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28 September 1999

The General Assembly is in the second and final day of its twenty-second special session, which is reviewing and appraising the implementation of the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, adopted in Barbados in 1994.

In three meetings today, the Assembly will hear 72 speakers. The session will conclude this evening with the adoption of a declaration and a document on the Status of Progress and Initiatives for the Future Implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action.

Negotiations on the two texts were finalized yesterday by the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole. That Committee met this morning to hear statements by representatives of organizations and to adopt its draft report to the special session (document A/S-22/AC.1/L1).

Only one section of the Status of Progress document had remained in brackets, that on shipment of radioactive and hazardous waste through island seas. In the agreed text, Governments reaffirm the paragraphs of the Barbados Programme of Action by which islands have the right to prohibit such shipments, but they also reaffirm that this must be in conformity with international laws governing rights of free passage.

What is new here is a call for States and international organizations to specifically address small island concerns about liability and compensation in the event of accidents, safety measures and disclosures, recognizing that these are not adequately covered in existing legal regimes.

On the issue of trade and globalization, the special session is asking the World Trade Organization and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development to consider the effects of the erosion of trade preferences and problems of diversification and lack of market access on the small islands.

In adopting the text, the special session will also call for improving the capacity of small island nations to adequately respond and adapt to climate change. It will reaffirm the Barbados Programme of Action in its call for new and additional resources from the international community to implement the action plan for small islands.

Also yesterday, the Committee of the Whole took note of a letter from Canada, annexed to which was a bracketed draft resolution on the Caribbean Sea (document A/S-22/6). It decided to transmit them to the General Assembly at its fifty-fourth session for further consideration by the Second Committee.

The Credentials Committee of the special session met yesterday and recommended that the Assembly accept, subject to a paragraph dealing with Afghanistan, the credentials of all the Members States concerned. The report is in document A/S-22/8.

The General Assembly will continue its general debate tomorrow, 29 September. Among the 19 speakers will be the President of Guinea-Bissau and the Prime Ministers of Samoa and Malaysia.

Again, I wish to draw your attention to document A/INF/54/3, which contains a tentative programme of work and schedule of plenary meetings for the period starting tomorrow, 29 September, to the end of November.

I have been asked when the Credentials Committee of the fifty-fourth session will meet. The Office of Legal Affairs has informed me that last year the Committee met on 20 October. It is anticipated that this year’s meeting will take place around the same time.

Tomorrow, 29 September, the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) will meet to elect the rest of its bureau and organize its work for the session. The related documents are A/C.2/54/1 and L.1.