Culture as economic asset

It’s hugely perilous to submit a budget-related newspaper column the very evening of the presentation of the annual package of survival measures. The national budget was presented on Monday October 12. My submission to the T&T Guardian was expected that very day.

In T&T, though, one thing you can rely on is a curious contradiction: a country capable of producing world-class creative work remains focused almost entirely on exhaustible and often unreliable assets. The value of these resources, moreover, depends heavily on external factors beyond our control.

Such irony is not unique to any single political administration. The T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce addresses the gap under its “Orange Economy” banner.

Meanwhile, generations of world-class musicians, mas designers, visual artists, dancers, dramatists, writers, and filmmakers continue to be treated as though their principal value lies solely on tourist entertainment, “cultural preservation”, keeping young people out of trouble, or occasional international acclaim.

The clichéd truism of “culture as a unifying force that defines our national identity” is insufficient to acknowledge economic value. It’s like how the need to “harness” potential, without specific evaluation of what can be useful to achieve this, can ring hollow without mention of tangible funding and performance indicators.

The problem has never been a shortage of talent, unifying potential, enterprise, or productivity. We are looking at this during a week in which final tributes are being paid to the late, great Mighty Sparrow.

All of this is occurring in the middle of an arguably unprecedented explosion of creative expression in this country. This is particularly so among the “lost generation”  who are being openly targeted for “buss tail” punishment and age discrimination – as opposed to protection - through law and official policy.

The problem may well be that those responsible for tailoring the basic frameworks for development of economic options are unaware of what is actually transpiring. I strongly suspect so.

I roam the creative space quite a lot and even participate. But I don’t regularly see the decisionmakers where I go.

There have been numerous art exhibitions, dance recitals, operatic performances, calypso shows, jazz and pop concerts, spoken word events, and literary expositions.

The people who crafted the minister’s speech – both in its economic and political dimensions – need to prove to some of us that they have been around to witness what is happening. If not, there can be no claim of enlightened evaluation.

Next weekend also marks the launch of Panorama 2027. That’s a whole different story. This space has been overly employed to stress the latent economic value of the national instrument – not only as a source of music, but as a renewable resource involving growing numbers of young and old people – including the “lost generation.”

Shell Invaders Youth Steel Orchestra - Winners 2026

So, this week, I am not going too far down that road except to say that progressive state responsibility for growing creative industries can never be considered to be mere acts of “charity.” Especially by people who are never around to witness what has happened or is happening in that sector alone.

Mention of skills-development for a culturally important industry such as steelpan is important. However, the scope of what was identified on Monday does not capture the broader steelpan ecosystem of performance, composition, arranging, instrument design, festivals, recording, distribution, and international promotion.

With diversification being an enduring, recurring national aspiration, the question is whether the creative sector will be treated as a collection of deserving cultural interests or as an interconnected economic system capable of generating employment, exports, investment, and innovation.

There is some evidence that the opportunity is substantial. A January 2023 CDB study - The Contribution of Copyright-Based Industries to the Economy of Trinidad and Tobago - estimated that the creative industries accounted for 5.5 per cent of GDP in 2016.

This was equivalent to approximately TT$8.3 billion in value added. This marked an increase in estimated contribution from 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2011. The study also estimated that copyright-based industries accounted for 20,113 jobs in 2016 and generated a positive overall trade balance of TT$113 million.

These are historical estimates covering a broad range of “copyright-based” industries, not a current valuation of the entire creative economy. So, don’t take this away as unquestioning fact. The figures however provide evidence of economic activity that deserves far closer attention.

The report's significance extends beyond its numbers. It identifies the potential for investment in copyright-based production to strengthen productivity, expand foreign currency inflows, and help diversify a near monocultural economy.

Its recommendations include financing arrangements, incentives, improved copyright enforcement, institutional strengthening, and investment in skills.

These are not simply “cultural policy” concerns. They are economic development requirements. Even if we acknowledge gaps in the 2023 analysis, where are these broad sentiments in Budget 2027? When have they ever been there?

Caribbean solidarity and Haiti

The world has developed the habit of leaving Haiti to disappear from international conversations between grand, headline-grabbing events.

Recent rhetoric out of the halls of the UN, OAS, and Caricom suggests an intention to resist such an inclination. But we have been here before … numerous times.

Haiti, we all must learn, is more than a photo-op.

