"We Need a Reset"
Barbados PM Mia Mottley Lays Out A Global Agenda
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The annual United Nations General Assembly session offers leaders from around the world to address the world. Often these speeches offer platitudes instead of new insight or inspiration. The Caribbean island of Barbados, led by PM Mia Mottley, ranks 186th in population among countries of the world, with less than 300,000 people. In area, with only 430 sq km, it ranks even lower, at 196th.
But as anyone who has watched and heard her speak can testify, she almost certainly ranks first among world leaders in terms of her global insights and eloquence. Two years ago AfricaFocus highlighted her speeches at the climate conference in Cairo and at the Samora Machel memorial lecture in South Africa.
Her speech to the General Assembly on September 27th this year is no exception. Check it out yourself.
The full video is 35 minutes long. Her comments on global peace and security start at about 17 minutes in.
The transcript of her speech is available at https://pmo.gov.bb/2024/09/27/barbados-prime-minister-addresses-general-debate-79th-session-september-27-2024/
I include below a few excerpts from the transcript.
There needs to be global peace and those of us who are old enough would have recognized that there are peaks and valleys as it relates to this issue of conflict. There are few areas where the world is more in need of the United Nations acting as the United Nations to secure the objectives of the charter than in the area of peace and security.
The silence that has engulfed Sudan is unacceptable and may well be rooted in the racism that the world still carries as a badge of honor from the victories of the last great war: World War II. The actions in Myanmar cannot continue. Ukraine has sucked more oxygen out of the global community and the global financial system than any of us can appropriately accept at the very time when the world needs to be applying its resources and efforts to fight in the greatest crisis known to mankind.
And the spread of the war from Gaza to the consequences in the West Bank to now clearly what is happening in Lebanon as we speak with Israel all of these are but the tip of an iceberg of death violence and instability and robs the global community of oxygen and resources at the very time when we need it most in a strategic way.
We all know as students of history that even the longest war in history came to an end. These wars yes they too will come to an end but the question is when and at what cost and without much loss of life with how many children not being able to be either given the chance to live or will now live with memories of war that will affect their every action for the next 60 70 80 years of their lives. Innocent people are paying the price with the one thing that is theirs to give and they don’t give it willingly; it is their life.
Unless we address the root causes of these wars one by one and the manners in which they are being sustained and financed we will never never know anything else other than war and rumors of war in these theaters. The transmittal of these scenes of horror in real time into people’s bedrooms into people’s living rooms will trigger two extreme reactions neither of which are acceptable to us in the third decade of the 21st century. We will either get the desensitizing of ordinary people to the loss of lives especially those of innocent children and women on the one hand or we will get on the other hand the anger and inclination for vengeance that it spawns necessarily.
We need peace and it cannot be too difficult for us to work for peace. It is the same Bible that tells us in the stories of the Old Testament much which has guided many people across this world. But when we turn from the Old testament to the New Testament it is Romans that says to us vengeance is mine saith the lord not any country not any human being so that the Bible can’t be used as a convenient aid when it suits us and rejected when it doesn’t.
In the midst of this maelstrom we were very clear my country took the step this year of recognizing and establishing diplomatic relations with the state of palestine in spite of having supported a two-state solution since 1969.
And we did this because it is clear to us that the state and people of Palestine as human beings are entitled to full recognition by integration into and support from the international community. The charter does not say we the people with the exception of any one group from any one part of the world. We join with others therefore in congratulating the state of Palestine on taking their seat among the United Nations member states as they did on the 10th of September of this year.
And let me be clear, we condemn the actions of Hamas on October 7th but we equally and strongly deplore the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza which is the result of the disproportionate use of force by Israel. There’s no justification for it and that is why treaties exist governing the rules of engagement for war because we as human beings learnt better and know better.
We are committed to a two-state solution. No matter how elusive it may appear to be now, it is the only answer. I’ve said already this week that we have known difficult battles in mankind’s history but when we were in it we didn’t think we could achieve it but we did we abolished slavery we removed apartheid in South Africa. These battles are not beyond our creativity, our capacity, and our resilience to resolve them.
