PMO

Transcript

VP of the GA The Assembly will hear an address by her Excellency Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister, Minister for National Security and the Civil Service and Minister for Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment of Barbados. 

VP of the GA May I request protocol to escort Her Excellency? 

VP of the GA I have great pleasure in welcoming Her Excellency Mia Amor Mottley, Prime Minister, Minister for National Security and the Civil Service and Minister for Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment of Barbados, and I invite her to address the General Assembly. 

VP of the GA Madame Prime Minister. 

Mia Amor Mottley Thank you very much, Madam Vice President. 

Mia Amor Mottley Please permit me at the outset to congratulate the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterrez, and the Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohamed, on their reappointment as to the post here and also to the election of the President for this 76th General Assembly. 

Mia Amor Mottley If I use the speech prepared for me to deliver today, it would be a repetition, a repetition of what you have heard from others and also from me. 

Mia Amor Mottley Equally, how many more times will we then have a situation where we say the same thing over and over and over, to come to nought. 

Mia Amor Mottley My friends, we cannot do that anymore. And I ask simply that we recall on three years ago when I made my maiden speech, I indicated from this very podium and told the international community that the world appeared awfully similar to what it looked like 100 years ago. Barbados made that position clear. Regrettably, we have not come to say we told you so, but we have come to say that the needle has not moved and that we have not seen sufficient action on behalf of the people of this world. 

Mia Amor Mottley I am not here, therefore, to keep you long today and I shall be very, very brief. 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more variants of COVID-19 must arrive? How many more before a worldwide action plan for vaccinations will be implemented? 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more deaths must it take before 1.7 billion excess vaccines in the possession of the advanced countries of the world will be shared with those who have simply no access, no access to vaccines? 

Mia Amor Mottley How much more fake news will we allow to be spread without States defending the public digital space? 

Mia Amor Mottley We’ve come together with alacrity to defend the right of States to tax across the digital space, but we are not prepared to come together with the same alacrity to defend the rights of our citizens, to be duped by fake news in the same digital space. 

Mia Amor Mottley And how many more surges must there be before we ask, when will the world take action? 

Mia Amor Mottley None are safe until all are safe. 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more times will we hear that? 

Mia Amor Mottley And how much more must we do, Madam Vice President, before the global moral strategic leadership that our world needs, comes? 

Mia Amor Mottley How much more global temperature rise must there be before we end the burning of fossil fuels? 

Mia Amor Mottley And how much more must sea levels climb in Small Island Developing States before those who profited from the stockpiling of greenhouse gases contribute to the loss and damage that they occasioned, rather than asking us to crowd out the fiscal space that we have for development to cure the damage caused by the greed of others? 

Mia Amor Mottley And how many more hurricanes must destroy, locusts devour and islands submerge before we recognize that a $100 billion dollars in adaptation is simply not even enough? 

Mia Amor Mottley The answer, Madam Vice President, is that we are waiting for urgent global moral strategic leadership. 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more crises must hit before we see an international system that stops dividing us and starts to lift us up?

Mia Amor Mottley How many more times must people come to this podium and speak about the plight of the people of Cuba and Haiti and see very little being done to lift the floor of social development, to give those people the right to pursue legitimate ambitions? 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more how many more crises and natural disasters before we see that old conventions of aid mean that assistance does not reach those who need it most and those who are most vulnerable? 

Mia Amor Mottley And how much wealthier must tech firms get? The top five tech firms have a market capitalization of $9.3 trillion. I didn’t say billion. Trillion dollars. How much more wealthier must they get before we worry about the fact that so few of us have access to data and knowledge and that our children are being deprived of the tools that they need in order to be able to participate in online education? 

Mia Amor Mottley The answer, Madam Vice President, is that we have the means to give every child on this planet a tablet and we have the means to give every adult a vaccine. And we have the means to invest in protecting the most vulnerable on our planet from a changeing climate, but we choose not to. 

Mia Amor Mottley It is not because we do not have enough, it is because we do not have the will to distribute that which we have. And it is also because, regrettably, the faceless few do not fear the consequences sufficiently. 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more leaders must come to this podium and not be heard before they stop coming? 

Mia Amor Mottley How many times must we address an empty hall of officials in an institution that was intended to be made for leaders to discuss with leaders the advancement necessary to prevent another great war or any of the other great challenges of our humanity? 

Mia Amor Mottley How many more times will we stand idly by and see women of color and men of color and women period, be attacked at the leadership of international organizations disproportionately? 