Understandably, this side of the insular Caricom arc simultaneously confronts intractable, recurring issues related to substandard governance, economic fragility, and the erosion of human rights as a vital socio-political pillar.

This side of the archipelago, we have long lost leadership status on matters of such wider interest – however longingly they remain at our door awaiting attention. We should have learned from the Venezuelan experience.

The temptation to forget Haiti has been vastly overwhelming. So, I return to this subject despite the current domestic lure of revenge mistaken for justice, condemnation of a generation, and coercion being considered a first option in pursuit of behaviour change.

Even as Haiti was busy beating the Dominican Republic 4-1 at the CONCACAF Nations League game last Thursday in Santo Domingo - where mass Haitian migrant expulsions have been taking place - the northern town of Gros-Morne, across the border, remained in grief from a murderous gang attack only days earlier.

The September 28 incursion left 11 people dead, many injured, and even more fleeing. This proves, with devastating clarity, that Port-au-Prince is not the only staging point for slaughter.

And, yes, World Tourism Day was commemorated only the day before in Pétion-Ville, a sub-urb just south of Port-au-Prince. Haiti is that kind of place. Journalist Phares Jerome’s compelling article in Le Nouvelliste explained.

Visiting the CARICOM troops in Cap-Haitien (1994)

It is fair to argue, however, that international commitments need to translate into protection more quickly and effectively. Several external warnings have been sounded. Amnesty International is clear that the spreading violence does not portend well for planned December elections.

The dreaded (as we heard at the UNGA from the US) International Organization for Migration (IOM) has reported that the Gros-Morne attack displaced approximately 5,254 people within days.

These are the developments that remind us that we should not permit Haiti to slip off the table of Caribbean deliberations – however remote some of us consider the collateral effects.

It is not that absolutely nothing is being considered or done. As advocated by the Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) and others, the United Nations Security Council has renewed the mandate of an indispensable Gang Suppression Force (GSF).

The OAS recently mounted a high-level mission and the EPG has itself visited Haiti several times and engaged numerous stakeholders.

OAS Secretary-General, Albert Ramdin, has identified security and elections as Haiti's two urgent and interconnected priorities. A recent OAS reported has also warned that international assistance must produce concrete and visible results and that Haitian institutions, where they remain viable, must reside at the centre of the response.

The EPG has found common cause on this subject. The team comprising former Saint Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony, former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding and former Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie has sounded loud and clear alarms.

December 13 elections remain tentative in the face of  insecurity, kidnappings, and territories beyond state control. Voter registration is sluggish. Journalist Frantz Duval has reported that as of October 2, the list of registered electors stood at just 737,478.

Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles has estimated the entire voting population to be in the vicinity of 6 million.

The electoral timetable remains an important potential milestone. It was born out of high hopes. But elections are never just another date on a calendar.

An empty or under-populated ballot box means nothing. Renewing the GSF mandate does not by itself protect the Haitian population.

For Caricom, therefore, Haiti is not simply another item on a crowded regional agenda. It is a test of whether Caribbean regionalism can translate solidarity into sustained action when one of its own members is in profound distress.

Back in 1995, upon the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office in October 1994 (and when I first visited), the late Mighty Sparrow was hopeful: “Come along with me/Life will be happy,/It will be ecstasy/If you come with me down to Haiti … Great expectancy, come in Haiti/It's democracy now in my country” he sang in ‘Democracy in Haiti (Liberté).’

That did not turn out to be the case and, even so, it would have been foolish to believe none of this was any of our business. Sparrow called Haiti “my country”!

Our UN photo album

The General Debate (GD) of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 81) ended Monday and did not always disappoint when it came to the efficient delivery of photo-ops, headlines, soundbites, and high drama.

Correspondingly, there must have been a separate cargo flight to transport signed, soon-to-be-forgotten memoranda of understanding, agreements, and other documents that made it through the prolific press release mill back to home territories, including ours.

Don’t get me wrong, bilateral diplomacy matters – however ad hoc, opportunistic, or gratuitously amplified via public communication channels. The term “speed-dating” has been used more than once to describe such interactions.

A leader attending a high-profile meeting, energetically delivering a speech or stomping in and out of the hall may generate media coverage. But a 15-minute private exchange and a handshake in a corridor has the potential to meaningfully change things. So, I am not dismissing its possible importance.

If, for example, the Persad-Bissessar/ Rodríguez speed date resulted in genuine infatuation and open declarations of love, that is not an easily dismissible outcome, however temporal. Click!

