The Honourable Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy; Dr. Edward Greene, Assistant Secretary General, Human and Social Development, Caribbean Community Secretariat; Dr. Morris Edwards, National HIV/AIDS Coordinator; PANCAP/CARICOM officials; participants; Distinguished Guests:

On behalf of the government and people of Canada, I am pleased to greet you this morning on the occasion of CARICOM/PANCAP’s Second Regional Training Workshop for country assessments on law, policy and human rights affecting the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS in the region. I wish to thank the CARICOM Secretariat and the Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) for affording me the opportunity to make a few remarks for the occasion.

This Workshop is part of the implementation process for the Caribbean Action Plan on Law, Ethics and Human Rights within the Regional Strategic Framework for HIV/AIDs. It follows on from a workshop in St. Lucia, June 9 to 13 at which participants from Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and Trinidad and Tobago worked to develop initial draft workplans for undertaking national assessments. The purpose of this workshop is to standardize the objectives, focus and methodologies of the national assessments, identifying key issues to be addressed and determining indicators that can be used to monitor progress at country level.

The spread of HIV/AIDS in the region will not be reduced until stigma and discrimination are also reduced. There is a need now to move beyond sensitization and education to actualizing the obligations of countries to respond to the legal, ethical and human rights challenges of HIV/AIDS in countries of the Caribbean region.

In partnership with the PANCAP Secretariat, CIDA ‘s regional HIV/AIDs programme has co-funded the process of research, analysis and consultations to develop and produce the Plan of Action and National Assessments. We are particularly pleased to have the collaboration of USAID and UNDP and the involvement of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network in the process. The importance that CIDA attaches to your work is demonstrated by the participation in this workshop of both Paulina Salamo, the Health Specialist from Americas Branch at CIDA Headquarters and Carol Kerfoot, CIDA’s Regional HIV/AIDs Coordinator located in Georgetown.

Today, we continue this partnership with CARICOM/PANCAP to further develop and implement the National Assessments. I close with extending sincere congratulations to the CARICOM/PANCAP Secretariats for developing the Action Plan and National Assessments and look forward to contributing positively to their successful implementation and I wish you an interesting and productive workshop.