Youth beyond seats at tables

I suspect few others noticed, before now, that the sharpest metaphor delivered at the 51st Caricom Summit in Saint Lucia came not from one of the political veterans, but from an eloquent participant in a largely overlooked Youth Dialogue.

I had been in active pursuit of alternative material for today’s dispatch - outside of the vexing, familiar themes of human rights blindness, racism, abundantly resourced online disinformation, steelpan disrespect, and overall official folly. They are all adequately covered elsewhere on today’s pages, I am certain.

Sunday, we had more than a small hint of what to expect when young Saint Lucian scholar, Rahym Augustin-Joseph, called on Caricom leaders to treat young people as partners in shaping the region's future rather than as passive beneficiaries of policy.

Then, on Monday, we heard Shakiah Lewis of Turks and Caicos at the dialogue. A teacher who serves as dean of the Caricom Youth Ambassador Programme, she delivered the telling line.

Emerging leaders, she argued, need to move from “asking for a seat at the table to building the table.”

I had followed much of what had transpired the previous afternoon at the launch of the summit and tried to capture as much as I subsequently could from regional media dispatches. Augustin-Joseph’s address continued to resonate as lasting memory not readily engraved in news pages.

While official attention shifted to Monday's contentious regional retreat and the plenary that followed, Lewis offered an arresting vision of constructive youth defiance.

Shakia Lewis, Turks and Caicos

Strengthening the youth voice, she argued, “isn't just about giving young people a microphone.”

She called for a shift from advocacy to executive power instead of “youth panels” whose recommendations are filed and forgotten. Ministries and regional bodies, she added, should embed young leaders directly into the work itself, with a real say when policy is being drafted.

Chiming in supportively was 23-year-old, Bahamas-born Guyanese Caricom Youth Ambassador and journalist, Shaquawn Gill.

Shaquawn Gill of Guyana

“When we establish boards and we establish committees, organising committees and special committees,” he argued, “it must be in every legislative effort that there is a youth representative as part of any conversation that we have.”

“It must not be a tokenistic matter,” he said. “It must not happen because we have to fulfil this responsibility and we want to make it look nice that young people are in the room, but it has to be about a specific and dedicated effort to make sure that (they) are involved.”

Other contributors included Sherwyn Stephenson (no youngster), Caricom Programme Manager, Crime and Security, Moesha Allen of Jamaica, and moderator Crista St Ange of Saint Lucia.

True, some of what was said is challenged by a few facts. Guyana President, Irfaan Ali, first entered parliament at the age of 26 and he is currently the youngest Caricom leader at 46. Dickon Mitchell of Grenada is not far ahead at 48 and Terrence Drew of St Kitts and Nevis is 49.

More than "giving young people a microphone"

So yes, younger people have reached positions of leadership. Sat at the head of the table. Roosevelt Skerrit of Dominica became Prime Minister in 2004 at 31.

So, it appears that the youth challenge does not occur purely as a concern regarding people and their ages but rather involves entrenched systems and a modus operandi that require dismantling. This has clearly not been our experience.

The panellists, however, appeared to agree that a distinction needs to be made between being heard and being empowered at a fundamental level.

The sluggish regional pursuit of digitalisation – for which young experts are uniquely positioned to lead – was cited as a glaring example of a refusal to part from tirelessly-navigated trails.

“The question is not whether or not young people are ready to lead,” Allen suggested. “The question is whether the systems are ready to trust, include, and allow for us to take our places rightfully where we belong.”

The picture that emerged from the discussion was that this generation is not waiting for permission. As Lewis put it, the young "will not wait for a formal invitation. They will not wait in the back of the line. They will start to create their own lines.”

This, in a sense, is what is already happening through the embrace of digital platforms for alternative sources and routes to information and informal instruction by the young.

Perhaps the region will finally discover that re-modelling the table matters more than simply finding another seat.

Our Haitian test

The resolution on Haiti adopted at the OAS General Assembly two weeks ago may eventually be remembered less for what it promises than for what it quietly acknowledges: that Haiti’s crisis has become inseparable from the future stability of the wider hemisphere.

Such broader recognition is long overdue, even as Caricom appears to have intimately engaged the journey for some time now. This is particularly so when it comes to nearby member states Jamaica and The Bahamas. But visa requirements for Haitians remain intact in a majority of Caricom states.

For many years, responses in the wider Americas have oscillated between expressions of solidarity and carefully managed distance, including complete silence.

Haiti has often been treated as a country somehow detached from the mainstream, despite sharing a history of colonial exploitation, economic vulnerability, and democratic fragility.

The latest OAS resolution abandons some of that pretence. For example, it accepts that Haiti’s multidimensional crisis cannot be addressed through security measures alone.

The OAS hosted its 56th General Assembly in Panama

Instead, it links security, political consensus, humanitarian relief, institutional reform, and long-term development within a single hemispheric framework while insisting that these efforts remain Haitian-led and respectful of national sovereignty. Those are not insignificant departures, provided the declarants are serious.

For Caribbean governments, the resolution also reflects responsibilities extending beyond diplomatic endorsement and posturing, though we too have had our share of negligence and/or incapacity.

