Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­tónio Guter­res, has stat­ed that in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­form to ad­dress in­equal­i­ties in the re­gion, as well as sys­tems to im­prove cit­i­zens’ se­cu­ri­ty, were among the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s top pri­or­i­ties.

Guter­res, who is among a list of high-pro­file guests cur­rent­ly in T&T for Cari­com’s 50th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, made the com­ments dur­ing a joint news con­fer­ence on Mon­day at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s. Guter­res stat­ed, “You are on the fron­tiers of glob­al de­bates around cli­mate ac­tion, fi­nance jus­tice, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.”

The UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al stat­ed that through the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s lo­cal arm, ef­forts were be­ing made to even the odds which re­gion­al coun­tries have been grap­pling with, “Our UN Coun­try Team is work­ing with Trinidad and To­ba­go on a Mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty In­dex–to en­sure you re­ceive the sup­port you need in the face of im­mense ex­ter­nal shocks. We are unit­ed in pur­suit of mul­ti­lat­er­al so­lu­tions to glob­al prob­lems–from tack­ling widen­ing in­equal­i­ties to bol­ster­ing cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty to the achieve­ment of the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals to ad­vanc­ing peace, and to fight the traf­fick­ing of drugs and weapons.”

Guter­res not­ed that con­sid­er­able in­jec­tion of funds in­to small is­land de­vel­op­ing states was nec­es­sary to ad­dress the threats of cli­mate change.

“We need to adapt the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tems to the re­al­i­ties of to­day’s econ­o­my and to make it more fair and more ef­fec­tive, at the same time we see the need to in­crease sub­stan­tial­ly the amounts of fund­ing for adap­ta­tion mit­i­ga­tion is cen­tral, we must re­duce emis­sions but we should not for­get that many coun­tries are al­ready suf­fer­ing from cli­mate change and those who suf­fer the most are not those who con­tribute the most to the prob­lem.”

The UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al al­so said that the Loss and Dam­age fund es­tab­lished dur­ing COP 27 last No­vem­ber must now be op­er­a­tionalised.

“Small is­land de­vel­op­ing states need sup­port and con­ces­sion­al fund­ing there are mid­dle-in­come funds ex­clud­ed from that and that needs to change and we need to have a much stronger ac­tion of mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks, they need to be more cap­i­talised and they need to change their busi­ness mod­el in or­der to lever­age much more the pri­vate fi­nance that is nec­es­sary to re­spond in the de­vel­op­ing world to the ef­fects of cli­mate change.”  

Al­so on Guter­res' radar was the con­flict con­sum­ing Haiti which fol­lowed the as­sas­si­na­tion of the coun­try's pres­i­dent in 2021.

"We need to have coun­tries that have ro­bust po­lice force and ro­bust equip­ment and lo­gis­tics sup­port to vol­un­teer them­selves. I've seen African coun­tries vol­un­teer­ing, I've seen coun­tries in the Caribbean vol­un­teer­ing, but most of them with lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty, so I think we need the key play­ers to have a strong com­mit­ment.

"We tend­ed in the past to look in­to arms and weapons traf­fick­ing as a kind of a sub-prod­uct of drug traf­fick­ing but un­for­tu­nate­ly, we are wit­ness­ing that arms traf­fick­ing are be­com­ing a prob­lem in it­self, and are se­vere­ly un­der­min­ing the se­cu­ri­ty of sev­er­al coun­tries and name­ly sev­er­al coun­tries in the re­gion. I be­lieve it’s nec­es­sary to look in­to arms traf­fick­ing as a se­ri­ous threat to glob­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty and to adopt in­ter­na­tion­al mea­sures to be able to curb this dra­mat­ic phe­nom­e­non."

The Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al al­so recog­nised the strides made by T&T in its ser­vice to the Unit­ed Na­tions. “T&T’s lega­cy of lead­er­ship in mul­ti­lat­er­al af­fairs—from the cham­pi­on of in­ter­na­tion­al jus­tice and one of the main ar­chi­tects of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court, the late Arthur Robin­son, to pi­o­neers of the Law of the Sea like Lennox Bal­lah and An­tho­ny Lucky.

“I al­so want to salute T&T for in­tro­duc­ing the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly Res­o­lu­tion on ‘Women, Dis­ar­ma­ment, Non-pro­lif­er­a­tion and Arms Con­trol’, which recog­nised the es­sen­tial role of women in ad­vanc­ing peace and se­cu­ri­ty. You have served with dis­tinc­tion on the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Coun­cil, and a range of oth­er UN bod­ies and or­gans.”