PORT OF SPAIN – Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley joined regional leaders in Bridgetown, Barbados for a meeting with a bipartisan United States Congressional delegation on Saturday. The meeting focused on several issues including security, economic and climate goals for the US and CARICOM.

The Bridgetown Initiative is a call for urgent and decisive action to reform the international financial architecture (IFA) that was designed at a time when most of the current member states were not independent and when climate risks or social inequalities, including gender equality, were not considered pre-eminent development challenges. The small island developing states (SIDS), including those in the Caribbean have become increasingly at odds with the reality and needs of the world today, making the IFA entirely unfit for purpose in a world characterized by unrelenting climate change, increasing systemic risks, extreme inequality, highly integrated financial markets vulnerable to cross-border contagion, and dramatic demographics, technological, economic, and geopolitical changes.

The Bridgetown Initiative is named for the capital city of Barbados, where the initiative originates. While Barbados continues to play a leading role, it is not an initiative of Barbados alone, but rather a coalition of partners in a movement for global change. (Jamaicaobserver)

Photo: Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley.