The time to place humanity first is now.
“If we act collectively immediately for peace, sustainable growth, and justice, nobody can be left behind, and there can be a greater tomorrow,” he continued. “Consequently, if we don’t act with the fierce urgency of now, our UN speeches and resolutions, within the phrases of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ will find yourself as a meaningless drama on the stage of historical past…shrouded with ugly clothes of disgrace.”
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