Wednesday 1 May 2024, UWI Regional Headquarters

•    Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of UWI, Chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission
•    Dr. The Honourable Peter Phillips, OJ, MP, Former Minister of Finance and Planning, Jamaica
•    Professor Aldie Henry-Lee, Pro Vice Chancellor, Graduate Studies and Research, UWI
•    Dr. Holger Henke, Chairman, Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies, UWI
•    Fellow UN Agency Representatives, Members of the Diplomatic Core
•    Colleagues, Students
•    Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Day. 

It is a true pleasure to be with you at this 25th annual edition of the SALISES conference on behalf of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). UNDPs Multi-Country Office based here in Jamaica supports cooperation in the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Turks and Caicos Islands on issues of combating inequality, advancing gender equality, access to justice, enhanced governance, climate action and ecosystem resilience among other priorities in the region. 

In many ways the theme of this conference on translating thought into action summarizes what UNDP does, connecting our role supporting upstream thought leadership and policy making with downstream community empowerment and local action. In advancing local results over the years, a key foundation has been the strategic partnerships we build on. 

I can think of no better example than the value local partners get from the strategic partnership between UNDP and UWI. UNDP is proud to have partnered with UWI for many years, collaborating on important research activities and policy dialogues across the Caribbean, combining the capacity development mandate of UNDP with the thought leadership and expertise of UWI and its various schools and centres of excellence. 

As we near the 50-year mark of UNDPs presence in Jamaica and neighbouring countries, we seek to build on the experiences and lessons of the past, and advance future avenues of support to communities in the region for goals of empowerment and resilience. The themes of this conference are important in this regard. Development policy and practice are in flux, in many ways a discipline in crisis. Policy makers and communities alike find themselves in an era of multi-dimensional crises, with the expansion of inequality and mass displacement, existential threats to planet and civilization no dystopian tale of the future, but rather than hard realities which academics and development practitioners alike face on a daily basis. 

As noted in the conference materials, do we simply proceed in this context with the daily task of implementing the policies and approaches that exist before us, despite extreme volatility and systemic risks, or do we challenge the defects inherent in development policy and practice that are often shrouded rather than elucidated by conventional discourse? There is I think a sense of deferred post-colonial defiance still to be reckoned with in this regard. 

The Caribbean is in many ways in the eye of the storm on many of these critical issues and a key task going forward is thus how to think decolonial, and how to infuse our actions as well. Decoloniality at its core about recognizing historical faults in development pathways, but also recognition of continued epistemic legacies in modern frameworks of knowledge and implementation. Rethinking the past is thus key to imagining a future development that empowers and upholds communities and the planet. Self-awareness of the often a-historical nature of the development discipline is key and why such dialogues are so critical. 

I look forward to an engaging set of discussions and debates and to taking forward the outcomes via our longstanding UNDP-UWI partnership.

Thank you.