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H.E. Marie-Pierre Lloyd, Seychelles High Commissioner to the UK is interviewed about the challenges and opportunities that face Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Speaking at the Small States Forum at the 19CCEM, the High Commissioner emphasised that “we may be small in terms of the area of our islands, but we are a big ocean-based nation. Small can be a challenge, but small is also good. We say small is beautiful, it’s resilient, it’s adaptable because you can turn around very quickly.” 

H.C. Lloyd also saw grounds for opportunity in how governance is effected in small states. “With any policy decision, you can actually get to the people very fast, and if you want to introduce change you can do it very quickly.”

The High Commissioner also gave an insight into the different perspectives that a small island state lends its people. “Coming from an island, I would say we always want to look beyond the horizon, because from a very early age you looking at the horizon and wondering what is there beyond. So you’re stretching your imagination and stretching your thinking so that it is easier for you to think out of the box… And this is where being small you can turn your so called vulnerability and challenge into a positive thing.”

H.E. Marie-Pierre Lloyd, Seychelles High Commissioner to the UK was interviewed at the 19th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (19CCEM) on how to provide quality education in Small States, despite the challenges facing them.

The High Commissione identified ‘brain drain‘ as one of the key challenges facing education in Small States. “It’s a knowledge-based society and we want to be there as well. You want to be part of that global setup, so again your people need to be broadening out. But once you get more education then you get the challenge of brain drain, because now they are marketable internationally so your bright ones might leave. You always almost have to be training and training all the time.” 

H.E. Lloyd also highlighted how providing quality education was not merely a question of matching skills with current jobs. “Because if you closely match it now what about freedom of people, freedom of choice? … It’s for us I think a question of now the equity issue and the quality of education.” 

The High Commissioner was interviewed following her keynote speech and participation in the 19CCEM Civil Society Forum. 

KELIN (Kenya), is embarking on a new phase in its programming, having adopted a new strategic plan that will expand their mandate to cover new areas: women land and property rights and sexual and reproductive health. 

The Kenya Ethical Legal Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN) is a human rights NGO working to protect and promote health-related human rights in Kenya, is committed to promoting and protection of the full enjoyment of health-related rights for all. It does this guided by core values of integrity, equality and non discrimination, justice and fairness, excellence, respect and dignity.

Registered on 20th December 2001, it was established to address and respond to Legal, Ethical and human rights issues relating to health and HIV and AIDS. Over the period, the mandate of the organization has broadened due to related health rights issues that need attention.

The 2015 – 2019 period, KELIN intends to focus on the following thematic areas

1. HIV and TB
2. Women’s Land and Property rights
3. Sexual and reproductive health rights
4. Key and affected populations 

These will drive the realization of strategic outcomes set out to ensure the full realization of health-related rights. Attaining this will require strong advocacy on integration of laws and policies that are sensitive to human rights issues and facilitate access of justice in respect to human rights violations affected persons within KELIN’s thematic areas.

Advocacy will entail ensuring that the laws, policies and operational frameworks at the national and county levels are preventive of human rights and embrace rights based approach. Also, communities will be empowered on health related human rights.

In addition, persons experiencing health related human rights violation will be assisted to access justice. This would be realized through initiating and partnering with other actors like PBOs and CBOs. These strategic partnerships will be both nationally, regionally and globally to strengthen the rights based approach across the thematic areas.

In delivering its mandate, KELIN will strive to carry out consultative and sensitization forums with and for communities of persons affected by violations of sexual and reproductive health rights and undertake public interest litigation to influence policy and provide long term redress on human rights violations.

Ideally, the new strategic direction is for KELIN to effectively and efficiently deliver on its mandate.

Download: Strategic Framework 2015-2019

The second in a series of civil society reflections on participatory governance, this publication provides an analysis of the main conclusions of the Third UN Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Summit held in September 2014.

It offers recommendations from civil society in the Commonwealth from the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Ocean on the critical issues raised in the SAMOA Pathway, the principal output from the SIDS Summit, on how to begin to turn these commitments into a transformative agenda for the sustainable and inclusive development of SIDS. 

