WLA

They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, they make it desert and call it peace. They make it desert and they call it peace. The assembly will hear an address by her excellency Mia Amore Mley, Prime Minister, Prime Minister and Minister for National Security and the Public Service and Minister for Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment of Barbados. I request protocol to escort her excellency and invite her to address the assembly.

 

Thank you very much, Madame President, excellencies, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. The 21st century has been marked by a series of crises for which our world has been unprepared. financial crisis that started in 2008 which then triggered fiscal crises across many of the world’s countries. And if that was not enough, a social crisis characterized by rising inequality with the consequences there too.

 

Be it substance abuse, mental health challenges, homelessness or human trafficking. Then there was a global pandemic lasting two to three years and taking the lives of millions of people. And for those surviving, they had restricted movement and restricted choices. All of this, my friends, has been exacerbated by the spreading of fake news. This distorts reality and threatens the stability of our societies, creating a platform for hate to thrive and prejudice to rise.

 

But deeper than all of these crises is a bigger, more insidious crisis that is undermining our domestic and global institutions that have promoted order, peace, and prosperity. It is, my friends, the crisis of truth. Excellencies, when we lose shared truth, our communities, our countries, our global society loses their center of gravity. At first, the damage may seem quiet. Words bend and facts drift in the service of political point scoring.

 

But slowly over time, we descend into political tribalism. We develop alternative realities and we are unable to understand each other and communicate with each other because we lack a center. Then we grow suspicious of each other. In the absence of truth, trust deteriorates. And we see it all around us in global forums and indeed on the blocks and in the communities in our own countries. Trust between neighbors.

 

Trust between the governed and the governing. Trust in our instructions. Trust in our social order. Trust in our health systems. Trust in our global rules governance structures. It all seems in the words of Chinra Achebe to be falling apart. When we lack truth and we lack trust, law becomes theater. News becomes spectacle and science becomes just another opinion. As I’ve had calls to say in this great hall on a few times, our world today worryingly worryingly resembles the world of a 100 years ago.

 

And this has become even more evident with the closing of our borders to both goods and to people. This has magnified the geopolitical tensions which had already taken root. Disturbingly war regrettably has only entered the daily lexicon of the west not when thousands were dying on the continent of Africa or in Myammar but when war came to Europe. Nevertheless, we still call for peace in the Ukraine.

 

Only yesterday, a leading British newspaper reminded us that for 500 days, 260,000 people, virtually the population of my country, 260,000 people have been trapped in the Sudin city of El Fasia. The article reported that while political progress stalls, those who attempt to escape are killed and those who remain inside are starved. The world must not ignore the horror in Sudan. And of course, I don’t need to remind you that it must not ignore the horror in Gaza.

 

The genocidal destruction taking place in both places must now have our full attention. And as it relates to Gaza, yes, there must be a release of the hostages taken on October 7th. But we have now gone to a point where all of our human sensibilities are offended by the continuous and disproportionate attacks on the Palestinian people and the failure to allow access by the international community to the survivors for the provision of humanitarian aid.

 

The survivors are entitled, my friends, to use the words of Bob Marley. How can you be sitting there telling me that you care when every time I look around the people suffer in the suffering in every way in everywhere? My friends, it calls to mind the Roman historian Tacitus who quoted a Scottish chieftain fighting against the military might of the Roman Empire. And I mentioned only the last two sentences.

 

They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, they make it desert and call it peace. They make it desert and they call it peace. The real tragedy of war is that these children when they become grandparents will still be answering the innocent questions posed by their grandchildren 70, 80 years from now as to how they lost their limbs. Granny, how did you lose your leg? And when they answer, we run the risk that the violence and hate will be perpetuated for another two to three generations.

 

This is not why we have come together. This is not good. And madame president, it is happening under our watch. We can and we must do better to secure the peace across the world in the name of the children. And let me say that at the very least the international community must immediately find the funding to support the children of Gaza and the children of Sudan for the next three months. UNICEF has said that in Gaza it is $66 million that is needed for the next three months and in Sudan it is $200 million.

 

The money is mostly nutrition related to reverse or to mitigate famine for children and to provide water and sanitation and health interventions. And we should note that there have been multiple disease outbreaks including kalera. So madame president to be very clear as I move on a lasting peace can never be achieved through violence. not continued bombing. It can only be achieved through justice as our guide and dialogue talking.

