Safeguarding Aruba’s Sovereignty

The following address was presented at the Baku Initiative Group Conference, “Right of Return and Self-Determination: Double Standards and Selective Approaches,” held on June 24, 2026, at the United States Congress on Capitol Hill, inside the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Grand rising to all distinguished delegates, advocates, and members of our global African Diaspora.

I begin by extending my deepest gratitude to Dr. Rhoda Arrindell for bringing us together in this historic space. A space where truth is not only spoken, it is reclaimed. My name is Shirley Caines; Vice President-Treasurer and Co-Founder of the grassroot non-profit foundation called: Plataforma Nacional Herencia di Sclavitud na Aruba, PNHSA. Translated into English means: National Platform of Slavery Heritage in Aruba. And the abbreviation “PNHSA” means to think. We implore for our people to think for themselves first, to see the patterns and not to think out of fear before they make a decision.

We stand for truth, healing, education, and community empowerment because without these, self-determination is only a slogan.

Aruba is my birthplace, and I am grateful for the island that shaped my spirit and who has built me into who I am today, however I call on our people to think with open eyes and open hearts, because the Right of Return and Self-Determination are not distant ideas, they are the lived fight of our African diaspora, our Indigenous roots, and every community touched by colonization.

The truth is simple: Every people deserves the right to shape their own destiny. Every community that has been displaced physically, culturally, or historically, deserves the right to reclaim what was taken from them.

But this world does not treat all peoples equally. Some nations receive full recognition, full support, and full protection when they assert their rights. Meanwhile, Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples are told to be patient, to negotiate endlessly, or to accept a version of “autonomy” that keeps real power far from their hands.

This is not an accident; it is a pattern. And Aruba is a living proof of that pattern. For us, the double standards are not hidden in diplomatic language. They are built into the very structure of how decisions are made about our land, our people, and our future. It is the quiet expectation that we should accept less than what others receive without question. We are here today to say: we see the double standards, we name it, and we refuse to normalize it.

The Reality of Aruba’s “Autonomy”

Aruba’s history is a case study in selective self-determination.

We were taken, governed, and controlled by external powers. Status Aparte, Separate, was presented as independence, it created an appearance of autonomy while leaving the core powers such as sovereignty, defense, foreign affairs and the judiciary in Dutch hands.

But the deeper truth is that it deliberately distanced Aruba from the powerful emergence of Black leadership in Curacao, interrupting a collective strength that was beginning to reshape our future.

And now, as the world approaches the 2030 UN decolonization deadline. And this deadline of the declaration does not mean an end to the Economic dominance. It means the continuing practice of economic exploration and dominance under a new brand European office on our island.

We are witnessing something unmistakable: The Netherlands is not loosening its grip on Aruba, it is tightening it boldly, publicly, and without apology.

And the clearest proof of this tightening is the recent opening of the EU office in Aruba. Let us be honest about what this means. This office is not a symbol. It is a signal.

A declaration that powerful external actors intend to deepen their presence, their influence, and their control at the very moment when decolonization should be moving forward and not backward.

The timing is not accidental. It is strategic. By planting an EU office on our soil, Aruba is being positioned not as a people with a right to self-determination, but as a geopolitical asset, a border post, a resource zone, a strategic foothold for European interests.

It places our island inside a framework designed to serve others first: their borders, their security, their access to our waters, their access to our resources and their control over our future.

This is not a partnership. This is not equality. This is a modern extension of the same colonial logic we have resisted for centuries, only now dressed in the language of “cooperation” and “European integration.”

The opening of that office makes one thing absolutely clear: as the deadline for decolonization approaches, the pressure on Aruba is increasing and not decreasing.

Double Standards in Action

When the UN passed the 2026 landmark resolution declaring the Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans the gravest crime against humanity, the Netherlands abstained, without consulting Aruba, Curaçao, or St. Maarten.

Then how can The Netherlands speak of “four equal countries” when our voices are erased and silenced, on matters of our own ancestral trauma?

This is the very definition of selective application of international law.

To Control the Narrative = To Control the Power

Today, Dutch institutions leads the research on our trauma and pain. A Dutch academic leads the “decolonization” narrative at our university and education. Dutch experts fly in to tell us how to grow food on our own land, in ways that does not decrease the revenue of the globalist, while local farmers struggle for water to grow their own food.

This is not development. This is dependency. This is narrative capture.

And narrative capture is a tool of modern colonization.

Our Right of Return

For Aruba, the right of return is not only about land. It is the restoration of truth, the reawakening of our African identity, the honoring of our ancestors’ dignity, and the reclamation of our authority to define who we are. It is the mending of a wound carried quietly across generations.

We were uprooted not only from territory, but from memory itself, from stories silenced, from names erased, from a heritage interrupted. Our right of return is the journey back to our own center, the return to wholeness, the return to the people we were before displacement tried to scatter us. It is, above all, the return to ourselves.

In Closing: A Diplomatic but Uncompromising Call

We stand here not to seek approval, but to claim what is already ours by right, by history, and by the undeniable truth of our people’s struggle. Aruba’s future, our sovereignty, our dignity, our security, depends on ending selective approaches to self-determination and ensuring that the rights recognized for others are recognized for us.

PNHSA stands ready in a effective strategic way. Our Caribbean family stands ready. Our African Diaspora stands ready.

And together, we will reclaim the narrative, reclaim the dignity, and reclaim the future that has always belonged to us.

Thank you.