News Releases

UWI Diplomatic Academy to spotlight UN’s Role in the Caribbean’s Post-COVID-19 Recovery

For Release Upon Receipt - December 10, 2020

St. Augustine


With the active policy shift from COVID-19-driven responses to post-COVID-19 recovery, the debate now is over what comes next for the Caribbean and the role of partnerships. For the Caribbean region, the United Nations (UN) remains a vital channel of support for the region. It is in this context that The UWI St. Augustine’s Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean (DAOC) will host a webinar on December 15 titled: ‘The Caribbean and Post-COVID-19 Recovery: The Role of the United Nations in the Context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.

The webinar, which will be held via Zoom web conference, centres around four related themes: (i) the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications for the Caribbean’s ability to advance on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a 15-year plan to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that UN Member States signed off on in 2015; (ii) the Agenda 2030-related opportunities to ‘build back better’, taking account of COVID-19-related setbacks; (iii) UN programming/partnership (re-)calibrations in the region in the age of COVID-19, against the backdrop of the Decade of Action; and (iv) the Caribbean’s post-COVID-19 recovery planning/policy trajectory. 

“This DAOC-hosted webinar represents an opportunity to contribute to framing of the unfolding Caribbean post-COVID-19 recovery narrative through the UN lens. The nature of the COVID-19 crisis has elicited renewed interest in the importance of multilateralism, the UN’s 75th anniversary also spurring wider debates on same,” said DAOC Manager Dr. Nand C. Bardouille.

 

This upcoming webinar, which will be moderated by Dr. Bardouille, features three panellists: Mrs. Safiya Horne-Bique, Director of Trade and Sustainable Development, Association of Caribbean States (ACS) Secretariat; Mr. Srdan Deric, RCO Team Leader, United Nations Country Team (UNCT) Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten; and Dr. Abdullahi O. Abdulkadri, Coordinator, Statistics and Social Development Unit, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) Sub-regional Headquarters for the Caribbean. The Commonwealth Secretariat’s Senior Director for the Economic, Youth and Sustainable Development Directorate, Dr. Ruth Kattumuri, will serve in the role of a panel-wide discussant.

Given the ACS’s role of enhancing cooperation within the Greater Caribbean, Mrs. Horne-Bique will provide a perspective on COVID-19 driven responses and post-COVID-19 recovery in the Greater Caribbean. Mrs. Horne-Bique’s presentation will set the stage for her fellow panellists, highlighting the importance of partnerships in the sustainable development of the wider region. From their respective institutional vantage points, Mr. Deric and Dr. Abdulkadri will elaborate on the role of the UN in lending support to the Caribbean in this ‘COVID-19 moment’. Dr. Kattumuri will provide a Commonwealth perspective on the issues, taking into account the Commonwealth Secretariat’s role as a key multilateral partner for its Caribbean small states members.

A cross section of the public and private sectors, as well as some non-state actors, are expected to be on hand in the webinar’s virtual audience.

The webinar takes place from 10am to 12:30pm (Atlantic Standard Time). For registration details, please visit https://sta.uwi.edu/daoc/webinars.

 

                                                                               END

 

Note to the Editor:

This DAOC-hosted webinar is a follow-on to the inaugural webinar of a recently launched DAOC webinar series. Held on September 22nd, the webinar was convened under the title ‘The Caribbean and the Coronavirus Crisis: Big Problems for Small States’ (link to the recording is available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WvXVaTOXA1BUJif5LEk8rZ2tZniFD8KI/view?usp=sharing).

 

About the Diplomatic Academy of the Caribbean (DAOC)

The DAOC is the Caribbean's premier professional development-oriented diplomatic studies centre. An integral part of The University of the West Indies' (UWI) Institute of International Relations (IIR), it was established in 2014. The DAOC has a primary teaching mandate in the area of diplomatic studies, offering short, highly specialized training modules in the broad field of diplomatic studies. For Caribbean professionals seeking to expand their capabilities to advance an international career, the DAOC is a trusted educational partner. Combining a world-class suite of curricular offerings, which align with topical policy and learning trends, with a programme of advocacy and partnerships regarding the relationship between diplomacy and the Caribbean, the Diplomatic Academy provides a unique setting for stakeholders to deepen diplomatic skills/knowledge and enhance policy expertise. The DAOC has yielded substantial and complementary benefit to the IIR, which was established in 1966 by agreement between the Government of Trinidad and Tobago and the Government of Switzerland.

Integral to the DAOC's mission is its commitment to help close human resources capacity gaps in international affairs and diplomacy in the Caribbean, by providing capacity-building and skills development training in diplomacy to up and coming diplomats and to aspiring diplomats from the Caribbean Region. This diplomatic learning and training facility also strengthens the University's capacities for research/analysis, knowledge‐sharing, advocacy, and partnerships and dialogue on the relationship between diplomacy and the Caribbean broadly conceived, with the goal of helping to facilitate policy-relevant awareness-raising on international affairs issues of import (and that are topical) to the Region.

The Diplomatic Academy derives its character from its global outlook, real-world impact and Caribbean mindedness which, in sum, constitute The DAOC Advantage™. For more information, please visit:  https://sta.uwi.edu/daoc.

 

About The UWI

For more than 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students across five campuses: Cave Hill in Barbados; Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda; Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago; and an Open Campus. Times Higher Education has ranked The UWI among the top 1,258 universities in world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in its Latin America Rankings for 2018 and 2019. The UWI is the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists.

As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); The UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport. As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of “The”)

 

Contact