 

Unless we forget where others are seeking to build the peace and to preserve humanity in Gaza, as we saw, the international community must not condone the bombing of those states who look to facilitate peace. It is a red line that we must never cross. Madame President, I say simply again another year. The world needs a reset. We must find first and foremost whether we still agree on the same values that inform our charter.

 

As simple as this seems, this is necessary in any reset for values we all know have changed over the last 80 years. And we cannot assume that it is business as usual. And if it is not available to all of us to agree to those values, then we must at least know who does and who doesn’t. And our addition in addition to our inability to bring about peace in multiple conflicts, there really still are a number of issues that threaten our way of life and the stability of our planet beyond war.

 

the climate crisis, food insecurity, water scarcity, mass flow of refugees and displaced persons, poverty and increasing inequality within and between societies. It has become so insidious that people don’t even talk about it sufficiently. And of course, the failing spectacle of the STGS for too many of our countries and people across the world. And of course, unregulated AI, which while it has tremendous promise, poses unregulated significant risk.

 

Many of our people ask every day, why has the United Nations not done better recently? The simple truth, my friends, is that countries have lacked countries countries have lacked the political will to live by the charter and to do what is right for humanity. Countries of different sizes, capacities, and cultures can only survive in this world in which we live if we maintain a rulesbased system. It is no different to what we have to do in our own countries to maintain and protect the vulnerable and the weak.

 

In fact, it’s no different than what has to be done in a child’s playground. The rules-based system is what protects us from bullying and from rogue behavior. Our charter was designed to promote compassion, equality, fairness, and this is why it is imperative that we maintain a rules-based system. I I speak as a leader of a small country. Our future is placed at risk unless we preserve this rules-based system.

 

The law of the jungle does not guarantee any of us a future on a livable or indeed doesn’t guarantee us a livable planet. We have simply to step up to the plate. And unlike the West Indian Federation when one country left and the maths of the day was one from 10 leaves zero, we must remember that if there are those who don’t want to be inside at the dance, that one or two or three from 193 does not leave zero.

 

Does not leave zero. Those of us who remain can continue to pursue our vital interests. And we don’t criticize countries for making sovereign decisions because that’s what governments were elected to do. If that’s not what they want, that’s not what they want. But let us get on with the business and protect our vital interests of preserving a rules-based system to strengthen us to build peace to allow us to better face challenges from climate to pandemics to unregulated AI and generally to build a better life for our people.

 

There is no doubt that there is a case for efficiency gains to be made in this United Nations institutional framework. We know that. But once we finish the efficiency gains, member states who want or need a rules-based order must put their money where their mouth is. If we are to be protected by a rules-based system, then we must step up to the plate and provide the funds to bridge the gap to deliver the results that we desire.

 

We must move from short pants to long pants and understand that we can no longer complain about the absence or behavior of a country and not ourselves be prepared to make wrong things right. It is as simple as that. And believe me the arithmetic is not bad. It is within each of our reach to reach there to do it. And let us remember the Aristotle principle, equality among equals, proportionality among unequals.

 

My friends, and while we contemplate the multiple crises, let us also not despair because there are some things that have worked for the benefit of our people in the last few years. We now have globally a historic pandemic agreement that was adopted to make the world equitable, more equitable, and safer from future pandemics. A full appreciation of this will only come when the next pandemic hits us.

 

We have agreed to the civil commitment on finance which seeks to fulfill the promise of the SDGs and which even though the funding has not been fully identified has mainstreamed a number of financing concepts that were simply not taken into account a decade ago. Debt swaps, natural disaster clauses or what they call climate resilient debt clauses. These are the things that we advocated in the Bridgetown initiative.

 

We have committed also as a world last year here to an ambitious global action plan to combat antimicrobial resistance. And what does that have to do with any of us in here? I’ve said repeatedly, this is the silent slow motion pandemic of the 21st century and threatens to reverse a century of medical progress. And when we know people who die from hospitalated infections, we understand the importance of the vital steps taken here.

 

Earlier this week, we successfully brought into force the Beyond Boundaries and National Jurisdiction Treaty. As a large ocean state, as Barbados is, I am acutely aware of the critical importance to protect our oceans and its marine biodiversity as part of the ecological balance of the planet. And last year we adopted the ambitious pack for the future which provides a road map a northstar for our work to protect people and planet of the future.

