Vexed Bermoothes

The UN decolonisation committee is warming up again.  I am critical of the UN’s current efforts as many of the countries on its list for liberation are not colonies of the invaded or oppressed; they are small countries who decide it is in their best interest to retain an affiliation with a larger power.

The validity of this desire is demonstrated by the moves amongst several small Caribbean independent island states to seek a larger conglomeration in order to remain viable.

Moreover, the hidden agendas on the decolonisation committee are rife.

Without doubt the UN played a valuable role in the liberation of many countries … for which it should be praised.  But the world has changed and the UN refuses to accept the special circumstances and challenges faced by some of the remaining dependent microstates.  In particular, their insistence that independence is the only allowable outcome is insulting when the populations of many of the countries on their list do not want independence. That is our right of self-determination.

The UN’s view that we simply need more education on self-determination to “see the light” is arrogant.  They’d find more support if they worked with us to improve good governance in our territories and adoption of international treaties and conventions.

The UK gets battered a lot as the “Administering Power” for 10 of the 16 countries on the UN list.  Here’s the synopsis of the UK’s presentation yesterday:

KAREN PIERCE ( United Kingdom) characterized her Government’s relationship with its overseas Territories as a modern one based on “partnership, shared values and the right of each Territory to determine if it wishes to retain the link to the United Kingdom, where that is an option”.  It was committed to the future development and continued security of each of its overseas Territories for as long as they chose to retain that link.  The United Kingdom had no intention of imposing independence against the will of a people concerned.  It had been established policy in her country to give every encouragement to those Territories where independence was the clear and constitutionally-expressed wish of the people.

She said her Government carefully considered all proposals for constitutional change received from the Territories.  A review process with the Territories aimed at providing a modern constitutional framework reflecting the circumstances of each Territory was also under way.  Those reviews had updated provisions of existing constitutions, in such areas as good governance and human rights provisions, and those relating to the role of Governor and locally-elected politicians.  Progress had been made with most overseas Territories.  New constitutions had already come into force in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Gibraltar in 2006 and in the British Virgin Islands in 2007.  Reviews were under way in Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Montserrat and Saint Helena.

The Government of Gibraltar also made a strong speech berating the UN for pushing independence (and to a lesser degree free association or integration into a larger state) above all other options:

This ignores the views of the General Assembly expressed in Resolution 2625, as far back as 24 October 1970, in which it declared a fourth acceptable decolonisation model, namely, any status suitable to its circumstances that is freely determined by the people of a territory in an act of self determination …

[The Commitee] presides, like a fundamentalist watchdog, over inflexible but out dated and impractical delisting criteria, that sees the 1950s and 1960s decolonisation models as an unchangeable holy grail.