UN General Assembly
1991

Our unrelenting efforts to help end apartheid form part of Antigua and Barbuda's sacred commitment to the promotion of human rights. Each year, my delegation also brings to this community's attention the violation of the human rights of the world's indigenous peoples. It is our considered view that the powerless peoples who inhabit the world's shrinking forests and the Earth's remotest corners need United Nations protection if they are not to be brutally exterminated. Land-grabbers, gold-miners, ranchers, logging companies, criminals and countless others have invaded their ancestral homelands, causing death, disease, degradation and massive disruption of traditional life - in short, genocide, misery and violation is the lot of the world's indigenous peoples. The islands of our Caribbean were once the home of several peoples that were virtually eliminated by war and slavery beginning in 1492. If the history of my region is any guide, then we fear the worst for the world's indigenous peoples. With Increased United Nations protection, however, that brutal history need not be repeated.