The Caribbean Community and the Commonwealth: Collective Responsibility in the 21st Century

It is a great pleasure to be here and to address the Opening Ceremony of this important and timely conference on the Caribbean Community and the Commonwealth.

It is especially appropriate that this should be at the University of the West Indies – a quintessential Caribbean institution which, having had its genesis in relations of empire, has embraced modernity, changing and adapting with the times so as to better serve the region.

The Caribbean Community, if not the oldest, may be most advanced regional integration movement in the developing world. While this decades old Community may have at times fallen short of its own goals this should not obscure the progress made over the years.

It is instructive to recall, as Pascal Lamy did in a recent article on regional integration in Africa, that the Southern African Customs Union was established in the first decade of the last century, and the East African Community nine years later – that is in 1919. History may therefore be intimating that the regional journey can be a long and challenging one. Fortunately, there is reason to believe that through co-operation, engagement and enterprise, this journey will yield social and economic gains far beyond the individual national investment of resources and political will. It is for this reason that the Commonwealth Secretariat, which I represent here today, is a strong supporter of regional integration movements across the Commonwealth, and why we readily agreed, when approached, to support this important conference.

This address is, like the conference, interestingly entitled the Caribbean Community and the Commonwealth: Collective Responsibility in the 21^st Century.

I have Professor Sir Kenneth Hall to thank for choosing what is a challenging subject. But it certainly has the virtue of concentrating the mind on what the modern Commonwealth is, what the Caribbean Community is and aspires to be, and how the two are related. Let me speak briefly to the modern Commonwealth.

The modern Commonwealth dates back to 1949. This was the year of the London Declaration – under the terms of which it was agreed that the then newly independent and republican state – India – would remain in the Commonwealth. This laid the ground for new members adhering to differing constitutional arrangements to join the association as they became independent.

The admission of new members was to be a frequent occurrence as the decolonization process gathered momentum in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific. With Rwanda’s admission in 2009, membership of the Commonwealth is now fifty-four countries, constituting one third of humanity, almost 2 billion people, and a quarter of all nations. Twelve of the fifteen independent members of the Caribbean Community are members of the Commonwealth, the exception being Suriname and Haiti.

The Commonwealth Caribbean, as is its way in the international arena, punches above its weight in the Commonwealth.

The region provided arguably the best known and certainly the longest serving Secretary-General, Sir Shridath Ramphal. This region also famously provided within the Commonwealth the persistent agitation, the resolve and the leadership that contributed to the dismantling of apartheid and to the termination of colonialism in Southern Africa. This history points to a vital convergence between the modern Commonwealth and the Commonwealth Caribbean. It is a convergence of values. The Commonwealth is committed to fundamental values that include observance of the rule of law, democratic processes, independence of the judiciary, protection and promotion of fundamental human rights, and the provision of equality of opportunity.

These and other shared values were reiterated in the “Affirmation of Commonwealth Values and Principles” adopted at the Heads of Government Meeting, in Port of Spain, in November 2009. It is certainly not my intention to suggest or imply that principle and reality are always one and the same. Within the Commonwealth, as without, the journey from principle to platitude can be short and swift. The Commonwealth’s Harare Declaration of 1991 is, for example, ironically a seminal document on adherence to the principles of good governance. But derogations along the way notwithstanding, a shared history, common aspirations, and similar institutions and practices, anchor and inform an important body of democratic values that are a beacon for the peoples of the Commonwealth, and for people everywhere. This is the riposte to the well intentioned query – what is the relevance of the Commonwealth today? To rely on Joseph Nye’s oft quoted phrase, it is the fact of its “soft power”. This is an important contribution to national, regional and global good that can be easily underestimated. In this regard, I recall a speech by the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States, H.E. Jose Miguel Insulza, to the Commonwealth Business Forum in Port of Spain two years ago. His subject was the Commonwealth and the Americas, and Secretary-General Insulza had this to say: “Major changes in the OAS began in the 1960s when first Trinidad and Tobago in 1967,

followed by the other eleven Commonwealth Caribbean independent states and Canada joined the organisation. Their advent altered the culture of the OAS in a decisive and positive way. These new members brought the Commonwealth’s entrenched tradition of parliamentary democracy, strong rule of law, respect for civil and human rights, and confidence in their institutions, which have bolstered the OAS and have reinforced its pillars of democracy, human rights, integral development, and multidimensional security. We are now experiencing a process of democratic consolidation in the Americas….”

It would be naive to suggest that the demonstration effect is all that is needed. Suffice it to say though that this is a very important ingredient as borne out by the cascading clamour for democratic change that we have seen across contiguous regions of the globe in recent times.

Let me hasten to emphasise that pragmatism and preparedness to act also inform the Commonwealth outlook. This is reflected in the association’s institutional framework. An important mechanism, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) is probably the only instrument of its kind outside of the United Nations Security Council.

This is a group of nine Foreign Ministers with the power to suspend and even to recommend the expulsion of a member or members for serious or persistent violation of Commonwealth values. This has been done on a number of occasions in the past, most recently in the case of Fiji, suspended in 2006 following the military coup in that country.

