United Nations General Assembly, Sixtieth Session, 4th Plenary Meeting Wednesday, 14 September, 2005, New York
Today we gather, as a family of nations, to take stock of the progress that has been made in fulfilling the commitment that was given as part of our celebration of the start of a new century, to bring about a dramatic improvement in the human condition everywhere.
It is important that this meeting does not become just a theatre of the absurd, an occasion for expressing anger at what has not been achieved and for giving new commitments that we know we will not honour. It is time that we began to hold some common ground and use it as a beachhead from which to launch our drive for progress.
Almost exactly one year ago, Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenadian society. Today the United States of America is coming to terms with the enormity of the destruction inflicted on its southern states by Hurricane Katrina.
It is therefore highly significant that in a world where we talk about developed and developing, the undiscriminating forces of nature render us all equal and point to our common fragility and humanity.
These recent events have thereby highlighted our interdependence, reinforced the need for sustained and effective international cooperation and have placed before us, forcibly, the need to carry out a programme for global development to stop poor people from being poor, no matter where they live.
They also highlight the unnecessary and unsavoury dilemma that we have imposed on ourselves, because with today’s technology, financial resources and accumulated knowledge, humanity has the capacity to overcome extreme deprivation. Yet, the international community allows poverty to destroy lives on a scale before which the impact of all of the world’s natural disasters pales into insignificance.
It is unconscionable that we should have to continue to live in a world that consists of a permanent coalition of “unequals” — the fabulously rich and the desperately poor. It is especially unacceptable that the principal agents of international cooperation — trade and aid — should be used as instruments to perpetuate underdevelopment. The world can do better. The issues at the core of global development have nothing to do with means; they have to do with morality. We feel that this occasion should be one not only for recommitment to the goals set out in the Millennium Declaration, as narrowly defined, but also for a new commitment to a process of compassionate global development that draws upon the best values known to humanity.
Five years ago, Barbados wholeheartedly adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which gave expression to the substance of the Millennium Declaration. We accepted those goals not as new international tests to be passed, but as an inspiration to reach for higher social and economic heights.
We therefore propose not just to meet the Goals, but to exceed them. To that end, we have woven them into our national strategic plan for the next 20 years. We, however, entertain no illusions about the difficulty we will experience in meeting these Goals.
Though small, our nation has attained a human development index that puts us ahead of countries in the European Union. The price we have had to pay for this is to have access to aid and development finance denied to us at an early stage in our development. We are therefore largely on our own as the financier of our development programmes. At the same time, we can no longer plan our national development on the expectations of enjoying preferential access to the markets of the world.
This double-edged challenge posed by the reduction in our access to financial resources and the demands of trade liberalization has drastically transformed the environment within which our national development takes place. It, however, does not deter us from believing that we can attain full development; rather it causes us to look to new means and devices by which that full development can be attained.
Similarly, we believe that the state of the global society requires us to look to new means by which global economic and social progress can be attained.
In that regard, permit me to suggest that the MDGs will only be achieved if the eighth Millennium Goal of a global partnership for development is fully addressed. Barbados believes that it is vitally important for this High-level Plenary Meeting to be used by heads of State or Government to reaffirm commitment to the global partnership for development in the Millennium Declaration, the Monterrey Consensus and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation. This calls for increased and more predictable resources; a comprehensive, sustainable and development-oriented solution to the debt problem; the promotion of a universal, open and fair multilateral trading system and a global governance system that not only allows for the full and effective participation of developing countries in international economic decision-making, but also manages world economies in a manner that would distribute more equitably the world’s resources. Anything less will find us wanting by 2015.
The Barbados economy is now largely a coastal economy. Like many other small island developing States, Barbados faces a high degree of vulnerability occasioned by climate change, climate variability and other phenomena such as the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters.
The Mauritius Strategy for the Further Implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action clearly identifies the key areas that need to be addressed to help such small island developing States respond to these and other sustainable development challenges. The compassionate development of which I spoke earlier requires that our development partners assist small island developing States in getting easier and more effective access to the financial resources and appropriate technologies needed as well as assistance in developing human and institutional capacity.
The Government and the people of Barbados have a vision to transform Barbados into a fully developed country; a model democracy that is prosperous, productive, peaceful, socially just and inclusive; a centre for high-quality services whose standards of excellence are global but at the same time rooted in our best traditions. We have made substantial progress in each of these spheres. Throughout this endeavour we will count on the solidarity of like-minded alliances, and we have the fullest hope in the shared responsibility of multilateralism, of which this Organization, the United Nations, must be the core.