Similarly we insist that the killing in Ukraine really has to stop. The people of Ukraine must be allowed to live within the internationally recognized boundaries of their state in peace and freedom from the threat of use or force and as I said it is sucking too much oxygen out of the global financial system and countries that should be the beneficiary of aid are being told that they may have to wait in the interest of the defense of others because of war. I say to us truly there has to be a singular commitment to build a peace truly.
Mr president, my own region has not escaped the scourge of instability and violence. The Americas do not constitute today a theater of war but we are today witnessing for some years now an unprecedented escalation in the number and caliber of assault weapons which are finding themselves in the hands of criminals who are wreaking havoc on the legal systems and our societies particularly in the small island developing states of the Caribbean and indeed in the wider states of Central and Latin America. This scourge caused by guns manufactured in the United States of America primarily also requires a fundamental reset: the right of persons to bear arms in countries not engaged in military conflict should not be an opening to accept as legitimate the presence of assault weapons in countries.
It is simply not right. There is no place for assault weapons in our societies. I turn now to the fate of the people of Haiti which continues to be of major concern to our people in the Caribbean region. The global community now has an opportunity for an essential reset with how it addresses its relationship with Haiti.
We continue to have it as a recurring decimal because we have failed to solve the problems and put them on a sustainable path to development for its people. What is needed is transformation of our sister nation and yes we must provide first and foremost security but transformation must be its handmaiden. The government and people of Haiti need the full support of the international community not just in the short term but in the long term and yes this starts by extending the mandate of the multinational security support force escalating the work of the United Nations deploying all the tools of bilateral regional and global cooperation not excluding countries who want to participate for spurious reasons ensuring that those of us who can step up to the plate by significantly increasing the pledge funds that we do so because we know that it takes cash to be able to deploy the forces and the police necessary to help with the restoration so that a Haitian mother or Haitian child can go about their day-to-day life without fear of being assaulted or killed or being denied the right to work because of their simple fear of walking the streets.
The Caribbean community has been working hard this year to support our largest member state and in the early part of the first few months of this year we met on Haiti almost three to four times a week to guarantee the stability that we ask you now to help us secure. We thank the efforts of the eminent persons group of former CARICOM prime ministers who were on the front line of helping to resolve this complex problem day in and day out so that we could find a political consensus for Haiti that Haiti had at this general assembly both the interim president of the transitional council and prime minister Conneal is a remarkable achievement given where Haiti was in February of this year. Let them continue on a path please of securing their future and we cannot be on this podium speaking about Haiti without thanking Kenya and president Ruto for their remarkable leadership after many delays and in what represents now a historical precedent for an African country they have ensured that an African country has taken the lead in helping to tackle the peace and security challenge beyond its own continent that is the kind of reset that we need in the international community.
I look forward to the day when I will not have to say it. We we must ask for reprieve for the people of Cuba it is unacceptable it is unconscionable and that it continues today is a mark on our international conscience the Cuban people continue to face the most dire of economic circumstances and that this is directly as a result of its exclusion and its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism and I have addressed our only knowledge of terrorism and Cuba is in fact the dungeon of the Cubana plane off the waters of Barbados where Cubans, Guyanese, and Koreans were killed. [Ed.: Wikipedia notes that all on board (73 people) were killed by a time bomb set by Cuban exiles].
Cuba has been a valuable partner stepping up for us when it has mattered most by the provision of nurses and doctors in pandemics and by the provision of other essential workers when the global community needed it and when people needed to be liberated in southern Africa the reality is that we must have and continue to have resolve in calling for the embargo to be lifted and we will condemn it year after year after year because it is simply wrong as we say so we pray that the people of Cuba as they determine what damages they have found from Hurricane Helene as well as we pray for the people of Florida who clearly are going to spend the next few days identifying the damage as a result of a hurricane that hit category four when it reached Florida.
Good choice to distribute - a wise woman
Definitely need a reset BUT is it possible?