Cook Islands push to become a member of the United Nations has been put on hold for now says Deputy Prime Minister Mark Brown.
With the country set to attain developed nation status next year, Brown who is also Finance Minister Finance says they might revisit the idea to become a member of the global intergovernmental organisation.
“At this stage no, we’ve put that on hold. We did look at it few years ago. But for us it’s more of a long issue for us,” he said.
“All Cook Islanders are entitled to New Zealand passports under the special constitutional arrangement between the two countries, which is a drawback to the country’s push to gain UN membership. It has also failed to get support from the New Zealand government.
“One of the things that is becoming more apparent is next year we will be graduating into a developed nation status under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).So the way we’ve been doing business on the international stage will have to be little different, it will have to change and in that regard, we might have to revisit our push for UN membership,” Deputy PM Brown told Pacific journalists covering the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.
Brown said OECD needs to change its criteria to include vulnerability index to allow them to access concessional finance available to developing countries.
“Absolutely, I mean for country like us based on very narrow economic base, the criteria by OECD is very narrow and is based purely on income. What is not taken into account is the vulnerability of a number of Pacific countries small islands states in particular because the wealth and prosperity that we build up over the years can be destroyed in a day with the natural events like cyclone.
“So the need to build resilience but also to build mechanisms to be able to respond quickly and to recover quickly are still being developed. And we find this example in the Caribbean where countries that have reached developed nation status have been devastated by previous cyclone where they have had very great difficulties acquiring development assistance to help them rebuild because of that status.
“So there needs to be a revisit on the criteria that OECD places on countries like us to include vulnerability index to allow us to still access concessional finance that is available for developing countries,” said Minister Brown.
