Barbados to Celebrate Ambassador Miles Stoby’s Pivotal Role in Championing the Cause of Small Island Developing States
Key figures instrumental in launching the historic Barbados Programme of Action, which outlines global strategies for addressing climate change devastation and the sustainable development of small island developing states (SIDS), will discuss the origins of this significant diplomatic achievement.
Hosted by the Stoby family, the meeting is set for Friday, April 26 at 5 p.m. at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Bridgetown, commemorating the visionary behind the initiative, Ambassador Miles Stoby.
It was at the former Sherbourne Conference Centre where the Barbados Programme of Action, noting that small island developing states were the frontline victims of the battle with global warming, and the need for the world community to act on the special vulnerability of SIDS, was adopted by all member countries of the United Nations meeting in Bridgetown, Barbados, from April 25 -May 6, 1994. The Centre now fittingly carries the name of Lloyd Erskine Sandiford, the prime minister whose advocacy won Barbados the right to host the conference in the first place.
Panelists for the session will recall how a small team of UN professionals pulled it all together under the leadership of Stoby, a brilliant Guyanese diplomat, Assistant UN Secretary General, and Coordinator of the 1994 Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States.
Former Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian and Emergency Relief, Professor Peter Hansen, will keynote the event by defining the extraordinary skill of Ambassador Stoby in guiding the Barbados process to success, and his role in framing the international development agenda.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Kerrie Symmonds, will be in attendance to support the event and to deliver welcome remarks. A message from Ambassador Tuiloma Neroni Slade of Samoa, former Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), which represents the interests of 39 small island and low-lying coastal developing states in international climate change, sustainable development negotiations and processes, will remind us how Stoby’s bureaucratic wizardry contributed to the success of the Barbados meeting.
Stoby’s former colleagues will discuss how a determined band of small island ambassadors overcame enormous resistance to put climate change onto the global agenda, where it has remained ever since.
Teresa Marshall, a former head of Foreign Affairs, a key negotiator at the UN in New York, will recount how small island diplomats successfully parried attempts by larger countries to downgrade concerns about climate change, sea level rise, and sustainable development.
Ambassador Dr. Christopher Hackett, Stoby’s deputy, and former Barbados Ambassador to the UN, has stories about the bureaucratic machinations at the UN, which led to one of the world’s smallest countries hosting one of the most important UN global conferences.
David Bulbulia, International Relations Coordinator on the Host Country Organising Committee for SIDS 94, participated in UN negotiations as well as the domestic processes leading up to the Barbados conference.
Senator Elizabeth Thompson, former UN Assistant Secretary General for Sustainable Development Issues and Deputy President of the Senate and Ambassador for Climate Change, Law of the Sea and SIDS, will look at the progress of the Barbados Programme of Action and how it will be addressed at the Antigua and Barbuda Islands Conference in May 2024.
Bevan Springer of Barbados, president of Marketplace Excellence and the Caribbean Media Exchange who edited the Barbados conference publication, “The Islander”, will moderate the session.
Lelei LeLaulu of Samoa, UN Outreach Coordinator for the conference, is the master of ceremonies for the proceedings.
The meeting is open to the general public, but seating is limited.
