The Diplomat
The Ambassador of Haiti, Louis Marie Montfort Saintil, and the Spanish Undersecretary of the Ministry of Universities, Luis Cerdán Ortiz-Quintana, held a meeting yesterday at the headquarters of the Haitian Embassy to discuss issues of cooperation between the two countries in the fields of education, science and research.
The Haitian Ambassador, Louis Marie Montfort, stressed during the event that “within the activity that the Government of Haiti has been developing for years in the fields of education and scientific research, in this meeting with the Undersecretary we are discussing how to work with the Ministry of Universities to develop a framework agreement and thus be able to have the support of the Ministry. This is the reason for today’s meeting and we have taken note of how we are going to move forward with Spanish institutions in the field of academic and scientific cooperation to strengthen human capital and to participate in economic and academic development”.
Likewise, the Haitian Ambassador remarked that “we have talked on how the academic sector can participate in all the challenges that Haiti faces in 2021, with the constitutional referendum and the new general elections. Spain is the third largest bilateral donor after the United States and Canada, and the largest donor to the European Union; in other words, Spain is always a partner we can count on at all levels.”
For his part, Luis Cerdán Ortiz-Quintana commented that this meeting “will not be the last. I am sure that this is the first of many meetings that the Ministry of Universities will hold with the Embassy of Haiti in order to strengthen cooperation at the educational and scientific level, and cooperation that is also in line with the strategic objectives of the Ministry, which is the internationalisation of the Spanish university system. This work has already been carried out, promoted by the Embassy and the Spanish authorities, especially in our public universities. We want to promote projects that allow for greater mobility between students, teaching staff and researchers from one side and the other, in cooperation and mutual enrichment. In short, we are sure that there are many opportunities for further progress in this direction.”
