"Here and now arises the truth of the neoliberal global order"

teleSUR English

Speech by Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, in the 79th session of the UNGA. teleSUR

Transcript

00:00Mr. President, your excellencies, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a magnificent exemplar

00:20of our Caribbean civilization. Despite the quarter-century of analysis, advocacy, and

00:30prescriptions set forth by leaders of small island developing states and international

00:38institutions charged with advancing the interests of CIDs, our travails are enduring in a global

00:47community largely disinterested in our well-being and that of small states generally. We in CIDs

00:56remain unequally yoked in a global community motivated by the baser instincts of the

01:05untrammeled power of money, ideology, guns, lethal weapons, territorial and global dominance. To be

01:16sure, the CIDs have made incremental advances in the global community and in the architecture of

01:26international relations. Nevertheless, for us in CIDs, it has been a situation akin to going up a

01:34dung escalator in which the dung escalator is moving at a faster pace than the upward baby

01:43steps. Frequently, it appears as though much of the powerful would wish the CIDs not to exist.

01:51But here we are, stubborn as the heavens. We are not going anywhere despite our massive

02:03vulnerabilities. Our people have a permanence in this world even if some of our lands wash

02:11away. We have a voice and we will continue to use it. We demand, as of right, a special support

02:22from the international community to address efficaciously the unique social, economic and

02:30environmental vulnerabilities of CIDs in the interests of the nearly 70 million people who

02:38permanently occupy the seascape and landscape of the CIDs and in the interests, too, of all the

02:45other 8 billion or so persons who inhabit Mother Earth. Small island exceptionalism ought to be a

02:54category embedded formally in international law and accorded most favorable treatment. Rather

03:04than securing a most favorable treatment, the CIDs are required to fight to maintain the special

03:13considerations which providence or serendipity has bestowed upon them. A case in point is the

03:21attempt currently by the International Development Association, IDA, to pit the most vulnerable,

03:29the CIDs, against the poorest countries in its quest to tighten the terms under which qualifying

03:36CIDs of a particular income level, such as St. Vincent and the Grenadines, obtain soft loans

03:43through the World Bank IDA nexus. In an event, why is the World Bank persisting with the single

03:53anachronistic and ill-designed metric of average per capita income in respect of vulnerable CIDs

04:03in the age of the Anthropocene as against a more comprehensive and sensible measure of a

04:10multi-dimensional vulnerability index? Your Excellencies, the unvarnished truth is that the

04:17developed countries have not kept their promises to the CIDs, except the most marginal ones.

04:26Importantly, the countries of the developed world, the major historic and contemporary emitters of

04:33greenhouse gases, have failed and or refused to keep their solemn commitments of restricting

04:41the global temperature at below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

04:48Unless there are drastic alterations in the patterns of consumption, production, life,

04:56and living in developed and large emerging economies, our planet is inexorably on a path

05:04to a proverbial hell in a handbasket. In the process, countries of an island or seaboard

05:12civilization are likely to be inundated by raging seas and enveloped in searing heat.

05:22On the matter of the financing of climate change, the developed countries which have the means

05:29and the major historic responsibility to contain this existential threat have been parsimonious

05:38and less than responsible in practice. Even today, the cynicism and doublespeak of several

05:45major developed countries is breathtaking in response to the quest of most of the global

05:52community to transform the international financial institutions as fit for purpose in today's world

05:59and for responsible, reasonable alterations in the actual modalities of climate financing.

06:08High representatives of most of these developed countries

06:11pay lip service in general to the innovative proposals, the Bridgestone 3 proposals endorsed

06:18by the Caribbean community, only to nitpick and delay in the particular on the progressive

06:26essentials. Brazenly, when these developed countries make a marginal concession,

06:34they trumpet it as a major advance so as to send the proverbial fool a little further.

06:42The Antigua and Barbuda agenda for SIDS adopted earlier this year

06:47encompass an action-oriented framework for the way forward. The recently adopted

06:53pact for the future by the United Nations General Assembly provides a wider and promising buttress.

07:00In our advocacy for the 39 SIDS, we embrace, too, the cause of the least developed countries

07:09and the landlocked developing countries, all 92 vulnerable countries in the United Nations system.

