Small only in size Trinidad and Tobago Executive Board Representative gives UNESCO a perspective on Small Island Developing States

Our capacities and incapacities as small island states characterise our potential to or not to fully participate as sovereign independent states on equal footing in global development - Kris Rampersad, Trinidad and Tobago Representative UNESCO Executive Board 

Statement

Trinidad and Tobago Representative to UNESCO Executive Board,

Dr Kris Rampersad

April 14, 2015, UNESCO, PARIS.

Mr Chairman  Mr Mohamed Sameh Amr;  Honourable Director General, Madame Irina Bokova; Dr. Hao Ping President of the General Assembly,  Colleagues.

I bring greetings behalf of the Government and People of Trinidad and Tobago, who congratulate Madame Director General for her stewardship of UNESCO in these most times of crisis and transitions.

We support the statements of GRULAC and my precedent speakers of the Caribbean. Mr Chair, while they have been general, allow me to be specific, because the nature of the issues surrounding small island developing states remain specific to our localised realities, even as they may be global issues. Our capacities and incapacities as small island states characterise our potential to or not to fully participate as sovereign independent states on equal footing in global development and we hope UNESCO is guided by this reality in all is activities. In this regard we support the SIDS resolution for articulation of a clearly resourced actions to correct this imbalance, including addressing the deficiencies in statistical analysis that plague our region – and to that I hope we can draw on the services of the UNESCO Institute of Statistics.

The Trinidad and Tobago which I represent is genetically continental carrying within it the flora, fauna and geology of continental America having broken off with the last ice age. One oldest known humanoid skeleton of the hemisphere was found in South Trinidad – one of our best kept secrets. But not a secret is that our Pitch Lake has paved tarmacs of roads and airports across the globe.

We are physically some 21 small islands, to be exact, the southernmost of Caribbean islands on the edge of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ridge.

Economically we hover in a categorisation somewhere between developed and developing world that does not take into account many of the challenges that exist within the context of size and inadequacies of capacity.

Culturally we are a global amalgamation of cultures and colours from indigeneous peoples to various migrant streams from Europe in the middle of the last century and the labour push that brought African as slaves, Indians, Chinese, Syrians and Lebanese as indentured labourers preceding the current free movement of labour, that caused the late Nelson Mandela on a visit to see a rainbow nation.

This is an example of what we are referencing in the too simplistic term, Small Island Developing States, which hardly captures the internal complexities and challenges we face so as to make the policies and programmes we are trying to devise at this level effective and relevant.

We are small only as islands in size: the first oil well was drilled in Trinidad. We have given the world the only known musical instrument invented in the last century in the steelpan; and genres of music known as calypso, soca and chutney; no less than two Nobel Laureates for Literature in Sir Vidia Naipaul and Derek Walcott and we have inscribed on the Memory of the World registers authors as Samuel Selvon, Anson Gonzales, and Larry Constantine and our first Prime Minister, Dr Eric Williams. Also part of our Memory of the World inscriptions include registers of the migration of slaves and indentured Indian labour. We are children of both the slave and silk routes. Our poets and calypsonians do not sing of our oceans and seas as scientific specimens of currents and tides that churn up tsunamis and other natural disasters, nor as passageways to economic prosperity. Our ocean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean Sea, are extensions of our cultural selves, repositories of the cruel history of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the Middle Passage, Slave Route and Indentured Indian Labour Routes, that are bridge those painful memories and legacies in building resilient and inclusive albeit diverse societies

Through the National Commission of UNESCO which I now Chair, we will in July this year launch a researched publication that highlights UNESCO’s presence in Trinidad and Tobago for the last 50 years to collaborate UNESCO’s 70^th anniversary celebrations. In July last year, before UNESCO paid its own tribute in October, we initiated Mandela Day celebrations – in collaboration with a committee established by the Prime Minister  - with a rally to capture the spirit and energy and inspire our youth in the “Mandela Effect”.

Our National Commission also embarked on interventions on youths at risk, school bullying. Inspired by your 10,000 Principals Leadership programme, Madame Director General, we initiated a Leading for Literacy and Decade for Literacy in 2012, driving change through reorienting school leadership and will tomorrow launch phase two of this. At the same time, riding on its success, we launched a Leading with Numeracy initiative.