Caricom has already assumed a prominent, if not under-resourced role in the current period. It continues to participate in the Standing Group of Partners overseeing the Gang Suppression Force while facilitating political dialogue through its Eminent Persons Group while working alongside the OAS and United Nations on the Haiti Roadmap for Stability and Peace.

This represents perhaps the most sustained, multi-dimensional, regional engagement with Haiti in decades. Yet, as hemispheric representatives conceded in Panama, the implications reach beyond Port-au-Prince.

If the hemisphere accepts that organised criminal violence can overwhelm a neighbouring state without a broad, coordinated response, it effectively lowers the threshold for similar instability elsewhere.

The OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin, is strong on that point as no country in the hemisphere remains untouched by the hand of transnational crime. This is manifest in domestic turmoil and instability.

Firearms trafficking, illicit financial flows, irregular migration, human trafficking, and transnational organised crime recognise neither maritime boundaries nor diplomatic sensitivities.

The resolution therefore serves another purpose. It is not simply about rescuing Haiti. It is about strengthening regional resilience before comparable pressures become unmanageable elsewhere. There is evidence this is already emerging, if not already the established case.

"Haitian Bus" - Wesley Gibbings watercolour

Equally significant is the resolution’s insistence that elections, while essential, are not sufficient. Democratic legitimacy requires security, functioning institutions, credible electoral administration, humanitarian relief, and broad political consensus. It rejects the comforting fiction that simply holding a vote automatically restores democracy.

That lesson deserves attention throughout the OAS landscape and perhaps beyond.

Across the region, political polarisation is deepening. Public confidence in institutions is weakening. Criminal organisations continue expanding their influence. Economic pressures increasingly test governmental capacity. And states have not always acted in accordance with accepted international human rights norms.

These may differ in degree from Haiti’s circumstances, but not necessarily in direction.

There is also another subtle message within the OAS resolution. It repeatedly emphasises transparency, coordination and accountability - not only for Haiti itself but also for the international agencies intervening there. It demands regular reporting, institutional review, and clearer coordination among the OAS, the United Nations, Caricom, and international partners.

This point represents an implicit admission that previous international interventions have often suffered from duplication, fragmented mandates, an absence of cultural awareness, and inadequate oversight.

People of the Caribbean should welcome that honesty.

Too often, external assistance has arrived in Haiti accompanied by competing priorities and short political attention spans. Sustainable recovery requires coherence rather than episodic interventions responding to successive emergencies.

Ultimately, this resolution asks governments to think differently about regional security itself.

Security can no longer be confined to military or policing responses. It now encompasses functioning democratic institutions, social inclusion, economic opportunity, humanitarian protection, and effective governance. Those elements reinforce one another.

Whether the new roadmap succeeds remains uncertain. Haiti has witnessed many ambitious international commitments before.

But failure this time would not belong to Haiti alone.

Rickey Singh memory bridges the Americas

Less than a year following his death, pioneering Caribbean journalist Rickey Singh remained a powerful presence in hemispheric media circles on June 22, as leading journalists gathered on the margins of the 56th OAS General Assembly in Panama to discuss a new initiative bearing his name.

Initiated by outgoing Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Pedro Vaca, the “Rickey Singh Initiative for Journalistic Excellence in the Americas” was explored by hemispheric media leaders.

Special Rapporteur, Pedro Vaca

A “manifesto” prescribing “new ethics of communication” was presented by Mónica González, President of the Colombia-based Fundación Gabo, named for the late Nobel laureate, Colombian journalist/writer, Gabriel García Márquez.

 She stressed the importance of meeting the journalistic requirements of a new era of communication and introduced a journalistic “manifesto” and a discussion paper entitled: “Reinventing Ourselves - Key Pillars for Upholding Excellence in Journalism.”

 Barbadian attorney, human rights activist and former IACHR commissioner, Roberta Clarke, suggested that the initiative had the potential to address a “blind spot” in relations between the Latin American and Caribbean sub-regions.

 She said there had been recent efforts to “deepen the Commission’s understanding of the Caribbean and to encourage greater participation by Caribbean states and civil society.”

 “The IACHR was perceived as not doing the work to understand the Caribbean and the challenges and achievements in constructing democracies given the political and economic legacies of extreme violence and inequalities based on ethnicity,” Clarke added.

Attorney/human rights activist, Roberta Clarke

She said: “The Rickey Singh story is not only about journalism; it is about courage, the importance of information to democracy, the insistence on state accountability and a commitment to the Caribbean identity.”

 IACHR human rights consultant and daughter of the late Guyana-born journalist, Wendy Singh, described some of the challenges faced by her father, including exile from his home country and difficulties in both T&T and Barbados.

Caribbean participants at the Panama event included senior journalists from the Dominican Republic, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Human rights consultant and daughter, Wendy Singh 

Journalists and press freedom activists also came from Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.

 The Initiative is due for formal introduction at the annual Gabo Festival currently underway in in Bogotá, Colombia.

 

 

The Charter we ignored

It is unfortunate that not many of us who have followed integration matters over the years have been reminding regional leaders and policymakers about the hollow PR that accompanied adoption of the Caricom Charter of Civil Society (CCS) almost 30 years ago.

In previous dispatches, I have - correctly or incorrectly at the technical level - described the statement of principles and values as our unratified but collective Caribbean “bill of rights.”

