PM Participates in Commonwealth Select Ten Leaders Meeting [1]
Friday, June 6, 2008 - 16:04. Updated on Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - 15:42.
The Prime Minister, Hon Dr. Feleti Vaka‘uta Sevele, has departed Tonga to participate in a Commonwealth Select Ten Leaders Meeting, at Marlborough House, London on 9 and 10 June 2008.
The Meeting will discuss the reform of international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, International Environmental Governance, and the United Nations.
The meeting will be chaired by the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Altogether there will be ten Heads of Government from Commonwealth member countries at the meeting.
The meeting is the first step in implementing the decision of the November 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Uganda, at which Leaders decided to establish a small representative group from their 53-member association to undertake lobbying and advocacy for the reform of international institutions.
The Hon Prime Minister, Dr Sevele, who is also the current Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, said, "As most of the members of the Forum are small island developing states, we will be particularly keen to ensure that any reforms will enhance the benefits we currently enjoy from the current architecture of international institutions."
"For Tonga and the small vulnerable, low lying Pacific Island countries, the subject of environmental degradation, global warming and its disastrous impacts is one of the concerns that has to be raised repeatedly at these international meetings. We contribute the least to global environmental change, yet we are disproportionately the worst affected," he continued.
"The larger, richer, developed countries, the worst polluters of our planet, are focusing more on future remedial changes, whilst we the small low lying countries are actually sinking under the harmful effects of their polluting activities. We need international action now, not by 2020 or 2050 ... that will be too late," the Hon Prime Minister concluded. PM Office, 06/06/08.