The Caribbean Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) took place in Kingston, Jamaica, from 2-4 July 2013.
This meeting was the first stop along the road to the Conference in Apia, Samoa in September 2014 and provided an opportunity for the Caribbean SIDS to: assess progress and remaining gaps in implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action and the Mauritius Strategy for Implementation; seek a renewed political commitment; identify new and emerging challenges and opportunities for sustainable development of SIDS; and identify priorities for the sustainable development of SIDS to be considered in the elaboration of the post-2015 UN development agenda.
Approximately 100 participants, including representatives of Caribbean governments, UN and regional agencies and organizations, and Major Groups, attended the three-day session. After two days of panel presentations and interactive discussions, government delegates met to identify priorities and draft the outcome document. This document was negotiated in a formal setting on Thursday. After two readings of the document, the twelve remaining delegates began a final round of negotiations at midnight and adopted the 44-paragraph Kingston Outcome of the Caribbean Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States at 4:55 am on Friday, 5 July 2014. The Kingston Outcome will be the basis of the Caribbean regional position at the Inter-regional Preparatory Meeting to be held in Barbados from 26-28 August 2013.
The Summary of this meeting is now available in PDF format http://www.iisd.ca/download/pdf/enb0849e.pdf and in HTML format at http://www.iisd.ca/vol08/enb0849e.html
A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF THE MEETING
“As a man sow, shall he reap, and I know that talk is cheap.” – Bob Marley
A year after governments at Rio+20 called for the convening of a third conference on SIDS, substantive preparations are now underway. The Caribbean regional preparatory meeting was the first stop along the road to the Third International Conference on SIDS, in Apia, Samoa in September 2014. It provided an opportunity for the Caribbean SIDS to assess progress and remaining gaps in implementation of the BPOA and MSI, identify new and emerging challenges and opportunities for sustainable development of SIDS, and identify priorities for the sustainable development of SIDS to be considered in the elaboration of the post-2015 UN development agenda.
This brief analysis will examine how the process evolved during the three-day preparatory meeting and how this will feed into the overall preparatory process for the 2014 Apia Conference. More
