Prime Minister of Barbados on the Dangers Facing Her Country

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: I just wanted to ask you how your country’s doing in terms of infections, in terms of deaths and to ask you whether — I think you have had some quite severe lockdowns and how that’s working there.

MIA MOTTLEY, BARBADOS PRIME MINISTER: Thank you very much, Christiane, for having me. We are fighting up not just here in Barbados but in the Caribbean. At this point in time, I’m actually chairing CARICOM, which is a state organization of 15 countries from Bahamas in the north to Guyana and Suriname in the south, from Barbados in the east, to Belize in the west. And I can pretty much speak on behalf of all of us that this has been the most destabilizing event for the countries, probably since World War II. I mean, we have heard you speak about that and others in the U.K., speak about the fact that this is for them similarly the most destabilizing event. Each of our countries regrettably has cases, each of our countries. We — in our own case, we have just about 80 and we have just about seven deaths. Half of the people just in the half have recovered. But alongside with the pandemic is the very real result of people being able to live and to eat. And I notice it’s not just the Caribbean. I have seen stories coming out of Africa and Asia and elsewhere. And this is a real balance. And listening just now to the last interview, both interviews, it is clearly a problem across the world. Our situation is perhaps a little more unique because we suffer a number of risks. One, we are a highly indebted region. Largely because we are perhaps the most travel dependent and trade dependent region in the world with almost half of our GDP coming directly and indirectly and our jobs from tourism. Secondly, we are also on the cusp of the climate crisis. In fact, we are four weeks away from the beginning of the hurricane season. But what is little spoken about is that the climate crisis has also resulted in droughts and sargassum weed which is meant a number of our hotel establishments and restaurants who are already suffering before this pandemic. And now we add this global pandemic, so that this is a peculiar moment for Caribbean states, not just Barbados. And it is one in which we hope we can summon the rest of the global community to recognize that it is now more than ever that we need to recognize that global leadership is needed and that we need to accept that these islands, as well as those in the South Pacific, are vulnerable.