A virtual event untitled Women Rise for All during the High-Level Political Forum. (UN)

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has told a global forum that it is time to move beyond those mechanisms that make assessments and judgements to the exclusion of many people.

Ms. Mottley made the comments today as she addressed Women Rise for All, an online special event convened by the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Amina Mohammed, which brought several women leaders from across different sectors together.

The Prime Minister also questioned why some states continued to determine that only those countries, proxies and definitions that matter to the larger nations are allowed to dominate.

“And what do I mean by that?  What does maternal mortality at this stage have to do with our ability to access the in vitro diagnostics to be able to successfully fight COVID-19? It is just a lazy definition for being able to determine who should benefit and who should not. What does historic per capita income have to do with my vulnerability today as to how I will be able to find the funding to be able to take care of my people?

“The bottom line is that we have to move beyond the laziness of the moment, and we have to move beyond the things that allow us to literally make assessments and judgements that preclude too many of our people, whether it is in the form of the naming and shaming that is taking place internationally, that then adds burdens to countries ….”

Ms. Mottley explained that because of the naming and shaming, some countries were less capable of meeting the problems presented by the pandemic and the climate crisis.

She noted that the convergence of the climate crisis and the pandemic had created an opportunity for leaders to lift their people to the next level.  

She opined that any young person moving into society needed the ability to care, and a level of consciousness, to understand what transpired before, and why circumstances might not be as they would want to see them.

“We see all that is happening in the Black Lives Matter as a revolt not just of individual Black people within the United States of America to want to have greater access to power, but it is also a reflection of those countries which came to past since the formation of the United Nations 75 years ago, and since the establishment of an arrangement that was supposed to create opportunity and equality for all,” she stated.

Ms. Mottley pointed out that as small states navigate through this global community, there could no longer be a set of countries that are seen and heard, and others that are not.

“We begin to question the injustice of the relationship, the injustice of the organisations that deem one set superior and another inferior. And I use that language not in any contentious way, but as part of our reality that we face every day,” she stated.


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