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TWN Info
Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Aug20/06) Geneva, 6 Aug (Kanaga Raja) – The government of Barbados on Wednesday signed the agreement to host the fifteenth quadrennial ministerial conference of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which is scheduled to be held from 25 to 30 April 2021 in Bridgetown, Barbados. In a signing ceremony held virtually, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, signed the agreement in Barbados, while UNCTAD Secretary-General, Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, signed the agreement in Nairobi, Kenya. According to UNCTAD, the signing of the agreement has officially set off the preparations for the gathering of UNCTAD’s 195 member states. UNCTAD 15 had originally been scheduled to take place in Bridgetown, Barbados from 18 to 23 October 2020, but was postponed on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. The quadrennial conference is the highest decision-making body of UNCTAD, and sets the work priorities for UNCTAD for the next four years. The theme of the UNCTAD 15 conference is “From Inequality and Vulnerability to Prosperity for All”. According to UNCTAD, the UNCTAD 15 conference will present the world with the first opportunity to align the sustainable development agenda with global efforts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. UNCTAD 15 will also be a major global event of the UN’s “decade for action” to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNCTAD has estimated that developing countries will need $2.5 trillion in immediate resources to begin meeting the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is beyond the outstanding SDG funding gap of billions, it said, adding that even before the pandemic, the least developed countries (LDCs) alone needed annual investments of $120 billion to achieve the SDG targets. According to UNCTAD, the economic impact from COVID-19 is particularly acute in small island developing states (SIDS) such as Barbados, the host country for UNCTAD 15, where the services industry, especially travel and tourism, have borne the brunt of the pandemic. These sectors are the lifeline of SIDS and the main sources of employment for women and small businesses, all of whom are severely affected by the pandemic’s economic fallout, it said. In a statement at the signing ceremony of the host country agreement with Barbados, the UNCTAD Secretary-General Dr Mukhisa Kituyi said that four years ago in Nairobi, UNCTAD 14 was a pathfinder conference as the foremost meeting of the development community globally after the signing of Agenda 2030 in September 2015. He said that UNCTAD 15 is the first development community meeting to take stock of where we have reached at the start of the “decade of action” for Agenda 2030. It also comes as the first development community meeting looking at the global “new normal” emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have estimated that developing countries need $2.5 trillion in immediate resources to begin meeting the challenge of the pandemic. And that is beyond the outstanding SDG investment gap and the disrupted global supply networks,” said the UNCTAD Secretary-General. Dr Kituyi further said that the pandemic has led to economic standstill, closed borders and a severe retrenchment in cross-border economic activity – this has effectively paralyzed trade as an engine for sustainable prosperity. Compounded by the “pre-existing” lack of trust in multilateralism, the global trading system has been woefully unprepared for this global health crisis, he added. “Key increases in demand for our work reflect this,” he said, pointing to “facilitation of trade and transport, support to the digital transition in developing countries, and the looming need for international liquidity and relief from debt vulnerabilities.” These have surged to the top of many countries’ agendas, Dr Kituyi underlined. The COVID-19 crisis has hit the most vulnerable countries and people hardest, at a time when they already were not doing well. Some 70 million more people living in LDCs will be pushed into extreme poverty over this year alone, increasing the global poverty headcount ratio for the first time in two decades. And the most vulnerable extends beyond the poorest to include SIDS, women, and micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) among others, said the UNCTAD Secretary-General. For example, the services industry, especially travel and tourism, have been among the most hard hit. “As Barbados knows very well, these sectors are the lifeline of SIDS, and are disproportionately sources of employment for women and for small businesses, all of whom are imperiled by the present pandemic’s economic fallout.” COVID-19 has been a litmus test for a globalized and interdependent world economy, and the verdict it has delivered is very clear, said Dr Kituyi. “The pandemic and its fallout have exposed existential challenges to the very tenets of globalization and will have a lasting impact on future efforts by developing countries to gainfully benefit from the global economy.” He said that after a decade of stagnant trade and investment, COVID-19 will be the inflection point catalyzing a transformation of international production towards more re-shoring, regionalization, and resilience beyond the pandemic. The “next normal” will bring shorter supply chains, greater digitalization and a lighter global production foot-print. According to the Secretary-General, it will mean a shift from “just in time” logistics to “just in case” resilience, and increased focus on the sustainability of private finance, on the blue economy, on biodiversity as a source of comparative advantage, and on changes in consumer tastes towards the local and the greener. “The pandemic has starkly revealed that we must transform global approaches to trade and development, if we are to chart a sustainable course to a better recovery,” said Dr Kituyi. “But rather than “building back better” as some have called it, we need to re-build entirely from the ground up, because for too many, going back to business as usual is anathema to sustaining prosperity.” As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise globally, particularly in the developing world, the global economy enters a synchronized recession unseen since the Second World War. Today, developing countries the world over need the galvanized attention of the international community. “An UNCTAD conference at this time offers just the type of focused attention necessary to deal with these issues,” Dr Kituyi emphasized. UNCTAD 15 will shape the ambitions for a better recovery, he said. “Countries have realized the devastating limits of current development practices. This gives us a window of opportunity to build the political will towards the systemic changes needed for truly better recovery, despite the current steep obstacles to international solidarity.” From a trade and development perspective, a better recovery must be green, resilient, just and digital – but it must also be for all peoples and all countries, not just those who can afford it, said the Secretary-General. UNCTAD conferences have generated ambitious solutions and rebuilt goodwill among nations in the past, Dr Kituyi said, adding that UNCTAD 15 in Barbados must be such a conference. It must offer hope for vulnerable SIDS facing lost tourism and travel revenues; it must offer feasible instruments to African countries and LDCs looking