UN invites the CNMI to attend Mauritius confab

The United Nations has invited the CNMI to be an observer in an international meeting on sustainable development of small island developing states in Mauritius early next year.

Gov. Juan N. Babauta, in a letter to the U.S. State Department, said the U.N. invited the Commonwealth “to be accredited as an observer delegate” to the meeting.

“I wish to coordinate my response with the State Department,” he said in a letter addressed to Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Kim R. Holmes.

Babauta said the CNMI was not able to attend preparatory meetings this year due to funding concerns. But he said, “I remain interested in being represented at the international meeting.”

The meeting in Mauritius, to be held on Jan. 10-14, 2005, aims to review the implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Development States.

The CNMI would participate as a member of the U.S. delegation for the 10-year program review.

The program, first adopted in 1994 in Barbados, sets forth specific actions and measures at the national, regional, and international levels in support of the sustainable development of the small island developing states.

Currently, 41 small island developing states and territories, including the CNMI, Guam and other islands in the Pacific, are included on the list used by the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs in monitoring progress in the implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action.

SIDS also includes low-lying coastal countries that share similar sustainable development challenges, including small populations, lack of resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, excessive dependence on international trade and vulnerability to global developments.

These places usually “suffer from lack of economies of scale, high transportation and communication costs, and costly public administration and infrastructure.”

In September 1999, the U.N. General Assembly undertook a comprehensive assessment of the implementation of the Barbados Programme of Action and in September 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Development reaffirmed the special case of SIDS and highlighted a series of SIDS-specific issues and concerns in the Johannesburg Plan of Action.

In a follow-up to WSSD, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a 10-year comprehensive review of the programme of action at a high-level international meeting, to be held in Mauritius.

Mauritius is an island of 1.2 million people located in southern Africa, east of Madagascar.