The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization will again discuss Puerto Rico’s political status as its annual session kicks off Monday in New York.
In last year’s session, the UN committee approved a resolution pushed by Cuba and supported by Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela that establishes that “any initiative to solve Puerto Rico’s political status should originate with the Puerto Rican people.”
The panel ratified the right of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence by adopting the resolution for the thirteenth year in a row. It called on the United States to expedite a process that would allow Puerto Ricans to fully exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence, requesting the UN General Assembly to consider the question of Puerto Rico comprehensively in all its aspects.
The 29-member body also backed a constituent assembly as an avenue to resolve the status issues from “decolonization alternatives recognized in international law.”
The panel has taken up the issue of Puerto Rico’s status every year for four decades. This is the first session it will hold after the status plebiscite in Puerto Rico last November.
In the first question of the two-part referendum, 54 percent of voters said they were not content with the current commonwealth status.
The second question asked what status was preferred. Of the about 1.3 million voters who made a choice, nearly 800,000 supported statehood, some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose independence. But nearly 500,000 left that question blank.
The White House has said “the results were clear, the people of Puerto Rico want the issue of status resolved, and a majority chose statehood in the second question.”
The Puerto Rican Independence Party and New Progressive Party maintain that the results of the two-step plebiscite represent a clear rejection of the continuation of the current territorial status. Those voting “no” included statehood supporters, as well as advocates of independence and free association.
Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla and his commonwealth Popular Democratic Party argue the ballot was rigged against the current status and that the empty ballots represent a protest against commonwealth’s exclusion from the second question. The governor says the blank votes dropped support for statehood to just 44 percent.
The $3.8 trillion fiscal 2014 budget President Barack Obama sent to Congress includes $2.5 million for voter education and the first federally sanctioned plebiscite in Puerto Rico on options that would “resolve” the fundamental question of the island’s future political status.
Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress, has filed legislation aimed at putting Puerto Rico on the path to statehood.
Pierluisi’s Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act hinges on a proposed federally sanctioned “yes” or “no” vote on statehood in Puerto Rico. The measure proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives would ask Puerto Rican voters, “Do you want Puerto Rico to be admitted as a state of the United States?” A majority vote for statehood would trigger a 180 deadline for the president to certify the results of the plebiscite and lodge legislation in Congress to admit Puerto Rico as a state the union “on an equal footing” with other states
PR not on UN’s list of colonies
The UN committee continues to take up the issue of Puerto Rico’s unresolved political status despite the fact that it doesn’t hang the “colony” tag on the island.
In 1917, Puerto Ricans were collectively made U.S. citizens via the Jones Act, and in 1952 the U.S. Congress turned the territory into a commonwealth after ratifying the island Constitution. The U.S. government then declared the territory was no longer a colony and stopped transmitting information about Puerto Rico to the United Nations Decolonization Committee. As a result, the UN General Assembly removed Puerto Rico from the UN list of non-self-governing territories.
Petitioners before the panel have pressed the international community to recognize Puerto Rico’s colonial status and place it on the list.
The non-self-governing territories are American Samoa, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands (Malvinas), Gibraltar, Guam, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Pitcairn, Saint Helena, Tokelau, Turks and Caicos Islands, United States Virgin Islands and Western Sahara. The administering Powers are France, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States.
Members of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization are Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Chile, China, Congo, Ivory Coast, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Grenada, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Russian Federation, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sierra Leone, Syria, Timor-Leste, Tunisia, United Republic of Tanzania and Venezuela.