 

The two instruments mentioned on Tuesday morning by our secretary general for regulating AI must now be our priority if we are to avoid the severe deepening inequality of our times and to avoid leaving our people exposed to the risk and exploitation of AI and the distortion of facts. I must tell you that regrettably, I have experienced on a well-known commercial AI platform examples of censorship that seek to deny access to the details of our history in this hemisphere, in terms of the Barbados slave code, in terms of the South Carolina slave code.

 

So, we must be vigilant. Speaking as a small country, therefore, we see no future without a rules-based system. And before I go on, let me recognize the outgoing president of the General Assembly, his excellency Filimon Yang for his impactful presidency last year. And let me also congratulate her excellency Analina Berbach for assuming the presidency particularly in this year when we celebrate Beijing plus 30. Barbados looks forward to working with you, ma’am, to execute your vision.

 

The fact that you are the only the fifth woman to occupy this post over the last 80 years is a cause both for profound concern, but I say renewed optimism. This is a testament to the very point that I’m seeking to make. The organization is working even if not at optimal levels. But we still have so much so much so much to do. Madame President, on climate finance, there is a re climate and finance I should say.

 

There’s a real danger that debates in this great chamber at the conference of the parties and elsewhere risk being reduced to mere performative exercises. We have watched the widely celebrated green wave which swept Europe in 2019. We’ve seen it now recede and in its backwash that continent now faces deep division over the scale, scope and speed of delivery on commitments made to eliminate climate harm and pollution by 2050. We’ve seen others withdraw from the Paris agreement.

 

At a time, Madame President, when we should be conducting an audit of the achieved targets and accomplished deliverables, we continue for the most part to receive IUS and statements of deferred intent. Even as we have witnessed this vacillation that I just referred to, we’ve also seen a rededication to breathing new life into highcarbon and high pollutant forms of energy. And we have witnessed a redoubling of efforts to fund military buildups, even at the expense of financing our way to sustainability and that of a livable planet.

 

Barbados does not treat climate science as a mere conjecture. And neither does the International Court of Justice nor the American Court of Human Rights. Their advisory opinions have affirmed the legal rights and entitlements of citizens who must on a daily basis confront the impact of the climate crisis. In this regard, we especially welcome the International Court of Justice’s ruling to the effect that states have obligations to protect the climate system and other parts of the environment from emissions and that those obligations can be enforced against other states.

 

Given this new reality, as we look ahead, we must seize the opportunity to find common ground. common ground given the diversity of opinions on this question of the climate crisis. I propose that one possible way forward is to focus on emissions rather than focusing on the fossil fuel industry. As I’ve said before, the fossil fuel industry is not the enemy. It is the emissions. In this regard, we should consider working towards a globally legal binding framework on methane, which could contribute to reversing global temperatures, I’m told by the scientists, by as much as half a degree, while purchasing time for the fossil fuel industry to scale up to a commercial level the use of decarbonizing technology.

 

This is possible. The Baku to Bellm road map must also ensure that the necessary resources $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 are not only committed but delivered. It is the political will and the ingenuity of countries and financial institutions that will ensure that these sums can be delivered. It must not and we must not allow that road map to suffer the same fate as the loss and damage fund which despite its historic establishment remains grossly under capitalized with less than $800 million pledged and regrettably only half of those pledges have actually materialized.

 

This ambivalence towards finance and fiscal space, my friends, is what gave birth to the Bridgestong initiative. Its latest iteration, Bridtown 3.0, will shortly be reviewed given the rapidly changing global environment in which we live. We still need to expand liquidity support and to close the financing gap to assist vulnerable countries, especially the V20, many of whom still face the possibility of a debt crisis.

 

They need it to build their resilience and to adapt to the new climate reality. I am conscious of the progress by which multilateral institutions have taken on board some of our arguments in the Bridgetown initiative, especially as it relates to climate finance and to the issue of vulnerability. I referred earlier to debt swaps and the climate resilient debt clauses. Madame President, all of these goals and many more can be achieved by a fully functional rules-based system, one that is ambitious in its goals, effective in its delivery, and fair in its organization.

 

As UN80 process seeks to enhance the functioning of this organization, we must ensure that we put in place the initiatives that are not the exclusive outgrowth of budget constraints and cross cutting exercises, but are instead initiatives that are people focused, deliverydriven, providing the global population with the peace and the security and the quality of life that they deserve and that they are increasingly ly demanding.

