📷 Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
VICTORIA, Seychelles — Seychelles’ Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora, Barry Faure, led the country’s delegation this week at the 121st Session of the Council of Ministers of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) in Brussels, the body that brings together 79 member countries across three regions and now serves as the principal political platform for the post Cotonou era.
The meeting, hosted at the OACPS headquarters in the Belgian capital, was the first ministerial gathering under the new leadership arrangements inside the organisation, which emerged from the dissolution of the Lomé framework and the entry into force of the Samoa Agreement as the new umbrella partnership with the European Union. The Brussels session set the political tone for the rest of 2026 and prepared the ground for a summit of heads of state scheduled for later this year, according to the OACPS session page.
Faure used the meeting to underline the small island developing state perspective inside the grouping, a recurring theme for Seychelles in OACPS and ACP forums since the early 2000s. He pointed to the value of the OACPS platform for countries that share climate vulnerability, market access concerns, and the need for predictable development finance. He also flagged the digital transformation agenda of the OACPS, which the organisation’s strategic framework maps out for the 2025 to 2030 period and which Seychelles has said it wants to use to sharpen its own public services and tourism marketing.
The Brussels session covered a wide substantive agenda, ranging from climate finance and resilience to trade and economic integration, peace and security, and youth, gender and human development. Delegates reviewed the implementation of the intra ACP strategy that the organisation has used to coordinate flagship programmes, including those focused on mobility, civil society engagement, and the digital economy. They also took stock of progress against the Samoa Agreement, the post Cotonou partnership signed in 2023 between the OACPS and the European Union.
Brussels was a fitting venue. The OACPS has long kept its main institutions in the Belgian capital because of the legacy of the Lomé Convention, signed in 1975 with what was then the European Economic Community and named after the Togolese capital where the first deal was concluded. The Council of Ministers page on the OACPS website tracks the rotation of the group’s chair, which the Seychelles delegation noted as part of its preparation for the session.
For Seychelles, the meeting was also a moment to reaffirm its longstanding engagement with the broader group. The country has been a member of the family of ACP states since the group’s founding under the Lomé framework and has held ministerial and ambassadorial roles at various points in its history. Faure’s presence in Brussels was read in Victoria as continuity on the diplomatic track that the country has run since independence, particularly on issues where small island states need to act together to be heard in global forums.
The Council of Ministers is the OACPS decision making body between summits and is composed of ministers from each member state. It meets twice a year in ordinary session and can be convened in extraordinary session when political circumstances demand. Brussels remains the regular venue for the body’s institutional work, with the OACPS also running a Geneva office and a permanent presence in other capitals.
Sources cited: 1. Wikipedia, “Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States”,
