The Right To Development

Forum

Kiribati’s President leremia Tabai discusses his country’s problems and potential.

I WOULD like to share my views on the important and timely topic of human rights with emphasis on develop ment and related issues in the small island nations in our region.

Human rights has been, and is, a very important international issue, and many Pacific countries have achieved their political independence one of these basic rights.

There are, however, still some people who are still struggling to join their fellow islands as an independent country. I refer to New Caledonia.

In many ways this shows that while progress is being made in many areas of human rights, there is still a lot to be done.

One such important area concerns devel opment. I intend to highlight what we do in my country in this area and the prob lems we face in the pursuit of our right to development.

Kiribati is a young country, only in dependent since 1979, We are poor, so much so that we have been granted re cently by the United Nations the status of a Least Developed Country. We are not proud of that label but it reflects our economic circumstances. We are a very small land, with an area of only 700 square kilometres, and can only support copra as a cash crop; there is a high population growth rate (in excess of two per cent per year); and Kiribati has problems with transport and communications that make development much more difficult.

While we certainly do not starve, we have real problems in meeting our basic needs. This is best illustrated by our rel atively bad health statistics. On average we have a life expectancy of 50 years for males and 55 years for females. We have in ad dition one of the highest infant mortality rates, at 82 per 1000. Such statistics indi cate a very low level of development.

This was the situation we faced on being granted independence. The immediate question that needed answering then, as it does today, was whether we could achieve a degree of economic self-reliance so that ai least we were able to provide for the basic needs of our people. And our response was in line with our fundamental conviction that there is no alternative to developing our country so that we can at least stand on our God-given feet.

Our development is the responsibility of our people. That may be to state the ob vious, but it is a very necessary realisa tion, not only to reinforce our total commitment to develop ourselves in the face of obvious economic problems and a

very difficult economic future, but also to underline our belief that our success in this endeavour depends critically on the poli cies we pursue.

One such was the issue of the budget ary aid we received from the United King dom. At independence we made it one of our objectives to exist without it as soon as possible and to try to live within our means. We believe that it is simply not proper for the operating cost of running our country to be paid by somebody else, so making us susceptible to all forms of pres sure that may not be in our national inter est and reducing our freedom of action as an independent country.

"There is no alternative to developing our country so we can stand on our own God-given feet”

This aim to go without UK aid was achieved two years ago without us having any real economic development to pro vide an alternative source of income. The process of development is a time-consum ing activity. It was, however, only possible because our determination and commit ment to be independent not only in name but in fact. We geared our spending to the level that we consider we can maintain and sustain in the long run. We feel this is an important precondition to ensure that fu ture development is conducted with the clear objective not only of achieving eco nomic growth but also of reducing, in the long term, our dependence on others.

But we realise that while this is an im portant step toward economic independ ence, it is only the beginning of what will be a long and difficult process of enhanc ing the economic status of our people whose per capita income of around SASOO is, I believe, one of the lowest in the region.

As a small country with the basic prob lem of a narrow resource base limiting de velopment options, marine resources offer the only real potential. We made a start

many years ago with the establishment of a fishing company and while progress is slow, I believe an increasingly firm foun dation is being laid. There are many rea sons for this slow progress, but the critical ones include the inescapable fact that we depend on others for capital and expertise.

Alongside this form of development we license distant-water fishing nations (DWFNs) to fish within our 200-nautical mile economic zone. Currently we are earning SA3-4 million per year through this means. This is not a small amount in view of our annual national budget of around SAIB million: it is, however, a source of revenue that is not without its own problems.

One of these is lack of leverage in ne gotiating a fair deal. To be able to pursue one’s interests adequately, one needs bar gaining power to achieve a deal that can be considered fair. For many years the small island nations were faced with this disadvantage. For many years, therefore, they were not getting a fair deal. And in an effort to remedy this situation the Pacific countries agreed to the formation of the Forum Fisheries Agency and other co-op erative arrangements with the aim of as sisting the members to get a better deal.

The results so far have been encouraging.

The DWFNs are beginning to see the need to pay a fair price and to respect the rights of the island nations.

The best recent example is the signings

of a multilateral fishing treaty with the USA, with the aim of resolving the differ ence between the island nations and the US over illegal fishing within the region’s eco nomic zones. There is now a move to adopt the same regional approach with Japan.

The clear lesson for all is that being poor or weak will not attract to us fair consid eration or sympathy. We simply have to fend for ourselves.

That problem is further compounded by another hangover from the past: the idea that our interests are somehow subordi nate to the interests of other people and in particular those of larger countries whose friendship, it is assumed, is sufficient rea son for us to continue to hang on to the apron-strings of the colonial past. This was very evident a few years ago, when we con cluded a fishing deal with the USSR.

