(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Professor Nigel Harris, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), yesterday challenged the Caribbean Community to ensure greater collaboration with Regional and international institutions in order to build a Region fit for children.
Delivering the Keynote Address at the Opening Ceremony of the Twelfth Special Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), which opened at the Guyana International Convention Centre on 17 March 2008, Professor Harris argued that greater effort and investment were needed from Member States to support change in the Region.
“Change requires greater effort and greater investments,” said the Professor who further noted that the University of the West Indies was collaborating with the CARICOM Secretariat and other Regional institutions to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) especially the six goals which were related to children.
He added that the COHSOD was strategically positioned to create an awareness of, and lead in achieving those goals and opined that any programme for building a Region fit for children could only be sustained if it were anchored in the human and social development agenda of the Council and in pursuit of an inter-sectoral programme into which the agenda for children was fostered and given purpose.
He assured the COHSOD of the willingness of UWI to advance partnership with the Community in order to build the required human resources “to conduct research and to provide expertise and collaboration that would guarantee the Region’s children a robust future.”
Professor Harris also expressed concern at the pace of the Protocol on Contingent Rights. According to the UWI Vice Chancellor, there were ambiguities about the entitlements and privileges of families who moved within the CARICOM Single Market. He said if the matter was not expedited, it could contribute to the displacement of many children, especially in the areas of access to education and health care in the country to which they move.
The professor also pointed to the need to address migration as one of the factors which displaced children, and stressed the need to create an enabling environment based on sound philosophical and moral principles which would create a Regional community that placed supreme value on guaranteeing human rights and freedom. “Our Regional community must create an environment that promotes equity in access to social goods; that protects citizens from the fear of crime and violence and one that creates the conditions for improving the competitiveness of the Region in the global arena,” Professor Harris averred.
He expressed the hope that following the deliberations of the Council, CARICOM Member States would be “moved to give of their best for the nation’s children.”
Also giving remarks at the Opening Ceremony were CARICOM Secretary General HE Edwin Carrington; Hon Clement Rohee, Minister of Home Affairs Guyana, Hon. Peter Martinez, Chair of COHSOD; Hon. Edwin Wolf Minister of Education and Community Development, on behalf of HE President Ronald Runaldo Venetiaan, Lead Head for Culture, Gender, Youth and Sport and Mr Nils Kastberg, Regional Director, UNICEF. A major highlight of the ceremony was a powerful statement presented by children of the Caribbean.
The three day COHSOD will end on Wednesday (19 March, 2008) with a Declaration on a Region Fit For Children. One of the anticipated outcomes of the deliberations is the establishment of a revised Framework of Action for Children which Member States will be expected to implement.
