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Awaiting the Prime Minister Philip Davis’ address at the United Nations from left Ambassador Patricia Hermanns, Ministers Zane Lightbourne, Myles Laroda, Fred Mitchell. At the back Baroness Patricia Scotland, Ministers McKell Bonamy, Jerome Fitzgerald and Sebass Bastian on 25^th September 2026. In the foreground Allison Collie, Chief of Staff OPM.

The Prime Minister of The Bahamas Philip Davis spoke at the United Nations on Friday 25 September 2026 delivering the country’s national statement at the General Assembly.  The themes followed the script of all CARICOM leaders with a call for multilateralism to continue as a solution to the world’s problems, ending the blockade by the U S of Cuba, support for Haiti’s Prime Minister Davis also called for the establishment of digital sovereignty, the ownership of the data of The Bahamas to be owned by The Bahamas.  He said that in this age of digitalization there is a new threat of colonialism through data, if the country did not act to protect itself. There was also the appeal to solve the climate crisis by continuing efforts to fight climate change.  You may click here for the full address.

National Statement by Prime Minister Philip Davis at the 81st United Nations General Assembly

September 25, 2026

Mr. President,

Mr. Secretary-General,

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates:

Congratulations, Your Excellency, Khalilur Rahman, on your election. The Bahamas pledges to you, its full support.

Mr. President:

Every generation inherits a promise it did not make.

The promise of our generation was made eighty-one years ago, with the founding of this United Nations, from the ashes of the worst war in human history.

Its ideals have proven its worth.

No nation is too small to be sovereign.

No people too poor to be equal.

And the strong should be bound by the same law as the weak.

Sad to say, the United Nations has drifted away from itspromise.

The Bahamas comes today to insist on it.

Mr. President:

All week we have been told this is an age of uncertainty.

With respect, I do not agree.

Uncertainty is the language of those who have already decided, and do not wish to say so.

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.

The message to small nations is very clear.

Be as sovereign as we allow you to be.

Mr. President:

A sovereignty that must ask permission is not sovereignty. It is a lease.

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:

People often say that the world lacks political will.

I do not agree.

The world has never lacked political will.

In 2008, when the banks of the richest nations were failing, trillions of dollars were found in a matter of weeks.

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.

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 aboutwho holds power.

And Mr. President:

That is what I have come to speak about today: 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.

The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.

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.

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.

The Bahamas was not in that room. But we were on the map.

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.

None of that happened because the powerful suddenly found their conscience. It happened because the balance of power in the room was changed.

That is the lesson of history. Change is not given, it is organised.

Mr. President:

It is not the small states who are 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.

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.

When The Bahamas defends multilateralism, we are 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.

A world without rules is not a free world. It is Melos.

Mr. President:

I do not appeal to conscience. Small states have done that for decades. Today, I appeal to your interests.

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.

The international, rules-based order benefits all. They are not arbitrary having been arrived at through lived experience.

Every rule you break today is a rule you will need tomorrow. 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 an insurance for the strong.

Mr. President:

Nowhere is that truer than the climate crisis.

Here too, we are told there is uncertainty. There is none.

The sea does not negotiate. It does not read communiqués. And it does not recognise a veto.

In 2024, for the first time, the world was more than one and a half degrees warmer for an entire year. The line which small island states fought to write into the Paris Agreement, has already been crossed.

A new report released only days ago warns that the El Niño phenomenon, now heating the planet, is likely to cost some four hundred and fifty thousand lives by next February.

In 2019, Hurricane Dorian inflicted damage and losses on The Bahamas equal to roughly a quarter of our national output. Families watched the sea take the only land they had.

Most of my country sits barely above sea level. For us, a rising ocean is not a forecast. It is a boundary inching towards our doorsteps.

That is why The Bahamas proudly endorses yesterday’s Declaration on Sea-Level Rise, which affirms that our statehood, our boundaries and our seat in this Assembly will not be washed away by the sea

The science is certain. Last year, the International Court of Justice made clear that the law is also certain.

