Introduction
As Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community I wish to express my appreciation to the North East regional Caribbean Students Conference for inviting me to deliver the keynote address at the last such Conference of this Century. I consider it not only an honour but my duty to be here. The title of my address this evening was chosen to concur with the theme of your Conference – Regional Integration – a subject to which I have devoted most of my professional life.
I must immediately dispel any impression that I am of the view that CARICOM is the only regional mechanism which is contributing to making the region whole. The University of the West Indies, the Caribbean Development Bank and Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, BWIA, LIAT, and the West Indies Cricket Team all advance the process of integration in myriad ways. Tonight, however, we are looking at CARICOM’s role.
The Caribbean has been described, correctly in my view, as one of the most balkanized regions in the world, being made up of geographic and social fragments historically moulded by imperial linkages, fragments which are in turn divided into a number of small states. Making the Caribbean whole therefore requires building bridges both among states and between the various fragments, by designing wider and stronger instruments of cooperation among them.
I would like to distinguish between the concepts of integration and cooperation. Integration occurs when countries adopt policies and mechanisms to enable them to pursue objectives as one unit. Cooperation is the process whereby individual countries agree to pursue similar goals or policies toward achieving a common objective.
Integration thus requires cooperation, but cooperation does not necessarily imply integration, making this distinction very important. Despite the fact that making the Caribbean whole may seem no more than an ideal, working to move ever closer to that ideal is of inestimable value to the region. Europe embarked on the road to integration some 42 years ago, charged with a mandate for ever closer union. Given its position today, CARICOM at 25 is still a youth by comparison.
A Brief History of Caribbean Integration
Regional integration generally dates back to 1947, with the First Conference on the Closer Association of the British West Indian Colonies in Jamaica. Some notable figures in modern Caribbean history gathered in Montego Bay to examine the prospects for regional union. From that forum a sense of solidarity and a vision of a joint future emerged, which laid a foundation for the region s initial commitment to integration.
This was the start of a process that saw, under the guiding hand of colonial Britain, the establishment of the West Indies Federation in 1958. After the Federation’s demise in 1962, a Caribbean initiative spawned another attempt – the Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIFTA) – with the signing of the Dickenson Bay Agreement in 1965 by Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, and Guyana. However, this agreement only came into effect in 1968, with the joining of Trinidad & Tobago, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts, Nevis & Anguilla, St. Lucia and St. Vincent & the Grenadines. Jamaica and Montserrat came on board later in that year, followed by Belize in 1971.
In 1973, five years after CARIFTA came into existence, the leaders of Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago signed the Treaty of Chaguaramas establishing the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM). All of the CARIFTA countries became members, and were joined by the Bahamas in 1983.
CARICOM and Beyond
The Treaty of Chaguaramas contains provisions for CARICOM membership of any other territory in the region in addition to the original signatories. Under this inclusive arrangement, the British colony of Montserrat was a founding CARICOM member, and the dependent territories of the Virgin Islands, the Turks & Caicos Islands, and Anguilla gained associate membership. It has enabled the Community to extend beyond its Anglophone roots to embrace Dutch-speaking Suriname and (pending finalization of negotiations) presently to admit French-speaking Haiti, to encompass fourteen sovereign states and one dependent territory.
But despite its large number of members CARICOM is still small, with a population of only 6 million (14 million including Haiti). This circumstance precipitated two key initiatives to broaden CARICOM s political and economic alliances. First, the Caribbean Forum of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM), which marshals the independent countries in CARICOM together with the Dominican Republic to interface with the European Union (E.U.) under the Lome Convention.
Second, the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), established in 1994 in Cartagena, Colombia. The ACS is a mechanism for consultation, cooperation and action, bringing together all the countries of the Caribbean Basin (the sovereign states of Central America, CARICOM, Cuba, and Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela) 25 sovereign states and a number of dependencies, with a population of some 200 million. Its purpose is to identify and promote the implementation of policies and programs with the objectives of:
– harnessing, utilizing and developing the Region’s collective capabilities for sustained cultural, economic, social, scientific and technological advancement – developing the potential of the Caribbean Sea
– promoting opportunities for cooperation and concerted action on trade and investment issues and
– establishing, consolidating, and augmenting cooperative and institutional arrangements that are responsive to the region s various cultural identities, development needs and normative systems.