Yet, the enlightened intervention of 1997 remained largely neglected, referenced fleetingly in speeches, but seldom treated as a living instrument capable of shaping public policy or actively protecting citizens.

Had such disregard not been the case, we could well have settled numerous intra-regional and even domestic quarrels by reference to what can be summarised as a shared commitment to democracy, human rights, due process, transparency, participation, and social justice.

The recent Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) judgment in the Derek Ramsamooj case has the potential to finally change that.

Judges of the Caribbean Court of Justice

Essentially, T&T political scientist, Ramsamooj, asserted that the rights accorded to Caricom nationals under the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) are not effective without the protection of fundamental human rights, specifically those rights articulated in the Charter.

True, the CCJ ruling does not magically transform the Charter into a legally binding treaty. Indeed, the judges expressly rejected that proposition. However, they also dispelled the notion that it is merely a symbolic declaration to gather dust on government shelves.

Instead, the Court found that the Charter serves as an important guide to interpreting Community law and identifying the general principles that underpin the Caricom project.

That distinction is enormously significant - at least for those of us who have advocated for the CCS to be recognisable as a basis for assertion of human rights at law.

I followed the situation with Ramsamooj from the start and did not feel overly confident that this aspect of his claim would have emerged as a decisive factor.

For years, regional governments displayed remarkable tardiness in advancing the Charter’s objectives. Successive Caricom Summits endorsed its principles, yet little effort was made to embed them systematically in regional governance.

The result has been an integration movement exclusively focused on markets, trade, and functional cooperation while paying insufficient attention to the human rights dimensions of development.

The Ramsamooj judgment revealed why this matters. Regional governments should sit up and take careful note. Those here in T&T who continue to proclaim the untruth that “we not in de CCJ” should also be particularly interested, as the matter was adjudged under the Court’s Original Jurisdiction to which all Member States are subject.

The judges relied on the CCS, together with national constitutions and international human rights instruments, to identify a region-wide baseline of rights and freedoms.

They recognised that RTC rights are meaningless if governments can at the same time restrict personal liberty, deny due process, or limit access to representation without adequate safeguards.

Ramsamooj was detained and had his passport confiscated by Surinamese authorities between 2020 and 2022. He was charged in 2020, five months into his detention, with a variety of offences including fraud and money laundering.

He had also been subjected to a Dutch-derived legal procedure known as “beperking”, or restriction, which gives authorities power to limit communication between a detainee and the outside world during an investigation.

In Ramsamooj’s case, this served to deny him direct access to legal counsel during critical stages of his detention and interrogation. He was also questioned in Dutch through a translator and signed documents in a language he did not understand.

The CCJ concluded that such application of the “beperking” procedure breached Community law. The judges found that freedom of movement and other treaty rights cannot be exercised effectively unless they are accompanied by minimum human rights protections.

Among these is the right of an accused person to have access to legal counsel of his or her choice. The judges noted that this right is entrenched in the constitutions of all Caricom member states and has effectively become a “regional customary standard.”

Based on this particular feature of the ruling, the Court awarded Ramsamooj US$30,000 in damages.

The Ramsamooj decision should signal that the era of human rights as secondary to economic integration may change. Caricom nationals who move, work, invest, and provide services across the region now have judicial confirmation that certain minimum standards should accompany those freedoms.

The CCS may still lack formal binding force, but the CCJ has made clear that its values matter.

OAS at the crossroads

Next week's 56th Regular Session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly convenes at a pivotal moment in hemispheric affairs, with several unfolding, interlocking developments bearing profound implications for regional relations and the Caribbean's place within all this.

These are not ordinary times. Here in our region, and perhaps everywhere else, a declining appetite for multilateral cooperation and action is accompanied by a reduction in the capacity to engage through both economic participation and enthusiastic political will.

It may well be that the latter persists as a by-product of cynical, hegemonic purpose and design and/or a growing inclination to singularly favour the transactional demands of domestic social and economic disequilibrium.

Within Caricom, there also appears to be a belief in the dispensability of a Caribbean paradigm that witnesses common cause and action. Even the colonial experience found value in geographical cohesion and joint endeavour.

Whatever the case, the hemispheric grouping founded on great hope in 1948 now faces a defining test of its relevance and effectiveness as a point of reliable resort at times when peace and security appear at stake.

For this reason, the outcomes of the June 22-24 General Assembly have the potential to be seminal in the framing of a renewed mandate and focus. There are several key issues, but those with profound, immediate impact include prevailing geopolitical tensions, sustainable financing of the organisation, and institutional reform.

The 55th General Assembly
hosted by Antigua and Barbuda (OAS Photo)

Secretary-General, Albert Ramdin, has already sounded the relevant alerts to reactivate an OAS that is “more agile, transparent, and results-oriented and better equipped to respond to Member States’ needs in a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment.”

It appears however that the requirements of such ambitions reside substantially in the will of member countries to decisively address some lingering, vexatious past and contemporary issues.

For example, and to invite the cat to pigeons’ quarters, the membership status of Cuba (now attracting aggressive, potentially violent attention from the US) should be regularised, and the situations regarding Venezuela and Nicaragua revisited.

