Secretary General Dr. June Soomer participated in a series of summits this week at the United Nations, culminating with the Meeting for the High-Level Review of the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway. The meeting focused on various aspects of global efforts to combat climate change. It also centred on the needs and expectations of Small Island Developing States, those most vulnerable and least responsible for climate change.
Intervention after intervention, there was recognition of the need to acknowledge and right the wrong of small states paying the big price for climate change. From various Caribbean Prime Ministers to the UN SG and actor Jason Momoa - the call was the same - island states must receive the help and attention they deserve. Small State exceptionalism, as PM Ralph Gonsalves of Saint Vincent & the Grenadines called it, must be addressed through a rules-based, juridically-founded and non-discretionary system of support. SG Soomer also participated in:
-SG’s Climate Action Summit -HLM on Universal Health Coverage
-General debate
-HLPF on Sustainable Development
-HL Commemorative event on Rights of the Child
-HL Dialogue on Financing for Development
-Commemoration of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
-HLM on SIDs

Secretary General Dr. June Sooomer met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia Ivica Dačić and his delegation on Tuesday yesterday September 24, 2019 in New York, USA, to discuss advancing implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2018. The conversation also touched on the effects of climate change on the Caribbean including the issue of climate refugees. SG Soomer is in New York attending several meetings at the United Nations, and conducting a series of bilaterals.

New Ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to Trinidad and Tobago Martha Cecilia Pinilla-Perdomo presented her credentials to Secretary General Dr. June Soomer at a visit on September 6, 2019. Colombia, a Member State, is where the Convention establishing the ACS was signed 25 years ago in historic city, Cartagena de Índias, in 1994.

Professor of Practice at the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and former government minister Winston Dookeran recently visited Secretary General Dr. June Soomer. During the meeting, Prof. Dookeran, an economist and politician, presented SG Soomer with a copy of his 2015 book, Crisis and Promise in the Caribbean – Politics and Convergence. Professor Dookeran served as a government minister in various posts and administrations. As an economist, he has also served as Governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.