Chair, colleagues, I have detailed some of these to say that even small islands we can boast of great achievements,  the challenges loom larger because of our size and because if we were furnished with capacities we can only do more. We challenge the statistical analyses that assign an economic categorisation based on narrow economic parameters that do not take into consideration the challenges of small island developing states. We thank colleagues for this support of initiatives that recognise the peculiar challenges of small island states as ours and to recognise and take and support steps that will help redress this through the UNESCO Institute of Statistics.

In this regard, we commend UNESCO on its publication of the 2014 report – nice and glossy and well illustrated and easy reading to highlight our age of crisis and transitions. We recognise that in this period of transitions that opportunities can easily become crises and of particular concern for us, is also the crisis that technologies pose to entrench underdevelopment because of lack of capacities, in some of our societies.

And we agree, Director General, that it is a time in which UNESCO becomes most relevant. In being able to shape the macro agenda, to meet the needs of the microscopic communities; to iron out the kinks and straighten the skews in the developmental agenda that has seen the large gaps in meeting the last Millennium Development Goals.

And it is because in these crises and transitions that UNESCO must assert its role and its place in the post 2015 Development agenda: in relation to the Oceans with which it is charged and to recognise their importance, relevance and significance to not just science but also to the cultural beings of citizens who cling to their shores and depend on them for livelihoods.

We commit to working with UNESCO to review and revise programmes and actions to become relevant to communities we serve. I make particular reference to the cultural initiatives that have been conducted in the Caribbean region through UNESCO with assistance from the Governments of Japan and the Netherlands in relation to enhancing our region’s access to the culture conventions, and the general work on the Action Plans for coming years for the Latin American region. In all of these we have made specific interventions on the realities of the regionl; that the one size fits all approach, adopted by some of the mechanisms and advisory bodies are not relevant and in an era of transition when sustainable development implies the ability to strike a balance between feeding citizens as much as conservation, the approach in many instances are punitive and are not sustainable for our region and we hope we can work together to iron out some of these kinks.

In an era where lifelong learning must become unlearning, lifelong modes and mechanisms for the new technologies that are evolving and placing considerable stress on governance and social management systems that see outbursts in crisis of interface between generations, escalate problems of youth at risk, school violence and bullying and other social negatives

Information and communication technologies offer opportunities to hitherto marginalised communities to shape the global development agenda, building ours into knowledge societies and also in deepening our democracies.

T he new environment of information and technologies is indeed fraught with pitfalls but it also allow for the promotion of freedoms of expressions and transparency and good governance and we can utilise these opportunities to share the good examples of consensus and building a culture of peace we ourselves practice in this room.

Chair, we heard your lament on the failure of mainstream media to give due attention to UNESCO’s work and your earlier invitation to enhance such visibility through our own use of social media. Madame Director General, indeed, we cannot leave our phone on silent. We have to hear and share the call for UNESCO’s relevance across the globe and throughout our communities.

By sharing these experiences and showing how we find ways of unravelling sometimes convoluted global issues, not just in the results, but in the processes with which we engage, we on the Executive Board can make ourselves more relevant in demonstrating our commitment to transparency in our governance issue by promoting use of the information technologies at our fingertips.

May I suggest that the Executive Board take advantage of the opportunities offered by new media to enhance its visibility as well as share this culture of UNESCO to promote transparency and open government, that we led by example and explore and take advantage of the many opportunities that the new media environment offers , as it puts the power of media access in the hands of every individual, to use the tools ourselves to make our presence felt, enhance our own visibility. Just as UNESCO has launched its own communication policy to enhance visibility of UNESCO, may I suggest that we revisit our own operational guidelines and regulations to accommodate this new environment of transitions; that allow for addressing crises with engagement, and through openness and transparency allow for leadership by example.

In this, especially as UNESCO is only UN agency charged with promoting freedom of expression, we become the change we want to be, a sustainable part of the global sustainable agenda.

I thank you.