to develop their productive capacities; it must offer a path forward on debt forgiveness and digital cooperation, especially for developing and middle-income countries. It must also offer solutions to the trade and development challenges facing other global processes next year, such as LDC-V (the fifth United Nations Conference on the LDCs scheduled to be held in Doha, Qatar, in March 2021) and the WTO MC12 (twelfth WTO ministerial conference scheduled to be held in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan in June 2021). “It is my firm belief that with Barbados as host country, and with the resolute commitment of all of our membership we can achieve a path forward on all these challenges next April in Bridgetown,” Dr Kituyi concluded. In her statement at the signing ceremony, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Amor Mottley, said that “this is the first time that my Government has put its signature on an agreement with another international or bilateral party without actually having the signatories together in the same room in the same country!” “We all know the circumstances that have prompted this creative solution, which may well prove not only to be precedent setting, but indeed a foretaste of the “new norm”.” By signing this Agreement, Barbados confirms its intent to become the first Caribbean country and the first Small Island Developing State ever to host a session of the UN Conference on Trade and Development. “At no time in recent memory have those two words, trade and development, seemed more significant than now,” said Ms Mottley. “It is also undoubtedly a first for us to attempt to plan and carry out a major international conference in the midst of such unprecedented global turbulence and uncertainty,” she added. “We in the Caribbean have, regrettably, become all too accustomed to dealing with the onslaught of hurricanes, which track annually through our island chain with devastating economic and social consequences.” “Yet never in our history has one hurricane decimated all of our countries all at once in the way that a vicious virus called COVID-19 has managed to do to the community of nations.” “Caribbean states have done well to manage and contain the spread of COVID-19 within our jurisdictions, but our tourism-dependent, open economies have had little defence against the global economic contagion that has followed,” said the Prime Minister of Barbados. “I cannot deny that the current environment continues to challenge us. Yet it is a challenge the Government of Barbados and the UNCTAD Secretariat are prepared to accept.” “We remain positive that by next year the determined efforts of world scientists and the prudent precautionary measures we are putting in place will help to make the convening of UNCTAD 15 a reality.” After careful consideration and consultation with Secretary-General Kituyi and the UNCTAD membership, Ms Mottley said that she is pleased therefore to confirm that the 15th Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 15) will now be held in Barbados from April 25 to April 30, 2021. Pre-Conference events including six Forums on Youth, Civil Society, Gender and Development, Global Commodities, the Creative Industries and Trade Digitization are planned for April 23 and 24. “The Government of Barbados is committed to delivering a Conference that allows for the universal participation of the 195 member states of UNCTAD while fully protecting the health and safety of both the visiting delegates and the local population,” Ms Mottley emphasized. “We aim to provide a platform for consequential deliberation and action by Ministers and for serious engagement with civil society, youth and the private sector. Above all, we are determined to make UNCTAD 15 an inclusive and unforgettable event that offers significant opportunities for the creativity and entrepreneurship of the people of Barbados,” she said. “The global pandemic has reminded us how vulnerable and exposed we are to shocks that threaten our very existence, let alone our development.” “And equally, the challenges to multilateralism continue to be exacerbated regrettably in this world at a time when international cooperation is needed more than ever if our nations are to attain their strategic objectives and their SDGs, but most importantly immediately, if we are to arrest this virus.” Ms Mottley noted that during the past few months “we have also witnessed worldwide protests, as ordinary people of all ages, races and backgrounds and stages have taken to the streets to call for greater equality and social justice.” This global phenomenon has put leaders on notice that the disadvantaged and the vulnerable of the world are no longer prepared to be marginalized and forgotten, and that citizens everywhere are standing beside them in the call for radical change. “I firmly believe that this theme (of UNCTAD 15) therefore provides us with a real opportunity to address the systemic causes of the vast and growing inequalities and the inherent vulnerabilities that we have come to accept as just part and parcel of our reality,” she said. “In summary, the COVID-19 global emergency and the extreme repercussions have exposed therefore the need for fundamental rethinking of those assumptions that have guided us in the last few decades that have previously underpinned the international economic order as it has come to be.” “It is an order that is no longer servicing the needs of too many of us across the global community,” said Prime Minister Mottley. In a sudden and unexpected way, the crisis has therefore provided the membership of UNCTAD with a unique opportunity to be at the forefront of this new thinking and radical policy corrections that the situation now requires, she added. “You and I, Secretary-General, share the conviction that UNCTAD 15 must be a transformational Conference with transformational outcomes. “Decisive leadership by our Governments is urgently needed, if we are seriously committed to empowering our multilateral institutions to respond to the acute and persistent development challenges of the twenty-first century,” Ms Mottley said. She said as host of the Conference, the Barbados government anticipates that Ministers will debate and provide leadership on a range of issues. These include “the impact of COVID-19 not just on trade and development as we know it but also on our ability to be able to attain the SDGs and Agenda 2030 because at the end of the day that is what we are all charged to do at the domestic level.” “We will also hopefully discuss and consider elements related to the future of the multilateral trading system.” Prime Minister Mottley also highlighted a range of other issues including: * the nexus between health and trade in policy formulation; * the measurement of vulnerability and the management of debt; * structural transformation of developing countries; * the growth of the digital economy; * the impact of climate change on trade and development and on the capacity of SIDS to survive as nation states; * trade facilitation and transportation; and * the importance of regional integration in building resilient value and supply chains to strengthen business continuity systems and food security. She said that in signing this agreement “my country reiterates its strong commitment to multilateralism and to the United Nations system as an indispensable platform to support the development of all states, particularly those of us that have specific and unique challenges.”
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