Cuba’s membership, for example, is recognised for its non-participation in OAS processes since 1962. It never actually quit the movement. (Just, by the way and on another note, Cuba as far as I know has never expressed an active interest in full formal membership of Caricom.)

Nicaragua withdrew its membership in 2023, and Venezuela has been the subject of an on-and-off again relationship.

In 2017, then Foreign Minister (now Acting President) Delcy Rodríguez announced her country’s withdrawal. In 2019, through the Juan Guaidó fiasco, they were on again. Now, more recently, Rodríguez has asserted that Venezuela is no longer a member of the organisation. It’s complicated. Hopefully, this will be openly and honestly discussed in Panama.

Haiti meanwhile remains in the fold but is a major humanitarian concern and one for which there appears to be no readily available resolution.

The other major, but not entirely unrelated issue, is financing of the organisation’s 2027 budget. The United States typically accounts for close to 50% of such funds. Total expenditure in 2025 was US$165.2 million even as the USA “paused” its contributions for 90 days “pending review.” This followed an executive order to that effect.

For 2027, the Trump administration has, significantly, sought no funding for the country’s assessed contribution to the organisation. Several smaller contributors, such as T&T, are reportedly in arrears of their financial obligations.

There is also the corresponding imperative to ensure the OAS runs a much tighter ship. A May 2026 US Congressional Research Brief identifies the inter-connectedness of the key challenges of geopolitics, finance, and institutional capacity.

OAS Secretary General, Albert Ramdin
(OAS Photo)

“Since the early 2000s,” the brief says, “increased ideological polarisation among member states has made it more difficult to establish a common hemispheric agenda. In addition, member states have repeatedly assigned new responsibilities to the OAS without providing commensurate increases in funding.”

In the budget document prepared for next week's Assembly, Ramdin argues that discussion of the organisation's future “will require balancing ambition with fiscal responsibility, ensuring that political objectives are adequately aligned with operational capacity.

“We hope that we can unite around the principle that effective delivery requires investment, and without sufficient human and financial resources, mandates cannot be fulfilled. Making the OAS relevant again thus becomes unattainable.”

There must be acknowledgement of the fact, though, that there will not be another transformative 1948. The turbulent tides have come and gone and come again, in changed directions and intensities. This General Assembly might well prove to be a key make or break moment.

Emergency powers and public trust

As fate would have it, this column is being published the very day the government proposes to seek parliamentary approval for an extension of the current State of Emergency (SoE). This will apply for three months beyond its June 17 expiration.

A statement from the Office of the Attorney General last Sunday indicated that support for the decision derives in part from an impact assessment related to SoEs spanning the period December 2024 to May 2026.

This criss-crosses political administrations and, hopefully, the ensuing discussions will extend beyond the temptation to contrast and compare, with querulous, partisan points in mind.

Instead, it is to be hoped that an honest, thorough explanation of the manner in which such an intervention has been able, in the past and today, to satisfy all constitutional and good governance benchmarks and to meet valid objectives.

The AG, as a professor of law, would have more than once elaborated to his students the key pre-conditions set out under Sections 8-10 of the Constitution and all the important features that distinguish their extraordinary nature.

Section 8 contains the substantive grounds for declaring an SoE, while Sections 9 and 10 address duration and parliamentary oversight.

The public needs to understand the broad circumstances contemplated by the Constitution: war or imminent war; natural disaster, epidemic, or similar calamity; and serious threats to public safety or essential services – the latter being cited in this instance.

Recourse to an SoE generally unsettles people with a concern for the maintenance of human rights in all its facets, mainly but not solely through the stated rationale, and the framing and application of accompanying regulations. This is important since it focuses on the performance of official agencies entrusted with their enforcement.

Within that context, the role of state security agencies is deemed singularly important – the police service and military in particular.

The citizenry is fully entitled to closely scrutinise this feature of SoE implementation. And the issues to which people and their representative civic institutions should pay the greatest attention.

Sometimes it is difficult to maintain clear focus through the haze of partisanship and political sycophancy. But responsible broader community intervention should routinely occur to bring under sharp scrutiny some key attributes of police and other official behaviour.

As discussed in last week’s edition of this column, public trust is indispensable when it comes to state actions that impinge on civil liberties and require us to concede otherwise protected space.

It starts with pervasive confidence in the soundness of a decision to travel such a path. I cannot say this is either universal or completely immune from irrationality in either support or opposition. Whatever prevailing predispositions, there is a case to be respectfully and competently made.

There are several key actors in the management of public emergencies, and the executive is only one of them. Let’s focus on another principal player, the Police.

The Police of Trinidad and Tobago at work

I have not heard any arguments against the view that a comprehensive remodelling of the police service, as currently constituted, is absolutely required to bring it in line with modern realities and challenges, and consequently to render this agency of the state wholly trustworthy under an SoE.

The slothful path being taken to recognise the value of body cameras is a simple example. The prohibitive default posture when it comes to public dissent is another.

But there are wider, already acknowledged shortfalls on questions of criminal detection rates and, even further, eventual conviction within the framework of our criminal justice system.

As it is – and to cite just one issue - there is a more likely chance than not of a criminal getting away with murder. This is even when there are more sharply focused laws, harsher penalties, and even emergency powers to skip some elements of legal processes.

