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UWI Experts share Post-Pandemic South-South Cooperation insights at ECLAC Expert Group Meeting

For Release Upon Receipt - December 22, 2020

St. Augustine


Technical cooperation among developing countries in the Global South, also known as South-South cooperation, is receiving even greater interest than before as a result of the economic shock dealt by the COVID-19 pandemic and multilateral efforts towards new strategies for financing development. Director of The UWI St. Augustine’s Institute of International Relations (IIR), Professor Jessica Byron-Reid and IIR Lecturer, Dr Jacqueline Laguardia-Martinez recently presented research findings on The Evaluation of South-South cooperation in Selected Caribbean Countries: Barbados and Jamaica. The findings were shared as part of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s (ECLAC) virtual Expert Group Meeting on the evaluation of South-South cooperation in the Caribbean in the context of the post-pandemic recovery, held on December 11.

Professor Byron-Reid and Dr Laguardia, in their capacity as ECLAC consultants, prepared this report over the past year, in the context of a larger study conducted by ECLAC on South-South cooperation involving the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Their report contextualized the Commonwealth Caribbean within the wider Latin American and Caribbean South-South cooperation landscape and presented case studies of Barbados and Jamaica.

Speaking on the project, Professor Byron-Reid noted that it is timely, given the fact that that too little is known and there has been very little research done on South-South cooperation in the English-speaking Caribbean. She was pleased that the report was well received by member countries and by the invited experts, and that it generated great interest among the ECLAC membership. The IIR researchers also expressed their appreciation of the support and inputs received from governmental officials, diplomats and non-state actors in Barbados and Jamaica, and from ECLAC officials in Santiago and in Port of Spain while they conducted this research.

South-South cooperation is a tool used by the states, international organizations, academics, civil society and the private sector to collaborate and share knowledge, skills and successful initiatives in specific areas such as education, agricultural development, human rights, urbanization, health, and climate change, among other key areas. The case studies presented gave a detailed picture for Barbados and Jamaica of the history, characteristics, advances and value of South-South cooperation, and explored modalities for its further strategic consolidation and development in the post- COVID-19 social and economic recovery agenda.

The presentation generated a stimulating discussion on the current value as well as the untapped potential of, and further opportunities for harnessing South-South cooperation and triangular cooperation in the ongoing work to achieve the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the Caribbean.

Some 22 member-states and associate members of ECLAC were represented at the meeting. Also in attendance were the representatives of the CARICOM Secretariat, the United Nations Office of South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), academic experts, ECLAC consultants working on similar case studies of South-South cooperation involving other member States, and officials from the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago de Chile, the ECLAC subregional headquarters for the Caribbean based in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the ECLAC office in Brasília, Brazil.

 

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Note to the Editor: To learn more about South-South cooperation, visit the UNOSSC website at  https://www.unsouthsouth.org/about/about-sstc/

 

Photos and Captions: 

Professor Jessica Byron-Reid - Director of The UWI St. Augustine’s Institute of International Relations (IIR)

 

Dr Jacqueline Laguardia-Martinez - Lecturer at The UWI St. Augustine’s Institute of International Relations (IIR)

 

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”)

 

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