Latest content: Small states

The ‘Ask The Expert’ series features leading specialists who work at the Commonwealth Secretariat in specialised areas. In this fourth edition, Travis Mitchell, Head of Economic Policy and Small States, talks about the priority areas that will be discussed at this year’s Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting.

Pacific leaders have urged the Commonwealth Secretariat to ‘reshape and extend’ the Hub and Spokes programme beyond its proposed closure in November 2018.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland is in Nauru to meet leaders and other partners this week at the 49th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting.

The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are an internationally defined group of highly vulnerable and structurally constrained economies with extreme levels of poverty.

It is hard to imagine that only 14 years ago Sri Lanka was severely devastated by the tsunami, triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland has met the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, during her first official visit to the country.

Recent research by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has brought to light the significant macroeconomic impact of citizenship by investment programmes on many small states.

The Commonwealth’s hub for climate finance celebrated key milestones this week, including the mobilisation of £3.7 million for climate-vulnerable countries, with another £135 million in the pipeline.

The Republic of Mauritius will share valuable marine protection know-how with other Commonwealth countries, using the Commonwealth Blue Charter as a platform to exchange best practices, collaborate on research, and carry out training workshops.

Officials from Commonwealth small states have completed a specially-designed course to strengthen their negotiation skills in international decision-making forums.

Secretary-General Patricia Scotland will pay her first official visit to the island nation of Seychelles this week, signalling the Commonwealth’s continued interest in being a voice for small states. She will meet the Seychelles President Danny Faure, Vice-President Vincent Meriton, the speaker of the National Assembly, government ministers and parliamentarians to discuss ways to deepen cooperation.

Policy experts from across the Caribbean will work towards strengthening human rights commitments in the region this week.

Creating a fresh perspective of how small states perform, exploring ways to help them do better and highlighting the Commonwealth’s role to ensure they are well-served by regional bodies are the key insights of a handbook launched at Marlborough House.

The Antigua and Barbuda National Youth Choir dazzled staff at the Commonwealth headquarters in London this week with its powerful voices, mesmerising music and heart-wrenching poetry.

Terrence Simfukwe is a trade adviser seconded to Belize’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He’s there as part of the Hub and Spokes Programme. The programme provides trade experts to national ministries and regional trade organisations in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states. Prior to his posting in 2016, he was principal economist for foreign trade in Zambia’s Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry. Here he outlines Belize’s efforts to develop a national trade policy.

The reality is that small and vulnerable states encounter well-documented challenges in accessing international climate finance. The most notable is the complex funding landscape, which has a number of actors and complex procedures.

Human rights and trade work for Commonwealth small states is set to be expanded following the funding of new experts.

Malta is allocating the oceanography grants through the Commonwealth Small States Centre of Excellence (CSSCE). They will fund a one-week course in operational oceanography for blue growth.

Youth has an increasingly crucial role to play in reducing pollution and protecting our planet, said the Antigua and Barbuda Minister of Health and Environment, Molwyn Joseph, at an event to commemorate World Environment Day.

The legal frameworks and mechanisms of Seychelles have been strengthened further, following capacity building and technical assistance from Commonwealth experts.

Each year, between US $1.5 to $2 trillion is lost from the global economy in bribes, not counting forgone tax revenues and economic growth. Africa alone is drained of US $50 billion annually due to illicit financial flows, of which corruption is a major component.

In August 2017, Jeff Ardron, Ocean Governance Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat, reported on the first High-level Pacific Blue Economy Conference, in Fiji: “The ‘Blue Economy’ is a term that appears to have been invented independently by both Pacific Islanders and the colourful German entrepreneur Günter Pauli.

Karuna Rana is from Mauritius, an island state in the Indian Ocean. It is one of the Commonwealth’s small and vulnerable members. Ms Rana and other young people from those countries understand better than anyone else on earth, the threat of global warming.

African officials welcomed a new toolkit aimed at helping countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other internationally-agreed targets.