The injustice is certain too. The people who bear least responsibility are asked to adapt first, pay more, and recover from disasters they did not cause.

And the self-interest is certain. People who lose their homes do not disappear. They move, and they arrive at someone’s border. Prevention costs less than rebuilding or relocating.

The Bahamas is taking action. But no nation, acting alone, can hold back the tides.

Nor can we build resilience inside a financial system designed at Bretton Woods in 1944, which still declares us too prosperous to help, until the next storm makes us poor.

The Vulnerability Index exists. The Loss and Damage Fund exist. What is missing is the power shift to make themoperational and real.

Mr. President:

The next contest for power will not only be fought over land and sea. It will be fought over data.

Our citizens’ data crosses the world without a visa and without a vote. It leaves our shores as raw material, and returns as products we must buy.

We have seen this pattern before. My islands once exported salt, sponge and sisal. Others set the price. Others kept the profit.

The commodity has changed. The pattern has not.

This is colonisation by data.

It does not arrive with ships and flags. It arrives in a box on a screen and a button that says, I agree.

I am talking about the capacity of a people to govern their own digital lives.

People whose daily lives and histories are being mined, shoulddecide where their data lives, who may use it and on what terms.

Those people should be able to share in the value which their data creates.

It means building artificial intelligence that understands ourlanguages, our laws and our lives, not only the lives of those in the wealthy North and dominate languages and cultures.

And it means taking part in the digital age on our own terms, not as consumers of other people’s systems, but as builders of our own.

Data is the newest raw material in the global economy.

The old empires took our lands, plundered them and renamed them. The new ones seek to take our data, and hand us back a picture of ourselves, one we did not paint.

In this modern age, are we expected to be simply the unquestioning suppliers of data, or can we not rightfully expect to participate in processing our own data so as to refine it, govern it and profit from it?

We do not think it outrageous to demand that small states help write the rules of this new age, not simply be shown where to sign.

That is why The Bahamas asks you to support the nomination ofMr. Stephen Bereaux for Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union.

Mr. President:

The Security Council was designed by the victors of a war that ended eighty-one years ago. The world has changed. The Council has not.

Five nations still hold a veto over the peace of one hundred and ninety-three. Most of the nations in this Hall did not exist when that arrangement was made. None of us was asked.

An institution that cannot reform itself cannot hope to reform the world.

Power without legitimacy is not order. It is control. And a peace kept only by the powerful is not peace. It is permission.

That is why The Bahamas seeks a seat on the Council for the 2032–2033 term.

The Bahamas does not seek a seat on the Council to sit quietly inside that arrangement. We seek it to help change it: a Council that reflects the world as it is, and that gives small island states a dedicated seat at the table where our survival is decided.

Change must also reach the leadership of this Organization.

The Bahamas supports the candidature of Her Excellency Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana for Secretary-General.

A former Foreign Minister who has presided over the Security Council, she understands what rules mean for nations with no other protection.

In eighty-one years, this Organization has had nine Secretaries-General. All of them men. None has come from the Caribbean. The Bahamas believes the time has come for both to change.

Mr. President:

In our own hemisphere, The Bahamas again calls for the lifting of the strengthened blockade against Cuba, an end to the fuel blockade, and Cuba’s removal from the unilateral list of alleged state sponsors of terrorism. The Cuban people are suffering.

We call on all states to respect Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.

And we must speak of Haiti.

Haiti was the first nation on Earth born from a successful revolt by enslaved people. For that act of courage, it was made to pay. In 1825, under the guns of a foreign fleet, Haiti was compelled to compensate its former colonisers for its own freedom. It took Haiti more than a century and a half to pay that compensation.

If you want to see what sovereignty costs when it is only allowed, and never respected, look at Haiti.

