Dwayne Baptiste

I’ll say it plainly: average Dominican reaches 78. Kalinago men get 60. That’s not fate, that’s arithmetic nobody audits.

Sure. Wake me when someone signs something.

Third bulletin? Rain and mosquitoes. Shocking.

Another chartered flight to New York, another speech about our drowning. Meanwhile the drain outside my house has been “under review” since 2019. Multilateralism in crisis? The crisis is the sea eating the road every spring, and no suit has noticed. Funny, that. The summit hall has air conditioning. The fishermen don’t. Keep pressing — the water isn’t waiting.

We buy trophies; our artists still get zero royalties.

We’ll have more meetings, same failure, more imports.

Joint declarations. Lovely. Meanwhile in Dominica, a government that can’t fix a road calls itself the Global South’s vanguard. New Delhi talks influence. We can’t get a ferry to run on time. Restraint in the Middle East — sure. We can’t restrain a pothole. Big words travel far. Ours stay stuck at the airport.

Fortaleza 2014. Big speeches, a development bank, a currency reserve pool. A decade on, where’s the leverage? Now the same faces gather with real wars and tariffs on the table. Difference? Nobody agrees on anything. Russia wants cover, India wants balance, China wants the chair. Photographs again. The bank still isn’t paying for a thing.

Last one flopped. Same hall, fancier title.

I doubt that giving young people a formal role in health policy will by itself make the region healthier, because consultation without real power or funding rarely changes anything. What’s missing is a concrete case where youth-led recommendations shifted a budget, a programme, or a measurable health outcome, not just another declaration.