Salutations:
I welcome you all to St. Kitts & Nevis – the country that my Government is honored to have been given the opportunity to lead. These two islands, as we know, hold a special place in the history of the Caribbean. It was here that the French and British subjugation of this Region began. They are the islands of the indigenous people of the Carib. It is here that thousands of our African Ancestors called their home away from home. And it was here that the mass-based movement toward self-liberation – in the English-speaking Caribbean – began as well.
St. Kitts and Nevis gave birth to the Right Excellent Sir Robert L. Bradshaw, the Right Excellent Sir Caleb Azariah Paul Southwell, the Right Honourable Dr. Sir Kennedy Simmonds and His Excellency Sir Lee Llewellyn Moore, each of whom was a leader of the Regional Integration Movement in his own right. St. Kitts and Nevis, then, has historically been a place of auspicious beginnings. And it is my belief that over the next six months, building upon the outstanding work of these men and of all the Chairs that have come before, St. Kitts-Nevis will once again, working with you, Esteemed Heads, play yet another historic role in this Region.
Together, we will assess the tumult that has befallen much of the world. And together we shall craft strategic responses that take full account of the challenges we face and the resources at our disposal, on the one hand; and the need for fluid analysis and insightful policy formulation and action, on the other. And we will move deftly, as our forefathers did, in defense of Caribbean stability; Caribbean justice; Caribbean advancement. In defense, esteemed Heads, of those who elected us to lead; and in defense of this Region.
St. Kitts and Nevis assumes the Chairmanship of CARICOM at a time of great global strain and uncertainty. Questions are being raised – as we speak – regarding the viability of the European Union. Uncertainty regarding the raising of the U.S. debt ceiling abounds. Problems in Europe will have consequences for the United States. And we, after all, are a nearby neighbor.
Just within the past 24-hours, in the most dramatic reckoning yet of the 2008 US financial crisis, it was announced that the Bank of America will pay some $8.5 billion to investors who had been duped into buying fraudulent mortgage securities. Xenophobia is a word that is increasingly being heard across Europe. This tumultuous world is all interconnected as we assume the Chair. However, with our commitment being not to our two islands alone, but indeed to the entire Caribbean, we recognize this Chairmanship as the distinct honor that it is. And it is one that we approach both with humility, and with a profound and unshakeable belief in us all – as a Caribbean people.
Permit me at this time, Esteemed Colleagues, to officially welcome the Heads of Government who have been appointed, elected, or re-elected since our last Regular Meeting of the Conference. We welcome:
• The Honorable Freundel Stuart, Prime Minister of Barbados;
• His Excellency Mr. Michel Martelly, President of the Republic of Haiti;
• His Excellency Desire D. Bouterse, President of the Republic of Suriname.
Once again, welcome.
Permit me to delay our welcome to the Hon. Kamla Persad Bisessar who is expected to arrive tomorrow having being delayed because of some domestic matters. You are aware that her husband underwent surgery a few days ago. We pray for his speedy and complete recovery. We delay our welcome also to Dr. the Hon. Ralph Gonsalves and the Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica and the Hon. Reuben Meade, Chief Minister of Montserrat, who are expected later.
Colleagues, Invited Guests: As we look to the next six months and beyond, our deliberations as a Region will be dominated both by issue areas previously agreed to by us (most recently, for example, during our May Policy Retreat in Guyana), as well as by priority issues that none of us, at this time, has the ability to foresee.
The sizes of our respective nations, combined with our special history, have resulted in our nations not having the requisite sources of capital, internally, to fuel the levels of economic growth and job formation that we seek. We are well managed, we are stable, we are fully functioning democracies, but our ability to attract foreign investment, in the short, medium, and long-term, therefore, will remain key – despite the economic instability currently being experienced in many nations that have traditionally been sources of investment capital for the Region.
In addition to this, in an era of increasing food prices, steady population growth, and limits to food production globally, our ensuring the Caribbean people’s access to safe, reliable, and nutritious food remains key. Food security, after all, is essential both at the level of the individual – because of the implications for personal health; as well as at the level of the Region – because of the link between the health of a people, and their Region’s productivity and competitiveness.
Our Region, fortunately, has been endowed with vast areas of fertile, arable land – land that is ideally suited to agricultural production. And due to our nations being either insular or coastal, our Region also controls a vast marine asset base – with positive implications in terms of dietary contributions, health, economic activity – and food security.
The Region’s insular and/or coastal features have obviously delivered to us a competitive advantage within the rather lucrative, global tourism market. These characteristics, combined with our climactic, topographical, and cultural profile, have also secured for us a special niche vis-à-vis tourism. As we all know, however, it is not enough to be able to state that the Caribbean is a major source of revenue for the global cruise ship industry, for example. Far more important must be our ongoing efforts to ensure that this Region continues to identify and develop the myriad entrepreneurial and revenue-based opportunities that tourism offers, and that these multi-faceted benefits are realized and maximized for the people of the Region.
Any reference to tourism today, Ladies and Gentlemen, must incorporate the current global instability, and the implications of this instability for tourism everywhere. I mention this, not to be a prophet of doom, but because this acknowledgement is, indeed, key to the skillful charting of our uniquely, Caribbean-specific response to same.
International finance, Esteemed Fellow-Heads….Distinguished Guests…… has always constituted a key component of this Region’s development progress and prospects.
It is also a fact, however, that as our policy prescriptions have borne fruit, and our socio-economic status has risen, some of our nations have had to deal with the restrictive – and logically unsound – denial of access to concessional financing. This constitutes a serious impediment to the affected nation’s growth, and to their ability to independently underwrite the projects and services that they have deemed to be in the best interest of their people.
