The Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Dr. Terrance M. Drew, has called for reform of the architecture of international finance, stating it was largely built in a different century for a different world.
Drew told the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly Debate on Saturday that this must be done “so that it reflects the realities of today: climate risk, transnational inequality, and the asymmetric impacts that fall upon the smallest and most exposed.
“Saint Kitts and Nevis affirms its staunch support for the Bridgetown Initiative and with our region’s clarion call for financial and climate justice,” he said, stating that the Bridgetown Initiative offers “a practical, principled platform to alter debt dynamics, to reposition credit flows toward green investments, and to operationalise liquidity instruments that protect the vulnerable.
“We ask this Assembly and our global partners to help convert initiative into instrument and to shift rhetoric into reflowing capital for resilience,” Drew added. “The mission of the United Nations — peace, development and human rights — is not advanced by preserving an architecture that perpetuates fragility. Reform is justice; reform is prudence; reform is protection and equity.”
The St. Kitts and Nevis leader acknowledged the “deep significance” of the recent Africa-CARICOM Summit, describing it as “a historic convening that rekindles bonds severed by the brutality of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and colonisation.
“This diplomatic meeting was a profound moment of remembrance, resistance, and reconnection,” he said. “We gathered as descendants of a common ancestry, forging a shared agenda for reparatory justice, trade, transport, investment, sustainability, peace and security, climate action and technical cooperation.
“Our partnership sounds loud, not only a call for financial redress, but for justice,” he added. “Reparatory justice is not just about giving money; it is about correcting a moral wrong.
“For centuries, our ancestors were forced to work, beaten to work, dehumanised to work for free,” Drew continued. “Yet, when emancipation came, it was not the enslaved who received reparations, but their enslavers. This moral inversion must be corrected.”
As part of this broader historical reckoning, he also amplified the call for the full exoneration of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jamaica’s first national hero, who Drew described as “a global Black icon, Pan-Africanist, and prophet of liberation.”
“While we welcome the posthumous pardon granted to him, we continue to petition for his full exoneration,” the St. Kitts and Nevis prime minister said. “Let us correct this error in the record of justice.
“Today, we stand not in anger, but in resolve,” he added. “As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’
“With our African brothers and sisters, as a nation and a region, we will continue to bend that arc toward justice, toward cohesion, and toward a future shaped not by the chains of history, but by the power of solidarity,” Drew continued.
He urged that peace be “a practical prerequisite for prosperity” in the Caribbean, stating that “our zone of peace must be more than a slogan pasted on policy papers.
“It must be defended by concrete measures: better public health frameworks, stronger interdiction of illicit weapons, greater cooperation on maritime security, investment in community safety and youth employment programs, and international support for capacity building in policing and justice systems,” he said.
Dr. Drew said his twin-island federation recognises the “serious threats posed by drug trafficking and other transnational crimes,” making it clear that “these scourges must be addressed through cooperation, dialogue, respect for sovereignty and the full respect for the principles of international law.
“Therefore, we continue to call for measures that encourage peace, stability and mutual respect,” he said. “These are the only foundations on which lasting security and sustainable development can be built and maintained in our Hemisphere.”
Noting that, historically, disputes in the region have been resolved through dialogue, the St. Kitts and Nevis leader, therefore, called for dialogue “between our two friends — the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the United States of America — to ensure that our region remains a zone of peace.
“We are not asking for pity or imposition. We are asking for partnership — for tools to block the flow of guns and the flow of funds that fuel violence; for initiatives that create opportunities so that young men and women find purpose in productive work rather than perilous pursuits – partnership, not pity; prevention, not punishment,” he said.
Drew said the time has come to reshape the United Nations itself — “to reform its structures so that they reflect the realities of our modern world.
“The Security Council — the very body charged with maintaining international peace and security — cannot be credible if it excludes representation from the region’s most vulnerable to the threats of our time: Africa, Latin America and Small Island Developing States — such as those in our Caribbean,” he said. “To secure a world of peace, those who suffer the sharpest edges of insecurity must have a seat at the table where peace is forged.”
Drew said the region remains incomplete while Haiti suffers.
“Haiti’s struggle is our shame if we do not respond with resolve,” he said. “The people of Haiti carry within them an extraordinary history of emancipation and courage. Yet, that history has been marred by instability, natural disasters and foreign interventions that have too often deepened dependency and deprivation rather than delivered dignity.”
The prime minister said St. Kitts and Nevis and the Caribbean Community welcome the commitments of partner states — notably the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission and the backing of the OAS and other regional actors — to help restore security and to assist in rebuilding Haitian institutions.
But he said security is only the first step.
“We must invest in Haiti’s health, education, agriculture, infrastructure and governance,” he urged. “We must help rebuild markets so that merchants trade rather than flee, we must help rebuild schools so that children learn rather than languish, we must help rebuild hospitals so that mothers are treated rather than traumatised.
“Haiti must be allowed to write and lead its own restoration story — and the international community must be a steadfast partner, not a scriptwriter,” he added.
Drew also said that the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba is “a relic that continues to wound an entire people and weaken regional solidarity.
“Year after year this Assembly has affirmed that the embargo is gravely unjust. Saint Kitts and Nevis joins the Caribbean Community in calling for its end and for Cuba’s removal from the List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, which isolates it from commerce and cooperation,” he said.
The prime minister said Cuba has long been “a friend to the Caribbean,” noting that Cuba’s doctors and educators have been among the region’s most generous partners.
“Our continued partnership with Cuba will always be uncompromisingly grounded in respect for human rights and labour rights, in full alignment with international law,” Drew said. “ A stronger, more sustainable Cuba enhances not only the well-being of its own citizens but the security and sustainability of the entire Caribbean basin.
“When islands share storms, we must share solutions,” he added. “Sanctions do not save lives; solidarity does.”
Dr. Drew said that excluding Taiwan from agencies where it can and must contribute — such as the World Health Organisation and the International Civil Aviation Organisation — undermines global capacity for collective problem solving.
He said Taiwan’s contributions in public health, technology and disaster response are “not partisan; they are practical.
“To keep a door closed on cooperation in these domains is to take a risk the world cannot afford,” he said.
Drew said the Taiwan Strait is not merely a lane on a map; it is a lifeline of commerce and human connection.
Therefore, he said: “We must urge calm, counsel conversation, and choose the diplomacy of dialogue over the dramatics of discord.
“Trade, travel, and talks are how we protect the livelihoods of ordinary people — whether in Taipei, Tallinn, or the twin islands of our Federation, the prime minister said.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep. 28, CMC –
CMC/nk/kb/2025