Greater Global Cooperation Needed says Commonwealth SG
03 May 2024
Baroness Patricia Scotland, Commonwealth Secretary General
Commonwealth Secretary General, The Rt. Honourable Baroness Patricia Scotland, has highlighted the need for an unprecedented level of international political and economic cooperation to address the myriad challenges facing the world today.
Baroness Scotland was delivering the inaugural Commonwealth lecture entitled ‘Legacy: Seventy-Five Years of the Modern Commonwealth’, at the Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business and Management on Friday.
She told the audience, comprising campus representatives, government ministers, students, among others, that in addition to the lingering effects of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is grappling with crippling debt, inflation and high interest rates; spiralling food and energy prices, instability and conflict; and the increasingly harsh impact of climate change.
“In an increasingly polarized environment, people are anxious about the capacity of governments and international institutions to provide the leadership and action required,” she said.
“It is in precisely a context such as this that the Commonwealth can mobilise its greatest qualities. The world today insists that we are dependent on each other. Seventy-five years of friendship, connection and common action mean something,” she said.
Principal of The UWI Cave Hill Campus, Professor Clive Landis, said the lecture was significant and timely, as the Commonwealth is celebrating its 75
th anniversary this year, on the heels of The UWI’s own diamond jubilee last year.
“When I reflect on our two 75-year-old institutions with their respective roots in the British colonial era, UWI’s transformation into a self-governing Caribbean regional institution is due I believe to its crystal clear and noble mission to promote the development of the Caribbean,” Landis noted.
“The most recent admissions to the Commonwealth of four countries with no prior ties to Britain does suggest that reform is ongoing and is quite exciting,” he said.
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