Mia Amor Mottley And yes, how many more times must the great needs be met simply by nice words and not have before us, the opportunity to see the goodwill that is necessary to prevent nationalism and militarism? 

Mia Amor Mottley The answer, Madam President, is that this age dangerously resembles that of a century ago – a time when we were on the eve of the Great Depression and a time when we fought a similar pandemic at a time when fascism and populism and nationalism led to the decimation of populations through actions that are too horrendous for us to even contemplate. Our world knows not what it is gambling with. And if we don’t control this fire, it will burn us all down. 

Mia Amor Mottley As I said two years ago, this is not science fiction. We heard the Secretary-General make the same comment on Tuesday morning. This is our reality. It is not science fiction. And if the truth be told, the Secretary-General’s speech said it all, but who will stand in here and support him to give him the mandate and our institutions, be it the WTO, the IMF or the World Bank or the regional development banks or the development institutions; who will give them the mandate to go forward if we continue to refuse to summon the political will to confront what we know we must confront? 

Mia Amor Mottley I ask us who in here will sign the new charter, a new charter for the 21st century that is appropriate for not the next 75 because the world in which we live moves too quickly. But let us try for the next 25 years to meet the needs of a 21st century, not the needs of the middle of the 20th century on the aftermath of a world war that none of us can really relate to today. 

Mia Amor Mottley In the words of Robert Nesta Marley, “who will get up and stand up?” Who will get up and stand up for the rights of our people? Who will stand up in the name of all those who have died during this awful pandemic? The millions. Who will stand up in the name of all those who have died because of the climate crisis or who will stand up for the Small Island Developing States who need 1.5 degrees to survive as we go to COP 26? Who? Who will stand up not with a little token, but with real progress? 

Mia Amor Mottley And who will stand up for all in our countries who remain and suffer the indignity of unemployment and underemployment, and whose access to food is now compromised by increased food prices and increased transportation prices and transportation, quite frankly, that is being manipulated. It is not beyond us to solve this problem. If we can find the will to send people to the moon and solve male baldness, as I have said over and over, we can solve simple problems like letting our people eat at affordable prices and making sure that we have the transport. 

Mia Amor Mottley We have been told that democracy is what matters in our country and democracy is fundamentally an issue of the majority in numbers. But why don’t we count who stands up in here and why don’t we take a reckoning for the numbers in here? My friends, it is against that background that I say to you, this is not 1945 with 50 countries. This is 2021 with many countries that did not exist in 1945 who must face their people and answer the needs of their people, who want to know what is the relevance of an international community that only comes and does not listen to each other, that only talks and will not talk with each other. 

Mia Amor Mottley It is against this background that I say that our voices must be heard and our voices must matter. And today, Barbados calls at this dangerous fork in the road, that the nation states of this Assembly and the people of this world must indicate what direction we want our world to go in and not leave it to the faceless few who have worked so hard to prevent the prosperity from being shared that is sufficient in this world of being shared with all of our people. 

Mia Amor Mottley I ask you today, to support us because we will bring a Resolution in Plenary to endorse the approach of Antonio Guterres as Secretary-General. When I met with him two days ago, I told him we share the same philosophy. We want the same destination. The only issue is what road we take and what are the obstacles in that road and what are the potholes we must overcome. 

Mia Amor Mottley My friends, I fear we live UNGA in need of another UNGA; one with real engagement on one to secure real progress, that is what he called for on Tuesday. I regret that the token initiatives will not close the gap. 

Mia Amor Mottley On Monday morning, I said to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom that I was a student in his country and that as we got off the train, there would be a prerecorded message each time that simply said, “mind the gap”. 

Mia Amor Mottley Let us make friends, not only mind the gap, but determine as a global community of nations that numbers matter and that we have the population and the member states to send the signal of the direction that we want our world to go in at this dangerous moment. 

Mia Amor Mottley And let us do so with the calm assurance that those who labour in great causes never ultimately failed, but we must summon the courage to do it. 

Mia Amor Mottley I ask us in the name of our people, to find the global moral strategic leadership – global because our problems are global; moral, because we must do the right thing and; strategic, because we cannot solve every problem of the world, but we must solve those within our purview immediately. 

Mia Amor Mottley Thank you. 

Mia Amor Mottley On behalf of the General Assembly, I wish to thank her Excellency Mia Amor Mottley, the Prime Minister, Minister for National Security and the Civil Service and Minister for Finance, Economic Affairs and investment of Barbados for her statement. And I request protocol to escort Her Excellency. 

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