Bilateral relationships essential for growth, says Permanent Secretary Kay Bass

Speaking on Working for You on March 13, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kay Bass spoke with great passion on the importance of bilateral relationships to development in St. Kitts and Nevis. She acknowledged that while steps needed to be taken domestically to improve the economy, on many issues, bilateralism is the only way for effective progress. According to Ms. Bass, “bilateral relations are very important because they can help us to advance our national agenda.”

Pointing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Ms Bass noted that “one to 16 included health, education, climate change and gender equality … a country cannot really achieve these on its own. It needs help, partnerships, friends and donors. Therefore the final goal of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda highlights the importance of international relations or partnerships.”

Furthermore, Goal 17 of the SDGs is “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.”

The Permanent Secretary also alluded to the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Cuba’s relationship with St. Kitts and Nevis as evidence for the success bilateral relationships can bring.

“If we look around the country, we see the influence and assistance of Taiwan. Their assistance has helped us to improve on our social programmes, helped us to improve in the area of energy and education and more. In fact, students have gone overseas to study”.

Although the value of bilateral relationships can sometimes be difficult to quantify, the added support they offer can be extremely valuable and, in some cases, life-saving.

“When the region goes to the United Nations (UN) and we want to highlight the threat and challenges we are having with Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), we had countries that may not be experiencing it themselves, supporting our cause. So you had a movement in that regard with CARICOM, European, African and Asian countries supporting our cause. This helped us to achieve our goal in the UN with respect to that initiative,” said Ms. Bass.

With regards to climate change, Permanent Secretary Bass noted that climate change is not a threat to some states as it is to small, developing island states like St. Kitts and Nevis. The nature of the threat of climate change may therefore be hard to appreciate as in many countries, it is not immediately an existential one. However, through bilateral relationships and through discourse they too can support the cause when dialogue is held in international forums like the UN and the OAS.

Much of what Ms. Bass had to say struck a similar tone to comments made by the ambassadors of Canada and New Zealand as reported by WIC News during the recent CARICOM conference.

With CARICOM looking to strengthen its standing and reform its way to greater solidarity and international dialogue on the up, it looks as though this is a golden period of international relations for St. Kitts and Nevis.