A current priority goal of the Commonwealth is strengthening CMAG to make it more effective, and recommendations to this end are expected to be made to the next Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, Australia, later this year. Jamaica from this region, and Trinidad and Tobago, as Chair-in-office, are current members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG).

Let me note though that in upholding its values, the way of the Commonwealth lies first and foremost in support and encouragement, such as through the use of good offices, the deputising of eminent persons, and the provision of assistance to bring about adherence to good governance and democratic practices. While the Commonwealth Secretary-General has deployed his good offices in this region in the past, it may be of interest to note that the Caribbean is the only developing region in the Commonwealth where stronger measures have not been taken in defence of Commonwealth fundamental values.

This points to the generally recognised strength of Commonwealth values in the Caribbean. This is a strength of which, shortcomings notwithstanding, the region can be proud. The Commonwealth Secretariat has been active in recent years in providing assistance to the Caribbean in areas such as gender mainstreaming, human rights training for the police; encouraging adherence to human rights instruments and meeting reporting obligations; strengthening the criminal justice system through training and promoting inter-regional cooperation and exchanges; providing legislative drafting assistance and training; and support to democratic processes through a Commonwealth flagship activity -– election observation in this and other regions. In this latter regard, with the active participation of this region, a pan-Commonwealth Network of National Election Management Bodies has been established recently to promote peer learning, peer support and exchange.

Development is a core value of the Commonwealth. In Port of Spain, Heads of Government affirmed that economic and social progress enhances the sustainability of democracy. While the Caribbean has made significant progress over the years, especially in human development, there is growing concern that the region is performing below its social and economic potential. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Commonwealth Caribbean is in danger of becoming in terms of comparative growth a “problem child” of the global community. Major recent studies have pointed in this direction. The World Bank’s mid-decade study “A Time to Choose: Caribbean Development in the 21st Century” while finding significant improvements in human development found, as well, lagging trade performance, and a secular decline in growth rates as compared to other developing regions. The recent end of decade joint report by the World Bank and the OAS found weak competitiveness and a long run growth performance that does not compare favourably with the best performing countries in Africa. More recently, in the 2009-2010 global competitiveness report only Barbados out-performed the Latin American average in terms of competitiveness and other Caribbean countries evaluated placed in the bottom half of the global competitiveness index.

One might ask - is the region strong in values and weak on growth? Earlier I spoke to a convergence of Commonwealth and Caribbean views on the question of values. Integral to these are support for democratic institutions, good governance, and development. Societies must not only provide the wherewithal to meet basic human needs but must also provide security, access to justice, and an enabling environment conducive to progressive communities and productive lives.

This leads me to two inter-related Commonwealth concerns – firstly, the situation, one might say, the plight, of small states in the global economy and, secondly, the importance of integration movements.

The Commonwealth is home to 32 small states, and twenty-five of these are small island states.

As a consequence, the Commonwealth has always placed great importance on advocacy for small states. It is cause for concern that research findings repeatedly show small states - and least developed countries - as lagging behind in growth performance. The Caribbean collectively accounts for almost a third of this “at risk” grouping. Two important Commonwealth studies in the last decade, both in collaboration with the World Bank, have identified the challenges and opportunities small states face.

The challenges include being prone to natural disasters, the erosion of preferences, limited institutional capacity, and migration of skills – to which we must now add the impact of climate change, heavy burden of debt, and secular low growth in major export markets. There are few commentators who do not propose regional cooperation as a path to take in response to these challenges.

Against this background, the Commonwealth Secretariat is fully committed to working with regional organisations and regional institutions to achieve their goals. By way of illustration: we have recently launched the Commonwealth Pacific Governance Facility; we continue to deliver trade capacity support to regional organisations in the Caribbean, the Pacific and Africa; we provide debt management support to regional and sub-regional organisations across the Commonwealth; we provide regionally based training in legal drafting and in human rights as indicated earlier. We deploy experts on climate change to regional institutions and assist small states, in particular, in maritime delimitation. Our work on strengthening the public service also has a strong regional dimension. We convene regular regional meetings of Commonwealth Heads of Public Service and Cabinet Secretaries, and more recently, regional caucuses of Ministers of the Public Service. We take this approach because we fully recognise that increasingly the boundaries between national and regional challenges are non-existent or blurred, and regional approaches and responses are imperative.

What are the overarching challenges, and the opportunities, of regional integration as we see it? The opportunities are known – economies of scale; shared costs by operating common services; pooling of negotiating power in interface with the wider global community – an area of some success, especially in trade; and, broadly, deriving synergies from combining human, financial, institutional and political resources.

