International Conference on Small States and Economic Resilience

The International Conference on Small States and Economic Resilience is being organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Islands and Small States Institute of our University.

The conference will be held at the Foundation for International Studies between April 23 and 25. The programme of the conference has been drawn up to cover the various aspects of resilience building, including its measurement.

The conference is a sequel and builds on three previous workshops on economic vulnerability and resilience with special reference to small states also organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University, and held in Gozo in March 2004, March 2005 and April 2006.

These three workshops were mostly of a technical nature, and led to the construction of a resilience index, which juxtaposed against the vulnerability index, assessed the risk of being harmed by external shocks.

As a result of these workshops, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University published three books on issues related to small states' competitiveness, vulnerability and resilience.

The planned outcome of this conference is to identify and propose suitable policies for economic resilience building in small states and to explore ways in which the Resilience Index could be operationalised. More information is available on http://events.um.edu.mt/resilience2007/