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The Chief Minister
At the United Nations June 2001 Grenada’s representative stressed that it was not often that the Government and the Opposition spoke so precisely with one voice. That should be of some concern to the Special Committee as it looked into the question of Gibraltar. Both the Chief Minister and the Opposition Leader had, in a polite and diplomatic way, told the Special Committee that it had been derelict in its duties with respect to Gibraltar.
"This is a verbal lashing that perhaps we should take heed of"
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Full text of an address by the Chief Minister of Gibraltar The Hon
P R Caruana Q C to the United Nations Committee of 24.
Mr Chairman, once again, as it has done each year since 1992, the
Government of Gibraltar, in the person of its Chief Minister, appears
before this Committee, to articulate the wishes, views and aspirations of
the colonial people of Gibraltar and to seek this Committee’s
assistance in our decolonisation through the exercise of our right to
self-determination. We are, as always, grateful of the opportunity to
address the Special Committee.
Since 1992 we have deployed many arguments, some of a legal nature,
others of a political nature, in support of our case. None has ever
received a response from the Special Committee nor have they so far
been reflected in the position adopted by the Committee. We have also
regularly reported to the Special Committee on the situation in
Gibraltar. In addition, we have rebutted the Kingdom of Spain’s
arguments that the people of Gibraltar are not a colonial people, are not
entitled to the right to self-determination and that this is, somehow, the
doctrine of the United Nations.
To these ends we have argued, and demonstrated, the following:-
1. That Gibraltar is one of the Territories
on this Special Committee’s list of non-self
governing territories having been placed on
it by our Administering Power, the United
Kingdom, in 1946. Since then the UK has
reported on the territory and its people to
the Special Committee in discharge of its
obligations under Article 73 of the Charter.
2. Gibraltar is thus unquestionably a
colony. Indeed, in Spain’s statement last
year to both this Special Committee and to
the Fourth Committee, Her Representative
conceded that: "Gibraltar is a colony in the
process of decolonisation". We have also
demonstrated that the doctrine of the United
Nations, repeatedly stated by this Special
Committee, is that in the process of
decolonisation there is no alternative to the
principle of self determination. That is to
say, that it is not possible to decolonise a
territory by any other means.
3. We have shown also how this principle
has been fully affirmed and endorsed by the
International Court of Justice and is thus
enshrined in international law. In support,
we have cited the Namibia case in which
the International Court of Justice said that
"international law in regard to Non-Self
Governing Territories as enshrined in the
Charter of the UN made the principle of self
determination applicable to all of them."
4. We have demonstrated, specifically,
(even though it follows from all the above
arguments) that there is in fact no UN
doctrine, as alleged by Spain, that Gibraltar
should or indeed can be decolonised by the
application of the principle of territorial
integrity, which principle (in any case) has
no application to cases of decolonisation.
To demonstrate this we have cited the case
of the Western Sahara, in which the
International Court of Justice said:-
"Even if integration of a territory was
demanded by an interested State it could
not be had without ascertaining the freely
expressed will of the people, the very sine
qua non of all decolonisation".
It is therefore clear that there is no such
thing as decolonisation by the application of
the principle of territorial integrity without
the consent of the people of that territory.
There is no special doctrine applicable to
colonies that some choose to call "colonial
enclaves". There is no special
decolonisation regime suspending or
overriding the right to self determination in
colonies just because they are, separately,
the subject of a territorial or sovereignty
dispute.
5. We have demonstrated how Spain,
therefore, has sought to distort the real
meaning of the principle of territorial
integrity, which is to prevent secessions by
an integral part of a Member State. Gibraltar
is not now, and has not for 297 years been,
a part of the Kingdom of Spain, and
therefore neither the principle has
application nor does our decolonisation now
bring about the disintegration of her national
integrity.
6. We have demonstrated how it is trite
international law that even if the Treaty of
Utrecht were still valid, it is incapable of
overriding rights and obligations contained
in the Charter of the UN – which is supreme
international law that overrides all other
bilateral and international treaties.
7. We have demonstrated how in General
Assembly Resolution 46/181 of 19
December 1991 the UN reaffirms the
inalienable right of self determination of the
peoples of all the remaining Non-Self
Governing Territories.
Mr Chairman, despite addressing you year after year to this effect;
despite repeatedly putting these (and other) arguments to you, we have
as yet had no sign from the Special Committee that it is ready to help
the people of Gibraltar to secure respect for and implementation of
these rights. The Committee listens to us politely and with interest
(which we greatly appreciate) but then appears to ignore everything that
we say.
