SECRETARY BLINKEN: Suzanne, thank you very, very much.
And colleagues, it is wonderful to see you all around this table.
Thank you so much for being here.
Welcome to the State Department.
Welcome to the Benjamin Franklin Room.
You can see to my left Franklin looking out over us.
He was America’s first diplomat.
He signed our first treaty.
He did a few other things too: he charted the Gulf Stream; he helped pioneer electricity;
he development – he developed our ethos of self-government.
And virtually none of this did he do while sober.
(Laughter.)
So I don’t think that’ll be a problem for us this afternoon, but nonetheless I wanted
to welcome you in his presence.
And I am truly delighted to be able to kick off the first-ever U.S.-Pacific Island Country
Summit.
This summit reflects our deep and enduring partnership with the Pacific Islands, one
that’s underpinned by a shared history, values, and enduring people-to-people ties.
Together we’ll discuss the challenges that we face, exchange ideas and perspectives,
and chart a way forward to deliver on the issues that matter most to our people.
I am very grateful today to be joined by Peace Corps Acting Director Carol Spahn, Millennium
Challenge Corporation CEO Alice Albright – two essential partners in doing the work of teaming
up with the peoples of the Pacific Islands to advance development across the region,
which is what we’re here today to discuss.
And I’d very much like to thank Suzy for her leadership not just today in helping to
moderate the discussion, but exceptional leadership of the East-West Center, which really brings
us together day in, day out.
We’re grateful for that.
Suzy, you’ve dedicated most of your life to strengthening ties between the United States
and our Pacific partners, and I just want to congratulate you on becoming both the first
Native Hawaiian and the first woman to lead the East-West Center.
This summit is the latest effort on the part of this administration to hear directly from
you about your priorities, your ideas, your hopes for the future of the region and the
world, and especially how we can work together to try to achieve them.
Many of us were together at the Partners of the Blue Pacific Ministerial meeting that
we hosted last week in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly.
We brought together countries around the vision that you and others set out in the 2050 Strategy
for the Blue Pacific Continent.
Today’s discussion also builds on the Pacific Leaders Summit that our gracious hosts in
Fiji convened in February – grateful for that; Vice President Harris’s engagement
with the Pacific Islands Forum in July; Deputy Secretary of State Sherman’s meetings with
many of you during the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders.
What I hope that you take away from these engagements is that the United States shares
your vision, and we are committed to help realize it.
It’s a vision that recognizes that only by working together can we actually tackle
the biggest challenges of our time that confront all of our citizens, from combating the climate
crisis and health emergencies, to promoting economic opportunity, to preserving a free
and open Indo‑Pacific where every nation – no matter how big, no matter how small
– has the right to choose its own path.
You can count on the United States partnering with you to rally other countries around this
vision across major international gatherings – from the UN General Assembly, to COP,
to the Summit for Democracy.
We also have the same vision for individuals.
Like you, we want every person to be able to choose their path, no matter who they are
or where they’re born, and have a chance to reach their full potential.
That’s what people-centered development is all about.
Delivering on that goal demands that we find pathways for people to build knowledge and
to share ideas across communities, across borders, and that’s going to be a key focus
of the discussion today: deepening our people-to-people ties and our educational exchanges.
We’re doing that through a number of programs, including ones like TechGirls, which brings
high school-age girls from across the world to the United States for a summer exchange
to build the knowledge, the skills, the networks that will help them pursue higher education
and careers in STEM – in the sciences and technology.
Today, we’ll also discuss ways to build greater resilience across the region.
One of the messages that we’ve heard loud and clear from Pacific Island leaders is that
building resilience is about more than equipping communities to adapt to the effects of the
climate crisis, which for many of you is an existential threat; it’s also about preparing
communities to weather a wide range of interrelated shocks that we know have caused cascading
effects.
That reflects the world that we live in, where the changing climate is accelerating the spread
of deadly viruses, where transnational criminal organizations not only threaten our security,
through corruption and human trafficking, but also biodiversity, through smuggling irreplaceable
wildlife and timber.
That’s why we’re partnering with you to deepen resilience across the board – from
bolstering health security through better early warning and response systems to diseases
like Dengue, to launching a program called Resilient Blue Economies, which will strengthen
marine livelihoods by supporting sustainable fisheries, aquaculture, tourism.
Today, I am very pleased to announce that the United States will contribute $4.8 million
to this new effort.
I have to tell you, though, that I’m especially pleased as we start our conversations, as
we start these two days with President Biden joining us tomorrow, that we have also come
together around a declaration of partnership between the U.S. and the Pacific, one that
shows that we have a shared vision for the future and a determination to build that future
together.
So I’m very pleased that we have this today, that we’ve agreed on it, and it will give
us a roadmap for the work that we’re doing in the future.
Most important, I’m really looking forward to this conversation, to listening, to hearing
from each and every one of you so that we can be a better, stronger, more effective
partner in the future that we’re working to build together.
Suzy, with that, back to you.