The experience of the latest round of SoE conditions appears to reinforce the point. Impunity remains the norm however rigid, even fatal, the application of regulations.

There is also a need for greater transparency and accountability by the TTPS, and the equipping and positioning of the Police Complaints Authority and other agencies to ensure this is achieved when things appear to go wrong.

Persistent concerns remain regarding corruption, poor professional standards, and the need to strengthen police-community relations.

None of these is irrelevant to how emergency powers are administered and accepted by law-abiding citizens.

Hopefully, some guidance will be provided in the House of Representatives today. It’s the least we should all expect.

 

A Crisis of Trust

It is clear to me that a lingering belief in some great and multi-faceted injustice resident among us is not solely the stuff of contemporary partisan deliberation.

If we dare pay closer attention, we will recognise some familiar elements of fear, distrust, and a lack of confidence in key institutions, and in what the resulting future is likely to bring.

Distrust in institutions is deep-rooted, culturally expressive, and increasingly articulated by younger generations and creatives.

This did not arise yesterday morning upon the incomprehensibly oppressive behaviour of officialdom and is expressed as disapproval over the status quo resulting in dissent and resistance.

The steelpan developed this way. Ban the drums (the Peace Preservation Act, 1884) and tamboo bamboo followed. Ban the tamboo bamboo (Summary Offences Ordinance, 1934) and along came pan – a singular, unique force for indigenous innovation and change whose place will not be denied.

In my view, creative defiance is imperilled mainly by societal retreat or surrender. Listen to our young people though and you will see that, even as dissent is being expressed in new and different ways, that isn’t going to happen any time soon – with or without the involvement of traditional players such as labour unions, human rights activists, and politicians.

Should our youth retreat or surrender, an already brittle civic substructure can and will collapse. Already, they are not turning up at the polls as a symbol of disapproval - whatever their deployment to fill space at the rallies and public exhibitions.

This situation, in my view, represents evidence of a genuine state of public alarm – over and above shady circumstances designed to barely and opaquely meet constitutional benchmarks for an “emergency.”

My participation in two recent activities reinforced these views. Last week at the Caribbean Media Summit hosted as a hybrid event from Port of Spain, a common thread related to retreating “trust” in media and official institutions would not go away.

Marching for Press Freedom - Trinidad Nov 20, 1998

The declining credibility of legacy media – both conspiratorially extracted and not - was repeatedly cited as being among the major challenges to their continued viability.

Apart from a decided failure to adapt, this phenomenon results from the unprecedented challenges of the new social media space, mis and disinformation (read “propaganda”), targeted undermining, and malpractice occasioned by the emergence of generative artificial intelligence.

The trust factor was however not generally considered to be the concern of only mass media but also of official institutions.

There are studies in other parts of the world that establish relatively inelastic relations between trust in media and trust in institutions of the state (and vice versa). But that’s for another occasion, perhaps when our universities start doing some of the important work.

It has been suggested that both an inclination and capacity to defend truth, accountability, and democratic values are prerequisites to both strong media and credible governance. In their absence, a crisis unfolds.

Recent events in T&T and elsewhere in our region prove these points. If, in fact, there is a belief that some great darkness is descending on our nations - and I believe that to be the case in T&T - it is clearly not the time to either ignore the causative factors or to impose regimes of restriction and oppression to limit expression of such apprehensions.

These are not entirely my own thoughts. The second important event I attended last week was the Bars Spoken Word show at the ThinkArtWork Studio in Port of Spain.

The young performers there provided a most articulate expression of distrust, fear, and looming despair you would otherwise have been detecting in the public views of creatives in other fields.

Those who have not been looking are amazed at the continuing explosion of creative expression in all its forms – art, music, drama, dance, literature. People attracted to such things are spoiled for choice but are also increasingly being exposed to the seeds of aspiration and change.

Leading the 1998 March

Hope? Yes, there is. There has to be – free expression in itself bearing that particular message. Whether it can be whipped into submission is another story. I suspect it won’t.

I will speak more about the Bars event on another page of this newspaper. But we ignore the messaging of our youth and our creatives at our peril. They are not displaying a preference for tribal or partisan allegiance. They are speaking truth in new and different ways.

Expression relaying a crisis of trust will not be silenced.

Caribbean media risks

It is no secret that traditional mass media face numerous, potentially terminal perils today.

Media establishments everywhere, including in the Caribbean, are being forced to consider changes to secure their survival. Mergers, consolidations, capture, re-calibration, staff cutbacks, and closures now scar our media landscape.

The Media Institute of the Caribbean (MIC), of which I am a part, has been researching prospects for continued media viability in the region and is not coming across very encouraging news.

In fact, tomorrow and Friday, the MIC will host a hybrid ‘Caribbean Media Summit’ from its T&T base to discuss these identical issues with perspectives from experts in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the wider Caribbean.

It is hoped that current regional media leadership, and other influential players in academia and public policy can listen, learn, and act on rational observations and conclusions.

UNESCO notes that as many as 10% of the world's media enterprises have closed in recent years, for reasons including commercial non‑viability.

It is clear that such fragility resides alongside longstanding threats of regulatory pressures, open hostility and violence, and the more recent threat of far-reaching disinformation campaigns in mortal combat against legitimate news sources.

