Washington DC - December 7, 2012
Everywhere in the Caribbean we now reflect
on times when persistent social, economic and political challenges had not as
much tested our will and resilience as a people as they currently do.
As an organisation of journalists and other media workers,
our members are close witnesses to all of this and prepare the first drafts of
history not as passive observers but as active subjects of such change - freedom
of expression being our principal asset.
Our interest in ensuring a future built on the foundation of
unqualified support for human rights and the conditions that assure essential
freedoms is thus not open to negotiation. Our partners within the Latin
American and Caribbean Alliance of the International Freedom of Expression
Exchange all share this uncompromising position.
We all view the role of the Inter-American Human Rights
System as indispensable. However estranged from its processes Caribbean member
states sometimes appear, had there not been such a mechanism for mediating
questions of con-compliance with accepted norms, we would have had, in 2012, to
invent such an institution.
Indeed, there is perhaps space for greater professional
Caribbean participation and more direct acknowledgement of the contributions we
already make, but there is no excuse for indifference to the requirement of a
strong, independent and appropriately resourced infrastructure for monitoring
and reporting trends and violations.
We are, in this regard, particularly concerned that Chapter
6 (of the OAS) recommendations will have the impact of significantly weakening the Office of
the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression by compromising its
independence and weakening its resource base.
We in fact propose a more concerted effort to elevate such a
function of the inter-American system to a position of greater influence and
prominence. Recent actions to repeal criminal defamation in some Caribbean
territories and growing recognition of the need for access to information laws
provide us with some confidence that this sub-region is ready to reflect
collectively, as we often do, on a question of grave relevance to our future as
sovereign states.
Development achieved in the absence of freedom and rights is
guaranteed not to persist over the long term. This is especially so when we
recognise the interdependent relationship between economic, social and cultural
rights and the civil and political rights we cherish and are prepared to
strenuously defend.
