NATIONAL STATEMENT
PRIME MINISTER
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE BAHAMAS
ON THE OCCASION OF
76TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
NEW YORK, N.Y.
SATURDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER 2021
“Building resilience through hope – to recover from COVID-19, rebuild sustainably, respond to the needs of the planet, respect the rights of people and revitalize the United Nations”
Introduction
Esteemed Colleague Heads of State and Heads of Government, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen;
Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres;
President of the General Assembly, Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid of the Maldives:
On September 16th, Bahamian citizens took to the polls to make their voices heard.
It is an honour to meet with you fewer than ten days after this peaceful exercise of the democratic process.
I wish to extend congratulations to the Maldives, a sister Small Island Developing State, on their election to the helm of this Gen-eral Assembly. Know that you will find The Ba-hamas to be a strong, engaged and thoughtful partner for the road ahead.
We also congratulate Secretary-General Gutteres on his re-election to a second term, and wish him every success.
Colleagues, we are meeting at a most ex-traordinary time. We come here from different corners of the earth, with our theme -- “build-ing resilience through hope” – reflecting our shared determination to pivot from crisis to op-portunity.
These crises are inter-connected and multi-faceted, and need a global response.
We must collaborate to end the Covid-19 pandemic and address public health issues.
We must co-operate to mitigate the effects of climate change.
And access to development financing must be equitable and fair.
An inadequate response to these issues will have dire consequences for the global econ-omy.
Collaborating to End the Pandemic
The world has changed enormously since we first learned about the COVID-19 virus.
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