UN General Assembly
2024

Your Excellencies, sadly, in our region, we have been experiencing the lived reality that the imperial ghost of Monroe still stalks the marbled halls of the citadels of a neighboring great country of extraordinary possibilities to the detriment of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. No country in our hemisphere can reasonably be considered a security or other threat to this great nation. Yet, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other Caribbean countries have been damaged collaterally, and directly, in significant material ways, by the weaponizing of the financial system and the unjust, unilateral, coercive sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba, which are a breach of international law. I am pleading with our friends for an amicable reset of these troubled relations in the interest of peace, mutual respect, justice, and prosperity. The international community continues, overwhelmingly, and rightly, to demand the end of the unilateral sanctions, the embargos, and unfair declarations about state sponsorship of terrorism, and more, made against Cuba.