Instead, the Special Committee, year after year, repeats the same
statement in support of a sterile and ineffective negotiating process
between our Administering Power, the UK, and the territorial claimant,
Spain, which is wholly irrelevant to the issue of our decolonisation. In
doing so, the Committee ignores another of Gibraltar`s pleas to it
namely that it should not endorse dialogue about a Non-Self Governing
Territory in which the people of that Territory are not represented in their
own right and with a separate voice of their own. How can this Special
Committee, with a sacred trust to promote the rights and interests of
the colonial peoples of a Non-Self Governing Territory, promote these
bilateral talks, as if our decolonisation could, even in theory, be
negotiated between the UK and Spain in any manner that would be
even remotely consistent with the Charter of the UN or the Declaration
on Decolonisation?
Surely the Special Committee exists to help us, the people of Gibraltar,
and not to balance the positions of Spain and the UK – or even to
adjudicate between them.
Mr Chairman, with your indulgence, I would like to read to you a lengthy
quotation. They are not the words of a Chief Minister of Gibraltar, but of
the Distinguished Representative of Iraq to this Committee on the
occasion of its consideration of the question of Gibraltar. But I could not
articulate the point more eloquently myself. Nor is this modern theory. It
was said here, to this Committee 37 years ago on the 6th October
1964:
"But whatever ancient shadows established or did not
establish the present, they have left us now with one
substantial legacy: 17,000-odd or 24,000-odd
Gibraltarians. These are our real responsibility here. We
cannot ignore them, nor should we seek to bundle them
up and dispose of them in some clandestine way. They
have been called a "pre-fabricated population". I do not
believe that they are. But whether they are or whether
they are not, they are in being – they exist. And they
exist as people. They exist not as Spaniards, nor as
Englishmen, but as people, and Gibraltarian people. They
exist as surely as, for example, the population of
Singapore exists – which developed, according to my
understanding, only from 1819 onwards, in much less
time than it took the Gibraltarians to develop, on an island
which was bought for the British by Sir Stamford Raffles
as an uninhabited island swamp, was converted from a
swamp, and rapidly became the home of 2 million people
who had never previously known of its existence, or if they
had known, they had never previously cared. So that
these Gibraltarians are not unique in the peculiar nature of
their birth and composition. In these respects they have
many colonial counterparts elsewhere. And I repeat that
they exist as surely as the populations of many other
places in the world to whom there has been no
suggestion that self-determination should be denied
simply because they have been migrant people over the
centuries in an area which they now call home. Through
the very fact of their existence these people have rights
as people. Under the provisions of resolution 1514(XV)
they have particular rights and a particular claim upon us
here.
These people are what we are now concerned with. We
are not, I submit, concerned with the conflicting and
imperial claims of Great Britain, on the one hand, and
Spain on the other. Whatever differences exist between
these two Powers, my delegation believes, are differences
for adjustment between them in the normal course of
events and without the intervention of our Committee."
Mr Chairman, in contradiction of this, the Kingdom of Spain says that
we are not a colonised people, because she says (wrongly) that we are
the descendants of the people brought to the Colony by the Colonising
Power. In saying this Spain ignores the fact that she is, in fact,
describing her own colonial history in much of South and Central
America, where the dependants of Spanish colonists (the people that
Spain took to her colonies) eventually exercised their right to self
determination in lands to which they were not indigenous. She also
ignores the similar colonial history of more than half the colonial
peoples who exercised the same right and now sit in these United
Nations.
Mr Chairman, it is a fundamental error to confuse the very different
issues of decolonisation and sovereignty dispute. Decolonisation
relates only to the rights and status of the people of a Non-Self
Governing Territory and their homeland. A territorial sovereignty dispute
is a dispute over a piece of land between two Member States.
Decolonisation and sovereignty disputes are not synonymous terms or
concepts. Neither can one displace the other. Just as the existence of
a territorial dispute over sovereignty cannot extinguish the right to
decolonisation by the exercise of self determination of the people of that
colony, neither does the exercise of that right to self determination
extinguish any sovereignty claim or dispute. But they cannot be
confused or lumped together, because each issue (decolonisation on
the one hand, and territorial disputes on the other) raises different rights
of a different quality and nature in favour of different parties.
I say this, Mr Chairman, not least because this Special Committee has
no mandate over sovereignty disputes. It does however have a mandate,
indeed a sacred trust, to help the peoples of all the remaining Non-Self
Governing Territories to achieve decolonisation and to do so through self
determination, given that it is the doctrine of the United Nations that in
the process of decolonisation there is no alternative to the principle of
self determination.
This makes the position taken by this Committee, year in year out, all
the more surprising to the people of Gibraltar.
Mr Chairman, in order to enlist the support of this Committee, Spain
begins almost all its statements to the Committee with words of
support for and commitment to the Committee`s work to eradicate
colonialism. Regrettably Spain`s actions do not match her words, for
she repeatedly informs this Committee and the people of Gibraltar that
Gibraltar faces only two options:
For example on 21st June 1999, the distinguished Representative of
Spain told this Special Committee:
"Gibraltar can either continue as a British
Colony or revert to Spain".