When the Security Council meets on the 30th of September, we urge it to renew the mandate under Resolution 2793, and to give the Gang Suppression Force the resources to deliver, in a partnership that respects Haitian sovereignty.

Mr. President:

The injustice of this century has a history. And history presents its bill.

This month, CARICOM advanced its Ten-Point Plan for reparatory justice, building on this Assembly’s recognition, in March, of the trafficking and racialised enslavement of Africans,as crimes against humanity.

The wealth of empires was built on the stolen lives of our ancestors, including enslaved children. It is important that the former colonisers have recognised this atrocity, as recognition was a vital step. But recognition without repair is only a sentence on a page.

We call on the nations that profited to engage seriously with reparatory justice: truth, apology, restoration and development.

Mr. President:

The founders of this Organization made their promise in the ruins of war.

We should not need ruins to find our own courage.

The United Nations was not created to manage the decline of its own promise. It was created to build on it.

These are not uncertain times. The only uncertain thing is how we respond.

I challenge you, I dare you, I encourage you, I demand of you:

Let history record that we responded through change.

Thank you.

ENDS

Director General Jerusa Ali, Minister Fred Mitchell with Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett at the Commonwealth Small States office in New York on 21 September 2026

The CARICOM part of the GRULAC region in the United Nations, this includes the Caribbean states and the Latin American states, have nominated the former Foreign Minister of Guyana Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett as their choice to succeed the current Secretary General of the United Nations who retires and is term limited at the end of December in this year. She is an excellent choice and all heads of CARICOM have endorsed her save Antigua and Barbuda who had earlier nominated another candidate. Since her nomination, there have been three straw polls at the United Nations to determine the level of support and Mrs. Birkett has triumphed twice and come second the last of the three times. There is another straw poll in October. There is the suggestion that this poll should take place with coloured ballots for the Permanent Five members of the Security Council. This will determine if any of the Permanent Five object to the choice of any of the candidates. During the general debate last week, the New York Times reported that the United States plans to veto Mrs. Birkett because she made statements that described what is happening in Gaza under Israeli occupation as genocide. No official word from the United States and some suggest this is the Israeli lobby at work trying to force the US to state their position rather than an actual U S positon. We wish Mrs. Birkett luck.

Last week, the Bahamian press led with a headline that the American Ambassador to The Bahamas Hershel Walker denounced the complaints of The Bahamas about Drug Enforcement Agents of his country operating in The Bahamas without the permission of The Bahamas’ government. He said that he did not know why the government did not carry out its commitment to fight drug trafficking rather than complaining about the arrest of a known drug trafficker.  The American Ambassador misspoke because there is no complaint about arresting any drug trafficker, known or otherwise. The complaint is that in two cases involving Bahamians arrested in the United States for crimes that were alleged to have been committed in The Bahamas, the crimes were induced by agents of the Drug Enforcement Agency of the United States, working without the consent of the government of The Bahamas. This leaves those agents open to being charged for drug offences in The Bahamas, if the evidence of the U S authorities is to be believed.  There is also the question of the violation of the country’s sovereignty. That didn’t make any difference to Michael Pintard, the Leader of The Opposition who immediately chimed in that The Bahamas government was fighting the United States efforts to fight drug trafficking instead of helping the United States. Michael Pintard is an unpatriotic Bahamian and we see why he has ended up losing the general election. He is simply craven and yes even stupid.

Ambassador Wendall Jones

Ambassador Wendall Jones spoke to The Tribune to set the record straight about the meeting in Washington D C with U S authorities about the work of American agents in The Bahamas without authority of the government of The Bahamas. The story was reported by Leandra Rolle and was published on 24 September 2026:

On Tuesday, Bahamas Ambassador to the United States Wendall Jones confirmed that a Bahamian delegation took its concerns directly to the US Justice Department, meeting acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Skaret and other officials over what the government believes were ‘rogue’ DEA operators on Bahamian soil.