Witness the social media deluge. Who is being “influenced” by whom? How? And to what ends? There are big issues associated with what is at play and what is at stake.

I am no advocate for regulation. This tends to be self-serving and myopic. But I am for greater official attention to management of an untrammelled marketplace. Some countries are pursuing different actions when it comes to the “big-tech” players, for instance. Media capture by powerful commercial/political interests are also evident.

Changed socio‑economic conditions, fast‑evolving technologies, market dominance by big‑tech multinationals, and generative artificial intelligence are all being examined as major generators of stress on legacy media.

Also, importantly, there have always been people and organisations who prefer these professional establishments not exist in the first place.

Journalists are easy targets of public hate and hostility, and media houses face vicious, unwarranted attacks when they publish narratives some find objectionable, or not in keeping with their individual convictions or belief systems.

Trinidad Express Newsroom 1986

Suddenly, as well - depending on commercial and/or political standing - media “freedoms” are considered to be disproportionately provisional upon delivery of broad social “responsibilities.”

Politicians in power become far more efficient proponents of the responsibility dictum than when they first aspired to office.

In thin Caribbean economies, state advertising is consequently deployed to reward the compliant and withdrawn as punishment for nonconformity. Paid and unpaid social media operatives diligently engage campaigns to undermine and discredit the earnest work of journalists.

The media do not stand alone. It’s the same when it comes to awareness of human rights. Perspectives on rights shift easily in accordance with power status.

Overnight, there is this transformation which suggests little understanding and support in the first place.

I have witnessed more changes in heart over the death penalty, for instance, than current adjustments in the weather outlook by meteorologists - the turning points mainly being adjacency to political power.

Today, Caribbean media face all of these idiosyncrasies and more – most of them internal in nature and related to adaptation consequent upon socio-cultural, technological, economic, and political tides of change.

Through all this, it appears clear that traditional structures and modi operandi cannot and will not withstand this convergence of longstanding adversities and contemporary challenges.

Media closures in the Caribbean, including Newsday in T&T, Stabroek News in Guyana, and a number of smaller operations throughout the island chain and mainland territories of Caricom, prove the point.

To me, the main loss from all of this is the reduction in professional journalism. Media closures are not only leading to fewer media enterprises that produce a wide variety of content, but shrinkage in the number of people who practise the profession.

In the process, a desire for greater diversity grows but is managed by a putative open market skewed by platform preference, manipulative algorithm, and factors that are generally blind to human judgment.

At the same time, claims for audience attention are being leveraged by very influential actors who are legitimate in their own right, but not in all instances committed to journalistic values.

We are not sure what the future holds. But it is most likely not to closely resemble what obtained in years past. For better or for worse.

Lessons from Angelo and Angelica

Tobago is not the kind of place most people regularly associate with heartbreak. Yet recent encounters with tragedy and grief have provided reason to reconsider how we proceed nationally on matters of personal responsibility, public policy, and collective action.

As of the time of submission of this column, the search for missing baby Angelo remained in progress - a month after little Angelica was killed while wading in the ocean with her parents at Pigeon Point.

The case of Angelo’s disappearance will soon receive judicial attention, and numerous questions will need answering. More soon.

Angelica, we would recall, died when a jetski slammed into her as she waded in the ocean at Pigeon Point in Tobago last month.

Today’s primary focus is on her, which raises issues that demand more than our customary awkward attention. We have been shabbily negotiating a notion of “the right to earn an honest dollar” against legal requirements, and a duty of care in the absence of explicit or ignored regulation.

If we wished we could compile a long list including things such as street vending, traffic light windshield wipers, itinerant food stalls, and an entire informal economy – productive but known for non-compliance with labour and other laws.

You may have however gathered from previous dispatches that I believe the highest form of responsible human conduct can come from actions unaccompanied by regulation. As a society, we need to understand how far we should go.

We have sufficient evidence that more laws and harsher punishment do not necessarily produce better, more principled behaviour.

Then we have instances where impunity appears to be the norm. There is a law or a rule, but the chance of getting away with breaching it is so high that people are not inclined to comply.

We live in a country, for example, where there is a higher probability of getting away with a violent crime than of being caught - an average detection rate of under 30%. And if caught, the chance of competent prosecution and prompt sanction is even lower.

Now imagine the fun to be had in command of a jet ski when the abuse of such an activity is viewed as low-level wrongdoing. Put this together - the “honest dollar”, high impunity, “having fun”, and scant official attention - and you land at the spot where Angelica was killed.

GML Business Correspondent Andrea Perez-Sobers kept the issue alive when she interviewed Jamaica’s Minister of Tourism Edmund Bartlett on the subject at last week’s Caribbean Travel Marketplace in Antigua. Full marks for journalistic persistence on this point.

Tobago - not regularly associated with heartbreak

Endorsement of an offer by Jamaica to help guide an orderly transition from pre-Angelica mayhem has promptly come from domestic tourism actors.

I hope all concerned will pay close attention to what this regional tourism leader has in place for itself to stem the possibility of death, injury, and harm resulting from the misbehaviour of people who own or control what regulations there categorise as “personal watercraft (PWCs).”

For starters, in Jamaica, all PWCs must be registered and licensed. They are also not allowed to be operated from public beaches.

