Dozens of Commonwealth leaders descend on Antigua at time of global political turbulence

Lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing near­ly a third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion are meet­ing on the tiny Caribbean is­land of An­tigua this week to strength­en ties dur­ing a time of glob­al po­lit­i­cal up­heaval.

New deals and pledges are ex­pect­ed to emerge from the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing, which is held every two years.

The Com­mon­wealth is made up of 56 na­tions span­ning Africa, Asia, the Amer­i­c­as, Eu­rope and the Pa­cif­ic, most of which were once part of the British Em­pire. Their lead­ers are sched­uled to at­tend, along with of­fi­cials from Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Brazil and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

“To deal with what to ex­pect in An­tigua, I think we need … to look at the world in which we find our­selves to­day,” Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Shirley Botch­wey told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press ahead of the meet­ing.

“We’re look­ing at is­sues like con­flict, eco­nom­ic shocks, ris­ing costs, cli­mate change, trade, weaponiza­tion of tar­iffs; and all of this hit­ting di­rect­ly the pock­ets of our peo­ple.”

Botch­wey said Com­mon­wealth lead­ers rep­re­sent­ing 2.7 bil­lion peo­ple will look at how to at­tract in­vest­ment and re­duce bar­ri­ers to in­tra-Com­mon­wealth trade.

“For us, this is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant,” she said. “All the coun­tries woke up one day and were slapped with tar­iffs. If we are trad­ing more among our­selves, what­ev­er hap­pens out­side the Com­mon­wealth will not af­fect coun­tries too much.”

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has im­posed the high­est im­port du­ties on U.S. trad­ing part­ners since the Great De­pres­sion, al­though rates have fluc­tu­at­ed amid le­gal chal­lenges.

Botch­wey said that cre­at­ing stronger economies is es­sen­tial giv­en the trade wars: “It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty we can­not miss.”

The mul­ti-day sum­mit be­gan with cul­tur­al events on the week­end, while the for­mal open­ing cer­e­mo­ny is slat­ed for Tues­day morn­ing.

It comes days af­ter British Prime Min­is­ter Andy Burn­ham said he is open to mak­ing a for­mal apol­o­gy for Britain’s role in the trans-At­lantic slave trade. Burn­ham, among lead­ers at­tend­ing the meet­ing, has re­ject­ed calls for the U.K. to pay repa­ra­tions, but has pro­posed lead­ing a pro­gram of debt re­struc­tur­ing to help the Com­mon­wealth’s poor­est coun­tries.

Some Caribbean lead­ers have called for slav­ery repa­ra­tions to be dis­cussed at the meet­ing, which King Charles III is al­so at­tend­ing af­ter vis­it­ing the Ba­hamas and Guyana last week. Queen Camil­la has joined him.

Dor­brene O’Marde, head of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da repa­ra­tions sup­port com­mis­sion, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Sun­day that he wel­comed Burn­ham’s com­ments but seeks more than an apol­o­gy.

“An apol­o­gy for us is es­sen­tial­ly the agree­ment to re­pair the dam­age that you have. It’s sim­ply not say­ing I am sor­ry and wav­ing your hand and walk­ing away,” O’Marde said.

The Com­mon­wealth of Na­tions al­so seeks to cre­ate a fund to pro­vide dig­i­tal skills to about 10 mil­lion young adults, Botch­wey said, adding that she hopes the pri­vate sec­tor, foun­da­tions and phil­an­thropies will con­tribute.

Of­fi­cials are al­so ex­pect­ed to es­tab­lish a fund to help na­tions tran­si­tion from fos­sil fu­els to re­new­able en­er­gy.

Cli­mate will be a big talk­ing point be­cause 49 of the Com­mon­wealth’s coun­tries share a bor­der with the ocean as con­cerns grow over ris­ing sea lev­els.

“How are we go­ing to pre­pare them and en­sure that our ocean is healthy?” Botch­wey said.

The four-day meet­ing al­so will host fo­rums fo­cus­ing on busi­ness, women and young peo­ple.

Richar­do Aiken, a civ­il so­ci­ety gov­er­nor who rep­re­sents the Caribbean and Amer­i­c­as at the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion, said in a phone in­ter­view that cli­mate jus­tice, free­dom of ex­pres­sion and em­pow­er­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups will like­ly dom­i­nate the peo­ple’s fo­rum in An­tigua.

“We are ac­tu­al­ly liv­ing in one of the most vul­ner­a­ble re­gions in the world,” he said.

He ex­pects the fo­rum to pro­pose spe­cif­ic ini­tia­tives to help civ­il or­ga­ni­za­tions over­come var­i­ous bar­ri­ers, in­clud­ing not know­ing how to write pro­pos­als, “which is the main ve­hi­cle to ac­cess fi­nanc­ing.”

“We al­so have a large pop­u­la­tion of In­dige­nous peo­ple,” he said. “It’s about how do we bring these play­ers, the first peo­ple, those who were be­fore us, in­to the con­ver­sa­tion?” —SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)

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Sto­ry by DÁNI­CA CO­TO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ist Juan Pablo Ar­ráez in St. John’s, An­tigua, con­tributed to this re­port.