GUYANA may be small in terms of geographic and population size but that is no reason for us not to think big. For too long the bigger powers have dominated global economic relations between the rich countries and the less developed nations. This centre-periphery relationship has resulted to a large extent in the underdevelopment of several countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new global economic centres, the dependency syndrome that had characterised much of the pre-cold war era, many developing countries have come on their own and are now economic powerhouses. Notably among these are the People’s Republic of China, India, Brazil and South Africa who are today key economic players on the international stage. The bi-polar world has now given way to a multi-polar world. Gone are the days when development countries were forced to align themselves with one or the other superpowers in order to gain economic favours.

Guyana is an example of a country that has now emerged as a key and strategic player on the international stage, thanks to our new status as an oil producing nation but also because of the pro-active role the country is playing in terms of influencing international opinion on important global issues.

At a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) World Leaders Summit Dialogue III hosted by Barbados, Guyana’s President, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, again used the platform to call for more equitable relations between the developed North and the developing South, especially in the area of vaccine distribution which continue to place poorer countries at a severe disadvantage. As the President correctly observed, even though the richer countries are doing better in terms of vaccination rates, the fact remains that most of that recovery is the result of uneven vaccine distribution at the expense of the developing world.

The world is not recovering; it is the developed countries that are recovering, the President noted in his address and posited that while it is true that some countries of the developed world can boast of vaccination rates in excess of 80 per cent, there are dozens of developing countries that are still lagging way behind.

If there is one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us is the interconnected nature of our world and the fact that no country is safe until all countries are safe. The virus does not discriminate between peoples and nationalities and in this global village it can take just one unvaccinated person to trigger a national and by extension an international pandemic.

President Ali could not be more correct when he called on the rich countries to rise above nationalism and self-interest and put the interests of humanity as a whole above everything else. There is need for a new global infrastructure, one that is based on the principles of respect and mutuality among countries. As such, the less developed countries should not be treated as mendicants but as partners in development. In fact the industrialised countries depended to a large extent on markets in developing countries for their manufactured goods in the same way the poorer countries depend on the developed countries for much of their raw materials and food supplies.

The way forward for both the developed North and the underdeveloped South is for there to be free and fair exchange of goods and services to allow for all countries to advance economically. The balance of trade still, to a large extent, favour the industrialised countries which continue sell their manufactured products at high prices and buy primary products cheaply.

As President said at the UNCTAD Conference, development assistance to the developing world must not be tied to ‘conditionalities’ as in a bygone era. The world has moved on and there is less tolerance by the developing world for development ‘models’ that are not in congruence with national specifics.