If you were on the Caribbean beat as a jour­nal­ist in the late 1980s/ear­ly 1990s, you would have recog­nised the late Guyanese leader, Dr Ched­di Ja­gan, as one of the more de­ter­mined voic­es for a new glob­al de­vel­op­men­tal par­a­digm, with this part of the world as a key fo­cal point.

Pri­or to his as­cent to of­fice in 1992 – (again) since the sto­ry of Guyana 1961 is an­oth­er re­mark­able is­sue – he was among the more ubiq­ui­tous Caribbean politi­cians; ap­pear­ing al­most any­where there was a plat­form to air his con­cern that the de­vel­op­ing world had not been re­ceiv­ing its fair share of glob­al as­sets.

That much of it was dis­mis­sive­ly put down to dat­ed, dogged “so­cial­ism” be­lied key mes­sages linked to no­tions of “so­cial jus­tice” as a phe­nom­e­non com­mon to both sov­er­eign coun­tries with­in their own bor­ders, and among mem­bers of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Those who had chal­lenged the rel­e­vance of Ja­gan’s “New Glob­al Hu­man Or­der” back then were to qui­et­ly con­sume their words and neg­a­tive thoughts by the time the UN sys­tem con­vened the First Copen­hagen Sum­mit on So­cial De­vel­op­ment in 1995.

Col­league Caribbean jour­nal­ists may al­so re­call the year be­fore, in Mi­a­mi, at the First Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, News Cen­tre ten­sions when some­one from a US tele­vi­sion net­work con­duct­ing busi­ness in an ad­join­ing suite, in­ter­rupt­ed a Ja­gan press con­fer­ence (on this very is­sue) and rude­ly called for si­lence while the Guyanese leader was at the head ta­ble.

The spon­ta­neous erup­tion of Caribbean me­dia col­leagues con­firmed the fact that Dr Ja­gan - now a sit­ting Pres­i­dent - through fa­mil­iar­i­ty or sheer re­spect, had views con­sid­ered to be worth more than pass­ing at­ten­tion. At that mo­ment, his mis­sion be­came lived, in-your-face re­al­i­ty.

Some con­sid­ered his ad­vo­ca­cy in this area as be­ing sem­i­nal in the for­mu­la­tion of a com­mon Caribbean agen­da in time for the Copen­hagen Sum­mit.

In 2000, fol­low­ing Ja­gan’s death in 1997, a res­o­lu­tion, en­ti­tled: “The Role of the Unit­ed Na­tions in Pro­mo­tion of a New Glob­al Hu­man Or­der,” was tabled by Guyana be­fore the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and adopt­ed by con­sen­sus.

Thir­ty years af­ter Copen­hagen and 25 years since the Guyana res­o­lu­tion, the Sec­ond World Sum­mit on So­cial De­vel­op­ment is due for No­vem­ber 4-6 in Qatar.

An ILO study pub­lished in ad­vance of the event strikes eeri­ly rem­i­nis­cent chords. En­ti­tled: “The State of So­cial Jus­tice: A Work in Progress,” the study dis­sects progress with some of the key as­pi­ra­tions iden­ti­fied in Copen­hagen.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing a world that “is wealth­i­er, health­i­er and bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed than in 1995,” there is al­so a con­ces­sion that the ben­e­fits of such gains “have not been even­ly shared, and progress in re­duc­ing in­equal­i­ty has stalled.”

In a sense, such an ob­ser­va­tion is ful­ly in keep­ing with a view ex­pressed by Dr Ja­gan all these years ago that mere at­ten­tion to sta­tis­ti­cal in­di­ca­tors is in­suf­fi­cient to come to terms with re­al­i­ties on the ground.

At that time, there had been un­even at­ten­tion in the Caribbean to the core is­sues. T&T was rid­ing rel­a­tive­ly high as a Caribbean en­er­gy su­per­pow­er, while Guyana was in the throes of an over­whelm­ing debt bur­den and heav­i­ly re­liant on re­gion­al and oth­er ex­ter­nal sup­port.

The pro­posed re­cal­i­bra­tion of re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties weighed more heav­i­ly on some and al­most not at all on oth­ers. We, in T&T, ap­peared to be sit­ting pret­ty.

Ja­maica was com­ing to terms with bank­ing col­laps­es and ris­ing so­cial dis­qui­et. Bar­ba­dos was con­fronting a bal­ance of pay­ments cri­sis and swal­low­ing IMF reme­dies. Oth­er neigh­bours were tran­si­tion­ing to sit­u­a­tions of greater sta­bil­i­ty while oth­ers wob­bled.

Do­mini­ca had been hit hard by Hur­ri­cane Luis in 1995, and ex­treme weath­er events every­where were fast be­com­ing the norm rather than the ex­cep­tion.

To­day, the ILO ob­ser­va­tions can be levied on us right here in T&T. There is pre­cious lit­tle space be­tween cur­rent, grow­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion and past as­pi­ra­tions once deemed by us to be dis­tant and near ir­rel­e­vant.

Slowed eco­nom­ic growth, ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment, a for­eign earn­ings cri­sis, un­sta­ble so­cial sup­port re­sources, ris­ing in­for­mal­i­ty in the labour mar­ket, and gen­er­al eco­nom­ic malaise all ap­pear emer­gent.

Yes, there are worst-case sce­nar­ios to con­tem­plate, but there is no law of his­to­ry to es­tab­lish com­plete in­vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

For rea­sons such as these, Qatar 2025 seems just as ur­gent for us in T&T as it was for Guyana et al in 1995. Ja­gan’s New Glob­al Hu­man Or­der con­fronts us once again. This time from a far more fa­mil­iar van­tage point.