That is to say, Spain is quite content for Gibraltar to remain a Colony.
Spain`s commitment, therefore, is not (as she professes) to
decolonisation but to her own self-interested territorial ambitions. And
the reason why Spain finds herself in this self evidently contradictory
position is that she confuses the question of decolonisation with the
question of territorial sovereignty dispute.
The people and Government of Gibraltar have supported the Special
Committee in its work, through our attendance at these meetings and
regional seminars. We have attended in spite of opposition from our
administering power. We have also openly welcomed the Declaration of
the Second Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.
To mark this support we attended the Caribbean Regional Seminar in
Cuba, last month. I would like, once again to thank and congratulate
the people and Government of the Republic of Cuba for hosting that
Seminar and for their excellent hospitality. I think that it was clearly a
good seminar for the Special Committee and its future. I regret that it
was not a good Seminar for Gibraltar.
Certainly I was afforded every opportunity to express my views, but
when it came to drafting the so-called "Conclusions and
Recommendations" of the Seminar, everything that I had said was
ignored, and everything that the representatives of the Kingdom of Spain
and the Republic of Argentina had said was diligently included and
reflected in the so-called "Conclusions and Recommendations" of the
Seminar, despite the fact that the Seminar participants (which included
me) had concluded and recommended nothing of the sort. I was
therefore obliged to condemn those Conclusions and
Recommendations and disassociate Gibraltar from them. The spectacle
of these two self interested Member States openly determining the text
of the Conclusions and Recommendation was most demoralising to us
as an affected Non-Self Governing Territory. Surely, the Special
Committee organises these Seminars for the benefit of the Non-Self
Governing Territories and not to give interested Member States a still
further opportunity to wield their obviously greater power and influence
within the UN and to frustrate the very objectives of the Special
Committee and the principles which bind it.
Mr Chairman, I do not come here expecting the Committee to accept
and adopt everything that we say, simply because we say it, even
though we have passionate confidence in the correctness of our cause
and the merit of our argument. Rather, I come to say:- This is what we
believe is right – if you agree with us please say so, if you have any
doubt about the truth of the facts that we put to you or the correctness
of our arguments please put those doubts to the test. If you have doubt
about the existence, in international law, of our right to self
determination, or of the extent of it, please recommend to the Fourth
Committee that it refers the question to the International Court of
Justice for a declaratory ruling. If you have a doubt about the worthiness
of the people of Gibraltar to be beneficiaries, politically, of the right to
elf determination, please send a delegation to Gibraltar to make an
independent assessment of that issue and of our situation. That is the
minimum that we ask.
Yet both these pleas have been disregarded by the Special Committee,
as well.
Mr Chairman, I have asked the Special Committee to devise a working
plan of action for Gibraltar based on these and other elements. This
request has not, as yet, prospered either. Instead, the Special
Committee has approved the Conclusions and Recommendations of the
Marshal Islands Pacific Regional Seminar in 2000, into para. 32 of
which, Spain and Argentina had (as a further example of what happened
in Havana) procured the insertion of the statement that representatives
of Non-Self Governing Territories should not participate in the
development of work programmes for individual territories, where the
territory was the subject of a sovereignty dispute.
The clause reads:-
In other words, this Special Committee, charged as it is to promote and
defend the right to self determination of the people of Gibraltar, has
endorsed the extraordinary proposition that the mere existence of a
sovereignty dispute results in us not being entitled to participate even in
the development of a work programme for the territory of Gibraltar. This
was not the conclusion and recommendation of the seminar or its
participants. It was the private prescription of Spain and Argentina. My
request in Havana for this to be excised from the Havana Conclusions
and Recommendations also fell on deaf ears because of the intervention
of Spain and Argentina.
Mr Chairman, the reality of the matter is that some Member State or
other has some axe or other to grind in relation to most of the territories
remaining on your list of Non-Self Governing Territories. Therefore, Mr
Chairman, if, as we would all wish, this Committee is to successfully
complete its work during this Second Decade for the Eradication of
Colonialism it will have to break loose from excessive influence over its
work by other Member States interested in the territories.
Mr Chairman, the distinguished members of the Committee will detect
in my remarks a degree of criticism of the Committee. It is born of
frustration and disappointment. I utter these criticisms on behalf of a
territory that has valued and continues to value the work of the Special
Committee. I therefore utter them in friendship and not in hostility to the
Special Committee and with due deference to the distinguished
members of it and the Member States that they represent.
Mr Chairman, I would wish to deal with one final matter. In Havana last
month the distinguished Representative of the Kingdom of Spain sought
to denigrate the worthiness of our cause and the sincerity of our
commitment to decolonisation by saying that Gibraltar targeted its
criticism only at Spain and never criticised the colonial power, the UK.
