WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Chairman of CARICOM and St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, yesterday renewed the call for the establishment of a natural disaster fund and a special renewable energy resources fund.
Addresssing a protocolary session of the Organization of American States in Washington yesterday, Douglas argued that the Caribbean region’s vulnerability to natural disasters - especially hurricanes - and the rising cost of petroleum-based energy, pose a tremendous challenge and therefore merit priority attention within the inter-American system.
“The Organization cannot and should not be all things to all people,” Douglas told members of the OAS Permanent Council. “But when a significant number of its constituents suffer a common problem, the Organization has an obligation to demonstrate its relevance and to show that its reforms are quite essential to making it more responsive to its membership.”
He also reiterated the need for special preferences for Caribbean trade, arguing that it “is definitely no threat to global trade liberalization” and that granting trade concessions to Small Island developing states is in no way “inimical to the interests of larger states.”
Douglas also touched on the deportee problem, which he described as a considerable threat to Caribbean societies. “The deportee phenomenon contributes to a new security reality,” he said, noting the related problem of violence, gangs, and domestic and transnational crime.
