Saint Lucia will host a major United Nations meeting on decolonization from May 11-13, 2022.

The Pacific Regional Seminar will be held under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly Special Committee on Decolonization, commonly referred to as the C-24.

Each year, the C-24 meets either in the Caribbean or in the Pacific, where the remaining 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories in the world are located, in order to obtain the opinion of the representatives of these territories, Member States, members of civil society and other stakeholders on policies that could help the Special Committee advance the decolonization process.

The Special Committee will consider the conclusions and recommendations of the Seminar at its substantive session in June in New York and will then transmit them to the General Assembly. The theme of this year’s seminar is “Progress of the Non-Self-Governing Territories through the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and beyond”. It will be chaired by Keisha Aniya McGuire (Grenada), Chair of the Special Committee.

This year’s seminar was to be held in the Pacific, but was moved to the Caribbean after the Pacific was unable to accommodate. More than 100 delegates, the highest number ever for such a seminar, are expected in Saint Lucia for the conference to be held at the Sandals Grande Hotel, Gros Islet.