Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley used his plat­form at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) to ad­dress crit­i­cal chal­lenges fac­ing the Caribbean re­gion and the world at large, in­clud­ing crime and cli­mate change as well as a need for world lead­ers to come to­geth­er to help Haiti as well as a call for repa­tri­a­tions to be giv­en to the de­scen­dants of all af­fect­ed.

At the 78th Ses­sion of the UN­GA in New York yes­ter­day, Row­ley re­it­er­at­ed T&T’s com­mit­ment to do­ing its part to achieve the UN’s sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals.

Row­ley said like crime, cli­mate change is an ex­is­ten­tial threat, where small is­land de­vel­op­ing na­tions are the most vul­ner­a­ble. He called for a glob­al stock­take at the up­com­ing Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (CoP 28).

“It is un­de­ni­able that cli­mate change is an ex­is­ten­tial threat to all of us and does not recog­nise ge­o­graph­i­cal bound­aries. We al­so ac­knowl­edge that our peo­ple, the peo­ple of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, those who bear the least cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the cli­mate cri­sis, are the ones who con­tin­ue to be most dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed,” he said.

“The ex­perts have told us that this past Ju­ly was the hottest month on record and that glob­al ocean tem­per­a­tures were al­so at record lev­els. Most dis­con­cert­ing­ly, we not­ed with jus­ti­fi­able alarm the re­cent dire warn­ing by sci­en­tists that with­out am­bi­tious cli­mate ac­tion, we will ex­ceed the crit­i­cal 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius tem­per­a­ture thresh­old. How­ev­er, re­cent de­vel­op­ments have shown that over-am­bi­tious net-ze­ro tar­gets ought not to be forced up­on small is­land na­tions.

“As we are called up­on to be game chang­ers, on this is­sue we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the sur­vival and con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of life on this plan­et that no oth­er gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers has had. A Glob­al stock­take at CoP28 is cru­cial. The stock­take must re­sult in a road map that brings the world near­er to the track by en­sur­ing that ND­Cs are aligned with the 1.5-de­gree tem­per­a­ture goal. Na­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined con­tri­bu­tions must be­come na­tion­al­ly im­ple­ment­ed con­tri­bu­tions. Trinidad and To­ba­go is in the process of im­ple­ment­ing its com­mit­ment to in­stalling some in­fra­struc­ture for sus­tain­able en­er­gy sup­ply.”

Dur­ing his 22 minute speech, Row­ley al­so ad­dressed the ur­gent need for mem­ber states to join forces to as­sist Haiti.

While ap­plaud­ing the ef­forts of coun­tries such as Rwan­da, Kenya, Ba­hamas and Ja­maica of­fer to help, he al­so urged the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to col­lab­o­rate with Haiti to­wards the achieve­ment of a cred­i­ble so­lu­tion to its cur­rent cri­sis.

Row­ley said T&T re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment of Haiti and all oth­er stake­hold­ers to ar­rive at an in­dige­nous so­lu­tion to com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dress the cri­sis in that coun­try.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go, as it fights its own bat­tles in this area (crime), re­mains deeply con­cerned over the de­vel­op­ments in our fel­low Caribbean coun­try Haiti that are caus­ing unimag­in­able, hu­man­i­tar­i­an, so­cio-eco­nom­ic and se­cu­ri­ty con­se­quences ... Just like any­where else in the world, Haiti de­serves peace! Haiti de­serves pros­per­i­ty! Haiti de­serves progress and Haiti de­serves sus­tain­abil­i­ty! Haiti re­quires the in­ter­ven­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions now!”

Quot­ing lyrics from David Rud­der’s 1993 song, Haiti, Row­ley drove his point by say­ing, “I refuse to be­lieve that we good peo­ple would for­ev­er turn our hearts and eyes away. Haiti, I’m sor­ry, we mis­un­der­stood you. One day we’ll turn our heads and look in­side you.”

He added that to re­build trust and reignite glob­al sol­i­dar­i­ty there must be uni­ver­sal ad­her­ence to the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions and In­ter­na­tion­al law.

Row­ley al­so called for repara­to­ry jus­tice to be served as mil­lions of peo­ple have suf­fered in the de­vel­op­ing world be­cause of the slav­ery and ex­ploita­tion of African peo­ple.

He said: “The per­sis­tent un­der-de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean na­tions and so many oth­ers is di­rect­ly at­trib­uted to the un­paid debt for cen­turies of en­slave­ment and eco­nom­ic ex­ploita­tion of African peo­ple by Eu­ro­peans.

“The de­scen­dants of these peo­ple pop­u­late the Caribbean is­lands where they strug­gle man­ful­ly against the resid­ual rigours of these his­toric crimes even as they are vis­it­ed by the worst ef­fects of cli­mate change and the con­stant threat of ex­clu­sion from the world’s main­stream fi­nan­cial sys­tems. In this re­gard, Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to call for bold de­ci­sive ac­tion to en­sure repara­to­ry jus­tice for the un­told suf­fer­ing of mil­lions of peo­ple in the de­vel­op­ing world. We would wel­come Africa’s sup­port in this quest for jus­tice.”

Row­ley al­so cel­e­brat­ed the UN­GA’s lead­er­ship by a “son of the soil of Trinidad and To­ba­go”, Am­bas­sador Den­nis Fran­cis.

On a sad note, how­ev­er, he al­so ex­pressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Mo­roc­co and Libya on the re­cent tragedies in­clud­ing loss of lives and de­struc­tion of prop­er­ty in both coun­tries.