07:18Your Excellencies, growing material dissatisfaction grips increasingly large numbers of people in

07:26both the metropoles and the hinterlands in this highly interconnected world.

07:33Noticeably, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. Things are falling apart.

07:43The centres cannot hold, and the cascading effects are ripping the world asunder.

07:50The best of all lack conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

07:56Creative resistance and reconstruction are the banners under which ordinary men and women across

08:05the globe are draping themselves. Sadly, in the North Atlantic countries,

08:12there is a growing and dangerous constituency for an illiberal, even a neo-fascist option

08:22of looking forward to an illusory past in search of making again their countries

08:29unalloyed mythical paradises of unrivalled dominance. They are looking forward to a past

08:37that never was. At the same time, even a modest middling social democracy is on the retreat,

08:46because this old political shell of the post-1945 global order can barely contain the erupting

08:54contradictions within and outside it. A search for new modalities is emerging, but not yet

09:01fully formed, in part because the old order is unprepared to relinquish, cede or share power,

09:09even as it realizes that it cannot continue to rule in the old way. But the new is yet to be born,

09:17and the forces of change lack a sufficiency of strength to deliver satisfactory alterations.

09:25Your Excellencies, the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the conflicts in the Yemen,

09:33Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the threats across the Taiwan Strait,

09:39and empires' designs on revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela, the violence and more in Haiti,

09:45and such-like disruptions of the peace globally, all have specific origins and contexts.

09:52But they are all reflective, too, of a failure of multilateralism,

09:57a hamstrung United Nations framework, and a derogation from the fundamental precepts

10:03of the Charter of the United Nations. Large, powerful nations,

10:11singly or in allied combinations, have a propensity to seek dominance. In this milieu,

10:20opportunistic or servile alliances emerge or persist, as the particular circumstances admit.

10:29It all degenerates into emanation politics of the madhouse. Hypocrisy,

10:37disinformation and folly reign supreme. Your Excellencies, in this context arises the trope

10:46of the neoliberal global order that the principal contradiction in today's global political economy

10:52is between democracy and autocracy. Still, all the self-serving shibboleths

11:01and gloss of this fictional construct will not wash away the unrepentant sins of the past

11:09or the cruel impositions of the present. The blinding truth is that the central

11:15contradiction in today's political economy is not between democracy and autocracy.

11:21The main contradiction has been, and still is today, that which resolves around the

11:27fundamental material questions of who gets what, when, where and how.

11:34It is centrally about the struggle or competition for ownership, control and distribution of

11:40material resources, which constitute the basis for regional or global hegemony.

11:47Everywhere, more and more, the poor, the hungry, the marginalized, the disadvantaged

11:53are clamouring and organising for a different and better future. Not an unacceptable past,

12:02not a present without possibilities of upliftment, but for a future beyond unbounded elements.

12:12Your Excellencies, sadly, in our region, we have been experiencing the lived reality

12:20that the imperial ghost of Monroe still stalks the marbled halls of the citadels

12:29of a neighbouring great country, of extraordinary possibilities

12:34to the detriment of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

12:39No country in our hemisphere can reasonably be considered a security or a threat to this great

12:45nation. Yet St Vincent and the Grenadines and other Caribbean countries have been damaged

12:53collaterally and directly in significant material ways by the weaponizing of the financial system

13:02and the unjust unilateral coercive sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, which are in breach

13:09of international law. I am pleading with our friends for an amicable reset of these troubled

13:17relations in the interests of peace, mutual respect, justice and prosperity. The international

13:25community continues overwhelmingly and rightly to demand the end of the unilateral sanctions,

13:33the embargoes and unfair declarations about state sponsorship of terrorism and more made against

13:41Cuba. Your Excellencies, on July the 1st, 2024, the Category 4 hurricane burial battered St

13:50Vincent and Grenadines, Grenada and Jamaica. Since the dawn of the 21st century, this is the 12th

13:57significant natural disaster to have struck my country. Hurricane burial has adversely affected

14:06one-fifth of our population and has caused economic damage amounting to one-third of

14:12our country's gross domestic product. The relief recovery and reconstruction processes

14:19are underway. On behalf of the government and people of St Vincent and Grenadines,

14:24I thank all countries and organizations, including the United Nations, that have come to our aid in

14:31the aftermath of the hurricane. Unfortunately, for the recovery and rebuilding processes,

14:37we are essentially on our own. We have had to seek significant loans to rebuild

14:44our physical infrastructure and 5,000 houses, to provide income support for affected persons

14:50and to mobilize production support for the agricultural, fishing and tourism industries.

