Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley says re­gion­al lead­ers must en­sure the Caribbean re­mains a zone of peace, and has an­nounced plans to es­tab­lish a Caribbean In­sti­tute for Democ­ra­cy and Po­lit­i­cal Gov­er­nance at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Cave Hill, say­ing it is crit­i­cal to safe­guard the re­gion’s val­ues.

Speak­ing dur­ing a CAR­IFES­TA pan­el ti­tled “The Big Talk Con­ver­sa­tion: The Idea of Caribbean Civil­i­sa­tion”, Mot­t­ley said gov­ern­ments across the re­gion must con­front the risks posed by shrink­ing av­enues for shap­ing pub­lic val­ues.

“What we need to do is to recog­nise that the state is at risk and why? If the on­ly place you can start to shape val­ues in a so­ci­ety now be­comes a school be­cause the peo­ple who used to watch the com­mon tele­vi­sion sta­tion ain’t do­ing so no more… what does that mean? That there is a risk and a temp­ta­tion that the state will want to strength­en it­self to con­trol the so­ci­ety by pow­er rather than by in­flu­ence,” she said.