ADDRESS BY

STATEMENT BY THE HONOURABLE DR. KENNY ANTHONY

PRIME MINISTER OF SAINT LUCIA

TO THE MILLENNIUM SUMMIT, SEPTEMBER 7. 2000

Co - Chairs of this millennium Summit

Excellencies,

We are gathered here today to reaffirm our faith in this organization - this United Nations. We are gathered here to reconfirm that the principles and purposes of its Charter can safely lead us in the new millennium - to give us the ageless expectation of a world free of poverty, free of hunger, free of war, free of the dictatorship of the mighty, free for us to enjoy our right to development. But why should Saint Lucia, an island of 238 square miles with a population of 155,000 persons be interested in the will and conscience of the United Nations? Has this body demonstrated in any way that it is a sanctuary for small island developing states? Was it not a promise of its birth to protect the weak, vulnerable and marginalized? Was this not the hope?

So, Excellencies, I ask you, where is the hope when the World trade Organization has orchestrated the destruction of the economies of some small Caribbean countries, through a ruling that condemns the preferential marketing arrangements for their bananas in Europe as being anti free trade? How can this be just when these arrangements are a life force of the economies of these countries? How can this be defensible when the Caribbean banana trade represents only 2% of world banana trade? Where is equity, justice, and fairness when other developing countries participate in this attack on our livelihood?

Where is the promise when the member countries of the OECD arrogate to themselves, the right to pronounce on the efficacy of the international financial services industries of a number of Caribbean countries; when they imperiously seek to determine the nature of our tax regimes by blacklisting those industries as harmful tax havens? Harmful to whom Mr. President? In this new age, we are exhorted to be competitive. Yet, whenever we manage to succeed in this endeavour, our developed world shouts foul and accuses us of being harmful and discriminatory.

Therefore, I say to you, Excellencies, that those prophets of the new age of globalization and trade liberalization, who trumpet hope in their praises of that new age, do so only because they are the ones who enjoy its benefits. . But for us in small island states like Saint. Lucia, what we hear is the deafening silence of a new order that ignores our special needs. What we experience is the insensitivity and the disinterest of the mighty (is they manipulate the system for their selfish ends. How can we laud the new order? How can we sing its praises ?

Excellencies

We are gathered here at a time of supreme paradox in the history of mankind? We meet (it a time when the peoples of the world can celebrate the unparalled progress that mankind has made in this last century. Yet, we are gathering at a time when they can also reflect on the unprecedented horrors and contradictions that human civilisation has visited upon itself during that epoch. On the one hand,

we have a world of unlimited possibility, a world of technological wizardry - all inflated to millennial proportions. On the other hand, there is a digital divide that more than ever extends the gap between the haves and the have - nots into "those who know* from *those who don't"

Today, life expectancy has increased. Educational, nutritional and health standards have improved qualitatively and quantitatively; but, we have never, ever, been stricken by the nature and scale of diseases that presently afflict us.

The world's economy has generated more wealth than at any other time in history and the prospects for economic prosperity are a lot brighter for a larger percentage of the world's population than ever before. But Excellencies, how can we explain the fact that, according to The Conference Report on Eradicating Global Poverty: Parliamentary Action Agenda for the 21st Century ", three billion people on the planet are living on less than one dollar a day, that One billion subsist on less than three dollars a day? Today, the combined wealth of the three richest people in the world is greater than the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the forty-eight poorest countries in the world. Of the one hundred largest economies in the world, f fifty-one are corporations, not countries.

How can we explain the fact that international assistance from wealthy countries to poorer countries has reached its lowest point in twenty years? Where is the collective conscience of human kind, where is our sense of justice, where is the brotherhood that binds us together. Where is the hope?

Today, there is (in evil stalking our civilization. It is the trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs. Day after day one of our young citizens succumbs to these drugs, and I know that we may have lost another genius. Day after day, we persist in pursuing strategies that are clearly not working king. We must urgently review those strategies. We must consider and commit ourselves to new approaches to eradicating the scourge of drug trafficking and addiction, otherwise we will not only lose our young people but communities, and in time, governments.

Excellencies,

If the United Nations truly wishes to embrace small states and the developing world and give us the promise of its birth, it must redefine global governance so as to embody the key principles of inclusiveness, equality, transparency and participatory action. Due deference and recognition must be paid to the special conditions of small developing countries. We must accept the constraints imposed upon them by geography and population size. We must understand their limited internal markets and resource endowment. We must appreciate their low levels of economic diversification. We must realise their high susceptibility to external shocks. We must sympathise with their vulnerability to natural disasters and the effects of environmental change. The United Nations System must take the leading role in the refashioning of multilateral economic governance so as to establish a new regime that is fully legitimate and effective, so that states like as a Saint Lucia given their openness, small size, diseconomies of scale and vulnerability are not further victimized, marginalized and ostracised.

What is therefore needed is a paradigm shift - a paradigm shift that will place the all encompassing issue of human security at the heart of the United Nations agenda as we seek to shape a new vision for the 21st century. If the 21' century is to be a century of prosperity for all, then people must be placed at the centre of development. Consequently, the United Nations System cannot continue to operate quasi concert of great powers.

Excellencies

The new millennium presents for us a special historical opportunity, a chance for new beginnings, a window through which desired moral imperatives can infuse the international system with new guiding principles for a different, fairer world order. In the existing plethora of international organizations, the United Nations System must lie at the legislative and normative centre of the world order. The United Nations system is the only universal forum capable of institutionalising development cooperation. Yet rich and powerful members of this body seek to denature it and strip it of its developmental role and focus. In the context of the global order, the United Nations must become the eternal symbol of the world community for equality in rights and unity of action; an institution where weakness can be ameliorated by justice and fairness. We cannot build a civilization without a conscience.

Saint Lucia therefore looks forward to the convening next year of the Conference on Financing for Development when development, economic and systemic issues will be addressed.

Excellencies

If there is to be hope that United Nations can fashion a 21" Century free of want and free of fear, then we must accept. that the pursuit of genuine global peace and security cannot be attained merely through peacekeeping, but rather by addressing the root causes of conflict, poverty, deprivation, and discrimination among the world's peoples and nations.

I thank you.