Chief Minister addresses the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation - 458/2026

The Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo KC MP, today addressed the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation (the Committee of 24) in New York for the last time as Chief Minister.

The address came eighty years after Gibraltar was listed as a Non-Self-Governing Territory in 1946, and sixty-three years after Gibraltarians first spoke before the Committee in 1963. The Chief Minister is the fourth Chief Minister of Gibraltar to have addressed the Committee, and has done so more often than any of his predecessors.

In his address, the Chief Minister set out Gibraltar's case for self-determination, referred to the Treaty concluded between the United Kingdom and the European Union in respect of Gibraltar, and called on the Committee to send a visiting mission to Gibraltar and to recommend Gibraltar's delisting to the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly.

The full text of the address is attached.

The Chief Minister, the Hon Fabian Picardo KC MP, said:

"It has been one of the greatest honours of my life to speak for the people of Gibraltar before this Committee. I am the Chief Minister to have delivered the most addresses before the Committee. As I address it for the last time as Chief Minister, I do so in hope, and with confidence in the generation of Gibraltarians who will follow. Our commitment to good neighbourly relations and to our right to self-determination remains as strong as ever. I know the Committee will eventually have no choice but to delist us, but that day will come only if we remain steadfast in our defence of Gibraltarian's rights before it."