In final UN address as CM, Picardo urges Fourth Committee to move on from ‘stale’ decisions and delist Gibraltar 

Chief Minister Fabian Picardo told the UN Fourth Committee that Gibraltar welcomed cooperation with Spain but would never surrender its rights, as he urged the committee to stop repeating “stale” decisions every year and instead take practical steps towards Gibraltar’s removal from its decolonisation list. 

In his final address to the committee before stepping down as Chief Minister, Mr Picardo pointed to the UK/EU treaty as evidence that cooperation with Spain could advance without compromising Gibraltar’s rights. 

But he challenged the UN to act on the wishes Gibraltarians had repeatedly expressed about their future, calling for a visiting mission and a recommendation to remove Gibraltar from the UN’s list of non-self-governing territories. 

His speech brought together the changes delivered by the treaty and the unresolved demand that successive Chief Ministers have put before the UN for decades. 

Mr Picardo said the agreement, now signed and being provisionally applied, had been negotiated at Gibraltar’s request, with his Government leading for this community at the negotiating table. 

“It removed a short but no less cruel iron curtain that General Franco drew closed to divide families and friends,” he said. 

“And our treaty states, in terms, that nothing in it affects the positions on sovereignty.” 

For Mr Picardo, the removal of the physical barriers at the frontier demonstrated what Gibraltar could achieve through negotiation while maintaining its position on sovereignty. 

“We have shown that our people can build friendship with its neighbour without surrendering a single one of our rights,” he told the committee. 

“Cooperation we welcome, but we will never capitulate.” 

Mr Picardo said the principles governing Gibraltar’s decolonisation remained unchanged. 

He asked the Fourth Committee to move beyond its repeated consideration of Gibraltar’s position and initiate a process that would allow the UN to assess the Rock directly. 

“First, stop recycling, year after year, a stale decision written for another age,” he said. 

“Second, direct the C24 to send a visiting mission.” 

“Let them come and see a self-governing, democratic, prosperous people, confident in who we are and confident in our rights.” 

He urged the committee to fulfil what he said was its obligation under the UN Charter and recommend Gibraltar’s removal from the list. 

The appeal came in an address that Mr Picardo described as his last as Chief Minister, recalling his first appearance at the UN in 2002, when he had accompanied Sir Joe Bossano. 

Then aged 30, he had sat behind Sir Joe without speaking, listening and learning as Gibraltar’s case was presented. 

Having himself addressed the committee 15 times, Mr Picardo said he was leaving in a year that would mark eight decades since Gibraltar was first placed on the UN list. 

He set his own appearances alongside those of the three other Chief Ministers who had taken Gibraltar’s case to the United Nations. 

Sir Joshua Hassan had first appeared in 1963, asserting that Gibraltar belonged to its people. 

Sir Joe had returned in 1992 with a promise to continue attending until the UN acted on their freely expressed wishes. 

Sir Peter Caruana had spent 16 years telling the UN that Gibraltarians’ self-determination should be paramount. 

Mr Picardo said he had delivered the same message, first as Leader of the Opposition in 2011 and subsequently as Chief Minister whenever he could attend. 

“Eight decades on your list,” he said. 

“Six decades of speeches. Four successive leaders. One consistent message.” 

The central argument throughout those appearances was that Gibraltar’s future must be determined by its people, rather than by the interests of a neighbouring state asserting a claim. 

Setting out the legal basis for that position, Mr Picardo cited Article 73 of the UN Charter, which he said made the interests of the inhabitants of a Non-Self-Governing Territory paramount. 

“Not the interests of any neighbour, or of any claimant,” he told the committee. 

He also cited Article 1 of both International Covenants, extended to Gibraltar 50 years earlier, and its declaration that all peoples have the right to self-determination. 

Resolution 1514, he added, likewise referred to all peoples, without exceptions. 

Mr Picardo also referred to Resolution 1541 and its provisions concerning a place that was separate and distinct from its administering power. 

He argued that a state which merely claimed such a place, without legal ties of territorial sovereignty, had no standing in its decolonisation. 

Drawing on the International Court of Justice’s cases concerning Namibia and Western Sahara, and its 2019 opinion on Chagos, he said self-determination was the governing principle of decolonisation. 

That required a free and genuine expression of the wishes of the people concerned, with an obligation on the international community to ensure the right was fulfilled. 

“Territorial integrity, properly understood, is a shield for colonised peoples,” he said. 

“It is not a sword in the hands of expansionist neighbours, whether in Southern Europe, South America or elsewhere.” 

He contrasted those principles with the resolutions from the 1960s that he said continued to stand against Gibraltar’s case, describing them as “resolutions procured by a murderous dictator whose legacy democratic Spain has rightly left behind”. 

Against that, he pointed to the decisions Gibraltarians themselves had taken in two referendums. 

In 1967, he said, 99% had chosen not to pass under Spanish sovereignty, while in 2002, 99% had rejected shared sovereignty with Spain. 

“We have been asked [and] we have clearly and unequivocally answered,” he said. 

“All we await is for you to hear our answers.” 

The demand was for the UN to act in accordance with those expressed wishes, rather than continue a process that had left Gibraltar on its list despite decades of representations by its elected leaders. 

Born in 1972, Mr Picardo said among the Gibraltarians who had grown up behind a frontier closed by a military dictator seeking to break Gibraltar’s democratic will. 

That effort had failed, he said, because his parents’ generation had kept Gibraltar alive and his own had developed it into a modern nation. 

Their children would inherit it with clearly established, inalienable rights, the committee was told. 

“I came to this room first as a young man who listened avidly,” the Chief Minister said. 

“I leave it as a father who has spoken passionately.” 

“With children who understand clearly.” 

His departure as Chief Minister, he told the committee, would not end Gibraltar’s demand for recognition of its right to determine its future. 

“Because, you can keep us on the list of non-self-governing territories [and] you can pretend that institutional inertia in the C-24 excuses you from acting,” he said. 

“But you cannot deny us our right to self-determination.” 

“You may outlast this Chief Minister.” 

“But you will never outlast the people of Gibraltar.” 

“Because Gibraltar belongs only to the Gibraltarians.” 

“It always has, and it always will.” 

In bidding farewell to the committee, Mr Picardo that while this was his last address as Chief Minister, it may not be his last appearance at the UN.  

“Goodbye,” he said, adding: “For now.”