Earlier in the news, we showed you the press conference hosted by the Commonwealth Secretary General, Baroness Patricia Scotland. As we told you, she’s in Belize until next week Monday, and during that that time, she has a packed schedule of activities.
So, what’s the importance of her visit? That’s what we asked, and she told us what role she sees for Belize in the Commonwealth at this time:
Baroness Patricia Scotland - Secretary General, Commonwealth
"As you know Belize is a very valued member of the Commonwealth and I promised myself that as soon as I became Secretary General, Belize would be one of the first places that I would come. Belize has a proud history of in support of the Commonwealth and has been a very active member; and of course I'm very grateful for all the support that Belize has given both the Commonwealth and myself. And I've come here to hear what the interlockers here in Belize really want to work with the Commonwealth on. We know there are huge issues in relation to climate change that's an existential threat to all of us. There are also issues in terms of how we put the wealth back into Commonwealth and the common back into wealth. As you know Belize host CARICOM climate change centre and one of the things we've been looking at is how we can enhance the ability particularly of the small island states to get access to the 900 and million dollars that there are in terms of help to mitigate and to adapt our environment to meet the new climatic challenges. And what we're hoping is to create hub and spoken relation to financial access and have specialists. We are going to create a hub in Malaysia, we've been very gracious but of course Belize has the climate change centre here already on behalf of CARICOM. So what we're hoping is we will be able to enhance that service which is provided for the whole region by putting in financial service advisors to help us here in the Caribbean to better understand how we access the money that is being made available to help mitigate and adaptation for climate change. And I think that Belize is doing the whole of the Caribbean region a great service by hosting the Caribbean climate change centre right here and I'm very grateful.
Baroness Scotland is a distinguished attorney and public official, and stateswoman. She holds dual citizenship from the United Kingdom and the Caribbean Nation of Dominica, where she was born. She has also made history becoming the first woman hold the posts of the Attorney General of England and Wales, and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
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