Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
He would be known as the Silver Fox who dared Lions. Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, the boy from the impoverished canefields of South Trinidad who has indelibly altered the political landscape of the Commonwealth and the Caribbean as Trinidad and Tobago’s fifth Prime Minister died at age 90 on New Years Day, 2024.
The Border Dispute between Guyana and Venezuela heats up as
the date for a Venezuelan Referendum approaches while Guyana has taken the
issue of Venezuela's threat to occupy some two thirds of its territory to the International Court of Justice. What are the implications of this
for the Region and why we should be glued?
Demokrissy takes a close look to the socio-cultural, historical and geopolitical factors in this dispute. Go to the link below for details.
PARIS – UNESCO’s Finance Commission has unanimously supported the call to challenge the development categorisation of countries according to gross domestic product (GDP) tabled by Trinidad and Tobago’s representative to the UNESCO Executive Board, Dr Kris Rampersad.
Rampersad advocated revision of the GDP basis for economic categorisation of states into small, medium and large categories promoted by global financial organisations such as the World Bank, noting it does not reflect the tremendous disparities in income, levels of poverty and inequalities within countries. It is part of a draft resolution proposed by Caribbean representatives and global SIDS with support from others for UNESCO to develop a focussed strategy of programme implementation and means of financing and resourcing an action plan for SIDS. It requests that UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics collate the relevant data for phased presentation to the Executive Board, “taking account of the vulnerabilities linked to limitations of size and resources economies of scale, indebtedness, external economic shocks and natural hazard occurrences and resources.” Support for the resolution came from not only small island developing states (SIDS) of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans but also ‘developed’ island states as the UK as well as countries like the United States, Sweden, and China who recognised the place of SIDS in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and to ‘the future of the planet.’ UNESCO’s Finance Commission (FA) is charged with examining budgetary provisions of the organisation. It is one of two commissions, with the Programme and External Relations Commission (PX), which is co-chaired by Dr Rampersad with the representative of Mexico. “This has implications for not only on SIDS but all of the developing world, Unless these misrepresentations are addressed we are likely to face the same pitfalls in meeting the United Nation’s new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” said Rampersad, an independent development educator/consultant who has been promoting culture-centred approaches to development as the UNESCO-trained heritage facilitator for the Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago’s Representative to the Executive Board, 2013-2017. She noted that persistent poverty and other glossed-over internal challenges have hampered achievement of the Millennium Goals. She observed that the GDP classifications have also restricted access to technical and other resources by civil society and others working to redress the imbalances at poverty, gender disparity and other inequalities at ground level.
Trinidad and Tobago became a member of the UNESCO Executive Board with the highest number of votes among the Group of Latin American and Developing Countries (GRULAC) at UNESCO elections of 2013. New members will be admitted to the 58-member Executive Board following elections carded for the upcoming UNESCO General Conference in November 2015, where all Executive Board resolutions will be finalised and adopted. (Caribbean News Now).UNESCO supports Trinidad's challenge to WB classifications of island states - Caribbean Times News
Masks and shields accompanined stained ink fingers in the 2020 Pandemic Polls to acccomodate voting in a time of Novel Corona Virus COVID-19.
What does the 2020 Pandemic Polls hold in store? This would unfurl in the next few hours. The reportedly heavy voter turn out already suggests how pivotal the population views these polls as some 125 candidates view for 41 seats in the Parliament's House of Representatitives. But the challenges remain for whoever take the helm henceforth into the Post Pandemic Planet.
See More: https://krisrampersad.com/the-pandemic-polls-2020-voting-in-a-time-of-covid/
MultipleChoice navigates through ethnic & religious dissension to draw readers into layers of the learning fabric & intricately interwoven diverse tracks of knowledge transmission embedded in festivals, rituals, beliefs, languages & lifestyles embroidered on a shared educational, cultural & ecological tapestry. From these Dr Rampersad draws significant lessons for societies newly challenged by multiculturalism.
This unfolds from the canvas of traumas and triumphs of settlement, adaptation & accommodation that faced post-colonial societies of Latin America and the Caribbean. It shifts the focus from lament to praise song in the integration of traditional learning systems into new ones, evolving to meet the challenges of the 21st century. History, heritage & legacies lace research into a fine filigree of oral storytelling & social lore on how the experiences from colonisation may inform the emergence from the pandemic as stronger more resilient societies through technology-driven learning processes & systems that value multicultural traditions. More at www.krisrampersad.com. Subscribe for texts, tools, templates and talks.
As the troops pull out, the triumphant shot of ownership, according to The Mighty Sparrow, was heard by the locals .....set against the lament when the BBC pull out ... revisiting this insightful exploration of post colonial mentality ....
The hue and cry from online and others readers, citizen journalists and media and other practitioners in the region over the BBC’s announcement of the forthcoming closure of its Caribbean radio news service is puzzling, and admittedly too, a wee bit amusing. Read More. Go to this link
Inaugural Address at 194th session of
UNESCO Executive Board, Paris, France
Dr Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on UNESCO
Executive Board 2013-2017 at the 194th Session of the UNESCO Executive, Paris,
April 2014
Dr
Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the UNESCO
Executive
Board (centre) co-chairs with the UK a joint sessionof the
Finance and
Administration and Programmes and External Affairs Committee
during the 194th session of the UNESCO Executive Board in Paris.
