BY JULIE CARRINGTON | DEC 24, 2021
Although the Caribbean has battled many crises, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said the region has excelled, and its resilience is a testament of a bright future ahead.
Speaking during the Eighth Annual Virtual Vatican Youth Symposium recently, Ms. Mottley painted a picture for her audience of a region that had weathered many challenges, on account of the climate crisis and other threats.
She added that the Caribbean had exited colonial rule “empty-handed without the type of development compact that many European and Middle Eastern countries were given”.
The Prime Minister contended: “Small populations fragmented across small islands, comprising largely of people whose ancestors were kidnapped and carried across the Atlantic, systematically stripped of their identity, families decimated and destroyed, miseducated for centuries and forced to live and work in constant fear of punishment and of death.
“Despite being the victims of the most heinous crimes in the history of humanity, we live, we thrive, and we excel. This is the context within which the Caribbean exists. We are a region and a people that provide the world with beauty, music, food and ideas, laughter, innovation, tolerance, happiness and scientific research….”
She added that the region’s existence was a living testament that humanity’s future can always be much brighter than its past and urged participants as they discussed the challenges and unforeseen opportunities of COVID-19, on advancing global sustainable development, to do so with optimism and conviction.
The Prime Minister reminded the audience that no matter what crises we faced, change would occur as it was an integral part of our existence.
“Change will occur…. It is a certainty…. It is an inevitable part of the cycle of existence. What is not certain is whether the change that occurs will be for the better, because better means actual hard work…better means the work that demands from us as individuals, from communities, from institutions that we all collaborate and operate with that genuine spirit of fairness, of justice, of equality, dignity and respect,” she stated.
The symposium was held under the theme: Global Youth Movements Leading Change for the Good and Present and Future Generations.
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Youth Involvement Critical In Solving The World’s Crises
The world needs young, smart, compassionate, brave people, who are ready to contribute and lead the world through the various crises that countries may encounter.
Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley issued this challenge to the world’s youth while delivering remarks at the Eighth Virtual Vatican Youth Symposium recently, which was held under the theme Global Youth Movements Leading Change for the Good and Present and Future Generations.
She articulated the view that within “each and every one of you, young people, listening to me right now, resides all of the capacity that is needed to safeguard humanity’s future”.
Ms. Mottley contended: “There is no other force in this world that can compare to the innate ability of young people to deconstruct injustices and to rebuild the bonds that holds us together through the most beautiful of creative expressions…. You, …the world’s young people, have the ability and the courage to create hope in the most hopeless of circumstances.”
The Prime Minister continued: “You have the conviction of collaboration and the gift to take the broken fragments left by the status quo and to reconstruct the collective vision of an improved and sustainable future for all.”
Ms. Mottley encouraged her audience to build on the lessons from the past and emphasised that this was the future all young people deserved.
The Prime Minister added that Barbados and by extension her Government, would continue to do its part in the fight to safeguard the future, and she inspired the youth to “dare to dream big”.
