RALPH GONSALVES, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, said the travails of small island developing States endure “in a global community largely disinterested in our well-being”.  Small island developing States have made incremental advances in the global community but “it has been a situation akin to going up and down an escalator in which the down escalator is moving at a faster pace than the upward baby steps”.  He added that frequently, it appears “much of the powerful would wish that SIDS [small island developing States] did not exist”, but “we are stubborn as the heavens. We are not going anywhere despite our massive vulnerabilities … We have a voice, and we will continue to use it.” He demanded, as a right, the international community’s support to address small island developing States unique social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities.  “Small Island Exceptionalism ought to be a category embedded formally in international law and accorded most favourable treatment.”

Developed countries, the major emitters of greenhouse gases, have failed or refused to keep their commitments to restrict global temperature rises.  Without changes to the patterns of consumption, production and living in developed economies, “our planet is inexorably on a path to a proverbial hell in a handbasket”, he underscored.  He criticized several major developed countries for stymieing the transformation of international financial institutions and alterations in climate change financing.  He highlighted, as reflective of failures of multilateralism, Ukraine’s war, the genocide in Gaza, conflicts in Yemen, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, threats across the Taiwan Strait, “an empire’s designs on revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela” and violence in Haiti.  They illustrate a hamstrung United Nations framework.  “Large, powerful nations, singly, or in allied combinations, have a propensity to seek dominance.”  The struggle for ownership, control and distribution of material resources prevails.

In his country’s region the Monroe Doctrine “still stalks the marbled halls of the citadels of a neighbouring great country” despite that “no country in our hemisphere can reasonably be considered a security or other threat to this great nation”.  But, he said, his and other Caribbean countries have been damaged collaterally and directly in significant material ways by “the weaponizing of the financial system and the unjust, unilateral, coercive sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, which are a breach of international law”.  “I am pleading with our friends for an amicable reset of these troubled relations in the interest of peace, mutual respect, justice and prosperity.”  He noted continued international calls for the end of unilateral sanctions and embargos against Cuba.

He underscored that his country has suffered 12 significant natural hazards this century and thanked those who have come to its aid in the most recent immediate aftermath.  But “for the recovery and rebuilding processes, we are essentially on our own”, seeking significant loans to rebuild.  He appealed to the international community not for further burdensome loans, but for grants.  The recovery and reconstruction after every natural hazard “increase sharply our debt burden”.  This is despite countries like his having contributed little or nothing to climate change.  “Yet, we suffer largely alone on the front lines.  This cannot be fair.  It cannot be just.  Do we have to choose death or debt?”  He noted international calls for European nations responsible for genocide and the enslavement of African bodies to pay reparations for consequential underdevelopment. “This issue of transformative reparatory justice will not go away until it is addressed appropriately,” he underscored.