Ahead of next month’s start to the hurricane season, United Nations Resident Coordinator Didier Trebucq and the UN Sub-regional Team for Barbados and the OECS, launched a joint COVID-19 Multi-sectoral Response Plan (MRP) and US$29.7 million Fund Appeal on Wednesday 6 May to help mitigate the staggering socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on Eastern Caribbean SIDS.

Addressing an international online audience, Mr. Trebucq said that through its integrated recovery strategy, the UN would mobilize financial resources to meet the region’s most pressing needs over the next eight months. The MRP, he explained, aims to contain the spread of COVID-19, minimize its socio-economic impacts, ensure resilient recovery and protect the most vulnerable including women, children and persons with disabilities. It will be implemented across eight pillars: health and wellness, food nutrition security, economic recovery, education, social protection, gender-based violence and violence against children, human rights, and logistics and supply chain management.

While Mr. Trebucq lauded Caribbean countries for their efficient health response to reduce the spread of the virus, he remained concerned about the socio-economic impact of COVID -19, given the high vulnerability of SIDS. The closure of borders and grounding of commercial travel, for example, threatened the region’s vital service industries, including tourism, which contributes as much as 50 per cent of GDP in some countries and provides jobs for one half of the region’s labour force. “It cannot be business as usual” he stressed, and he made an urgent appeal for “international solidarity for the needs of Eastern Caribbean SIDS to be given the highest priority.” Mr. Trebucq also pledged the UN would stand with CARICOM countries to amplify their call for urgent debt restructuring or forgiveness. “Please count on the UN to help garner wider support,” he said.

The launch was co-hosted by UN Under-Secretary-General and UN High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), Fekitamoeloa Katoa ‘Utoikamanu, with interventions from the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados.

Under-Secretary-General ‘Utoikamanu called for immediate global action for SIDS and solidarity with the most vulnerable countries. If their need for funding support was not met with urgency, she said, “the likely result will be longer term poverty and hardship for many…. We cannot allow for this to happen. [The] time to act is now!”

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade of Barbados, Senator Jerome Walcott, said the region’s already fragile economies were regularly disadvantaged by their inability to qualify for grant funding and limited fiscal space, as well as the challenges of climate change as manifested in hurricanes. “So, as we battle with all of these, we are now faced with the COVID-19 pandemic,” he lamented, and he thanked the UN for its well-analyzed response to the region’s needs at this time.

Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, Allen Chastanet told the launch that COVID-19, unlike previous disasters, had adversely impacted all sectors, leaving the Government with a 60 per cent drop in revenue, and struggling to pay salaries and meet its debts, even at the regional level. SIDS, the Prime Minister said, “are simply not fitting in appropriately into the global economic architecture. It is really about the inability of Government to continue funding business as usual.”

Criticizing the use of per capita GDP as a measure to determine the level of support made available to SIDS, Prime Minister Chastanet said COVID-19 had left them to battle the pandemic on two sides – the health side and the economic side. “The developed world showed us what the solution was, which was to create liquidity. Sadly, for us, we are not in a position to create that level of liquidity,” he said. Mr. Chastanet praised the UN’s multi-sectoral approach, while calling for an urgent meeting for SIDS to discuss their place within the new global architecture.

Chairman of the OECS and Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, also welcomed the UN funding appeal but hoped for the target to be increased significantly to more adequately meet the region’s post-COVID-19 stabilization needs. Mr. Browne also called on the UN to support Antigua and Barbuda’s request to the Paris Club for debt forgiveness of over US$100 million.

“If the international community cannot assist us at a time when we are seeing the worst crisis, when are they going to assist us? When are they going to be able to assist these micro-states?” Prime Minister Browne said. “Forcing us to carry high debt loads and then to find monies to stimulate and to stabilize, [will mean] we are not going to be able to achieve the SDGs.”

Embracing the spirit of global solidarity, representatives of the Consulates of Japan and India, and of the Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union Delegation to Barbados and Eastern Caribbean delivered informal interventions.
The UN Resident Coordinator is the highest-ranking representative of the UN at the country level and leads the UN Sub-regional Team comprising the Heads of UN Agencies for Barbados and Eastern Caribbean states.