Bear in mind, though, that the concept of a “public beach” is currently the subject of strenuous debate in Jamaica given appalling restrictions on beach access by non-state actors, particularly in the tourism industry.

PWCs are also generally required to operate only in daylight, and under licenses that distinguish private, commercial, and security usage.

In The Bahamas - another serious tourism destination … which T&T is not … regulations are even more extensive: import controls, registration, insurance, regular police vetting, and zoning.

None of these measures equals a ban on PWCs.

In T&T we are moving belatedly toward enforcement of a maritime/small craft policy. Though the focus is understandably on Tobago for now, there are ocean folk in Trinidad who can recite a long list of other transgressions by recreational and other boaters.

We appear to be at a point where a duty of care cannot be reliably and voluntarily expected at all times. Personal responsibility is not always a popular resort. So, Angelica’s case is not only for the Tobago House of Assembly to mull. We are all called to account on this one. Two little angels are among those who brought us here.

Full bellies and failing health

A very important note was struck on the op-ed pages of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian on Monday May 11 by well-known T&T plant pathologist/climate change expert, Steve Maximay, who has been among the more tireless campaigners for Caribbean food and nutrition self-sufficiency.

In his missive, the Grenada-based scientist/development busybody reminded us of his “core beliefs” which make a distinction between routinised reference to “food security” and the more important goal of “nutrition security.”

In other words: a goal not only to fill our bellies, but to make sure that whatever we’re feeding ourselves is wholesome and healthy. “I am certainly not interested in celebrating a reduction in our regional food import bill if that bill still includes carbonated beverages and nutritionally empty calories,” he insists.

Plant pathologist/climate expert, Steve Maximay

Think of the non-communicable diseases – cardiovascular disease (including hypertension) and diabetes.

The first time I was forced to consider the important difference - having long latched on to the doctrine of self-sufficiency in food production purely to counter rising food import bills while staving off hunger - was through the counsel of retired CARDI Executive Director, Dr Arlington Chesney nearly 20 years ago.

Regional politicians had by then adopted the sovereignty dictum in response to growing concern that in the event of a cataclysmic global event - A pandemic? War? - we would be left at the mercy of underdeveloped capacity to meet domestic food demand. Plus, there was the persistence of foreign currency outflows during increasingly difficult economic times.

Dr Chesney reminded us even back then that the concept of “food sovereignty” had also grown to include an ability to purchase food not grown domestically. This was so as there were few Caribbean countries possessing the capacity to produce all they required - including those commodities for which we have acquired a demanding, compulsive taste.

Take doubles, to cite one example. Yes, the “dressings” are all largely indigenous concoctions, but the main ingredients namely wheat flour and channa (chickpeas) are not produced in T&T.

So, there should be allowance for “tastes” and things we claim to be ours – but not to the extent that undermines a valid concern about the large sums of money expended every year to import the things we eat and drink.

Now unofficially branded as “25-by-2030”, Caricom’s 25‑by‑2025 (25% reduction in food imports by the year 2025) target was not met by a single member state mainly because of domestic and imported needs and appetites.

The tourism-dependent countries tell a huge part of the latter tale. But it’s not the entire story.

Here in T&T, where our food import bill is in the vicinity of TT$7.5 billion annually (calculate 25% of that), there are some difficult questions to answer regarding expenditure on imported food and the extent to which, as Maximay reminds us, we are not simply aiming at satisfying caloric intake.

His concern is therefore as much focused on “the food import bill” as it is on the achievement of “nutrition security” as a strategy to counter the scourge of poor health and all its attendant implications for productivity, social costs, and reduction in the quality of life.

Regionwide, the outlook is not much more promising. The effort to reduce/substitute reliance on imports such as poultry and other meats, wheat flour, rice, soya and other commodities can benefit from greater pooling of resources and redirecting of productive efforts in the food sector.

The Caricom Agri-Food Systems Strategy was designed specifically to address growing demand for these commodities, and to meaningfully reduce the current annual bill of US$6 billion.  

It is nothing new that Caricom nations can benefit immeasurably from intra-regional collaboration/rationalising by mutual consent to address the difficulty we have with expenditure on extra-regional food imports. Import substitution is an age-old mantra. Nutrition security is not.

In an ideal world, we would have all been trading in our own currency (the single economy component of the CSME) and making better use of single market conditions to feed each other. Channa from Belize. And Guyana could have also supplied us with wheat flour had its trial runs been successful. Hopefully they have not given up completely.

Instead, there prevails a foolish belief in a destiny that denies important building blocks of the integration movement.

On the particular question of food and nutrition security, it helps that important producers such as Guyana, Suriname, and Belize are members of the family – though their own 25-by-2025 aspirations were unsuccessful.

But there is a structure and a rational pathway to collective success that should not be abandoned.

Maximay’s alert is worth heeding as a warning against the temptation to ignore healthy bodies in exchange for full but unwell bellies.

 

Blades of Grass

Several years ago, a respected Caribbean international relations expert told me in private conversation that the notion of “national sovereignty” was becoming an outdated concept.

Yet, few issues generate greater unreserved bipartisan political and wider social support than real and perceived threats to a country’s territorial integrity or a claim that its sovereignty has been violated.

