KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has added his sig­na­ture to a joint de­c­la­ra­tion by ten for­mer Caribbean lead­ers call­ing for the re­gion to re­main “a ‘zone of peace’ where the rule of law pre­vails”.

In a state­ment mark­ing his 76th birth­day, Dr Row­ley said he found it “nec­es­sary and du­ti­ful” to en­dorse the his­toric state­ment by the for­mer heads of CARI­COM.

He re­flect­ed on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s past lead­er­ship in up­hold­ing the prin­ci­ples of uni­ty and re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty that un­der­pin the de­c­la­ra­tion.

“It was Trinidad and To­ba­go’s voice, sup­port­ed by all my col­leagues, when we af­firmed that ‘to­geth­er we are stronger.’ We main­tained, even in the most dif­fi­cult of cir­cum­stances, that ‘we may be small but not in­signif­i­cant and our voice and our in­ter­ests should be re­spect­ed’,” he said.

Dr Row­ley added that it was “em­bar­rass­ing” that Trinidad and To­ba­go had now “reck­less­ly sub­scribed” to ac­tions that aban­don those prin­ci­ples.

“It is a dan­ger­ous dere­lic­tion of du­ty, un­der any cir­cum­stances, to em­brace the dis­card­ed colo­nial mantra that ‘might is right’ and that the rule of law—lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al—is an in­con­ve­nience and a hum­bug,” he said.

The de­c­la­ra­tion—ti­tled “Our Caribbean Space: A Zone of Peace on Land, Sea & Air­space where the Rule of Law Pre­vails”—ex­press­es con­cern over the in­creased mil­i­tary buildup and the pres­ence of nu­clear ves­sels and air­craft in the Caribbean.

It urges re­gion­al gov­ern­ments to re­sist be­ing drawn in­to ex­ter­nal con­flicts, up­hold in­ter­na­tion­al law, and pre­serve the Caribbean as a space of peace and sta­bil­i­ty.

The sig­na­to­ries in­clude for­mer lead­ers Bald­win Spencer (An­tigua & Bar­bu­da); Said Musa and Dean Bar­row (Be­lize); Fre­un­del Stu­art (Bar­ba­dos); Edi­son James (Do­mini­ca); Till­son Thomas (Grena­da); Don­ald Ramo­tar (Guyana); Bruce Gold­ing and P.J. Pat­ter­son (Ja­maica); and Ken­ny An­tho­ny (St Lu­cia).

The state­ment reaf­firms CARI­COM’s com­mit­ment to sov­er­eign­ty, peace­ful dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, and the prin­ci­ple that mil­i­tary ac­tions in re­gion­al wa­ters must be gov­erned by in­ter­na­tion­al law.

“Pre­serv­ing our Caribbean space as an es­tab­lished zone of peace is for us a vi­tal im­per­a­tive. Our shared his­to­ry and com­mon in­ter­ests de­mand one­ness. We have gone too far to turn back now,” it con­clud­ed.

The de­c­la­ra­tion comes amid height­ened at­ten­tion to the pres­ence of US naval ves­sels in the re­gion, in­clud­ing re­cent port vis­its to Trinidad and To­ba­go.