A further objective of common linkage is the creation of trade, investment and economic cooperation arrangements with other countries of the Caribbean Basin, including Central America. To that end CARICOM has signed agreements with Venezuela and Colombia, and is now in the final stages of negotiation with the Dominican Republic. It also established the CARICOM-Cuba Joint Commission for cooperation on trade, transport, culture, and biotechnology, and met in Honduras with the countries of Central America in 1992 to initiate the building of a process of cooperation.
So far I have sketched the linkages among countries of the Caribbean Basin from a CARICOM-centric point of view, with the notable exception of the United States. The main vehicle for regular U.S.-CARICOM dialogue is the agreement Partnership for Prosperity and Security in the Caribbean, signed in Barbados in May 1997. This instrument emerged from a CARICOM initiative to forge a common position in response to unilateral action by the U.S. on sensitive issues such as the illicit traffic in drugs and firearms, maritime interdiction of the drug trade (the so-called Shiprider Agreements), U.S. deportation of criminals to the Caribbean, and U.S. policy toward the E.U. Banana Regime under which Caribbean bananas are marketed in Europe.
The agreement comprises two elements. First, the Bridgetown Declaration of Principles in which the leaders pledged to strengthen their cooperation in responding to the challenges of the coming millennium in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect, and second, the Plan of Action with two broad sections – Trade, Development, Finance and Environment; and Justice and Security. This structure has established a mechanism for regular dialogue, primarily annual meetings between the U.S. Secretary of State and Caribbean Foreign Ministers.
But despite the Principles recognition of the inextricable link between economic development and justice and security, the United States primary interest has been and continues to be the agreements security provisions. Significantly diminishing the value of the agreement to CARICOM is the failure of the U.S. to honour its main economic commitment to extend the provisions of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI a U.S. non-negotiated trade mechanism conferring preferential access for many CARICOM and Central American products to the U.S. market since 1984) to Caribbean exports that do not currently receive favourable treatment. This failure is particularly costly because Mexico is afforded such treatment under NAFTA, resulting in a diversion of U.S. trade and investment flows away from Caribbean countries.
Finally, the U.S. position on the marketing of Caribbean bananas is not only contrary to its commitment, but has severely embittered the CARICOM countries, leading to the recent decision by the Heads of Government to review the agreement. Further, U.S. action on this matter recently threatened to spark an international trade war. All of this for an export not produced by the United States, and for which CARICOM accounts for no more than 2% of the world market, but which is very significant for a number of CARICOM economies, accounting in 1995 for more than 40% of total exports, 30% of employment, and 10% of GDP in Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent & the Grenadines!
To the extent that the United States saw the meeting of May 1997, not as a meeting between the Caribbean and the U.S., but, as President Clinton said, a meeting among Caribbean nations including the U.S., it is a great pity that the record of implementation of this agreement has not lived up to its potential in contributing to making the Caribbean whole.
The Deepening of CARICOM
As a process, making the Caribbean whole is more than the creation of agreements with a common membership, or even increasing linkages among nations. It is as much about strengthening the arrangements to which the countries are parties. The deepening of relationships within CARICOM is thus as vital as the widening of its membership and outreach.
CARICOM’s main thrust has historically been trade-centred. But being a group of small, open, developing economies, intra-CARICOM trade has always been modest never rising above 20% of total CARICOM exports and 12% of total CARICOM imports. The bulk of CARICOM trade has been and continues to be with the U.S., which is responsible for 45% of CARICOM imports and just under 40% of exports.