I do not want to dwell long on that ex cept to highlight a certain aspect that is relevant in our attempt to pursue our na tional development goals. The deal is a commercial one. That is not said to please anybody but that is exactly what it is.

We have no time for ideological de bates. We cannot afford the luxury of in volving ourselves in those. Our people expect us to deal with their urgent prob lems of development.

The adverse press we received over the deal with the Soviet Union was unjusti fied and misleading. What we did is very easy to understand. The important thing to note, however, is that somehow, being a small island nation, we are expected to follow others blindly. And that is why our right and capacity to pursue our national interests were, and are, being questioned.

We will continue to make commercial deals with the Russians or with anybody else, if it is in our national interest to do so. We are determined not to allow any thing to stand in the way of our development.

Another obvious area for our devel opment effort is the improvement of the rural and subsistence way of life. This has been our way of life for hundreds of years and there is no viable alternative. To have a proper and balanced development, we cannot afford to ignore the rural areas, home to around 70 per cent of our people who earn their living from rural and sub sistence resources. We must improve transport, communications and fishing access so their lives can be generally made easier. That is why we see the need for such projects as causeway construction, reef blasting and push-handcarts.

We are, in addition to these projects, giving local authorities more powers and resources to allow them to have a greater say in the direction of development in their own areas. We believe it is a most impor tant part of the program to encourage self reliance and independence the under lying theme of our government policies.

In talking about development in a small island nation such as mine it is impossible

not to talk about development aid. In our case, our development budget, which broadly corresponds to our capital ex penditure, is around SA2O million an nually, nearly all of which comes from external aid sources. We are therefore heavily dependent on this source of finan cial assistance for our development pro gram. Most of this assistance is also provided on a bilateral basis rather than on a multilateral basis, making it a diffi cult type of finance to deal with. We all know that not all of these aid offers origi nate out of humanitarian considerations.

The donors also have their own self-inter est to pursue and as a result our relations can become adversely affected because of the likely differences in priority or objec tives. Accepting aid could also become a problem if it side-tracked us from pursu ing our fundamental long term interest.

To reduce the chance of this we are di

“We have wasted important years trying to establish a market when we should be developing the product”

versifying our sources of funding. Since independence we have attracted assist ance from many sources. In particular, we recently became a member of the World Bank and its affiliated financial institu tions to provide the necessary backup in case our source of assistance dries up or is reduced significantly with an adverse im pact on our development effort.

But that is not to say that we are not grateful for this assistance, and I want to thank all those who have offered us help in may ways.

One way to assist the development process is to address trade issues on a re gional basis. Some of the small island na tions, however, find it very difficult to expand their trade. Our experience in this respect has been very tough. Until a few years ago, our export was dominated by phosphate. Now our export is confined virtually to two products fish and co pra both of which have suffered severe adverse price movements, reducing our economy to a state of near stagnation.

Some very tight budgeting has therefore become necessary to keep our finances under control.

In recognition of the problems of ex panding export trade for island nations, the SPARTECA regional trade agreement was drawn up. The agreement aimed to en courage the island countries to export to Australia and New Zealand by giving them tariff-free access to those markets. While nobody can disagree with those noble aims, it soon became apparent that there is an urgent need to improve the agree ment, or at least to look for far more con crete ways in which countries such as ours can start to feel that they benefit as well.

In my view SPARTECA worsens the problem of the widening economic gap: as a member of this part of the region, and as a member of the Forum and other regional institutions, we object strongly to this state of affairs. While I know it would be un reasonable for us to demand the end of the agreement, we do submit that new and im aginative arrangements be put into mo tion to address directly the peculiar problems of the smaller island nations.

What is required is a new frame of mind, a new attitude capable of responding to problems that may not fit with the existing rules of the game.

What changes are being made are probably too minor or too slow to be of any significance. Let me give you an example.

In our attempt to develop our economic base we have developed one product line, namely salt, for which (according to all ad vice) the main constraint to further de velopment is the need for a reliable market.

With expected annual production of only around 25,000 tonnes, finding a mar ket in the region should not be a problem.

It is a tiny amount in relation to the re gional consumption. We have, however, wasted a few important years trying to es tablish a market when we should be de veloping and producing the product. As a result the development of this particular project has been delayed with an unfor tunate effect on our development effort.

In view of our being one of the poorest island nations in the South Pacific, and knowing that SPARTECA is essentially of very little value to us, we expect an offer to buy our salt to assist us in resolving our marketing problem. No such offer has come, but I hope that in time we will get a more positive response from those who are able to assist. While this is just one specific problem, is indicative of the range of problems we face in the pursuit of our economic goal. One basic consideration in all this is the need for us to develop an ex port trade, or an industry that would be able to support our national economy.

And despite the known problems of our narrow resource base and long distance from possible markets, I believe it is still possible not only to take advantage of the regional markets, but also the wider world markets. Progress in these areas would make an important contribution to the process of development. □