Dominica’s PM Skerrit shares vision of resilient and balanced world at the MEDays Forum

The 2024 MEDays Forum was moderated by Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit with his impactful speech in the historical city of Tangier, Morocco.

Delivering his speech before international leaders and intellectuals, PM Skerrit depicted a very realistic picture of patronage and freedom, calling on the global society to build a better and fairly balanced world.

The theme, “Sovereignties and Resiliences: Towards a new global balance”, provided a background to start the discussion of the main issues and common approaches.

Prime Minister Skerrit started with the experience that Dominica went through after hurricane Maria in September 2017. He went on to tell how his nation was still standing tall despite being struck to the ground, and the attempts to prepare his nation for reconstruction.

This tragic example acted as a reflective on what small states undergo and the power that small states exercise in enduring the bad time.

“For us resilience is not a concept, it is a necessity, and it is imperative to ensure that we uphold that sovereignty,” he said.

PM Skerrit also emphasized on the nation’s path to sustainable development. In his address, Leader Skerrit boasted of the nation’s resilience and ability to grow with a diversified economy based on agricultural product, eco-tourism and renewable energy.

However, he also spread out awareness on the constraints that small nations face, such as financing inequalities and restrictive trade regime.

This requires fundamental changes in the rules of the global system which provides and allocates equality access to resources, technologies, and export markets stating that sovereignty even at the national level cannot be absolute or guaranteed without corresponding economic base.

Specifically, climate change was also mentioned in the speech of Prime Minister Skerrit. He spoke about how hurricanes become more frequent and severe and how Caribbean islands are threatened by unpredictable climate and rising sea levels.

The Prime Minister asked for the largest world economies to remain faithful to financial obligations of the Paris Agreement. He called for higher climate financing, enhanced cooperation, knowledge sharing, and overall collaboration to assist the most vulnerable countries.

“Climate resilience has to be one’s shared commitment,” he said, stressing that the future of small states depends on their ability to sustain cooperation and access to support from developed nations.

On the issue of global governance reform, PM Skerrit also shed light. He called for a world political system which would help give louder voice to small countries and the organization of world policy making.

In his view, people of the world want fair, justice, more specifically, everyone want that the world gets more understanding and accept every country or nation’s contribution.

In his closing remarks, PM Skerrit thanked the MEDays Forum for such discussions and called for other leaders to promote a future that is based on restoration and perseverance.

“In conclusion, together we can form a society that is sustainable, integrated and fair throughout the entire world,” he said.

This speech from Prime Minister Skerrit was a passionate ‘rallying cry’, emphasizing that nations should not only be resilient region based, but resilience must be done such as ‘the world must rise’.