The EU (to which most of the traditional exports of sugar, bananas, rum and rice are exported under the Lome Convention) has been the second largest export market, with intra-CARICOM exports running a close third. A significant part of CARICOM s trade with the U.S. falls under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. However goods not covered by the CBI mainly garments, petroleum, and petroleum products weigh heavily in the Region’s total exports, and have enabled the U.S. to maintain a substantial trade surplus with Caribbean nations.
CARICOM therefore needs integration mechanisms that extend beyond the essentially commodity trade-based agreements now in place. In the economic sphere, existing measures must be broadened to include trade in services, and their focus deepened to facilitate the actual enhancement of productive activities within the region.
Closer integration calls for the fashioning of arrangements which significantly influence macroeconomic and industrial policy of member states to ensure coordination in areas such as the movement of skilled labour and capital, companies legislation and the right of Caribbean nationals to establish businesses in any CARICOM state, monetary and fiscal policies and management, and the harmonization of policies relating to network sectors such as telecommunications and air and maritime transportation. These in turn create demand for complementary arrangements outside of the economic sphere, encompassing cooperation in functional areas such as environment and civil society, and in the political arena of foreign policy coordination among member states. It is to these issues I now turn.
A Single Market and Economy
In recognition of the economic requirements of integration, the Heads of Government embarked on the ambitious task of upgrading CARICOM to a Community including a Single Market and Economy. This objective is expected to be substantially realized by the year 2000, by subjecting the Treaty of Chaguaramas to broad and radical revision through the following series of Protocols:
I. Institutional framework for governance of the Caribbean Community, establishing a governance structure that is headed by the Conference of Heads of Government as the supreme decision-making authority, supported by a Management Council and four specialized Ministerial Councils responsible for trade and economic development, finance and planning, human and social development and foreign and community relations.
Complementing these are three subsidiary technical bodies dealing with legal affairs, budgetary matters, and the laying of the foundation for the next stage in CARICOM’s evolution, economic and monetary union. In addition, the Secretariat plays an integral role to the entire structure by providing the main technical and administrative support.
Driving the functions of each part of the structure are the following principles of governance: unanimity at the level of Heads of Government, qualified majority elsewhere, cooperation among Community Organs and bodies, and provisions governing associate and observer status for countries and related organizations.
II. Free movement of capital, the provision of services, and the right of establishment. Also pursuant to the 1995 decision of the Heads of Government to waive work-permit requirements for university graduates, media workers, sportsmen, and artistes, skilled labour has the limited right to move and work freely throughout the Community.
III. Industrial policy, to promote the productive employment of resources and increase international competitiveness of the industrial production of the Community.
IV. Trade policy, to enhance previous CARICOM provisions regarding the movement of goods, rules of origin to determine eligibility for Community treatment, the development of a common policy with respect to third states, and the role of tariff policy in an era of open regionalism.
V. Agricultural policy, to transform this traditional sector by increasing its efficiency and diversification, addressing the requirements of international competitiveness, environmental sustainability, contribution to the Region’s food security, and the creation of forward linkages in food markets for the region s tourism sector, and raw material for agro-industrial and other sectors.
VI. Air and sea transportation policies, to facilitate the intra-CARICOM mobility of people and foster market integration through more efficient transport of goods and raw materials, to overcome geographic separation, and political, economic and social fragmentation.
VII. Equity, to ensure fair distribution of the costs and benefits of the process of regional integration, by ensuring that less-developed partners, regions, and sectors that are disadvantaged by the opening of borders and removal of barriers are provided for. This element is critical to sustaining the process of integration.
VIII. Dispute resolution, whose centrepiece is the soon to be established Caribbean Court of Justice designed to be the Community’s final Court of Appeal, and also to have original jurisdiction in the interpretation and application of the Treaty of Chaguaramas.
IX. Competition policy, to deal with the issues of restrictive business practices and consumer protection that will become increasingly important with the increasing openness of the Community as a Single Market and Economy.
