Government officials and experts from across the Caribbean participated in the subregional preparatory meeting of the XIV session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, an ECLAC subsidiary body, held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 18 June 2019 to examine progress as well as obstacles for advancing women’s autonomy and gender equality in the context of the Caribbean’s changing economic scenarios.

The event was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs as the Technical Secretariat for the Regional Conference on Women, in partnership with UN-Women and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and recorded the participation of more than 17 ECLAC member countries, including Anguilla, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Chile, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as several agencies of the UN system, members from civil society organizations and academia.

Welcoming government officials and experts from across the Caribbean, Gaietry Pargass, Senior Legal Adviser in the Office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, underscored that “over the past five years, Trinidad and Tobago has strengthened its legal, policy and programmatic frameworks in its efforts to achieve gender equality, more specifically, its initiatives towards the dismantling of structural barriers that impede gender equality”…[+]