07/05/2026
From the UN-Habitat Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, we accompanied senior housing officials from across the Caribbean in Bridgetown this week.
From the UN-Habitat Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (ROLAC), we had the privilege of accompanying senior housing and urban development officials from 7 Caribbean countries: Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The SURGe Caribbean Regional Workshop took place at UN House in Bridgetown over two days of structured technical work, where the participating countries developed the Bridgetown Technical Roadmap, a country-owned working document that will guide our joint engagement over the next 12 months.
"In the Caribbean, adequate housing sits at the centre of urban climate action. This Workshop, and the work that follows, reflects exactly that conviction: country-led, anchored in multilevel governance, and grounded in the realities of each country."
Elkin Velasquez Monsalve, Regional Director, UN-Habitat ROLAC
"The work we are launching in the Caribbean is an opportunity to generate real impact in places where the challenges are layered: hurricanes, volcanic activity, coastal erosion, vulnerable housing stock. Our task is to adapt UN-Habitat's methodologies to those realities, not the other way around. The Caribbean does not need more frameworks designed elsewhere. It needs frameworks built with the region, for the region."
Luis Antonio Ramírez García, SURGe Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, UN-Habitat ROLAC
Our particular gratitude to the Honourable Christopher Gibbs, Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance of Barbados, for his presence and leadership at the opening of the Workshop.
We also thank the United Nations Country Team for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean for hosting us at UN House, the Slovak Republic for the steadfast partnership that makes SURGe Caribbean possible, and the Caribbean Development Bank and CNULM for their substantive contributions.
The work that began in Bridgetown will inform UN-Habitat's broader contributions to WUF13 in Baku, the Caribbean Urban Forum in Jamaica, and COP31. Our team will continue to walk alongside Caribbean countries over the year ahead.
