Black Immigrant Daily News

High-level delegations from several Member States of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM) will participate this week in the Blue Justice Conference 2023, billed by organizers as the largest global high-level event on transnational organised crime in the global fishing industry. The Blue Justice Caribbean Hub–to be housed in Jamaica–will also be launched at the high-level event.

Officials from twelve CRFM Member States–Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and The Turks and Caicos Islands–will be among the participants from approximately 80 countries and territories expected to attend the hybrid event, slated for 23-24 March 2023, in UN City, Copenhagen, Denmark.

The CRFM–the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) institution which leads the region’s efforts to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and transnational organized crime in fishing industry–is among the partners joining the Government of Norway and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in convening the international conference.

Mr. Milton Haughton, CRFM Executive Director, will deliver official remarks at the Opening Ceremony on Thursday, 23 March, and will subsequently speak with Conference attendees about regional cooperation mechanisms in the Caribbean.

Haughton said: “The Blue Justice Initiative offers our countries significant opportunities to obtain intelligence, improve maritime domain awareness, access technical assistance, and strengthen national and regional capacities to better monitor and protect our marine resources and combat fisheries crimes, including illegal fishing. We are very grateful for the support being provided by the Blue Justice Initiative and the Government of Norway and other Nordic countries to support our countries in turning the tide against fisheries crime in the region and globally.”

During the conference’s high-level session, delegates from several participating CRFM Member States will present their “Country insights”. This segment of the conference will conclude with a discussion on governance and space technology in support of SDG 14 (Life Below Water) and SDG 16 (Peace, justice and strong institutions).

Conference side events will be held on the Blue Enforcement Project (UNODC) – “Understanding gender roles in tackling crimes in the fisheries sector in Sri Lanka and Maldives”, and the Blue Fairness Project (ILO/UNODC/IOM) – “Using data to inform policies to combat trafficking for forced labour in fishing”.

The second day of the Blue Justice Conference, Friday, 24 March, is dedicated to the Blue Justice Action Forum. During that event, CRFM Member States will participate in a tabletop exercise.

The CRFM solidified its partnership with Norway and the Blue Justice Initiative in 2022, when 12 Member States signed the International Declaration on Transnational Organized Crime in the Global Fishing Industry (the Copenhagen Declaration) en bloc and pledged their support for the Blue Justice Initiative.

To date, fifty-one countries have signed the Copenhagen Declaration, and other countries have been invited to likewise sign the agreement at the upcoming conference and to join the Blue Justice Initiative. Dominica, a CRFM Member State, intends to sign the declaration at the event and join the global effort against transnational crime in the fishing industry.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

A two-day workshop kicked off this morning in Saint Lucia to discuss policy recommendations built on the human security framework, one day after the IPCC released an alarming report regarding the state of climate change.

The workshop brought together technical officers in the fields of disaster management, immigration, regional integration, environment, climate change, and more, as well as representatives of national Red Cross Societies, to identify best-practices, and work towards improving and coordinating the responses of member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to disaster displacement and environmental migration.

In the face of climate change and recent experiences (2017 hurricane season and 2021 volcanic eruptions), that threaten the human security of people in the region, governments in the OECS have seen the need to assess policies to better manage the complex effects of displacement and migration due to environmental factors and climate impacts, including to ensure regional coordination in the event of cross-border evacuations. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is supporting this coordinated effort with resources from the UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS).

The human security approach recognizes that when people are displaced because of climate impacts, or disasters that affect their environment, they can become exposed to a complex combination of risks and increased insecurities. Comprehensive, people-centred and prevention-oriented policies that consider the specific contexts of displacement can help OECS Member States to protect and empower their populations.

The workshop will focus on discussing the draft best practices in the eastern Caribbean on the protection of persons crossing borders in the context of disasters, environmental degradation and climate change, and importantly the protocols on cross-border evacuation in the OECS region that will be tested by a tabletop exercise. It is expected that the guiding documents will be finalized and ready for application by relevant sectors of government in the OECS and other regions, as this project seeks to deepen the collaboration and sharing of knowledge between SIDS in the Caribbean and other regions including the Pacific.

The 21-22 March 2023 workshop will be hosted by the IOM in partnership with the donor – UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS). Other contributing stakeholders include the OECS Commission, the UN Resident Coordinator Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Platform for Disaster Displacement (PDD).

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Black Immigrant Daily News

This statement is issued in an effort, once again, to explain and clarify the position of the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, regarding the former employees of LIAT (1974) Ltd.

