Resilience after the COVID-19 pandemic

Good afternoon, chairs, ambassadors, authorities of the General Secretariat, alternate delegates and observer countries.

The Delegation of the Dominican Republic wishes to express its thanks for the convening of this joint meeting of the Permanent Council and the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI) to consider the phenomenon and the fostering of resilience after the COVID-19 pandemic. We also wish to thank the distinguished panelists for their presentations.

The Dominican Republic wishes to recognize the work of the Organization of American States (OAS) in promoting resilience on issues of vital importance to the region at a time of great challenges for its member countries. Our country also wishes to acknowledge the great impact the pandemic will have on the elimination of poverty, on health systems, on the nutrition of the most vulnerable and on the capacity to respond to natural disasters.

As our Foreign Minister stated at the United Nations on April 17, the COVID-19 pandemic has once again confronted us with the unbearable evidence that, well into the twenty-first century, and even though productive capacities are ever more efficient, the achievement of the sustainable development goal of zero hunger is not guaranteed. Before the pandemic arose, the Government of the Dominican Republic had made the food security of the population the central axis of its action. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations confirmed as much. The Dominican Government declared 2020 the Year of the Consolidation of Food Security and has worked accordingly.

Our country produces around eighty-five percent (85%) of the food it consumes and currently maintains stable prices and food supply; even so, the effects of the pandemic will be disastrous for the region and the Dominican Republic will be no exception and, although the country is expected to end the year without an economic recession, the effects of the pandemic may extend throughout 2021. Hence the importance of the proposals made by our Minister of Foreign Affairs at the meeting of the OAS Permanent Council on April 24 of this year, when he referred to the creation of a special fund for food and health with the sole aim of fostering the equipping, training and adaptation of the food and health systems of developing countries. The renegotiation of external debt payment obligations must also be discussed, especially for countries that are not members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Both proposals can help developing countries resolve the problem of hunger and give the citizens of the Americas access to adequate food.

Likewise, the Dominican Republic views with sympathy Guatemala's initiative to prepare a draft resolution within the OAS that will address the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic and the commitment we must have to food security in the Americas.

The Dominican Republic reiterates to the countries of the region the proposal to create mechanisms for the joint purchase of supplies for the health response to the coronavirus and for supplying food to our populations. The Central American Integration System (SICA) experienced the benefits of a scheme for the joint purchase of medicines before and during the pandemic, with favorable results for its member countries. Such initiatives can be taken to a larger scale, one that helps eliminate hunger and allows for greater purchases of medicines.

In another area, building on the system of epidemiological models designed by the Dominican Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development, and in collaboration with experts from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and the Mexican Social Security Institute, the Government of the Dominican Republic is at this moment working on the inclusion of a model for mapping current and future diseases related to COVID-19. Taking this example of collaboration, and considering how unexpected this pandemic was for the Americas and the world, we believe we should consider creating a hemispheric epidemiological observatory able to issue an early warning and to inform the competent authorities of the severity of the pandemic and its spread.

In these months we have focused on how to attack the coronavirus and on how not all to become infected at the same time, so that our countries' health systems do not collapse. Some of our States have entered, or are entering, what is considered the deceleration of the pandemic. We are consequently in the stages of reopening. A great challenge awaits us, in which we will all have to put our resilience into practice as peoples, as States, as a region and as a multilateral organization. The pandemic is not yet over, and it now coincides with the arrival of our hurricane season, when the threats to crops, to infrastructure and to human and animal life are devastating. Today, in the face of natural disasters, it is no longer enough to practice prevention and reconstruction; resilience is needed as well: the ability to face these challenges and to empower the individual, communities and countries for a faster recovery.

We governments should reinforce public and private policies based on solid development planning, so as to avoid greater havoc than that which natural disasters already leave us. The building of infrastructure must be thought through both in ordinary times and in the reconstruction phase after a disaster.

The Dominican Republic, like the countries of the area, is prone to suffer from hurricanes and floods; it also suffers from droughts, and in recent years earth tremors on our national territory have been notable. The vulnerability that surrounds us drives us to advocate greater disaster preparedness in order to respond effectively and improve practices. Our country has the Emergency Operations Center, which is responsible for planning and directing all coordination among the institutions of the National System for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation and Response. We also have the National Emergency Commission, made up of thirty-four Dominican institutions, and a National Risk Management Plan.

I conclude by saying that, given the increase in both the frequency and the magnitude of disasters and their consequences, and now of pandemics, and the strain these events place on our system of action, this is when we must keep examining ourselves and reassess what we can do together as a region and as an Organization to go on confronting these adversities each year.

Thank you very much.