Through a campaign of sustained presentations to insightfully selected executive branch officials, legislators, and international financial institutions abroad, this Region must do everything in its power to correct this anomaly. And the economic development of our Region is now intricately intertwined with new and emerging Information and Communication Technologies, alluded to earlier by Prime Minister Hon. Tillman Thomas of Grenada. We have seen the ways in which these new capabilities have revolutionized the way in which, and the speed with which, commerce is conducted within and across national boundaries. And the people of the Caribbean already understand that advanced ICT skills now do more than merely improve one’s employment prospects. They understand that these skills, indeed, represent a doorway to myriad – and heretofore nonexistent – entrepreneurial possibilities for them and their families.
The ICT arena, we know, is characterized by rapid change. And along with improvements in efficiency, administrative precision, reliability, and other positive offshoots, there has also been, all around the world, the emergence of negative sociological phenomena associated with precisely these advanced technologies. In the interest both of maximizing the multi-faceted benefits that the ICT revolution can deliver to our Region, as well as in the interest of controlling any negative sociological implications of this revolution, ICT should be seen in the Region, not so much as tool that makes other industries more efficient and competitive, but as a distinct industry in its own right.
As we look outward, Ladies and Gentlemen, our successes in the areas of health care, our ongoing and successful collaboration with the University of the West Indies, and other accomplishments augur well for our plans to ensure that the construction industry, with its significant multiplier efforts, continue to be an engine for growth in the Region. And they give reason for optimism regarding the emergence of creative industries in the Region, with their logical tie-in to our tourism sector; and in relation to the social stability often ensues when the constructive flowering of artistic expression is encouraged and facilitated.
CARICOM, Ladies and Gentlemen, has committed itself to a Regional thrust – to a joint battle – against crime in general, and violent crime in particular. And both our intra-Regional initiatives, as well as the broader, multilateral, national security framework that we have come to know as the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative constitute the essential underpinnings of our Region’s social, economic, political, and indeed even cultural interests. Indeed, it was just one week ago that some US $77 million was committed to the Region’s joint effort against crime – because security is pivotal to all other areas of public and private endeavor – not only in the Caribbean, but everywhere.
Security threats take different forms in different countries and Regions. We know the form that it takes in this Region, and the decision by CARICOM to address this Regional threat with a Regional response was one of the most insightful that we have ever taken on this issue. And as incoming Chair, I am especially committed to working with you, Fellow Heads, as well as our international partners, on this complex but unavoidable battle.
Fellow Heads: There is much that we have accomplished, but there remains much to be done; for it is constant striving and motion that provides the fuel for all advancement. Among the areas in which we must demonstrate greater striving and motion is in the pace at which decisions are taken regarding the CARICOM Single Market & Economy. Another area pertains to The Caribbean Court of Justice, which has a distinct role to perform in the functioning of our Region, and in the assertion of ourselves as a fully evolved and socio-political grouping. We must, as a Region, ensure that this role is indeed fulfilled.
We must also ensure the greater harmonization of those procedures which are now a part of each of our individual realities, but which nonetheless, from a Regional perspective, lack a certain uniformity of process, form, and impact. We must also restructure and modernize the CARICOM Secretariat so that it may play an even greater role in advancing a pragmatic and realistic Regional agenda, and in strengthening the integration process.
There have been, as I have said, many areas of substantive and quantifiable progress: Let us look back, for example, to the 2001 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV and AIDS, and its subsequent Declaration which led to the establishment of the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Our Region was the first in the entire world to produce an actionable response. Since the Nassau Declaration of 2001, with its Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) on the one hand, and the Caribbean Cooperation in Health (CCH) on the other, the Caribbean Community has indeed produced ten years of solid achievements in the area of health sector development.
In 2001, 10% of our populace had access to treatment for HIV/AIDS. Today, that figure is above 50%.The incidence of HIV/AIDS has decreased. And there has been a significant reduction in deaths as well. It was this Region that initiated the first ever Heads of Government Summit on Non-Communicable Diseases which as we know account for some 70% of deaths in the Region, and costs some US$50 – 70M per year, and which was held in Port of Spain. And it was as a result of the Caribbean’s efforts at the UN and elsewhere, and as a direct off-shoot of Port of Spain Declaration, that there will now be a UN High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases in September of this year.
One of the most significant outgrowths of the Nassau Declaration, however, will redound to the benefit of this Region and its peoples long after we are no more. And I refer here to the consolidation of the Region’s five health-oriented institutions into one agency – the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA). As a result of this important change, our Region will be better positioned to respond to health emergencies. We will have access to high level laboratories. There will be enhanced training for nationals in the health-care profession. There will be heightened and expanded health-care related research and development.
At this, the Thirty-Second Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community, the formalities pertaining to CARPHA will be officially addressed. We expect that an Executive Board will be in place by September of this year, by which time we also expect a Resource Mobilization and Sustainability Plan to have been completed. We also expect a 2-year work programme and budge to be in place by December 2011, and the recruitment of the Implementation Team to have taken place by January 2012, and a Business Plan by March 2012.
At the time of the Nassau Declaration, we agreed that the health of the Region’s peoples would be the key determinant of our accomplishments in all and any areas of endeavors. We, as a Region, committed ourselves to making meaningful and significant strides in the interests of our people, and this we have done.
I commend my Fellow-Heads for all that they have done to protect this Region and to advance its interests.
I commend our two honourees who are most deserving of the highest order of recognition by our Community.
I commend the people of the Region for the resilience and the hard work and the outstanding qualities that have enabled the Caribbean to remain a symbol of stability and good governance.
And I pledge my unstinting attention to the needs of our Region and our people during the time that St. Kitts-Nevis will have the honor of chairing this most important, and impactful, Regional institution.
Thank you.
