MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Friday, June 26th 2026 - 13:30 UTC
The two addresses took complementary approaches
Two members of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly, Dorothy “Dot” Gould and Michael Goss, addressed the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation, known as the Committee of 24 (C24), on June 25, where they defended the right to self-determination of the archipelago's inhabitants and renewed their invitation for the body to send a visiting mission to the Islands, something that has never happened since the UN began considering the question in 1965.
The two addresses took complementary approaches. Gould, who holds the Health and Social Services portfolio and represents the rural community, centered her message on personal testimony and a description of Island society. She recalled moving to the Islands from England at the age of five, three years before the 1982 Argentine invasion. “I want this committee to understand what it feels like, as a child, to have someone try to take your home from you,” she said. She described a community of around 3,600 people with more than seventy countries of birth and stressed that the territory funds healthcare and university education for its residents from its own economy, without asking the United Kingdom for money, and that it holds an A+ credit rating from S&P Global.
