His Excellency the Director-General of UNESCO
Members of the UNESCO delegation
Assistant Secretaries General of CARICOM
Ladies and Gentlemen
Members of the Media
It is my pleasure this morning to be part of this ceremony heralding deeper relations between the Caribbean Community and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). I am also pleased to welcome to the headquarters of the Community and the CARICOM Secretariat, His Excellency Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO.
The relations between UNESCO and the states comprising the Caribbean Community have been of mutual benefit from the time the first States were admitted to the UN in 1962. For us at the Secretariat, we cemented our relations at the administrative level with a Co-operation Agreement, which we signed with the UN Secretariat in 1997. That Agreement has as one of its main objectives the development of “measures to promote and expand co-operation and co-ordination between both Secretariats in order to increase the capacity of the two organisations to attain their common objectives.”
Today’s signing certainly takes that objective forward as with UNESCO’s help, the Secretariat and the Community will be moving to implement programmes in the fields of Education, Culture, Communication and Information, Natural Sciences and Social and Human Sciences. These are all areas that touch the heart and soul of our Community, reaching as they do directly to the people.
Indeed the cultural aspect of this Memorandum is geared towards improving the capability of our cultural products to benefit economically from their innovation and creativity. Progress in that area has been painstakingly slow, which has allowed others to reap the benefits of our undoubtedly gifted peoples. Any help that the Community can garner to ensure that the fruits of this creative labour can accrue to the artists and artistes is truly welcome.
Significantly too your visit coincides with the thirtieth anniversary celebrations of CARICOM, which means that this is the longest surviving Regional integration movement in the developing world. No doubt at the next leg of your present tour to Suriname you would be advised in detail of the plans for our eighth Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in that country between 24-30 August, 2003. The inaugural CARIFESTA was held right here in Guyana in 1972 and most fittingly with the assistance of UNESCO.
The signing of this memo also takes place at a time when we celebrate the 30th Anniversary of our Caribbean Examination Council whereby we have been able to systematize the curriculum and award of tertiary level certification across the Region. In this regard I must signal that the Education segment of this package will also have a direct impact on our society as there is special emphasis on developing distance education at the tertiary level to increase opportunities for both young and not so young. As you know in 1997 Heads of Government, set a critical goal of 15 percent enrollment of the post secondary age cohort in tertiary-level education programmes by 2005. With the cooperation of UNESCO and other agencies we are making very effort to ensure that we marshal the newer information technology to facilitate the active participation of our people in the knowledge based economy which is at the core of the increasingly competitive global system in which we live.
Your Excellency, with these few words on the importance of this exercise, let me on behalf of the Community and its people, thank you and your organization for continuing to render to us the kind of support so necessary for achieving our primary goal of a viable, sustainable and prosperous Caribbean. I thank you!
