PM Ralph Gonsalves makes call to establish a permanent home for CELAC

The Pro-Tempore Presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), has officially been handed over to Honduras and a call has been made to establish a permanent home for the organization.

The call came from the outgoing President, Dr Ralph Gonsalves during his opening address at the eighth summit held in St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), last Friday March, 1,2024.

CELAC is a regional bloc of 33 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean which was established in 2010 with SVG being the first CARICOM country to hold the Presidency since its inception.

“Let us over the next year fashion a permanent and nimble secretariat for CELAC so as to ensure that its monumental tasks in this challenging global environment be optimally addressed,” Dr Gonsalves urged.

He explained that the functions of CELAC required that a permanent headquarters be set up to enable proper functioning of the organization.

“There are functions to be performed by CELAC that cannot adequately be performed with the current structure. I am calling for us to give serious and urgent consideration to a permanent and nimble secretariat for CELAC to carry out his requisite functions.”

PM Gonsalves told those at the summit that despite being a “very small country” St Vincent and Grenadines had an “active year” which included the hosting of the meeting between Guyana and Venezuela, in addition to navigating other global challenges.

“It is up to you to judge if we did well or not.”

He added that CELAC has laid a roadmap of policies and programmes under the Kingstown Declaration, to advance the interest of the region’s citizens.