In fact, that meeting lived up to and even exceeded its billing as a decisive, made-for-media encounter minus mention of the contentious “res non grata” (to coin my own idiom employing the Latin ‘res’ for “thing”) Venezuela-plus-Essequibo brooch worn by Rodríguez).

What is important now is what gets consummated at the second and third and fourth dates.

Last week I drew attention to the fact that UNGA 81 included several “High-Level” meetings on what, in this neck of the woods, must be considered of great priority – even more than main stage grandiloquence and posturing.

Second Floor Flag Hall (United Nations)

From the reports, T&T was present for some of these; however unremarkable our contributions. Saint Lucia, currently holding the Caricom chair, was listed to address collective regional concerns at the High-Level Meeting on Climate Action and the Just Transition last Wednesday.

Barbados represented the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) – a group of developing countries deemed to be highly vulnerable to climate change. Jamaica and St Vincent and the Grenadines were also there in their own right and addressed the meeting.

On the margins that day, with climate concerns in mind, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Caricom “formalised their partnership through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).” Click!

The fact is UNGA 81 was, outside of the main hall, the setting for substantive conversations on issues that go directly to our collective and individual interests - climate finance, adaptation, energy transition, resilience, information integrity and, critically, sea-level rise.

For T&T, these are not obscure UN issues or needless burdens founded on demonic assertions of a climate crisis. They involve issues of sovereignty, maritime space, coastal communities, infrastructure, fisheries, tourism, water security, and development finance.

I may have missed it but have not received anything to suggest that consideration of such issues was newsworthy enough to make it through our official communication infrastructure or had in fact been rigorously explored.

The climate-finance discussions, for example, got down to nitty-gritty examination of lingering questions regarding the cost of capital to address low carbon transition issues, the expansion of concessional finance, debt, and the conversion of national adaptation plans into financeable programmes.

I am aware we were present at the High-Level Meeting on Sea-Level Rise and raised some key points about full capitalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund. But where were the photos? The press releases?

Perhaps the PM’s comment on the matter was not meant to be overshadowed when she declared at the GD: “Trinidad and Tobago brings a distinctive perspective as we understand that climate resilience, energy security, affordability and economic development must advance together.”

At COP30 in Belém last November, T&T was also among those calling for predictable, accessible, and adequate climate finance to bridge the gap between ambition and implementation. Click!

Yet, as currently applies, citizens should not have to reconstruct the substance of our international engagement last week from UN transcripts and other obscure documents.

Admittedly, there was little local journalism on this, and neither the propagandists nor usual trolls are typically interested in such boring details.

Even so, a photograph tells us who met whom. A signing ceremony tells us that something was signed. But serious public diplomacy should also tell citizens what was negotiated, what was sought, what was committed, what was obtained and what happens next.

On mutually assured survival

(First published in the T&T Guardian on September 28, 2022)

It may well have been the case that Caricom leaders had strategised to weave a vast multitude of questions into the chaotic underside of the Caribbean embroidery at the UN General Assembly debate which closed on Monday.

However, the knots and ragged snips and dissonant entanglements required to produce at the frontside, a partial, yet seductively healthful view of the whole remained on full display.

To be certain, both our hemispheric neighbours, and those beyond, too frequently lease a homogeneous Caribbean visage of their own design. Initially, as cover for brutalities of the past, and latterly as deception to escape complicity and responsibility.

It could not be, we once thought, that even those who shared major hurts of our disturbed past could now be seated at the table, two elbows away, and be despising us.

It is the stuff of diplomatic routine to negotiate such multi-polarities. Ambivalence bred by both self-interest and the prospects for mutually assured survival in the face of undeniable interdependence.

In what ways are the stories of Venezuela and Nicaragua and Cuba not our own, was the gist of Ralph Gonsalves’ retort. To what degree are Russian depravities at its borders irrelevant to Gaston Browne’s admonitions regarding the increasingly anachronistic Security Council?

In what ways, as Dickon Mitchell urged, do we harness the value of youth and the rich harvest they may bring.

T&T’s Amery Browne notably cited the scourge of transnational, organised crime without, as was required I must say, substantially dissecting the hemispheric dynamics that facilitate it.

Instead, like almost everyone else, he went for the scattershot, knowing full well that officially appointed dissent would ritualistically fall short of anything resembling a competent response or rebuttal.

