09/28/2026
Prime Minister Davis at UN: ‘A sovereignty that must ask permission is not sovereignty. It is a lease.’
NEW YORK, New York – During his National Statement at the 81st United Nations General Assembly, on September 25, 2026 Prime Minister the Hon. Philip Davis stated that, respectfully, he did not agree that there was currently “an age of uncertainty” in terms of international affairs.
“Uncertainty is the language of those who have already decided, and do not wish to say so,” he said.
He added: “Treaties are being torn up. Institutions are being starved. Rules are giving way to deals, and the benefits of the deals go to whoever holds the most leverage. Once again, we hear the language of Spheres of Influence, of Backyards and Hemispheres. For 500 years, the Caribbean was somebody’s backyard.
“We did not win our freedom to once again become somebody’s backyard.”
Prime Minister Davis noted that the message to small nations “is very clear: Be as sovereign as we allow you to be”.
“A sovereignty that must ask permission is not sovereignty,” he stated. “It is a lease.”
Prime Minister Davis added: “Our ancestors did not break their chains so that their children could become tenants. These are not uncertain times. These times are very certain. The only uncertain thing is how we respond to the opportunities and challenges of this time.”
Mr. President:
He stated that he did not agree with the people who often said that the world lacked political will.
“The world has never lacked political will,” Prime Minister Davis said. “In 2008, when the banks of the richest nations were failing, trillions of dollars were found in a matter of weeks.”
He added: “When a global pandemic reached the capitals of the powerful, the political will returned. The will exists. It is simply pointed elsewhere. Somewhere, a bank is always too big to fail; but a nation should never be too small to be left behind.”
Prime Minister Davis continued: “What the world lacks is not political will for change. It is political change – a change in who writes the rules; a change in whose suffering counts; a change in who decides, and who pays.
“Political will is a feeling. Political change is a decision about who holds power.”
And Mr. President:
He stated that this was what he came there to speak about that day: power.
“Two-and-a-half thousand years ago, the envoys of Athens stood before the small island of Melos and told its people a simple truth about power,” Prime Minister Davis said. “The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.”
He added: “Eighty-one years ago, in San Francisco, humanity wrote a different law. The sovereign equality of nations – not equality of size or wealth, equality of standing.”
Prime Minister Davis said that the United Nations was the world’s answer to Melos.
“But in 1945, nearly one in three people on earth still lived under colonial rule, the people of my islands among them,” he pointed out. “The Bahamas was not in that room; but we were on the map.”
Prime Minister Davis added: “Then came political change, not granted from above – demanded from below. On the eighteenth of September 1973, The Bahamas took its seat in this Assembly. Then in 1985, Commonwealth leaders met in my own capital and agreed The Nassau Accord against apartheid. We were told pressure would never work. Less than five years later, Nelson Mandela walked free.”
He stated that none of that happened because the powerful “suddenly found their conscience”.
“It happened because the balance of power in the room was changed,” Prime Minister Davis said.
“That is the lesson of history,” he added. “Change is not given, it is organised.”
Prime Minister Davis pointed out that it was not the small states who were dismantling the rules-based order.
“Small countries cannot dismantle a rules-based world; but we will be the first to be crushed beneath its collapse,” he warned.
Prime Minister Davis added: “Great powers can survive the end of the rules. Small states cannot. For us, a rules based world is our shield. The rules have not always been applied fairly. But the answer is not a world without rules. It is rules that bind the strong as firmly as the weak.
“International order, where rules apply only to the weak, is not order. It is a hierarchy.”
He pointed out that, when The Bahamas defended multilateralism, it was not defending a bureaucracy.
“We are defending the only successful arrangement in which a nation of four hundred thousand people can stand at this podium as the sovereign equal of a nation of a billion people,” Prime Minister Davis said. “A world without rules is not a free world. It is Melos.”
He added: “I do not appeal to conscience. Small states have done that for decades. Today, I appeal to your interests.”
Prime Minister Davis continued: “What is in your best interest? No wall is high enough to keep out rising warming seas, no border strong enough to stop a pandemic. Narrow self-interest asks what you can take today.
“Enlightened self-interest asks what kind of world you will have to live in tomorrow.”
He pointed out that the international, rules-based order benefited all.
“They are not arbitrary having been arrived at through lived experience,” Prime Minister Davis said.
“Every rule you break today is a rule you will need tomorrow,” he added. “Every institution you starve is one you will one day call upon. Every small nation you abandon is a crisis you will one day inherit.
“Defending the rules is not a favour to the small. It is an insurance for the strong.”
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