Photo
Courtesy Kris Rampersad. All Rights Reserved
Greetings on behalf of the
Government and People of Trinidad and Tobago who welcome, admire, respect and
support the Director General’s initiatives to reform and restructure UNESCO and
her intensive drive to use soft diplomacy which we believe is crucial to significantly
impact the post-2015 agenda as we transition from priorities of the Millennium
Development Goals and consolidate the gains of them through more focussed
Sustainable Development Goals.
Trinidad and Tobago pledges its commitment to
engaging in this process of futuring the operations of UNESCO to remain
relevant and responsive to a global environment of dynamic and effervescent
change. It is an environment that is demanding greater inclusivity. It is placing
increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity,
gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools
placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies
towards eroding these superficial barriers.
In this context, we believe that the work of
UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed the
institution best positioned to consolidate the gains of the past towards
carving responsive and relevant paths to progress that address the needs of
generations to come. Foremost among these seems to be combating the ennui and
disenchantment at failed and failing macro political, institutional and
bureaucratic formulas, systems and structures in favour of more glocally
(global-local) focussed initiatives that emphasis and value empowerment of individuals,
communities and civil society to explore their full potential.
Certainly there is much more that needs to be done
to particularly better utilise new technologies in making our work here at
UNESCO more effective and more relevant.
We reiterate the call made by the Trinidad and
Tobago Minister of Education to the Director General at the last General
Assembly, that UNESCO, along with its focus on other disadvantaged groups as
women and children in general, take a lead role in championing actions
throughout the United Nations system that would directly impact and bring in to
the mainstream the estimated 30 percent of the global population of special
needs children who are still severely marginalised and handicapped by current
existing systems in education, culture, science and information.
We support our colleagues speaking on behalf of
strengthening the culture initiatives having regard to the direct benefits this
is having from the work done in our societies where for many the main sources
of income and survival reside in leveraging their talents and skills as the
counter to the haemorrhaging of national resources, by exploitative, corrupt
and ineffective systems and practices. We endorse the culture-centred development drive that
recognises not just intercultural linkages but also cross sectoral links.
At the same time, we particularly commend the
drive to synergise and harmonise sustainable actions in biocultural diversity
and acknowledgement of the intrinsic interplay between physical, mental and
emotional cultural spaces and the potential to either erode, or energise these through
use of scientific understanding and technologies.
In this regard, we believe compilations as the
2013 Creative Economy Report could achieve greater depth were it to more fully
explore the cross-sectoral cost-benefit analysis of the co-relation between the
creative and cultural sectors and other out-of- the-box-areas - as the economic
value of social and culturally inclusive practices on political stability for
instance – an area of analysis that is sadly lacking and could provide the
data, if not ammunition, needed by UNESCO in pursuit of its motto of building
peace in the minds of men and women.
As such, we look forward to deepening of UNESCO’s
intersectoral increasing drive to promote multisectoral partnerships, and
collaborative mechanisms through cross institutional and cross regional
platforms, including with other institutions of the United Nations.
It is in these contemporary areas of UNESCO’s
focus, including its now developing perspective on Big Ocean Sustainable States
(Boss) – the informal rebrand of SIDS - Small
Island Developing States posited at the last General Conference - that we in
the Caribbean believe we can draw the greatest strength, given our evolution
from a history of fragmentation, violence, migration and marginalisation.
The Caribbean Sea at once connects and separates
us from all the regions of the world. It presents to the UNESCO community beyond
the hard politics of power and dominance, a living example for survival and
resilience that endures despite and through a history of genocide of
indigeneous peoples, slavery, forced indentureship, and migration.
Such resilience is represented in the survival of
religious and cultural practices, habits and beliefs: the vibrant celebrations
that range from pre-Columbian festivities of the Mayans, Incas, Tainos and
others to the evolving festivities of migrated peoples: the Garifuna and Rastafari
from oppressed African heritage; and others transposed from the East – the resilient
Ramleela, Chinese Dragon festivities, and their evolving fusions in our
cuisine, music, dance, drama, our Carnivals and steelpan, reggae, zouk and
chutney. All of these present significance to UNESCO ideals of peoples, who
beyond conflict and tensions, are finding ways to celebrate their migrations,
cultural contact and shared occupation of our natural environment.
Yet, our space is at the same time, severely
endangered by the risks of climate change and sea level rise, deforestation, poor
land use practices and pollution and other development challenges.
We believe that the UNESCO mechanisms in science,
education, information and culture can be more effectively used to bridge these
divides, and to help us to further explore, capture and harness these
experiences for the benefit of building peace in the minds of men and women
Even
as we admire the creative initiatives of the Director General to balance a
shrinking budget in challenging financial times, we pledge to work with her for
further rationalisation, while we particularly look forward to better
engagement and more equitable treatment of the countries of the Caribbean. We form
part of the Latin American and Caribbean UNESCO region, and represent almost 40
percent of the votes from this region, but not an equivalent allocation of UNESCO
resources. In its programme of restructuring, we would also
suggest that UNESCO look at ways of redressing of imbalances in its institutional
structure and mechanisms of field and national offices in our region where of
12 offices in the region, only one – located in Kingston - serves the 13 member
and four associated members of CARICOM.
We assure you of our commitment and support to the
Director General’s goal of making UNESCO more relevant and more effective.
I thank you
Dr
Kris Rampersad, UNESCO Executive BoardApril
2014