Dr Kris Rampersad,

April 14, 2015, UNESCO Paris

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A Happy Demokrissy: T&T Tops Caribbean on Happiness Index

So we did it. Again. The numbers are in and Trinidad & Tobago has been named the “happiest” Caribbean nation yet again. Why? Lifestyle, dynamic culture, booming business center, strong government and, of course, largest Carnival celebration in the Caribbean, according to the World Happiness Report from the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) released on April 23, 2015. Want More. click HERE:
Trinidad and Tobago ranked highest in happiness in the Caribbean and 41^st in the world (6.168)I. And that's up 0.336 notches from 2007-2007.
  Additionally, with 15 public holidays last year, Trinidad & Tobago is among the top ten countries in the world for the number of public holidays.

The World Happiness Report aims to help country leaders recognize the importance of happiness and well-being for the success of the world and sustainable development.  Researchers examine 11 areas essential to happiness and well-being, including health, education, local government, personal security, income and overall satisfaction with life. Trinidad & Tobago was also the top-ranked Caribbean nation in the previous Happiness Report, which was published in 2013.

For more information on Trinidad &Tobago Get your copy of LiTTscapes: Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago: 

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Machel Montano may be the happiest man alive among the happiest people in #happynation which must include significant numbers of happy women, too, (if one is to go on his video in which he seems to be the only man alive!) Yet this national state of being is not reflected in the Happy Planet Index nor the World Happiness Report promoted by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network initiative of United Nations where Trinidad and Tobago ranks somewhere at number 130 among 151 countries assessed – believe it or not!

But then, Bhutan - the country whose development philosophy is based on Gross National Happiness(as opposed to the standard material assessment: Gross National Product) and upholds the need for recognition of mental and emotional wellbeing of citizens as a primary goal of governance – does not even feature in these global assessments whose methods and assignments of value then become questionable.

http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2014/02/people-power-participation-and-pursuit.html

World happiness report 2015: http://goo.gl/lzd86n

Changing the World with Ideas

Changing the World with Ideas

By Kieran Khan (twitter@kierancan) Sunday, March 8 2015

http://www.newsday.co.tt/womens_weekly/0,208014.html

We’re short on time as Dr Kris Rampersad and I meet at Normandie Hotel to chat. After a quick photo shoot with Elise Romany, we have just 45 minutes before she is due at the National Museum to open an exhibition by

LeRoy Clarke, ‘Eye Hayti …Cries…Everywhere.’ That’s far too short a time to chat with someone whose CV in media, cultural heritage and development work weighs some 50 pages heavy as a writer, researcher, media strategist, lecturer, journalist, founder, publisher, sustainable development, advocate and more.
Despite the time frame, Dr. Rampersad is as cool as they come. She orders a cup of tea, Earl Grey, black with no sugar as I cling to my third cup of coffee for the day and she starts, “Tea, is an ancient ritual in all our cultures, you know? It is my pick me up. I get less than four hours sleep, you see.” Then she moves straight to the subject at hand: “Do you know that I was one of the founding journalists of Newsday?” It’s a fact that I did know once but forgot. She doesn’t mince words: “Many of the new journalists forget or do not know, like much of our society has little interest in heritage. Newsday started in a social climate not unlike what we have today: tremendous negativity in the news. Then, it was driven by public outcry for more balance, with more positives even with rising crime.Today that outcry seems to have died and we just accept and relish and even revel in the blood and gore. We are losing our social conscience because we have done little to try to protect or retain it. Newsday came on the scene as ‘the good news paper’ and I was titled ‘the good news reporter’,” she reminisced, laughing.

“Our first cover story, which I wrote in September 1993, was ‘5000 Lives Saved’ (by the local suicide hotline). Think about it – a headline for such a story would normally read ‘5000 Attempted Suicide.’ My journalism was already taking on that character to impact the social conscience; that news and media should know its social responsibility to proactively shape the national character, not just report or react to it and that was the thinking that drove the founders of Newsday. But it didn’t last long. A few months in, the paper ran a crime story and its readership jumped beyond what its good news was attracting. The executives reversed the paper’s direction to what Newsday now is,” she says.“If we are lamenting the deterioration of our social conscience today, we are only reaping the whirlwind for not having invested in what it would have taken to change public orientation and outlook, not just react to it.” As negative as it all sounds, Dr Rampersad exudes energy, optimism and hope. “Social change doesn’t happen overnight, and it is not unattainable. That belief drives everything I do. But it is a collective responsibility. Positive change requires investments, risk-taking and resources.”That conscience about the long term, that we are only here for a short time as custodians not just as consumers, she notes, is what is missing from our society today.