I will now cite three important overarching challenges. The first of these is the importance of citizen engagement – ensuring that regional movements become ‘flatter’. Regional arrangements, by their very logic, move decision-making and implementation up the ladder, and a rung further away from the citizen. This can impair accountability, may run counter to subsidiarity, and risks distancing decision-making and implementation from those they are intended to ultimately serve. This can be addressed by actively promoting transparency, engagement and accountability at both national and regional levels and by providing space for interface by civil society, the private sector, and the ordinary citizen, with regional institutions and processes. It can also be addressed by extending certain rights that citizens enjoy at the national level to the regional level – such as access to information. Instruments and mechanisms like the Assembly of Community Parliamentarians, the Charter of Civil Society, the media, and institutions of learning, such as this one, have a vital role to play in this regard.

Another key issue that faces regional organisations is the sovereignty question. To be effective, regional organisations need consistent mandates, strong policies and predictable financial support from their member states. They also require a clear determination of the extent to which sovereignty will be devolved to the collective by constituent members. These are issues that are cogently and well explored in the book entitled Caricom: Policy Options for International Engagement launched in London last week by the UWI-Caricom Project, and with which the Commonwealth is pleased to be associated.

A third overarching and critical issue is the balance to be struck between inward and outward focus. For the purpose of these comments, this is primarily related to the trade and economic aspect of the integration movement. In the case of Caricom, as with other regional movements, there is no easy answer. But it is suggested that the leap that may be required is to view the regional integration movement both as a platform from which to engage with the global community, and as a vehicle for inserting national and regional enterprises into hemispheric and global production and output. In much the same way that the fact of small size should compel foreign policy coordination, the fact of small size and markets may also compel this strategic path to economic growth and development. In this context extra-regional engagement may be seen not as a threat to, but as an integral part of, creating a stronger and more effective regional movement.

Some years ago the World Bank noted that there is a strong co-relation between high levels of extra-regional trade and high levels of intra-regional trade. The point was that the best performing integration schemes were those engaged in removing barriers to third countries at the same time as they proceeded with removing barriers amongst themselves. In Europe currently, intra-regional trade is 60%, in NAFTA 40%, in ASEAN more than 30%, in Africa and the Caribbean, between 10 and 20%, with the Caribbean at the low end of this range. In this vein, I might recall that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in its Trade and Development Report drew attention some years ago to the strong trade expansion in Asia and its link to the rise of regional production networks. A strategic objective of engagement for the Community might possibly be its insertion into the merchandise value chain to take advantage of what the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation was among the first to describe as “trade in tasks”, a segment of global trade that is growing very rapidly, both as a component of North/South and South/South trade.

In stating this, I am aware that the Caribbean economies are mostly services-based. Fortunately there is a synergy that can be taken advantage of, for the integration of countries into the global services economy as well as their insertion into the merchandise value chain can be driven by the same policy set. This includes appropriate regulatory frameworks, a focus on education and skills development, efficient border processes, and the provision of reliable infrastructure, especially communication facilities to take advantage of e‑commerce and the revolution in information and communications technology.

Let me elaborate briefly on this last point. A number of studies, the previously referred to World Bank/OAS study, earlier IADB/INTAL studies, as well as the Single Development Vision have pointed to the importance of infrastructural regional public goods to the development and transformation of the Community. The African Development Bank has emphasized that Africa needs to integrate to build common infrastructure. It can be argued that the Caribbean needs to build common infrastructure to integrate. In addition to infrastructural regional goods, the regional services that are essential to economic intercourse, such as regulatory and quality control bodies, are another area of priority. A third building block is the collective management of the regional commons, which Brewster has identified as the sea, airspace, weather, disease, pest infestation, and the like. And a fourth is security cooperation. It is to the region’s credit that progress is indeed being made in some of these areas. Taken collectively, they are key elements for a Caribbean Community that can walk confidently on two legs – stronger within and more engaged without.

Finally, let me say that the challenges facing small states such as those in the Caribbean are well documented. The region’s achievements in political, economic, social and cultural terms have been noteworthy but new hurdles must now be cleared. This requires heightened cooperation. Among the most challenging for the region are the debt burden that currently constricts fiscal space and limits social expenditure, the high level of migration that depletes skills, and the growing regional security problem, fuelled by the drug trade and the Caribbean’s strategic location as a transhipment point. It is an ironic aside to observe that those engaged in illicit activities may be proving more adept at taking advantage of the region’s strategic location than legitimate business.

Regrettably as well, on the question of depletion of skills, the Caribbean is a global leader in the migration of its tertiary graduates. Remittances notwithstanding, this has profound implications for economies that individually and collectively will only be able to compete in the new global environment through knowledge-based and value added endeavours.

Fortunately, regional integration offers a viable means of harnessing anew the productive and creative energies of the Caribbean people in response to the tectonic shifts that are taking place in the global economy. Many of the challenges facing the region can and must of necessity be addressed in concert with others, within and outside the region. The Commonwealth with its diverse composition and a recognised tradition of advocacy on behalf of small states is well suited for this role. The peoples of the Caribbean are embarked on a journey to build societies that, though small, are democratic, open, accountable and beneficially integrated into the global economy.

The region’s destiny may well be the task of demonstrating to the global community that this journey is not at all ill-conceived.