First, the Antigua and Barbuda Government opposed the decision by the other principal shareholders in LIAT (1974) Ltd to collapse the airline, with no obligation to its employees and creditors. Our preference was to maintain the airline, recognising that it had a crucial role in providing necessary transportation to people of the region and that, without it, regional air transportation for both goods and services would decline to the detriment of tourism, commercial activity and the socialization of the Caribbean people.

Indeed, our fear in this regard, has turned out to be true as the traveling public can now attest.

Second, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, although it had no corporate or legal responsibility to any of the creditors or former employees of LIAT 1974 Ltd, decided to assume a “moral obligation” to provide compassionate assistance to the former employees of LIAT.

Our compassionate severance was offered system wide, on a non-discriminatory basis, affording national treatment to all LIAT workers, irrespective of their nationality, in keeping with the spirit of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.

Third, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda made this decision even though it owned only 32 percent of the shares in LIAT (1974) Ltd, and, therefore, should only have a “moral obligation” up to 32 percent to the former workers, who, indeed were employed by all the governments that comprised 100 per cent of the airline’s ownership.

Fourth, despite the dire economic and financial circumstance that resulted from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the scarcity of financial resources, the Government of Antigua and Barbuda decided to offer 50 per cent of what the LIAT employees reasonably might have expected as compensation, if the company had not been declared insolvent.

In other words, the Government decided to use monies and other resources that should have been spent on the needs of the entire population, such as improvement of roads and water supply, to provide compassionate assistance to the former LIAT employees. By any stretch of the imagination, this is a generous offer, recognizing always that no legal obligation of any kind falls to the Government of Antigua and Barbuda, and certainly not for 100 percent of assistance to employees of a company, 68 per cent of which was owned by other Caricom members states.

Fifth, in reality if the principal shareholder governments had taken the view that all of them had a moral obligation to provide assistance to all the former LIAT employees, an offer could have been made, formulated to provide such assistance, according to the ownership shareholding in the company.

This cooperative approach which would have resulted in full settlement of staff severance payments was not pursued by the other shareholding governments, instead a domesticated option was employed ostensibly to limit their liabilities to the staff of LIAT.

LIAT (1974) Ltd was forcefully collapsed as insolvent, in spite of the dissenting view by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda and the recommendation for the establishment of a LIAT 2020 Ltd.

The Government of Barbados severance payment was raised by the Antigua Workers Union, and therefore, I am obliged to address it.

The Barbados government has decided to offer assistance to Barbadian employees only, in a sum it has solely determined in light of its own circumstances. In this regard, neither the Government of Barbados, nor any other shareholder government in LIAT (1974) Ltd, has acknowledged any obligation to the former workers, including those here in Antigua and Barbuda.

Consequently, the position of the Antigua Workers Union that the Government of Antigua and Barbuda should use taxpayers’ money to pay 100 percent of monies to LIAT (1974) Ltd employees and former employees to which they have no legal claim, and for which the Government of Antigua and Barbuda could only reasonably be responsible for 32 per cent, is both reckless, misleading and unhelpful.

The Government of Antigua and Barbuda, as an act of compassion and eminent reasonableness, continues to be committed to settling this matter directly with for the existing and former employees of LIAT (1974) Ltd, in their interest.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The Director of the Barbados Meteorological Service (BMS), Sabu Best, is warning Barbadians that they should be prepared for a long drought period given that “there is not going to be any rainfall that is going to be coming in anytime soon”.

Best said that over the past couple of weeks, there has been a “significant reduction in rainfall across the island” and that the dry conditions, dry air, and abundance of sunshine “is actually leading to a lot of drying out of the top soils across the island, and a lot of areas are actually turning brown in fields and cane fields…”

“So, I know a lot of residents have noticed a lot of cane fires or grass fires that have been going on in the past few days,” he said, and that some of those fires actually last for a “good few hours” and even days.

“We expect that these kind of conditions are going to continue into March and into April with the dry conditions,” he said, warning the population that “there is not going to be any rainfall that is going to be coming in anytime soon.

“And so I just want all Barbadians to be aware that you can expect to see the possibility of more fires in the days to come and just be ready and be prepared. This is not an uncommon thing to actually happen during the dry season,” he said, adding that “the number of fires is probably unprecedented and also the duration of the fires.

“So, our best advice to all the public out there is just to be aware that these things are going to happen in the next few weeks, and the possibility, and just be ready. For those who have respiratory challenges, just walk with the necessary medications and take the necessary precautions to protect yourself over the next few weeks,” Best added.

He said the forecast for the future “is basically, like I said, March is going to be really dry.

“We are going to see a slight increase in April, in terms of precipitation, and more so in May, especially going into the ending part of May, and we should have a lot more relief in the early part of June as well,” the BMS director said.

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