It may have been that the joint regional brief was to cast a wide fine-mesh net to signal a vast terrain of limitless priorities. But, as with the fisherfolk out at sea, we are not always best served by the resulting catch. In too many ways a hierarchy of needs is assured disorder especially when everything, as is the current case, is proposed as a priority.

Ironically, we have also been undecided, at the height of the pandemic for example, whether we, as a regional community, should ride the waves or crash against the same heavy seas on different vessels.

Successive collective bubbles either popped or contracted to the size of smaller spaces. There are even those who would have preferred smaller capsules – in the process leading the charge of destructive denialism and applauding tragic failure.

Of course, to those who pursue other destinies, none of this really matters. We can tell by the way you grasp that passport or how you frame partisan desire. We got to know you well – deformed shadows in the face of approaching light. Laughing emojis at the sight of tragedy and pain.

All this as an unapologetic response to those who picked up on the prospects for hope this page has attempted to offer in recent weeks. Complete repudiation of the notions of a “lost generation” and of a “failed race.”

So it is with our embrace of the world, self-validation is needed in consort with far greater self-confidence. The UNGA presents an opportunity to say what about the challenges is new and unique and to explain why the disparate vessels of change may collide and be lost at sea.

This, to me, requires far more diligent management of all the processes involved when it comes to our Caribbean future. The banal challenges fed by fear and an absence of fraternity are not among the least important of the assignment.

Here in Kingston, where I am briefly, the battle cries persist despite the recent, gratuitously displayed full mast of white flags. In Georgetown, a single flag, not all, is soaking in the rich mud these days.

What has been uttered in New York is but a faint spectre of what pierces our silence here at home. There remain many who believe that we sink or swim on our solitary own. Changing all of this can make the difference between sad conclusions and our mutually assured survival.

Just transition questions

Today’s packed public affairs agenda can have the impact of shattering the desire for unifocal attention. At the top resides continued parliamentary consideration, via the Senate this time, and public commentary on the contentious Special Operations Bill.

Yet, the timeline for this submission and its publication today undermines a desire to be thorough and to capture a vast and growing variety of perspectives.

These include my concerns about the secure practice of journalism, and the impact on the creative sector by less than thoughtful application of constitutional derogations. More, next week. I promise.

Alongside this, there is at least one other significant event. Our Prime Minister and her delegation are currently in New York attending the 81^st Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

The Prime Minister’s meeting with Venezuela’s acting President, Delcy Rodríguez, should provide a nice photo-op and produce the usual bland foreign ministry communiqué, while avoiding mention of the Venezuelan map showing claimed Guyanese territory that she wore as a pin when she arrived in New York. The PM, based on her prior utterances, should take public note of this.

We should also be minded that while special attention justifiably turns to the General Debate – which began yesterday – there are, typically, several other concurrent events with the potential to sharpen focus on the platitudes of the main stage.

UNGA 2026

We would do well, for example, to regard today’s UNGA’s High-Level Meeting (HLM) on Climate Action and the Just Transition as one of the more important events.

Its significance lies in the opportunity to move beyond broad declarations and confront a difficult question: How can developing countries reconcile climate obligations with the equally urgent demands of economic development?

That precise question was explored by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in her address to the 80th UNGA last year. I believe her rather contentious pronouncements on the “force-feeding” of the climate agenda and “blackmail” by the developed world did not attract the critical dissection they deserved.

Later on, at COP30 in Belém last November, Planning Minister Kennedy Swaratsingh was not exactly on message (as per UNGA 80) when he argued that “ambition alone is not enough” and that the transition to a low-carbon future (my words) must take centre stage.

He called for predictable, accessible, and adequate climate finance to bridge the gap between ambition and implementation.

The Prime Minister’s more combative, and therefore instructive argument had been that national climate policies must balance development and poverty eradication with environmental protection.

She also maintained that fossil fuels remain essential to contemporary economies. The PM may as well have been referencing the dilemmas of not only T&T, but the energy market’s regional newcomers, Suriname and Guyana.

For, though their economic circumstances are different they too confront the complicated interface involving hydrocarbons, development, and the international drive towards decarbonisation.

The HLM thus provides an opportunity to turn that dilemma into a more substantive Caribbean conversation. I hope Monday’s meeting of the Caricom Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) did not leave this subject abegging, even if geopolitical neglect dominated.

The Concept Note on the HLM acknowledges that initial ambitions aimed at containing global emissions to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels are more likely to be “overshot” with a trajectory tending in the direction of 2°C.

