The Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD), an Organ of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), will examine proposals aimed at refashioning the Region's 1997 human resource development strategy as it places emphasis on human capital development in the Community at its Fifth Meeting in Georgetown, Guyana.

CARICOM Governments and people have, over the past week, expressed their horror and disgust at the tragic and premeditated acts of terrorism which took place in the United States of America on 11 September. We condemn these dastardly acts which rank among the most reprehensible that have been afflicted on the innocent in modern times.

The Caribbean Community Secretariat has been informed about the death on 11 September 2001 in Belize of Judge Edward A. Laing, Member of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea and former Ambassador/Permanent Representative of Belize to the United Nations, the Organisation of American States, and High Commissioner to Canada, at the age of 59.

A two-day Regional Demand Reduction Forum opens at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Georgetown, Guyana-based Headquarters on Monday 17 September 2001, bringing together governmental and non governmental agencies from across the Region to set out a new course of action against the scourge of substance abuse which threatens to consume the entire Region. The Forum is also expected to advise the Community Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) on the policy direction to be adopted.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) learnt with great horror and dismay of the tragedy of unprecedented and unexpected magnitude which occurred on 11 September 2001 in the United States of America.

The thousands of lives lost and countless others injured, the continuing search for those missing, and the impact of this traumatic day on the United States of America and its people were all the more deeply experienced given the large Caribbean presence in those two metropolitan areas.