 

To this effect, the security council we know must be reformed. It must reflect the multipolar world that we now live in. And it must give an opportunity to recognize that there have been substantial geopolitical shifts since 1962 when you had your last reform, three years before I was born and I turn 60 next week. Permanent seats for Africa and a seat that revolves for small island developing states are an essential part of that reform because we all have perspectives that must be heard.

 

You cannot ask us really to show up for family photos and votes when you need them and then exclude us from the family’s decision-making as if you are the grown-ups and we are the children. We are not minors. We are independent sovereign states with full capacity and we insist on being treated as such. Madame President, I have left the peace and security of our Caribbean region for last. It is deeply troubling.

 

example, Haiti, and you’ve heard Prime Minister Gonzalez speak eloquently this morning on these matters. Haiti, which was once a beacon of emancipation and revolution for all of us as black people, is today a victim of centuries of external interference and contemporary internal conflict and regrettably even blindness. We want to thank Kenya for its extraordinary leadership of the multinational security support mission even when they were out there on their own.

 

We look forward to the enhanced support of the UN Security Council and the Organization of American States even as we maintain a strong watching brief for this valued member of our Caribbean community as CarryCom. Haiti requires, I’ve said it over and over, a longterm support plan that addresses security and development. not one at the expense of the other. With the requisite political will, the UN Security Council and the International Development System are well equipped.

 

They have the resources and power to deliver. We also want to urge dialogue with our friends and partners, especially in the United States, on the inescapable issue on the flow of small arms and light weapons, not only to Haiti, but indeed across this entire hemisphere, especially in the Caribbean with small states. Fragile economies in the democracies of the Caribbean community are now being threatened by this incessant flow of illegally obtained weapons and increasingly organized criminal elements which utilize them.

 

But we will use the systems to deal with them collectively and in accordance with due process. We thank Secretary General Gutirez for his unswerving support with respect to Haiti and we now need others on board to ensure that Haiti can turn the corner and prepare itself for free and fair democratic elections. Madame President, Cuba has long been a source of support for many across the globe in times of conflict, health crisis, and indeed colonial resistance, particularly in Africa.

 

Cuba has paid, however, a high price for insisting on its right to self-determination. And again, yet again, we must be prepared to engage in dialogue in order to stop the disproportionate suffering and the deprivation that is being inflicted on the Cuban society by what is now globally seen to be an unjust embargo and other unilateral coercive measures. Barbados, my friends, reiterates its call for the end of the embargo and the removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

 

This is unjust. [Applause] What is even more in the Caribbean Sea, we’re now seeing a shocking violation of a hemispheric understanding that the Caribbean be treated as a zone of peace. There has been a buildup in military assets in the last few weeks in the Caribbean by both sides, by the United States of America and by Venezuela. We believe that any such buildup could occasion just an accident.

 

And if it does, a simple accident can put the Southern Caribbean at disproportionate risk. I need not tell you therefore what a war can do. It is not acceptable for our islands, our countries to be viewed as collateral damage. I say simply for all who can hear and for all who read and can listen. Full respect for the territorial integrity of each and every state in the Caribbean must be respected and that includes all states.

 

Almost all wars end as a result of dialogue. Let us make a greater effort to have the necessary conversations to prevent war. It is too simple. As I close today, I leave you with an image that has stayed with me for the last week of a young Palestinian girl of six or seven years old walking in the midst of the rubble in Gaza. Her eyes were hollow. and full of despair. It was clear that she was in great pain.

 

But she carried her sister on her shoulders, both shoulders, clearly recognizing that it was she who would have to carry the burden of taking them to safety. My friends, this is the ultimate picture for me of hope and resilience. Let us be inspired that even in the face of the greatest adversity and challenges that the world faces that we too can rise. For if a six-year-old can push past the pain, all the physical and emotional pain and still find hope that there’s a better moment ahead of her.

 

Then we as leaders and members of the global community have a duty to summon that spirit. The world needs it now more than ever. It is not beyond us to forge a better world that is fair and just. But 80 years ago, it was just a few countries that summoned that will. Today, those of us who were denied the right to be heard then must now be the core responders to this critical clarion call. I leave you inspired by the words of my own anthem as I think about the world.

 

Inspired, I say, upwards and onwards we shall go. inspired, exalting, free, and greater will our world our world grow in strength and unity. If a six-year-old child can summon the will against all that she faced, then we with much much much more and with a commitment and an obligation to many many many more must summon that will. I thank you. [Applause] Do you want to watch more videos like this one?

 

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