Though she prefers not to be labelled an academic, much of her time is spent in intensive research, not just behind a desk, but interacting, collecting oral stories of peoples and cultures, visiting museums and piecing together stories couched within artefacts and she has accumulated and documented audiovisual materials and interviews from over two hundred cities in more than fifty countries across the world, and supplementing and comparing this with other materials.

“This means very little to most, but I have the only full length intimate video interview with Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal, but who’s interested, eh? No one ever took the time to try to find what made a woman who was giving so much to our society tick. Whatever interest there was in her horrendous death has just moved on to the next unsolved murder statistic.”
She is also active on the range of social media as well: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and her own blog. “As much as there are negatives, the new technologies place the world at our fingertips. It’s a tool, to be used, negatively or positively, and for a child consumed with curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, who grew up barely able to afford books, for me it makes everyday Christmas,” she laughs. “It allows me to piece together connections about us; about our place here in the region, in the Americas, in the world that no one knows!”

Dr Rampersad was recently appointed chair of the National Museum and Art Gallery, a position that she says, was thrust on her for articulating the need to transform “such core national institutions which now exist only as shells of what they should be, pawns of power play and bureaucratic wrangling.” She explains, “It’s a sad indictment on all of us that our museum should be in the state that it is when a museum is the pulse and soul of a nation’s character and identity. We need to ask ourselves where our focus really is as a nation. I get shocked looks when I say that the same kind of dedicated attention and investments it took for us to develop our oil industry is needed for the cultural heritage sector, there’s no two ways about it; so when the oil dries up – and we are told we have, what, less than two decades – we would have a developed parallel economy in the heritage and its satellite sectors. Look at the developed world, this has been at the social and economic centre of those societies since time immemorial. It is not about what’s left or falls out of national and corporate and education budgets,” she says. “It requires proactive and conscience intervention.”

Speaking of heritage, she delivers a radical thought-provoking notion as we chat. “Look at our ancestry – we are not children of slaves. We are not children of indentured labourers. We are children of societies with magnificent cultures and traditions that have traveled across the seas to build this new and magnificent society,” she leans forward, emphatically, “which I firmly believe is second to none in the world: and I have seen plenty, eh!” She adds, “You want a good sound bite? We should also remove the word ‘Tolerance’ from our national watchwords; just as we need to redesign our National Coat of Arms. It contains elements that have nothing to do with us. We as a people are not about tolerance – the way we function as a society, the way we celebrate together; how we party, according to David Rudder. It should be dropped. And then we can try to start dealing with politics,” she laughs harder.

No doubt much of this global thinking comes from actually being a global thought-leader. Her work has transformed the globe in no small way. A working proposal from her computer and her networking skills to celebrate “Women as Agents of Change” has been used not only by our Government, but moved through the Commonwealth and OAS and onto large swathes of the world as well.

The model of engaging people to activate plans for change she developed in her hands-on work with communities across the Caribbean through inter-American institutions, UNESCO, the Commonwealth and others, is being used across the spectrum to get bureaucracies and decision-makers to understand that their plans and actions should be about people. That brings no monetary rewards, but, “it is about legacy,” she says.

To read the continuing story about Dr Rampersad and hear her viewpoints on what she has to say about the challenges facing our first female Prime Minister as well as the upcoming general election and our nation’s way forward, log on to our website www.newsday.co.tt or check us out at Newsday Womans Weekly on Facebook.

Follow Dr. Rampersad online on Facebook where you can also check out ‘LiTTscapes’ or via Twitter (@krisramp) and through her blog Demokrissy (kris-rampersad.blogspot.com) 

Related Links: https://krisrampersad.com/
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Just call me Lizzie

Dear Lizzie,

Just call me Lizzie: The natural choice isn't it? The name of two of my grandmothers.

Welcome #RoyalBabyPrincess: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate must be so proud, as are your other #family #Jahaji Bahin
New evidence on the DNA link and maternal bloodline...For #England, For the #Commonwealth, For the #NewGlobalOrder ... more in still on its way, #LetterstoLizzie


Related Links: http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2013/06/letterstolizzie-princes-will-harry-my.html