At the global level, if we subscribe to scientifically supported “anthropogenic” human triggers (some flat earthers even here in T&T do not), this calls for accelerated execution, adaptation, resilience, increased renewable energy (not idle solar farms), and substantially greater access to affordable finance.

But implementation is precisely where the argument becomes complicated. Swaratsingh had pointed to measures being pursued by T&T, including electric vehicles in the public sector, solar water heating, exploration of green hydrogen, and emerging carbon markets.

He had stressed that the transition must be fair and just, while protecting workers and vulnerable communities and creating new economic opportunities.

Taken together, these positions suggest that the Caribbean debate need not be framed as climate action versus development.

The more useful question is what a genuinely “just transition” means for economies whose development has been or is about to be closely connected to fossil fuels.

How quickly can such economies diversify without jeopardising employment, government revenues, and energy security? How can they finance the transition when capital remains expensive? And who should bear the costs when developing countries are being asked to transform their economies?

These are not arguments against climate action. They are questions about the conditions under which climate action in our neck of the woods can realistically succeed.

Haiti’s election mirage

The Caribbean news agenda is currently so packed, the temptation would be to relegate some important issues to the bottom of the lineup in the belief they would somehow resolve themselves - out of sight and out of mind.

Haiti’s proposed December 13 elections – 10 years after the last one - has been reduced to brief paragraphs signalling everything between remote possibility and terminal impossibility.

Thankfully, the diligent eyes of indigenous Haitian outlets and committed observers, have maintained a realistic focus on developments as nuanced as they are problematic to portend.

My Haitian Tuk Tuk watercolour (Aug 2024)

On Monday, a release on the September 2-9 visit of the Caricom Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to Haiti acknowledged intractable challenges but fell short on the more realistic conclusion that a first-round December 13 encounter, if it happens, is unlikely to produce viable political conditions.

“The EPG observed several positive developments, including the work being undertaken to reignite an election process after more than ten years,” the press release says.

However, days before, OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin, was advising: “There is a certain collusion between the political world and the gangs. I am saying this clearly because everyone knows it, but no one is talking about it.” The EPG should be prepared to publicly confront that reality.

Now, there is no doubt that Caricom’s diplomatic engagement is, at minimum, symbolically significant. But I am fearful that the expectations conveyed exceed realities reflected on the ground.

This is not at all to diminish the value of the efforts of the EPG comprising former Saint Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony, former Jamaica Prime Minister Bruce Golding and former Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie.

But, in reality, the prospects for Haiti holding a first round of credible, inclusive, and safe elections on December 13 look increasingly dismal. A second round has been scheduled for February 21 next year.

Voter registration is behind expectations. Large parts of the country remain beyond effective state control. Political parties have raised the possibility that important procedural changes might be postponed. 

Most fundamentally, the EPG itself acknowledges a “recent spread and spike” in deadly violence and kidnappings, and the slow deployment of the international Gang Suppression Force whose tenure faces renewal on September 30.

The OAS SG has been far more outspoken on the hazards. Do not dismiss this observation as an attack on the competence or commitment of the EPG. Their mandate is essentially one of political dialogue and good offices. The problem is that political mediation cannot by itself create the conditions under which democracy operates.

My friend and eminent Haitian journalist, Phares Jerome writing in Le Nouvelliste, described the election plan as “increasingly hypothetical as the government struggles to take the appropriate measures to create the conditions for holding elections.”

He references the August 23 Kenscoff massacre which claimed the lives of 47 men, women, and children as proof that “the government has not yet found the right formula to neutralise the bandits. On the contrary, fear is once again taking hold in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas.”

Jerome also challenges acting Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé’s effective influence over the “conditions for organising elections.” Miami Herald journalist, Jacqueline Charles’ reportage also poses similar questions.

How can candidates campaign freely when roads remain controlled by armed groups? How can voters register when territories are beyond state authority? How can citizens cast ballots safely when the security forces themselves cannot guarantee freedom of movement?

The humanitarian numbers make the disconnect even more stark. According to UN figures, in the first half of 2026, at least 2,310 people were killed, 1,106 injured, and 99 kidnapped in gun-related violence.

These are not simply security statistics. They describe the environment in which Haiti is expected to conduct a national democratic exercise. The humanitarian crisis is equally formidable.

