Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley has repeated her call for agreement on a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) to replace the historic per capita income criteria.

Speaking virtually at the 20th Session of the High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation, held from June 1 to 4, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Prime Minister Mottley pointed out that Barbados’ classification as a middle-income country had meant that for more than a decade, there had been limited access to concessional development funding.

A multidimensional vulnerability index will allow for the inclusion of more than just income-based criteria to assess eligibility for concessionary finance. According to Mottley, “we have been advocating over the course of the last few years that this needs to change and that we need more inclusive mechanisms that will allow our countries to truly benefit from the concessional funds that are available….”

Vulnerabilities faced by small countries like Barbados

The Barbados Prime Minister also spoke about the vulnerabilities faced by small countries like Barbados, noting that her country has called for a more enabling global environment to consider the unique vulnerabilities faced by countries such as ours that are small island developing states. 

“What we need is a fairer measure of that vulnerability. As chair of the Development Committee, I have been making this call and again I am calling for agreement on a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, which would replace historic per capita income,” Mottley told the 20th Session of the High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation.

She stressed that the per capita income measurement was unfairly applied in many instances to small island developing states, which were on the frontline of different levels of vulnerabilities, namely financial, social and environmental, pointing out that Barbados has been arguing this issue of vulnerability for over three decades.

The Barbados Prime Minister is of the belief that, “the time is now ripe for us to see movement on this criteria, largely because we are seeing the vulnerabilities…. It is therefore imperative that we harness South-South solidarity and action to reshape it.”

UNCTAD to devise new ways to use trade as an enabler of sustainable development

The Prime Minister reminded her audience that Barbados would be hosting the 15th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), from October 3 to 8 this year, using a blended format. The theme is, ‘From Inequality and Vulnerability to Prosperity for all’.

She explained that this UNCTAD conference would offer the nations of the world a platform to devise new ways to use trade as an enabler of sustainable development adding that, “we have been placed off track in the last 16 months because of this awful pandemic.”

As such, Motley mentioned that it is critical that the world meet to see how it can do these things to achieve this enabling of sustainable development through trade as the world go forward. “We also believe the conference will play a pivotal role in supporting and strengthening South-South cooperation through trade integration, as well as regional, sub-regional and inter-regional economic integration,” the Barbados Prime Minister said.

She concluded that South-South cooperation had already generated benefits for many countries during this global COVID-19 crisis stating that Barbados had received assistance from several countries, including those in this region, United Arab Emirates and China.