United Nations A/68/ PV.19 General Assembly Official Records asdfSixty-eighth session 19th plenary meeting Saturday, 28 September 2013, 3 p.m. New York President: Mr. Ashe . (Antigua and Barbuda) The meeting was called to order at 3 p.m. Kenya following the tragic attack on innocent civilians in Nairobi just last week. Agenda item 8 (continued) This year we in the Bahamas are celebrating General debate our fortieth year of independence. It is appropriate, therefore, that we should pause today and look back to Address by Mr. Perry Gladstone Christie, 1973, when our nation was founded and our membership Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the in the United Nations began. In addressing the General Commonwealth of the Bahamas Assembly for the first time on 1 October 1973, our The President: The Assembly will now hear an then Prime Minister, Sir Lynden Pindling, spoke of address by the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance our journey from the dehumanizing experiences of of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. slavery and colonialism to the liberating achievements of freedom, majority rule and independence. He spoke, Mr. Perry Gladstone Christie, Prime Minister and too, of the “perpetual interdependence of the big and Minister of Finance of the Commonwealth of the the small,” and the fervent wish of the Bahamian people Bahamas, was escorted to the rostrum. to be neither “dominated nor coerced.” He also had this The President: I have great pleasure in welcoming to say: His Excellency Mr. Perry Gladstone Christie, M.P., and “We have the means to give new hope to inviting him to address the General Assembly. mankind, to create a stable international order Mr. Christie (Bahamas): Permit me to congratulate dominated by total and absolute political and you, Sir, on your election as President of the Assembly. economic self-determination and human and moral As a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), values which make human beings paramount, not the Bahamas takes special pride in the election of one things or abstractions.” (A/PV.2135, para. 28) of our region’s own — the third such person to be so Sir Lynden’s call for us to be faithful to the elected over the years. You may be assured of our full responsibilities of our nationhood and world citizenship support as you attend to the duties of the high office is as relevant and compelling today as it was when we to which you have been elected and for which you are, were welcomed into the family of the United Nations if I may say so, superbly qualified. We consider it a 40 years ago. As the present Prime Minister of the privilege to extend Ambassador Paulette Bethel to your Bahamas, I have therefore come here today, on behalf office as Chef de Cabinet, and we wish her well as well. of the people of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, to Permit me also to express my condolences and renew our pledge to play our part to help make our planet those of the Bahamas to the President and people of the place of peace and stability and of collaborative This record contains the text of speeches delivered in English and of the interpretation of speeches delivered in the other languages. Corrections should be submitted to the original languages only. They should be incorporated in a copy of the record and sent under the signature of a member of the delegation concerned to the Chief of the Verbatim Reporting Service, room U-506. Corrections will be issued after the end of the session in a consolidated corrigendum. 13-48809 (E) *1348809* A /68/PV.19 28/09/2013 endeavour and mutual support that it was intended to service-based economies, especially in the Caribbean be, and must be, for the good of all humankind. region of which the Bahamas is a part. Some have used their power, either unilaterally or in small groups of But we need to ensure that such pledges are not just high-powered nations, to impose their will, arguing that so many catchy phrases. We need to not only talk the talk there is something fundamentally immoral, something but walk the walk. We in the Bahamas are determined intrinsically sinister, about the accumulation of wealth to do just that. That is why, to cite one very recent in offshore jurisdictions. example, my Minister of Social Development, Melanie Griffin, on Tuesday of this week here in New York, We reject that premise and we criticize in the signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights strongest possible terms the efforts of some to maim and of Persons with Disabilites on behalf of the Bahamas. cripple, if not destroy, the offshore economies within This is an important step forward that we have taken, our region. Ironically, the anti-money-laundering, marrying our rhetoric to our actions and synching our anti-terrorism funding and anti-criminal regulatory domestic agenda with our international obligations. We regimes of many of our countries are far more robust and intend to ratify the Convention in the shortest possible demonstrably far more effective than the corresponding time, and later this year we will introduce the necessary regulatory regimes in many of the same countries that legislation in our Parliament to protect the rights of the are leading the fight against us. disabled and to give full effect to our obligations under We firmly believe that offshore financial services the Convention. The end to discrimination against the can be responsibly operated and regulated. We believe disabled in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas is now that the sector represents true tax competition and, in clearly in sight. Indeed, it is now imminent. the great majority of cases, that it affords an honest I would also submit today that we are all of us opportunity for families and individuals alike to under a moral obligation to ensure that the policies protect their privacy while accumulating lawfully and aspirational goals that the General Assembly sets earned capital for themselves and future generations. for itself, and to which all Member States subscribe, Moreover, the evidence is overwhelming that most of are in fact reflected in the way that we govern our the investment of that offshore wealth takes place in respective nations internally and, to no less a degree, and generally benefits the developed world. in the way that we interact with each other as Member Unilateralism and diplomacy by coercion are not States in the international community. For example, we the way the world should be dealing with that issue. cannot, on the one hand, proclaim that we believe in Instead, we need to challenge the United Nations to free trade, then implement policies that inevitably bring take the lead in developing and refining multilateral about the destruction of agriculture as we know it in global mechanisms for the governance of the offshore the Caribbean, and, in response to the resulting moral financial services sector — mechanisms that will meet outcry, simply shrug our shoulders and piously lament the legitimate demands of the developed world for that the old order changeth. the protection of their fiscal systems and their need We have to become more conscious of the practical for greater security, while at the same time allowing outcomes of what we do. Too often, in the headlong offshore financial-service economies to continue to rush for change, we damage the vulnerable and the grow in an orderly and properly regulated way. weak. We then make pledges to help but seldom live Let us not forget that the destruction of those up to those pledges in any sustained way. We simply offshore financial-service economies will destabilize cannot build a credible new world order on the basis of the countries that depend upon them for their such practices. They run completely counter to our lofty livelihood. To destroy that sector in the Caribbean pronouncements about the need for interconnectedness would effectively cause tens of thousands of newly and mutual support in the pursuit of economic progress empowered middle-class citizens to slip back into for all the nations of the world, be they large or small, poverty or to migrate to the developed world. The developed or developing. middle class of which I speak constitutes the anchor We see the same dynamic at work in the of social stability for the countries of our region. If it ongoing economic aggression of many of the more is taken away, social destabilization will emerge as a developed countries against small, offshore financial risk of the most ominous kind. And should that risk 2/28 13-48809 28/09/2013 A /68/PV.19 materialize, the developed world may well end up Another problem that is of special concern to us finding that it has solved one problem only by creating is the continuing influx of guns and the increase in an infinitely bigger one for itself. gun-related criminality, not only in the Bahamas but throughout the region. As a world community, there The need for greater multilateralism is also evident is, I am convinced, a great deal more that we can and in many of the other problems confronting the Bahamas should be doing to fight that common menace. and our region. A matter of the highest national priority for us revolves around our ongoing problem with illegal The Bahamas has this year signed the Arms migration to our shores. We in the Bahamas suffer from Trade Treaty, and we encourage all States that have the illegal migration of tens of thousands of desperate not already done so to sign the Treaty as well.