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As Secretary-General I want to welcome you to the headquarters of the CARICOM Secretariat, in particular those of you who may be here for the first time. You are here to begin a series of meetings scheduled for this week which will deal with matters pertaining to Contingent Rights, the outcome of the appraisal of the state of implementation of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), the free circulation of goods and the treatment of monopolies in the CSME.
In the coming hours and days you will undertake work, which is critical to the further development of the CSME. Without any fanfare the Community, on the 1st of January, entered the fifth year of the operations of the Single Market. You will be very much aware as officials that the Single Market nevertheless is not yet a finished product, but is still very much a work in progress and still very much evolving. In no other area of the Single Market are we confronted with the need to undertake and conclude work more expeditiously than in the development and acceptance of a Protocol on Contingent Rights. Five years ago our Heads of Government declared that: “it is our intention, without prejudice to the elaboration of a Protocol provided for under Article 239 of the Revised Treaty relating to contingent rights, to grant eligible nationals of participating Member States access to health care, education and such other social services as are necessary for their enjoyment of CSME rights, subject to considerations of national capacity.” We are aware that CARICOM Nationals continue to benefit from access to various social services in Member States even when their presence is not in full accordance with the requirements for free movement. This was underlined by the comprehensive study on Contingent Rights, which was conducted four years ago, which showed that CARICOM Nationals had such access and in most cases under similar conditions as nationals of the receiving country. This is in part very much so for when all is said and done, we are all Caribbean brothers and sisters and we all recognize this when it counts most. In more recent times however, various Member States have indicated that they are facing capacity and resource constraints which inhibit their ability to provide full access to social services. It is those constraints that have proven so far to be a major hindrance in advancing the work that needs to be done with respect to the development of the Protocol. This is evidenced by the fact that after almost four years of negotiations we are still in the phase of identification of rights to be included in the Protocol. We can and must do better as there is an urgent need to make significant progress in this area. Contingent rights are after all, closely related to the free movement of persons in the CSME. This is so, be it for wage earning or non-wage earning activities. Persons, who have moved or want to move under the various CSME arrangements – some of them our very friends and colleagues – are more and more wondering what to expect in terms of rights in the receiving country. It was therefore no great surprise that in 2009 the Secretariat witnessed a noticeable increase in issues and questions linked to contingent rights matters. The Conference of Heads of Government, recognizing the urgency of this matter, therefore took a number of important decisions during its Thirtieth Meeting held in Georgetown, Guyana and these decisions are detailed in the Working Document for this meeting. Critical among them were the approval of a definition of contingent rights and the granting of the right to primary education. To advance the process on an empirical basis, the Secretariat commissioned two studies namely a study on a Policy Framework for Contingent rights and a study dealing with binding commitments made by Member States at the bilateral, hemispheric and international level in areas that are relevant to contingent rights. The outcomes of these studies will be presented during this Meeting for consideration and further guidance of and assistance to Member States. I do not wish to detain the meeting much longer but it would be remiss of me not to use this opportunity to thank the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for its support in the past years for funding major activities relating to Contingent Rights, such as the various meetings and studies that were done. I also wish to thank the European Union (EU) for supporting the hosting of this critical meeting. In closing, it is my belief that if in the coming two days we are fuelled by the spirit of regional integration, we will be in a position to make progress in this critical area. Our Community is depending on us.
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