Development of Regional Capital Markets
The Caribbean economy can neither develop nor be made whole by relying solely on the investment of others. This was recognized in the 1989 Grand Anse Declaration, where CARICOM Heads of Governments initiated measures to provide opportunities to draw on the savings of people within the Caribbean and in the diaspora to stimulate indigenous development. This endeavour has made significant progress in two areas.
First, the stock exchanges of Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad & Tobago were linked in 1993 and began cross-listing and cross-trading the securities of companies listed as public in all CARICOM member states. Cooperation among the three exchanges has continued with the technical support of NASDAQ, so that by the end of 1999 they should be fully automated, linked for real time trading, and have a central depository.
Additionally, an exchange is being established in The Bahamas and initiatives are at different stages in Belize, the East Caribbean currency area and Guyana to create national or sub-regional units to link with the regional system. The Dominican Republic stock exchange has also been participating in meetings of the CARICOM Capital Market Committee.
Second, CARICOM Heads of Government entered into an agreement in 1993 with the ICWI Group of Jamaica to spearhead the creation of a private Caribbean investment fund. To date, the fund has mobilized in excess of U.S. $25M of a target of $150M, which it intends to achieve by September 1999. ICWI’s effort has been brought to fruition by three young Jamaicans who returned to the Region from Wall Street and London.
The Environment and the Caribbean Sea
This area of functional cooperation is motivated by the fact that Caribbean nations naturally share the important common linkage of the Caribbean Sea. This defining feature of our Region is a fragile ecosystem that is highly vulnerable to pollution from the myriad economic activities on densely populated coastlands, and heavy use for transportation, especially the passage of hazardous materials (especially the movement between Europe and Asia of nuclear waste) and the more than 50% of the world’s cruise fleet through the Region’s waters.
The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea has expanded the exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Caribbean countries. This has meant an increase in both the size of the marine area that nations are bound to protect, and the overlap of territorial waters most of whose boundaries have not yet been negotiated, broadening the scope of CARICOM nations responsibilities at the same time as increasing the need for cooperation among their governments.
To address this circumstance the CARICOM Heads of Government launched an initiative to have the Caribbean Sea internationally recognized as a special area in the context of sustainable development. And because management of the Caribbean Sea must be a Caribbean-wide rather than CARICOM-wide challenge, CARICOM is seeking the support for this initiative from the Heads of Government of the ACS, having already secured the support of the Dominican Republic and Central American Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Promoting the need to sustainably manage and develop the Caribbean Sea is a key area in which Caribbean experts in the diaspora can assist their region.
Social Dimensions of Caribbean Development
CARICOM has already made an indelible mark on the quality of life in the Region, through the creation and maintenance of regional institutions in areas such as education, health, the role of women in development, labour, sport, and the youth. From the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to the Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (CARIFESTA), CARICOM’s social and cultural dimension has made a signal contribution to making the Caribbean whole. And that extends also to the quality of political life set forth in the 1997 CARICOM Charter of Civil Society, which sets the normative standards for relations between governed and the governing within the Community.
By making the relationship between every CARICOM Government and every Community national extend beyond their country of citizenship to the entire Community, these arrangements set a common normative standard and provide common facilities for all Members of the Community. In so doing, they help not only to make the Caribbean whole, but wholesome as well.
Foreign Policy Coordination
The third pillar on which CARICOM’s strength is predicated is the coordination of the foreign policies of its independent Member States. As a collection of small sovereign states, individual and separate foreign and external economic policy is much more likely to divide rather than to integrate the Region.
A key objective of CARICOM has therefore been to approach its external political and economic negotiations e.g. the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a single, coordinated unit. For example, to ensure effective coordination in the field of external economic negotiations, CARICOM has established a dedicated institution the regional negotiating machinery (RNM) to undertake regional and multilateral trade negotiations on its behalf. The subscription of the Dominican Republic and Cuba to the RNM demonstrates the contribution of this approach to unifying the Caribbean.
