Mr President,
This Millennium Summit will adopt a
Declaration projecting a vision for the world.
It will be a high-sounding document
filled with laudable objectives and admirable pledges.
We will assert that globalisation should
become a positive force for all the world's people. We will acknowledge the importance of
creating a shared future based upon our common humanity. Importantly, we will insist that
global policies and measures be devised with the effective participation of developing
countries to meet their needs.
Many have
little faith that the words of this vision will be met by the deeds necessary make it a
reality.
So, I say:
Surprise me.
Surprise all
the millions of people who live in abject poverty. Surprise all the children who suffer from malnutrition and are denied even
a rudimentary education. Surprise those who are born with no expectation except that of a
short and miserable life.
Surprise
small countries like mine. Surprise us by showing that, even though we are small and
powerless, account will be taken of our conditions and our views by the big and powerful.
Surprise the
countries that are burdened by debt, whose people repay that debt coffers of the rich in
misery and despair.
The evidence at
hand provides no comfort to the poor and the powerless. For the world that turns on the cusp of the new Millennium is still one
in which right parades in the armour of might, and justice is cloaked in the raiment
of the rich.
Even this
body, the United Nations Association - the repository of mankind's highest aspirations -
has become marginalised by the dictates of a few. Its principles, of a world based on
faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in
the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, have become a hollow
echo.
The sustained
prosperity of industrialised countries in the last 50 years and the more recent
performance of a few developing countries have camouflaged a more gruesome reality, and
that is the relentless growth in the number of the very poor.
Is it not a
woeful indictment that although 25 countries were identified by the IMF and World Bank to
benefit by the end of the year 2000 under the much vaunted Highly Indebted Poor Countries
Initiative, not one has yet received an actual cash draw down?
The world's
economic and political agenda is now devised and dictated by a few of it most powerful
governments. The Group of 7 has arrogated to itself not only the role of the world's
decision- maker, but also of its enforcer.
And, it
appears that in arrogating this role to themselves, the members of the G7 have been
motivated by narrow, national political concerns at the expense of the wider interests of
global economic growth and international political stability.
Recently,
several small countries - Antigua and Barbuda included - have experienced the most blatant
disregard for the rules of international law; rules that have been spelled out by the UN
General Assembly and upheld by the International Court of Justice.
Those rules
specify quite clearly that States cannot intervene in areas solely within the jurisdiction
of other states, and international organisations are restricted from intervention within
the domestic jurisdiction of states.
Yet, the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - an organisation created by
the G7- has unilaterally devised a set of standards
for taxation that it wants to impose on
other jurisdictions. The OECD is also demanding that States change their domestic laws to
allow the tax authorities of OECD countries unfettered access to banking information.
Should States
fail to yield to the OECD's demands, its member-states have threatened to impose sanctions
on those countries.
The rule of
law has become the rule of the jungle. Rules no longer apply, only might is right.
All of this,
incidentally, is being done because the OECD - usually a warrior in the battle for more
global competition - believes that its member states will lose capital to other states
because of their more competitive tax regimes. Amazingly, these competitive tax rates are
described by the OECD as "Harmful Tax Competition".
Let me be
clear: none of this has anything to do with money laundering and other financial crime.
While the spin doctors of the OECD have attempted to cloak their position in moral
rectitude with references to the evils of money laundering, "Harmful Tax
Competition" has nothing to do with money laundering.
Money
laundering is handled by a separate institution, the Financial Action Task Force, which
has established criteria for evaluating countries that are cooperative in the prevention
of money laundering. My own country- Antigua and Barbuda - successfully passed the FATF
evaluationlast June, and many of the countries on the OECD's list are in the forefront of
the fight against financial crime.
This OECD action is designed to impose its unilaterally created
standards on states low tax regimes so that they can justify and maintain what amounts to
a high tax cartel.
What the OECD is doing is wrong in international law and violates
both the letter and spirit of countless resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly. If
the Charter of this organisation means anything - and if the Declaration of this Summit is
to give any credibility to the United Nations - the OECD should withdraw from bullying
small countries in forced bilateral negotiations and should cease to hold sanctions over
their heads like swords of Damocles.
The
OECD should resolve to halt its insidious process and place any discussion issues in a
multilateral forum where it rightly belongs.
Mr
President, this OECD issue and others like it are symptoms of the much problem of global
governance.
My
country acknowledges and upholds the right of the G7 countries to be at the centre of
global decision-making. But, it cannot be an exclusive right. Others too have a right of
participation. We too represent people with a legitimate interest in the way in which our
shared planet is managed.
It
is for that reason that my country is ready to assume additional financial responsibility
for UN peacekeeping operations. We believe that every country has an obligation to
contribute to the maintenance of world stability and to stop waste of human life. We
recognise that participation has a cost, and we stand ready to play our part.
In turn, however,
the large and the powerful must also accept that the table of decisionmaking must be wide enough to accommodate
representatives of all the world's people: developed and developing, large and small.
When this UN
Association was conceived 54 years ago, leaders of States committed themselves to a world
"governed by justice and moral law", one in which they asserted the
"preeminence of right over might and the general good against sectional aims".
In the passage of time, the world has witnessed a withdrawal from those commitments if not
a reversal of them.
The world's
people are today highly sceptical of what their leaders say in this Assembly.
Surprise me,
and surprise them.
Let the
Millennium Declaration we issue from this place go forth to the four comers of the world
as a programme that each nation will implement to create a truly shared future based on
our common humanity.
The world's
people would welcome that surprise.
Thank you.
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