MITCHELL ADDRESSES THE UN ON THE FUTURE
23 September 2024
United Nations
New York
Statement to the United Nations Summit of the Future
(Check against delivery)
Mr. President
This is a valuable forum for the discussion of our planet, in many senses the future of mankind. We are more than half way there to the year 2030 when the world through this body pledged to attain goals which would save our planet. This remains a laudable goal. It is clear that we will not reach the goal to which we aspire in 2030 but the goal is laudable all the same.
For The Bahamas, there remains an immutable truth. That truth is that people are more important than things. As an extension of that, we believe that each man, each human being, each species, each culture has a right to exist.
The historians tells us that this is a relatively recent development in the history of mankind, the view each person has a soul, a culture a space and an entitlement on the planet. The doctrine is espoused far and wide but again, the goal though laudable has fallen short in reality.
As we look around today, there are wars and rumours of war. Some countries have marched into other countries and claimed the space as their own, simply because their troops are all over it. We all ascribe to the UN charter on territorial integrity but the goal though laudable has fallen short. Ask the people from Ukraine, to Gaza , to Cyprus, to Sudan, if they believe that the international system as it is, values the charter and the beliefs therein described. Ask Haiti.
At one time and to some extent today, people invaded or discovered other peoples and nations and claimed them in the name of the Lord. They then decimated the people they met on the land and divided up the spoils. That was the founding principle that allowed the millions of African slaves to be transported across the seas as cargo and chattel to small islands, displacing local populations. That is how my fellow Bahamians and I got to be in the place called The Bahamas. We have made it thus far by faith.
However, as science has developed, some have argued that science is the new religion. The argument is that if you look at the history of human beings on the planet, there has been a march toward the view that there is no supra human deity that controls the affairs of women and men but we ourselves. It goes farther now, the argument is that there is nothing in particular which sets human beings aside and that the machines that we have created will one day be able to do what we do and that is to rule the world. On author described this state of affairs in a work called Homo Deus.
Carl Sagan, the American astronomer, has a widespread video which shows the earth in far relief from outer space. It is a blue dot. And he describes that we are as far as we know all alone on that blue dot in the loneliness of space and from that standpoint, where there are no boundaries that can be seen, he argues compellingly that this is why we have to work together to resolves the issues of our survival. It is still all that we have.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson argues that the one thing about science is that whether you believe it or not, it is true.
I refer again to the immutable truth: earth is all we have and we are all in this together for good or ill.
The age of discovery that wrought the systems that we have today, is still at work. Countries are now reaching out into the void of space and seeking to carve up in national names the resources of that void. This is what appears as we land on Mars and on the moon. We argue and give lip service to the creed that it belongs to all mankind but the doctrine of “ I got there first” so it’s mine still applies as far as we the smaller countries who have gotten there can see. If we scale back then to the immutable logic of what that means, it means that we who do not have the resources are expendable and power is the only fact.
Fifty years ago on the 18 September1973, the Commonwealth of The Bahamas raised its flag here at this body. Our then Prime Minister Lynden Pindling committed our country to the charter and its provisions. We accepted and believe today under the present Prime Minister Philip Davis that we have no choice but to believe and subscribe and support the charter and to recommit ourselves today to global governance. We believe and recommit ourselves to the shared nature of the resources of the earth.
We superintend 100,000 square miles of water. We superintend 4,000 square miles of land. We are about 400,000 people. This is not even a small village in India. We fight though for the right to exist in the land which we now occupy and govern. We are tenacious about it. We pay tribute to the people who were there before us and mourn their loss. We fight to establish a viable economy which can survive on moral principles but we have found that many nations talk the talk but cannot walk the walk.
The nations of the Pacific are facing the existential threat of climate change. Those who are responsible have not stepped up to the plate as they should with money and materiel. The same can be said for the Caribbean. The commitments have been observed more in the breach.
I said yesterday to one of the world leaders that every time the Caribbean region tries to use the provisions of the market to save ourselves, the response from the powerful is to use their laws and other forms of coercion to ensure that it does not succeed. They often use the moral principle that they are preventing money laundering or tax evasion or some other invented evil. But morality works both ways: when actions result in penury, poverty and displacement and you are unable after all the blandishments and niceties at fora such as these, you are unable to get any world leader on the phone, and you realize we are in trouble. Shakespeare wrote the words: help me Casius ere I sink
So I end here with a recommitment to this body, to the pact for the future. We have no choice. I ask delegates to forgive the circumlocution but it is what it is. We are confident that humans have a soul, a right to exist and a god given right to all resources of the earth, sea and sky, all humanity not some. There must be a guiding moral and ethical principle to underline all that we do and say going forward to 203 and beyond. That is why we say today, now more than ever we need the United Nations.
End