Civil society organisations (CSOs) put forward these recommendations to build on the progress already made by SIDS governments and to demonstrate their commitment to work with governments to strengthen advocacy with the international community. In the same way, it aims to encourage SIDS leaders to make their pledges on the SAMOA Pathway actionable and meaningful. CSOs from the Commonwealth have begun to monitor and evaluate the progress and achievements of the Pathway and intend to document their findings.

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Commonwealth-Insights_SAMOA-Pathway.pdf | 311K

The Third International Conference on Financing for Development is a rather dry title for an event with profound global significance. During the course of this week the international community meets to set the seal on the Addis Ababa Action Plan, which describes a popular vision for the things that should be included on the development docket. But how will we pay to ensure that “no one is left behind”?

I am here with my colleagues Diana and Reineira scanning the agendas and attending sessions that will improve our understanding of some of the technical dimensions of development finance, but also to gain additional insights into the preoccupations of civil society organisations, many of which have been working on this issue for years. Their concerns are also for the future of Sustainable Development Goals, which will be unveiled in New York in September. They remember the lost years at the start of the millennium when the MDG agenda effectively stalled because of a lack of detail on how it would be funded.

Addis is buzzing. Lanyarded delegates make their way between the more than 200 side events that are taking place alongside the official conference and thousands of civil society organisations are here to learn, share and influence. They have come in such numbers that the UN system has struggled to accommodate them effectively, showing that once again multi-lateral processes have yet to catch up with the demand from civil society not only to be heard but to be involved.

The tone of the official discussions this year has changed since the early days of the Monterrey Consensus. In 2002 there was at least some recognition that the developed world had some obligations to the majority world so that commonly held development aspirations could be achieved. Here the talk is of “mobilising domestic resources.”  I’ve heard the phrase “getting each country to stand on its own feet” more than once this week and while one can’t argue with the sentiment, the question of how we work together as a global community to address universal concerns remains unanswered.

Mobilising domestic resources I now understand is code for financing development through domestic taxation. It’s an issue that divides the conference. Civil society networks are looking beyond national boundaries and are pressing for a global body that would close loopholes and ensure that tax is paid by corporations in the countries where wealth is generated. On the other side there are many governments (which will after all sign off on the Addis Action Plan) that see the setting up of tax havens as the only way of attracting foreign direct investment.

Outside the formal sessions civil society organisations offer many other counterpoints to the official conference. The rise and rise of the private sector panacea is checked only briefly by civil society organisations raising questions about accountability, scale and sustainability. They are also working to make sure that generic headline issues such as gender equality and climate finance are nuanced with regional or sectoral specificities. But don’t think for a moment that those side events are the sole preserve of civil society. The World Bank, OECD, UN agencies, donor governments and private philanthropy are also out to win hearts and minds as well. Who could resist the World Bank’s side event “Building Bankability – How Private Public Partnerships can help leverage billions to trillions.”

I leave Addis with my admiration for civil society organisations (at least those dedicated to advocating for social justice when they are consistently excluded from decision making moments) renewed. The fact that they were included throughout the process leading up to Addis – only to be asked for additional accreditation at the last minute to allow them into certain official sessions can only have heightened their frustrations with global governance institutions. In a similar vein you can also begin to see the potential for common cause between small states that feel similarly alienated and civil society. This is an area of rich potential for the Commonwealth Foundation – acknowledging the Commonwealth’s small states advantage with 31 of our 53 member states.  Enabling constructive engagement between state and non-state in that context takes on an emerging strategic significance.

To close I offer a postscript.  I wonder whether domestic tax regimes really will be able to finance development in the global South, when in some parts of the North tax avoidance has become something of a civic duty.  This morning outside our hotel in the Muslim quarter, men carried huge weights of fruit and vegetables from the market to vans and cars for distribution across the country. Suddenly one of them, slightly built and carrying at least twice his own weight in potatoes in a basket balanced on his head buckled and fell. The potatoes rolled down the hill as passers-by stopped to look on.  The spell was broken when one person started to pick up the potatoes and re-fill the basket. Another looked after the fallen man. Another volunteered to finish the journey for him with the heavy load. The crowd dispersed and my mind went back to the conference themes. I struggled to see how the people I had just seen would fit in to a new domestic tax regime and wondered what impact it would have on the informal economy that is their livelihood.