By Philip Iglauer
High ranking representatives from 12 Caribbean nations and senior government officials here met Thursday for the first time to discuss ways to increase donor aid, investment and expand cooperation at a forum in Seoul.
They met with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kim Sung-hwan and other senior Seoul officials at the 1st High-level Forum on Korea-Caribbean Partnership to discuss ways of expanding mutual cooperation.
The Caribbean officials included Prime Minister Winston Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda and Foreign Affairs Minister Carolyn Rodrguez-Birkett of Guyana.
“I see this forum as a start into continuing the very good relations Korea has had with the CARICOM nations,” said Kenneth Darroux, the Commonwealth of Dominica’s minister of the environment, natural resources, physical planning and fisheries.
CARICOM is short for the Caribbean Community, and is a regional group of 15 nations and dependencies whose main purpose is to promote economic integration and cooperation.
Darroux said he hopes to see the expansion of Korea’s overseas development assistance (ODA) to Caribbean nations, but that this first meeting serves as a kind of “ice-breaker” for expansion in many areas of cooperation between Caribbean countries and Korea.
Participants from Korea’s Consul on Latin America and the Caribbean said the meeting will also serve as a means to increase the Caribbean nations’ participation in next year’s Yeosu Expo 2012 at the southern port city in South Jeolla Province.
Chang Hyun-sik, vice president of the Korea International Cooperation Agency, the body in charge of overseas assistance, said the government’s ODA to Latin America and the Caribbean remains small both in terms of dollars and as a percentage of Korea’s total ODA.
“This forum will inform the government’s decision on how best to expand that assistance to the Caribbean,” he added.
The bulk of Korea’s total ODA goes to Asia and the Pacific at 55 percent. Only 10 percent of all assistance goes to the Caribbean. Although Korea’s assistance to the region has jumped since 2007, the government spends less than $50 million annually. The government focuses its aid in the areas of health (38 percent), information and communication technology (23 percent) and the remainder on disaster relief, education and energy.
That focus is channeled into program areas of basic human needs for vulnerable groups like women and children, into programs for primary education and rural health development, and to combat environmental deterioration and the effects of climate change, especially in relief aid from natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and floods.
The massive earthquake in Haiti is often cited as an example of how international relief can be focused to help a Caribbean nation in need, though Haiti did not send a representative to the forum.