Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cari­com’s 48th Heads of Gov­ern­ment con­fer­ence which Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne are at­tend­ing in Bar­ba­dos from to­day, will see Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res and Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion pres­i­dent Ur­su­la von der Leyen al­so in at­ten­dance.

Guter­res will have a closed ses­sion with Cari­com lead­ers on Haiti and “oth­er press­ing is­sues in the re­gion.”

He will al­so hold talks with Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed that Row­ley left yes­ter­day morn­ing for the two-day con­fer­ence ac­com­pa­nied by Min­is­ter Browne.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is act­ing as prime min­is­ter in Row­ley’s ab­sence.

The theme of the con­fer­ence is Strength in Uni­ty: Forg­ing Caribbean Re­silience, In­clu­sive Growth, and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty’s web­site stat­ed that the con­fer­ence will ad­dress mat­ters on the re­gion­al agen­da in­clud­ing food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty, cli­mate change and fi­nance, the on­go­ing chal­lenges in Haiti, se­cu­ri­ty is­sues, dig­i­tal re­silience, and ex­ter­nal re­la­tions. The Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), mar­itime and air trans­port, as well as repa­ra­tions, will al­so be dis­cussed over the two days.

Pre­ced­ing the con­fer­ence this morn­ing will be a spe­cial meet­ing of the Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR) and the Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil of Min­is­ters re­spon­si­ble for Cari­com Af­fairs. Browne will at­tend those.

The re­gion­al move­ment meets at a crit­i­cal junc­ture re­gard­ing glob­al events in­clud­ing the ad­vent of the new US Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Row­ley, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter, chairs Cari­com’s re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty com­mit­tee and its com­mit­tee on fur­ther­ing re­gion­al crick­et.

Row­ley didn’t re­ply to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions on what he ex­pects from Cari­com’s con­fer­ence or hopes to be high­light­ed giv­en glob­al de­vel­op­ments, es­pe­cial­ly in the Unit­ed States.

He al­so did not re­spond to ques­tions on what this coun­try will pro­mote/lob­by and if T&T would back moves for a col­lec­tive Cari­com ap­proach to the new US ad­min­is­tra­tion on mat­ters, in­clud­ing T&T’s en­er­gy is­sues.

He al­so did not give views on the con­fer­ence’s theme and if he would have any spe­cial mes­sage for the lead­ers af­ter an­nounc­ing he would be re­sign­ing in Jan­u­ary.

How­ev­er, Cari­com As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Eliz­a­beth Solomon in a state­ment lead­ing up to the con­fer­ence said the event comes at a fo­cal time for the hemi­sphere and will be an op­por­tune mo­ment to dis­cuss Cari­com’s ap­proach to var­i­ous mat­ters.

Solomon said the con­fer­ence will be of great in­ter­est as she un­der­scored the im­por­tance of re­gion­al uni­ty, stat­ing, “It is im­por­tant for the re­gion to unite and speak with one voice on many is­sues, and this is an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty un­der Prime Min­is­ter (Mia) Mot­t­ley’s lead­er­ship, who be­gan her chair­man­ship of Cari­com at the start of 2025.”

Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett al­so said re­cent­ly, “Last year, we am­pli­fied our ef­forts to en­sure that our unit­ed and col­lec­tive voice was heard at some of the high­est-lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al fo­rums. It has be­come abun­dant­ly clear that if we do not ac­tive­ly and con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cate for our­selves, our pri­or­i­ties may well be rel­e­gat­ed to the foot­notes of in­ter­na­tion­al pol­i­cy agen­da.”

Stress­ing the need for in­creased ad­vo­ca­cy in 2025 and be­yond, Bar­nett high­light­ed the Sum­mit on Fi­nanc­ing for De­vel­op­ment in Spain, COP 30 in Brazil, along with Cari­com’s in­ter­nal pri­or­i­ties: food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty; free move­ment of peo­ple, ser­vices and cap­i­tal; in­no­va­tion and dig­i­tal de­vel­op­ment; crime and se­cu­ri­ty; in­tra-re­gion­al trans­porta­tion. She said that all re­quire fo­cused at­ten­tion and com­mit­ment to mov­ing for­ward.

Speak­ers at this af­ter­noon’s open­ing cer­e­mo­ny are in­com­ing Cari­com chair­man Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, im­me­di­ate past chair Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell, the new Pre­mier of Montser­rat Reuben T Meade, and Bar­nett.