UN General Assembly
2014

The theme for the sixty-ninth session of the General Assembly, “Delivering on and implementing a transformative post-2015 development agenda”, is timely and relevant, particularly considering the ongoing efforts to arrive at a new post-2015 development agenda for all countries. I commend the excellent progress that has been made in this area, and I recognize that it is not easy to negotiate such goals, with so many member countries and the different groups they represent, all of which want their development agendas incorporated. I believe that our draft agenda does represent a consensus on the part of every United Nations Member and that it is capable of bringing development to a new level in all of our countries. As a Pacific small island developing State, we are dealing with numerous development challenges that the United Nations system and the international community should address. I reiterate that climate change is a major global challenge for all of us. Some Pacific States are facing an existential threat, and we cannot deal with the issue of sustainable development