14:56I am appealing to the international community, our dear friends, to assist us,

15:01not with further burdensome loans, but with requisite grants. The recovery and reconstruction

15:07after every natural disaster increased sharply our debt burden. Countries like ours have contributed

15:16little or nothing to global warming and man-made climate change, yet we suffer largely alone

15:23on the front lines. This cannot be fair. It cannot be just. Do we have to choose

15:31death or debt? D-E-A-T-H or D-E-B-T? Which one we have to choose?

15:40Your Excellencies, the Caribbean community, the African Union, the community of states

15:45of Latin America and the Caribbean, their diasporas and all fair-minded persons globally

15:51have been insisting that the European nations responsible for native genocide

15:56and the enslavement of African bodies pay reparations for the consequential legacy

16:01of underdevelopment. This issue of transformative reparatory justice will not go away until it is

16:10appropriately addressed. Your Excellencies, the suffering and pain of the Haitian people

16:17continue to weigh heavily on the consciences of our Caribbean. Through the efforts of the Haitian

16:23people in tandem with the regional and international communities, especially CARICOM, the USA,

16:30Canada and Kenya, a measure of progress has been made on some fronts, but immense challenges remain

16:37in the humanitarian, security, political and economic spheres. The building of a free,

16:43democratic, peaceful and prosperous Haiti demands commitment and concerted action from

16:49all the relevant stakeholders in pursuance of solutions devised by Haitians and led by Haitians.

16:57Haiti fatigue is not an option for the international community.

17:01Your Excellencies, in our Caribbean, there is a growing challenge of violent crime

17:07involving the combustible mix of imported guns and bullets, illegally exported marijuana

17:14and the trafficking of cocaine from South America. It is evident that this challenge

17:19demands much closer cooperation, operationally, between all the countries concerned in the

17:25Caribbean, North America, South America and Europe. In the Middle East, the collective punishment

17:34meted against the Palestinians in Gaza and the continued illegal occupation of Palestinian lands,

17:42including in the West Bank, amidst a company in state terror by an Israeli regime,

17:50in total defiance of international law, is utterly unacceptable.

17:55Surely, despite the complexities of the problems at hand,

17:59this United Nations, especially the Security Council, ought to summon the courage and will

18:04to stop the carnage and facilitate a lasting peace and security.

18:10Your Excellencies, in the Far East, the prospect of a disruption of the tenuous peace across the

18:16Taiwan Strait is alarming. The quest for hegemony and the denial of a people's inalienable right

18:23to self-determination are wrong in the East as it is in the West. Bullying is objectionable in the

18:30West as it is in the East. Unilateral coercive action by a big power in the East

18:38is contrary to international law as it is surely in the West.

18:43St Vincent and the Grenadines continues to urge that Taiwan be allowed to participate fully in

18:49the specialized agencies of the United Nations, including those pertaining to health,

18:55air and sea transport, climate change, disaster preparedness and global policy.

19:04Your Excellencies, it appears that there have been recently some positive movements in the

19:12long quest to effect a judicious and just reform of the United Nations Security Council.

19:21It is evident to all reasonable persons that reform of this body is long overdue.

19:27As the chair of the L69 Group, St Vincent and the Grenadines will continue its advocacy

19:34for an inclusive, more comfortably effective representative and relevant Security Council.

19:40Excellencies, we know that a better world is possible. On the United Nations rests our hopes

19:47for a better world for peace, justice, security and prosperity. Let us also act in accord

19:57with our responsibilities, obligations and means. Please, let us not desecrate our future. Thank you.

20:09We were listening to the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves.

20:20Among other key topics, he highlighted that the developed countries of the world have failed to

20:25keep their commitments to meet emission targets and have worsened the unequal harm caused by

20:30climate change. We will continue bringing you the latest on this and major topics around the world.

20:35Stay tuned with TELUS for English.

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