By the end of 2025, the UN estimated that about 1.5 million Haitians were internally displaced. There is severe food insecurity and the collapse of basic services in many areas.

Elections require more than laws, registration centres, candidates and polling stations. They need citizens to have the security, resilience, and freedom to participate.

There have been solidarity slogans, resolutions, conferences, and security initiatives. Yet the resources required to translate those commitments into reality have consistently fallen short.

What is required appears to be a substantial, sustained investment by all – and within our means in the region. We must also resist the temptation to confuse diplomatic progress with political transformation.

The December 13 election should therefore be regarded as a conditional objective, not an inevitability.

Beyond emotional regionalism

I believe the idea of Caribbean unity - in all its various geographical/historical/political manifestations - is something that enchants most (not all) people who live in our region.

I would say it comforts rather than disturbs a majority of Caribbean nationals and generates a measure of warmth and affection. This is particularly so for those of us who have come to know and understand this unique space.

And, yes, there are some who yearn for other intimate, remote alignments as wholesale substitutes rather than as convenient extensions. Others who pursue exclusive internal alliances. This has been so over the many years; not only now that the absence of collective self-esteem is being geo-politically challenged.

Yet, none of this erases shared, immovable attributes related to human experience - history, culture, and economic endeavour.

Members of the Caribbean Community (green)

Since 1973, Caricom has become part of the emotional vocabulary of regional unity. Even among the sceptics and recently converted opponents of multilateralism, there has been room for sentimental attachment. There are flavours of it in sport and music and art.

Not unlike our independence experience, there is no substantial nostalgia among younger folk when it comes to the federal experiment of 1958-1962 or for CARIFTA (though the latter persists as titular anachronism in more than one sporting arena). Where emotions on these persist, they are largely positive or reflect lost or fading love.

Not much of this specific perspective is captured in the inaugural edition of the Regional Institutional Risk Monitor published on September 1 by the Caribbean Business Review (CBR) under former Caricom Assistant Secretary General, Joseph Cox. I think it should have.

The Monitor does, however, offer an implicit suggestion that beyond integration sentimentality – what might be called emotional regionalism - “functional regionalism” is what can and will make the difference between the success or failure of the movement, in its disparate parts, to collectively achieve developmental objectives.

The publication raises the fundamental question of whether key Caricom institutions are “fit for purpose” through an assessment of “institutional risk across the Caribbean Regional Architecture.” Big words to, in effect, gauge success or failure.

No doubt, the region has conducted introspective exercises before. During my brief tenure at the Caricom Secretariat in the mid-90s, then management consultant, Dr Suruj Rambachan undertook a review of the effectiveness of the Secretariat in delivery of its respective mandates. I cannot recall the grade/s earned.

There have since been several similar projects, often at the insistence of international benefactors. But the CBR Monitor attempts to dissect the question of “fitness” by assessing the qualitative performances of four key institutions: the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and the Caricom Secretariat itself.

“Any assessment of Caribbean regional institutions must begin by avoiding a common analytical error: Caricom is not synonymous with the Caricom Secretariat. The regional architecture comprises several layers of institutions with different legal foundations, responsibilities and relationships to Member States,” the report says.

The CBR Report

The report also identifies the methodological challenge of examining four institutions that are not “variants of the same organisational model.” (Read the report here: CBR Report.

Through it, though, readers can acquire a better understanding of the fact that the durability and effectiveness of integration efforts depend much more on the quality, resilience, and performance of our regional institutions than on the romance of integration.

They have been created largely because of the undeniable absence of scale, specialist expertise, financial resources, and bargaining power to do some important things on our own as single entities. Countries and delusional politicians who think otherwise are often rudely awakened to this fact – whatever their typically unreliable external dalliances.

We ought to have learned this during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic as CARPHA was called to action at a time when external friendships grew lukewarm and even cold. Let’s also see what’s currently happening regarding the accommodation of third-country deportations. Friends indeed.

The report does not get into these kinds of details but spends time on whether the selected institutions have been successfully leveraging their authority, expertise, convening power, and partnerships in the conduct of their affairs.

The perception of repeated failure has meanwhile not been matched by effective programmes of public awareness and education, and regional bureaucrats have not all been convinced that open communication provides the best avenues for interrogation of performance.

This goes beyond affection and communion. Emotional regionalism amounts to almost nothing without functional regionalism. The CBR risk monitor makes the point more strongly than most other self-diagnoses of the last few decades.