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Friday, July 25, 2025

Caricom and regional integration

by

Guardian Media
881 days ago
20230226

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) was es­tab­lished to deep­en re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion on Ju­ly 4, 1973, some 50 years ago. The re­gion will cel­e­brate its 50th an­niver­sary know­ing that it is the old­est sur­viv­ing in­te­gra­tion move­ment in the de­vel­op­ing world. Hon Philip Davis, Prime Min­is­ter of the Ba­hamas and cur­rent Cari­com Chair said “…this mile­stone comes at a time when re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion has nev­er been more ur­gent and nec­es­sary. The shock of and re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic was a stark il­lus­tra­tion of the lim­i­ta­tions of work­ing alone.”

The mile­stone is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for re­flec­tion to de­ter­mine how the re­gion has pro­gressed since its for­ma­tion, and its fu­ture di­rec­tion and ini­tia­tives geared to­wards achiev­ing sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment for the re­gion. The chal­lenges faced by the re­gion in find­ing its place in the world abound. The eco­nom­ic chal­lenges faced by small de­vel­op­ing na­tions states, the peren­ni­al prob­lem of in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and food se­cu­ri­ty re­main whilst the world has be­come more com­pli­cat­ed. En­er­gy costs are a sig­nif­i­cant item as no econ­o­my has ever de­vel­oped with­out ac­cess to af­ford­able en­er­gy. Nor can so­cial or­der be sus­tained if there is no food se­cu­ri­ty.

De­spite the rhetoric, Haiti re­mains the sick child of the re­gion. It is not clear that any for­eign in­ter­ven­tion, mil­i­tary or oth­er­wise, can al­ter Haiti’s des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion. Nor can any Cari­com coun­try. Haiti’s prob­lems re­quire long-term so­lu­tions and po­lit­i­cal will. How­ev­er, the ap­proach of the Ba­hamas to its Hait­ian refugee prob­lem re­flects that of de­vel­oped west­ern coun­tries which the re­gion has crit­i­cised in the past. Fur­ther, Guyana’s Min­is­ter of Nat­ur­al Re­sources say­ing that Guyana was press­ing ahead in build­ing a re­fin­ery geared on­ly to do­mes­tic de­mand is a telling re­but­tal of the idea of re­gion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

The bot­tom line is that no Cari­com coun­try has the in­flu­ence to ef­fect changes on the world scene on its own. We are vul­ner­a­ble eco­nom­i­cal­ly, ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly to cli­mate change and hur­ri­canes, and so­cial­ly. Our pop­u­la­tions are small. We have no mil­i­tary might and many of the re­gion’s skilled na­tion­als em­i­grate. US pop­u­la­tion cen­sus sta­tis­tics alone show that in 2019 there were 2.2 mil­lion peo­ple who were born in Cari­com but were liv­ing legal­ly in the USA. Of these, 1.4 mil­lion came from Haiti and Ja­maica.

While some Cari­com coun­tries may have nat­ur­al re­sources, they are de­pen­dent on for­eign tech­nol­o­gy and multi­na­tion­al firms to de­vel­op or ex­ploit these re­sources. Our re­gion­al links have been weak­er than our in­ter­na­tion­al link­ages. We are high­ly de­pen­dent on a glob­alised world and that has shaped the for­eign pol­i­cy of in­di­vid­ual coun­tries. Ex­cept in a few no­table in­stances, we have not seen the val­ue of op­er­at­ing as a block as op­posed to ne­go­ti­at­ing arrange­ments on an in­di­vid­ual ba­sis with the stronger pow­ers.

There are a few lessons that the Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment have yet to learn and in­cor­po­rate in­to their ap­proach to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. The first is that the re­gion can on­ly move as fast as its pri­vate sec­tor and that these sec­toral links must be fos­tered and en­cour­aged by de­vel­op­ing the do­mes­tic pri­vate sec­tor. Al­so, in­di­vid­ual coun­tries are still to learn the les­son that Cari­com has more lever­age vot­ing as a bloc on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage than op­er­at­ing as in­di­vid­ual coun­tries.

A fifti­eth an­niver­sary is not mere­ly a time for re­flec­tion. It is a time for change.

Editorial


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