Warning that small states like Barbados will “cease to exist” without an equitable rules-based order, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley is calling for an urgent renewal of multilateral cooperation which ensures that the United Nations (UN) is adequately resourced, reformed and empowered to deliver fairly for all.
Mottley signalled it could not be business as usual, highlighting a global “polycrisis” shown in unprecedented conflict, worsening climate change and high inequality, as she addressed the afternoon session of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly yesterday.
In a near 36-minute statement interspersed with applause, the Prime Minister made a case for UN reform, including greater representation for Africa and small island states on the Security Council and restricting veto power during mass atrocities.
Fair system key
She underscored that “countries of every size and capacity depend on a system in which rules are made collectively and applied consistently and fairly, but if we don’t act early enough, we have trouble, and that is why we say that the UN must receive the resources and the resolve to act before the guns speak, and not after the guns start to fly”.
“Without an equitable rules-based order, smaller states like mine will simply cease to exist in this world and that is why Barbados is a co-sponsor of the P4M, a group focused on strengthening multilateralism and to beat back the undertakers who are waiting to bury it,” she said.
Mottley also advocated for equitable artificial intelligence (AI) governance, reforming international finance to support vulnerable nations and emphasised the need for reparatory justice regarding slavery.
She made her remarks against the backdrop of what she described as a multiplication of obstacles confronting human progress, in particular increased hurdles to achieving global peace, food and clean water, finance, medicine, education, movement and opportunity, technology and the knowledge and infrastructure needed to use it.
“And increasingly, obstacles between nations, between communities and between people who no longer agree on the same facts or trust the same institutions,” she said.
“War continues to destroy lives and communities, even though the international community possesses more tools than ever before to prevent conflict and to facilitate dialogue.
“The climate crisis is accelerating, even though the science is clear enough for us to act and many of the solutions are already known. And despite unprecedented global wealth, millions remain without reliable access to food, water, health, or shelter.”
This was in addition to the new challenge where AI “is opening extraordinary possibilities in health, education, science and productivity, while also creating new risks of exclusion, exploitation, surveillance, and the distortion of truth, and yet the cooperation needed to confront these challenges is under strain”.
For Mottley, the failure to solve these problems in an equitable way showed that there was a “crisis of responsibility” evident in the halls of the UN.
She, therefore, called for UN reform that is not selective and urged that the institution, which Barbados joined nearly 60 years ago, received “the resources necessary to fulfil the mandates that we ourselves have agreed”.
Rules-based order
“Our commitment to multilateralism, to an international rulesbased order, must be measured not only by what we ask of these institutions, but by our willingness to support them,” the Prime Minister said as she called for UN reform, including its Security Council.
“But reform is not only about who sits at the table, it is about how power is exercised. Barbados is, therefore, joining 123 other member states in supporting the Franco-Mexican initiative on the use of the veto in the cases of mass atrocities.
“Even as we call for greater equity with the reform of the Security Council, we must equally reform the secretariat to better support peacekeeping and the resolution of conflicts.”
This included the UN’s deliberate and systematic deployment of “nimble mediation teams led by political leaders, current and retired, on behalf of the Secretary General”.
While making her case for fundamental change at the UN, the Prime Minister also made it clear that Barbados is fully supporting the candidature of Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana in her bid to become the organisation’s next Secretary-General.
Mottley also announced that Barbados would be hosting the second in-person meeting of the Independent International Scientific Panel On Artificial Intelligence, which will be held in November.
Barbados is also supporting the proposed establishment of the International Panel On Inequality, as Mottley reminded that “climate vulnerable countries need to mobilise approximately US$490 billion each year by 2030, and yet the current inflows are roughly US$90 billion”.
“We must also correct the inequity of the borrowing costs that these countries face. It is almost 1.2 percentage points higher for climate-vulnerable countries than for advanced economies.
Voiced concern
“Now that figure seems small to you, but that actually generates an estimated $62 billion more a year in excess interest payments each year. This cannot be fair,” she asserted.
The Prime Minister voiced concern about challenges facing Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela as she emphasised the importance of the Caribbean remaining a zone of peace.
“We cannot accept our region becoming a theatre. We cannot accept our region becoming a theatre for confrontation, or for the unilateral and unjustified use of force,” she said.
This was in addition to effecting healing through reparatory justice because “it is the right thing to do”.
“The mindset that established, justified and sustained slavery is the same mindset that sustains the iniquities and the inequities within the power structures of this very institution, and within the international financial architecture,” the Prime Minister argued.
“If we want to restore trust in these United Nations and we want to manage transformation, as is your theme and we want a UN that truly delivers for everyone, then, at its core, we must treat every human being as having equal value and deserving respect.”
Addressing the issue of humanity, Mottley quoted the words said by Haile Selassie before the United Nations in 1963, which were also used in the song War, by late Jamaican artiste Bob Marley: “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned… there is war.” (SC)