(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) CARICOM Secretary General, His Excellency, Edwin Carrington, leaves Guyana on December 1 for a series of speaking engagements in Jamaica, Miami and Guadeloupe.
(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Representatives of the Region’s media industry will meet on December 7-9, 2006 in Barbados, at the third Champions for Change Conference aimed at accelerating the process to reduce HIV and AIDS stigma and discrimination.
Today, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the members of the Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) join our brothers and sisters throughout the world symbolizing our deepest commitment to the fight against HIV/AIDS. This disease, which is the highest cause of death among our youth between the ages of 15-29, as well as our most productive workforce between 15-44 years, has deep social and economic implications for us all.
Over the years I have learnt to take up any offer to hold hands with the media with a hint of trepidation. But this time around I feel safer as the chaperone is the United Nations. And even though not the blue helmets of the peacekeeping force, the United Nations Population Fund grants me enough cover to feel reasonably safe particularly as over the years we have had a close and fruitful co-operation relationship. We look forward to an even closer and more productive relationship in the face of the upcoming restructuring.
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Chairman Mr. Kyle Jackman, Ambassador Lolita Applewaite, Ambassador Irwin La Rocque, Senator Sandra Husbands, Patrick Zephyr, President of Guyana Small Business Association, Delegates from the respective CCARICOM countries, Invited guests and Staff of the CARICOM Secretariat, Members of the media, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Firstly, I would like to welcome our overseas guests to bright and beautiful Guyana and to invite them to visit our resorts. |
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Your Excellency Mr. Charles Court Today I am deeply honoured to welcome His Excellency Charles Court and to receive the Credentials accrediting him as Canada’s Plenipotentiary Representative to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). |
Theme: 30 years of Progress: The COMPETITIVENESS CHALLENGE TO THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY
Salutations
In an age of instant gratification and built-in redundancy, the celebration of a thirty-year anniversary, even in a marriage, is becoming very rare. So it is with great pleasure that I extend hearty congratulations to Caribbean-Central American Action (CCAA) on achieving this milestone with the Miami Conference on the Caribbean Basin.
I would normally start by saying that it is a pleasure for me to be here today; however, there is nothing pleasurable about the topic that brings us here today. For it must concern us that the number of HIV infected persons in the Caribbean is larger than the entire population of Barbados; we cannot afford to lose sight of the fact that the number of new HIV infections occurring in the Caribbean last year bordered on the entire population of St.