Former cabinet minister Elizabeth Thompson is joining the United Nations in New York as an executive coordinator for the next global conference on sustainable development.
The announcement was made yesterday at UN headquarters in New York by Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who also announced that Brice Lalond, a former Minister of the Environment for France, would also be an executive coordinator for the conference to be held in Brazil in 2012.
Thompson, who served in several ministerial positions, including health, energy, housing and the environment during the Owen Arthur Administration, is to be the executive coordinator for the South for the world’s developing countries, while Lalond will serve as the coordinator for the North, the rich nations of Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Australia.
Thompson’s position is at the level of an assistant secretary-general of the world body, perhaps the highest position a Barbadian and a person from the Eastern Caribbean has ever occupied.
“I consider it an honour and a privilege to have been chosen by the United Nations for this position and I will certainly do my best to represent the interests of Barbados, the Caribbean and the other nations of the South in this very important position,” Thompson told the Weekend Nation.
“It’s an unbelievable opportunity for someone from a small country such as Barbados.”Earlier this year, Thompson was backed by Barbados and its Caribbean neighbours, along with the other members of the Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS, for the position of executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but after reaching the final round of candidates, Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica was chosen for the job which, like the Executive Coordinator from the South, is also at the assistant secretary’s level.
UN sources said that Thompson’s “outstanding performance” during the selection process and the round of interviews for the previous post put her on track for this newly created position which is based at UN headquarters in New York.
