Gaston Browne, Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Corporate Governance and Public Private Partnerships of Antigua and Barbuda, said his small State has one of the fastest-growing economies in the Caribbean and a high level of human development.  Yet “it owes little to the global financial system, and even less to the global effort to curb climate change”, he said, which have not helped achieve the transformation they promoted.  “While my small country readily agrees that the nations of this world would be ‘better together’, as this year’s theme proclaims, we must also remind this Assembly that eighty years after the Charter, ‘better together’ remains an aspiration,” he added.

The world’s retreat from multilateralism and tenets of international law means this is the moment to “resummon all nations to the purposes and principles of the Charter set down eighty years ago”, he said. “Without international cooperation, universal peace will not be achieved.  What humanity needs at this time is not only peace, but compassion, solidarity, justice and love reigning in our hearts.”  Turning to the climate crisis, he said the Government supports a just, orderly energy transition that caps, then fairly phases down and ultimately phases out the fuels that drive the sustained high emissions without sacrificing energy security or development.

The ocean, which “is not scenery” but the source of food, jobs and development for the region, must be protected with robust global plastics and fossil fuel non-proliferation treaties and expanded blue-carbon finance for mangroves and seagrass.  Until independent science proves no serious harm, Antigua and Barbuda supports a moratorium on seabed mining.  “No one should mortgage the ocean floor to pay short-term bills,” he added.  Last year, the international community came to Antigua and Barbuda for the Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States and adopted the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS — a 10-year contract for resilient prosperity.  “If ‘better together’ means anything, it means delivering where need is greatest and fiscal space narrowest,” he added.

Turning to regional issues, he said Antigua and Barbuda supports a single, Haitian-led plan, executed under a single Council mandate and financed through a single, transparent Haiti Fund.  It would align the United Nations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) behind one budgeted programme with public accountability.  Disbursements should follow results such as:  roads retaken from gang control, extortion stopped, arms and illicit finance interdicted, civilians protected and essential services restored. Addressing the conduct of counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean Sea, he said the fight against drug trafficking must rest on cooperation and law.  “We remind everyone that our hemisphere should be respected as a zone of peace, not a theatre of military conflict,” he said.