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The ACS Ministers, at their ordinary meeting in Port of Spain in March of this year, agreed on the creation of a Follow-Up Commission which would build on the work already done by the TAG, devising a work programme not only to implement the Caribbean Sea Initiative and the UNGA Res. 59/230, "Promoting an Integrated Approach to the Caribbean Area in the Context of Sustainable Development”, but more importantly to ensure that a future resolution captures more of the essence of the proposal from the ACS. The Commission’s composition will also benefit from participation of representatives of the ACS Member States. As ACS Legal Adviser, Sheldon McDonald, explains, “This new structure is qualitatively different from the TAG. The former, while doing valuable work was purely advisory. This Commission is an inter-governmental agency, with a multi-disciplinary composition to ensure that it is able to tackle all the critical issues involved in securing acceptance by the international community of the need to declare the Caribbean Sea a Special Area in the context of sustainable development.” Though this first meeting is expected to deal with the Commission’s structure, financing and procedures, its future activities are essential to the implementation of the Caribbean Sea initiative, which will bestow on the peoples of the Greater Caribbean the power to tackle the uses and abuses of the Caribbean Sea. This will be achieved by seeking to ensure greater harmonisation of the planning and implementation of the numerous activities which directly and indirectly impact upon the Caribbean. The inaugural meeting, apart from deciding on procedural issues, will begin to tackle the mandate to develop an action-oriented programme of work. Additionally, the meeting will plan the strategies to be utilised to ensure that the issue is fully ventilated at the Sixty-First Session of the UN General Assembly later this year. In this regard, plans are already advanced for the holding of a special meeting of the Commission at the UN Headquarters coinciding with the debate on resolution 59/230. About the ACS The Association of Caribbean States is the organization for consultation, cooperation and concerted action in trade, transport, sustainable tourism and natural disasters in the Greater Caribbean. Its Member States are Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela. Its Associate Members are Aruba , France on behalf of French Guiana , Guadeloupe , and Martinique , and the Netherlands Antilles . For further information, please contact: Denise Lewis Martínez |
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Association of Caribbean States ©
2007 |