The meeting included Assistant Commissioner of Police for Security and Intelligence Dwight Adderley and National Intelligence Agency Director Anthony Ferguson. The Tribune reached out to Mr Jones after Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell posted photographs of the September 18 meeting on Facebook.

Mr Jones accused undercover US agents of operating outside treaties and longstanding arrangements governing law enforcement cooperation between the two countries.

 “The same way a police officer is not allowed to go into the US to arrest someone or something such,” Mr Jones said, “by the same token, the DEA agent is not allowed to do so in The Bahamas unless they have the permission of the government of The Bahamas. That is the complaint.”

…

We just wanted to make it very clear that they have been operating against the laws of our country,” he said. “And we just wanted the US authorities to be aware of it and to investigate it so that it doesn’t happen in the future.”

 “In order for a DEA agent to operate in The Bahamas,” he said, “it must do so with the permission of the Bahamas government or the Royal Bahamas police force.

 “That is a matter of law. That is a matter of treaty. That is a matter of an agreement between the two countries and that agreement goes back to the early 1980s.”

Wayne Munroe answered questions by the press about the meaning of the meeting that took place between U S authorities and Bahamian authorities in Washington D C on 18 September 2026 that were misinterpreted publicly by the U S Ambassador in The Bahamas. The report was in The Tribune 25 September 2026 by Leandra Rolle:

Mr Munroe said every country has laws and procedures that must be respected and suggested there was no reason for US officials to be “overly defensive” about the government raising concerns with the US Justice Department.

 “We’re a small country, and you know, all we say is just as it would say we can’t go and do that in the US,” he said. “We can’t go and do that in Turks and Caicos. We can’t go and do that in Jamaica without reference to their police resources. That’s all it said.”

,,,

Mr Munroe said yesterday that coordination between Bahamian and foreign law enforcement produces more effective results because local officers have knowledge that outsiders may not possess.

He said informing Bahamian authorities could also prevent an undercover DEA agent involved in an apparent drug transaction from being arrested or charged by police unaware of the operation.

 “So that is why you don’t operate without reference to local law enforcement,” Mr Munroe said, “but nothing affects our working relationship with them.”

He also rejected suggestions that the undercover operation demonstrated a lack of confidence by US authorities in the Bahamian government, saying the country’s drug enforcement officers are vetted, experienced and subjected to polygraph testing. However, the reliability of polygraph testing is disputed, with the American Psychological Association saying scientific evidence does not support it as a reliably accurate method of detecting deception.

Asked about perceptions that the government was trying to hide something, Mr Munroe responded: “Trying to hide what?”

He pointed to arrests and drug seizures since the Davis administration took office and said the government did not want The Bahamas used as a transhipment point for drugs destined for the United States.

 “We do not want our country to be used as a transhipment point to feed the drug habit of the American public that consumes the drug,” he said. “We do not want that.”

…

 “The same things that can be said about corruption in The Bahamas can be mirrored about corruption in the US because it’s received there,” he said, “so we would be receptive to whatever steps the US takes to battle that sort of corruption on their soil.”

 “So, if there’s corruption that permits it to be transhipped through our country, then there must be corruption that permits it to land in the US, aye?”

The latest fire on 24 September 2026 at BPL

All last week throughout The Bahamas, the country was plagued by power outages and water outages. Eleuthera suffered. New Providence suffered. Meanwhile, the Bahamas Power and Light Company suspended the Union Leader accusing him of bilking the company of overtime monies unlawfully and fired two other union members.  Let us hope this will keep the power on. Consumers are increasingly fed up with it.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley hit a home run when she spoke at the United Nations on Thursday 24 September 2026. She made the usual calls for multilateralism, for climate action and for sovereignty but it was her stirring call to the words of Marcus Garvey that were put to music by Bob Marley that moved the audience: Until that ignoble and unhappy regime that holds are brothers in Angola , in Mozambique, South Africa, sub human bondage, there will be war. Amen