Social Partnership Important To Barbados

BARBADOS:  Barbados’ Social Partnership has been, and continues to be, at the heart of this island’s social and economic progress, and it fuels the nation’s drive towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient green economy.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart expressed this view earlier today while underscoring the importance of partnership during his address at the High-Level Thematic Debate on Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the 70th Session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly.
Explaining that the social partnership is a tri-partite governance mechanism comprising representatives of government, labour and the private sector, Mr. Stuart emphasised the critical nature of partnerships.
He said: “Partnership remains the single most important factor in realising the promise of the 2030 Agenda at global, regional and national levels. Barbados has historically recognised, and reaffirms, the concept of Partnership for Development in the pursuit of its national sustainable development agenda…
“Given its [the Social Partnership’s] success in Barbados, I believe that countries with similar characteristics can adopt this sustainable development governance model. Barbados stands ready to cooperate.”
Mr. Stuart highlighted the assistance provided by the UN system in facilitating the country’s recent Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Assessment exercise, along with the ongoing United Nations Development Assistance Framework. According to him, both initiatives are critical to Barbados’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) alignment process.
“A key lesson from Barbados’ MDGs assessment is the need for a strengthened, inclusive and accessible system of data and statistics to support the national monitoring of the SDGs. This is a major challenge which hinders our capacity for evidence-based policy making and monitoring.
“I call on the global partnership for Agenda 2030 to establish a “Capacity 2030 Platform for Sustainable Development Statistics in SIDS”, without which, SIDS will be unable to participate meaningfully in the High Level Political Forum,” the Prime Minister stated.
Mr. Stuart expressed the view that the adoption, last September, of the 17 SDGs which form the basis of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development offered a ray of hope to a world beset by complex and ever-increasing challenges, and represented a new framework for global transformation.
“The successful implementation of the SDGs is inextricably intertwined with a wider concept of finance for sustainable development. This includes public and private finance, as well as financing from bilateral and multilateral sources. Once again, I underline the importance of making specific provision for the unique vulnerabilities of SIDS,” he stated.
The Prime Minister reminded all that we live in an interdependent world, and that if wealthy nations did not take care of the weak, poor and vulnerable, the concerns of the latter “would end up right on their doorstep”.
sharon.austingill-moore@barbados.gov.bb