In fact this is not true, but even if it were, the reality of the matter is that
it is not our colonial power, of her own conviction, that denies us
decolonisation, but the Kingdom of Spain that obstructs, intimidates
and discourages the UK, as it does this Special Committee, to that
end.
In Havana last month the distinguished Representative of Spain openly
told the Seminar that if Britain made the slightest alteration to
Gibraltar`s Constitution this would have dire consequences for relations
between Spain and the United Kingdom. In doing so he was doing no
more than echoing the words of the Spanish Foreign Minister who told
the Spanish Senate in February this year, that:
"An ever-growing trellis of human, cultural and economic
links exists between the United Kingdom and Spain. The
United Kingdom is our 4th supplier and our 5th customer,
the flow of investments in both directions is of utmost
importance, interest for our respective cultures is on the
increase, approximately 12 million British people visit us
every year and there are 200,000 UK residents in our
country. However, Gibraltar still prevents our bilateral
relations reaching their plenitude. Moreover, they could
deteriorate if the Gibraltar "Constitution`s" reform project
bears fruit. Even if the United Kingdom minimises its
scope, alleging that it represents a mere modernisation
technique, Spain cannot remain indifferent to a
modification in the colonial status of Gibraltar contrary to
that stipulated in the Treaty of Utrecht, to the resolutions
of the United Nations General Assembly and to the very
same Declaration of Brussels."
The following month he told the Spanish Parliament`s Chamber of
Deputies that:
"To the absence of dialogue there is added the
perspective of a constitutional reform in the Colony, the
first steps towards which have already been taken in
Gibraltar. The UK intends that its scope should be
minimal. We have made clear to the UK our frontal
opposition to any modification, however small it may be,
of the colonial status of Gibraltar, to any modification of
the Constitution in the direction of a greater measure of
independence or integration with the UK, contrary to the
Treaty of Utrecht. If the process comes to fruition, Spain
would regard the reform as a grave and hostile act that
could cause a serious deterioration in relations between
Spain and Britain."
Mr Chairman, we believe that it is these Spanish threats that prevent
the United Kingdom from adhering to her own position on the matter of
Constitutional Reform and self Government which she articulated before
this Committee as long ago as the 30th September 1964 when her
distinguished Representative, a Mr King, told this Committee:
"First, I wish to say that my Government does not accept
the interpretation of the Treaty of Utrecht presented by my
Spanish colleague, nor does it accept that Spain has any
right to be consulted on changes in the constitutional
status of Gibraltar and its relationship with Britain. My
Government is satisfied that the grant of Gibraltar to
Britain under the Treaty, and as subsequently reaffirmed,
was absolute and without any bar to constitutional
changes in Gibraltar and the acquisition by its inhabitants
of "a full measure of self-government" as the Charter
requires".
He then added:
"Given that the United Nations has consistently treated
Gibraltar as a colony and that Article 73 applies to it,
Britain would not have been fulfilling the requirements of
that Article had it not taken steps to enable the
Gibraltarians to advance towards a full measure of
self-government."
I am not aware that the UK has made any statement in the UN resiling
from this position. Indeed, how could it?
The distinguished Representative of the United Kingdom went further on
to add:
"My Spanish colleague has argued that the principle of
self-determination cannot apply to the people of Gibraltar.
He has not made it clear why that should be so. This
Committee would not, I am sure, accept the implied
suggestion in the statement by the representative of
Spain that the population of Gibraltar is too small to enjoy
self-determination. It has repeatedly been said in this
Committee and its organs that the size of a population is
irrelevant to the applicability of the Charter and of
Resolution 1514(XV)"
Mr Chairman, in conclusion I wish to make it quite clear that the
Gibraltar Government is not opposed to, and indeed would welcome
properly structured dialogue with the Kingdom of Spain to attempt to
resolve our differences and problems. I would therefore urge the Special
Committee to make the following recommendations:
(2) Without prejudice to the applicability
of the principle of self determination to the
decolonisation of Gibraltar, the Special
Committee recommends dialogue between
the Governments of the United Kingdom,
Spain and Gibraltar within or outwith the
Brussels process aimed at achieving a
solution to the question of Gibraltar in
accordance with the relevant resolutions of
the United Nations, namely respect for the
inalienable right of the people of all Non-Self
Governing Territories to self determination.
to remain a British colony
for ever; or
to integrate into
Spain.
The participants noted that the participation
of representatives of the Non-Self-Governing
Territories in which there was no dispute of
sovereignty in the development of the work
programmes for individual Territories should
be ensured.
(1) No dialogue should take place about a
problem affecting a Non-Self Governing
Territory between the administering power
and any other Member State without the
presence and participation, with a separate
voice, of the Government of that territory.
Thank you, Mr Chairman and Excellencies.
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