(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)     The prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in adolescents and youth across the region was a major agenda item when the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) convened a three-day meeting in Georgetown last week. The meeting also examined plans to move the region forward towards the elimination of mother-to-child transmission (EMTCT) of HIV and congenital syphilis.

I commence with a heartfelt recognition of the plight of the young high-school girls of Chibok, Borno State, abducted in April of this year, the two teenaged Indian girls raped and hanged in Uttar Pradesh in May and the 25 year old pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death in May for marrying against her family’s wishes.  The poem of Mahadai Das of Guyana, My Finer Steel Will Grow, aptly describes despair and hope as we confront the issue of gender-based violence.  I will read the poem in order to keep the memory of the girls and this young woman alive.

The Thirty-Fifth Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) was held at Dickenson Bay, Antigua and Barbuda, from 1-4 July 2014. The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, the Honourable Gaston Browne, chaired the proceedings.

(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana)     Ms. Marion Bethel, the eleventh recipient of the CARICOM Triennial Award for Women, in her acceptance speech, struck a resounding note  in her call to governments and civil society “to commit  wholeheartedly to zero tolerance for violence against women and girls” and to the “pursuit of a fifty percent representation of women in Parliament”.