UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly arrives in Jamaica on Thursday and is expected to announce £22 million worth of funding towards the country’s violence prevention efforts and the mitigation against flooding and coastal erosion.
Jamaica is one of four countries to be visited on his seven day tour of the Latin America and Caribbean to cement partnerships on climate, people and peace and to renew the UK’s relationship with the influential region.
In Jamaica, Cleverly will attend the UK-Caribbean Forum to set out support for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). He will then meet with Prime Minister Andrew Holness.
After leaving Kingston, Cleverly will then travel to Colombia, Chile and Brazil, to deliver a keynote speech on the future relationship with this important region. This visit comes 200 years after Britain first began establishing diplomatic ties with the independent Latin American republics.
This will be the first visit by a Foreign Secretary to the Caribbean since 2017 and the first to South America since 2018. The hope is that the tour will help meet a UK foreign policy objective to revive old friendships and build new ones beyond established alliances.
“This is a milestone year in the history of UK relations with countries across Latin America and the Caribbean.While I look forward to celebrating our close bonds of friendship and family, I am also here to renew and enhance our ties for the years ahead. It is a partnership that will be marked and strengthened by our shared values of freedom, democracy and concern for the state of our planet,” said the foreign secretary.
Latin America is home to 660 million people and with a combined GDP of more than $6 trillion, is also an enormous potential market for the UK. Mexico, Chile and Peru are among the region’s members the UK will be joining in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trading bloc – boosting British jobs, growth and influence.