Concluding Observations
The process of making the Caribbean whole is not easy given the Region’s history, geography, cultural diversity, economic weakness, and individual and overall small size. Moreover, in light of the myriad and powerful influences to which the individual countries are subjected, uniting them will be no simple task. But even though conceiving of this achievement is difficult, it is not impossible. Other countries and their people have faced equally daunting tasks in their history and have succeeded. Are the Caribbean people any less capable?
In March at Saramacca, Suriname, CARICOM Heads of Government, assisted by a significant regional youth participation, began discussions on The Caribbean Community in the Next Decade as part of the Community’s 25th anniversary celebrations. From this meeting three important points emerged. It was widely accepted that the CARICOM s process of governance does not adequately serve the Community s needs, and requires the ceding of some degree of sovereignty to a central executive authority that is responsible for driving the entire Community forward. Additionally, it was agreed that the Caribbean in the new millennium should combine technological versatility with its cultural and ethnic diversity to secure its place in the hemisphere and the new global village.
Finally, there were calls for the Community to improve the efficiency of is functioning, through more selective prioritization of its activities.
But even if CARICOM as an institution were to limit the scope of its current contributions to the various dimensions of regional life, spearheading the process of making the Caribbean whole would still be a herculean task. And this would still be the case even if all the Caribbean territories, including Cuba and the Dominican Republic were to become members of CARICOM, and the Single Market was to come into effect complete with the Caribbean Court of Justice. There are two crucial reasons for this.
One is that making the Caribbean whole is a process that requires a much wider participation than is now conceived of within that design. The other is that CARICOM and other institutions that make this process happen are in critical need of resources human, financial, and technological to undertake their tasks. These serve to highlight the role and contribution which those in the diaspora can and must play if we are to be successful in making the Caribbean whole.
Finally, I hold the view that even a fully supported and effective CARICOM can only achieve the objective of making the Caribbean truly whole in the sense that I have elaborated here tonight, if there exists a certain context and socio-political environment. On an earlier occasion when asked my views on what we of the Caribbean must do to face up to the 21st century – now a mere matter of days away – I took example from the Great One and laid down the following Ten Commandments of Caribbean development. I close by repeating them tonight, as they provide the environment that CARICOM would need to make the Caribbean whole.
I. Most importantly, stimulate the people of the region to become involved on an ongoing basis in matters affecting their lives be it at the community, national, or regional level. Specifically, sensitize people to the necessity of thinking and acting as one region, as the best and perhaps the only way to achieve our aspirations. We can only do this by instilling a sense of pride in our many achievements as one people.
II. Within the context of the various regional institutions, develop a shared vision of the future direction for the Caribbean among the Region’s leadership. This process should be transparent and pursued within an environment of broad consultation and public accountability.
III. Adopt clear policies to shift economic activity away from primary commodities toward a more balanced mix of goods and services, with the objective of increased international competitiveness and participation in trade.
IV. Incorporate into domestic and regional policies the social dimensions of development, by using criteria not just the rubric of economic growth but also job creation, poverty reduction, participation of women, conservation of the environment, and the meaningful involvement of youth.
V. Strengthen regional cooperation and continue to build strategic international alliances, as a means to develop production, increase trade, and pursue external negotiations with major countries, economic blocs, and international financial institutions.
VI. Strengthen our human resources, by according greater priority to our universities and other institutions of learning and research, firmly grounding our educational policy in regionalism, linguistic versatility, computer literacy, and mastery of new technologies.
VII. Develop a regional infrastructure of production and marketing through deeper integration to promote freer movement of all factors of production, the formation of regional companies, and the creation of strategic business alliances.
VIII. Strengthen the information and telecommunications infrastructure to increase the efficiency of production and stimulate the creation of new service industries.
IX. Dismantle barriers to entrepreneurship by promoting broad participation in business and enabling people to benefit directly from the fruits of successful endeavour in the context of market-driven economic development.
X. Embrace the spirit of regional commitment to ever closer political, economic, and cultural cooperation.
As young people with an interest in the Caribbean’s future, the Region looks forward with high expectations to your contribution to making the Caribbean whole.
I thank you.