Both Guyana’s and Venezuela’s fierce internecine political environments, for example, de-escalate and cohere around the question of the Essequibo region. It has not mattered the political administration in power in either Guyana or Venezuela.

For example, Guyana’s agent to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, who is not associated with the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and is among the more eloquent advocates on his country’s behalf on this subject. Correspondingly, neither Chavismo nor anti-Chavismo is a factor in Venezuela when it comes to this.

I have interacted with independent human rights defenders in Venezuela who casually contend that “Guayana Esequiba” belongs to their country.

As interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodrigues has said, this is taught at school alongside negative views on the process that led to the current situation, and she is not about to “change history” … as she understands it.

Mention to young and old Venezuelans the 1899 Arbitral Award which essentially granted most of the Essequibo region to what was then “British Guiana” and they would have at least heard about it as something of a longstanding travesty - though the result remained uncontested, and even applauded, for over 60 years

Most Guyanese can tell you about the tens of thousands of fellow citizens who live in the region. They will also be able to recite at least one line from the Tradewinds’s 1980 hit “Not A Blade of Grass” – repurposed now as Essequibo slogan.

When Juan Guaidó was unilaterally declared by some big and powerful countries as the “legitimate” President of Venezuela in 2019 I followed accompanying social media narratives by his supporters for mention of “Guayana Esequiba.”

I found mainly derogatory mention of Guyana and its Caricom partners in their support of Guyana’s position on Essequibo. This was hardly Bolivarian imperialism as enunciated by their sworn enemies, the Chavistas. Witness as well the general position of María Corina Machado.

The fact is, whatever the nonsensical claims to the contrary, Caricom member states have long, actively, and repeatedly rallied in support of Guyana on this question. Check Caricom Summit discussions and communiques going back to its formative years in the 1970s.

I have however noted that in commentaries regarding Delcy Rodrigues’ provocative brooch - depicting her rendition of a map of Venezuela – people have been speaking about the seemingly passive treatment of the matter by Grenada and Barbados as indicative of a lack of support for Guyana.

The divisiveness generated could well have been intentional.  I am nevertheless unaware of anything by either Caribbean leader suggesting action on the deliberate insult, though there should hopefully have been discreet communication.

I think both Mia Mottley and Dickon Mitchell should explain to us how this sentiment has been conveyed to the Venezuelans, if at all. But failure to do so cannot and should not be considered to be lukewarm postures on the substantive Essequibo issue.

With the Venezuelans due to present their version of history at the ICJ today, we are likely to witness insertion of similar provocations.

Monday’s oral submissions on behalf of Guyana appeared to establish a clear progression from relative passivity on the part of Venezuela to belated opposition to the arbitral award. There have been minor border skirmishes, but through the years there has been unimpeded, peaceful occupation via longstanding agreement, productive activity, and functional governance by one of the two parties - Guyana.

Some recent work by CIJN Guyanese journalist, Nazima Raghubir also reports, at least anecdotally, that the people who live and work in the region are crystal clear about which country they occupy.

Guyana - Land of Many Waters

Guyana also argued on Monday that neither Spain, as coloniser, nor Venezuela ever actually administered Essequibo in the first place.

I am not going to play “bush lawyer” and speculate on the ICJ’s evaluation of that point and others as being seminal to final determination of the case. There is certainly much more to consider.

Venezuela meanwhile holds that its participation in the proceedings is “without consent” and meant purely to demonstrate the "truth” about its rights to “the territory of Guayana Esequiba."

Guyana, along with Caricom, insists that not one blade of Essequibo grass belongs to anyone else. It’s our collective position that this carries the weight of international law.

 

Fear, power, and an exposed press

Last Saturday’s dramatic turn of events at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, generated enough emotion to dominate my thoughts ever since - other massively significant issues notwithstanding.

Yes, I had considered elaborating on last week’s missive regarding deep, pervasive national fear and a patent inability to address its causes and effects: the disconnect between political messaging and reality, and the largely silent rejection - even among the faithful - of empty reassurance.

There has also been accumulating evidence to challenge the deterrent effects of more punitive fines and expanded traffic laws in the absence of meaningful enforcement. And, even so, to redirect behaviours to minimise risk. I promise to return to these sometime in the future.

But today, what is presumed to have been an attempted violent attack on the President of the USA, Donald Trump, has been dissected in numerous ways, the very least being its impact on and meaning for the numerous journalists in and out of that dinner hall.

In videos of the incident (few re-broadcast the opening moments), I kept my eyes on the woman in white who had been seated at the head table and was later seen crawling on her hands and knees as the President was hustled off by what seemed to be a dozen security personnel.

She turned out to be Weijia Jiang, CBS News correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents' Association. Crawling alone and seemingly not a concern of anyone else.

This episode forced me to recall that following the violence of July 27, 1990 in T&T, among the numerous emergent issues associated with the attempted coup d’etat, was the manner in which the role and interests of journalists and media were diminished or largely ignored.

Port of Spain, Trinidad under siege July,1990

For what it’s worth, I remember my own scramble to safety – on hands and knees like the lady in white – across the parliament floor as the shooting and shouting and screaming continued. I tell you, at that point, your instincts as a journalist play second fiddle to a will to survive.

Late journalist and former TTT hostage, Raoul Pantin, went to his grave a perpetual advocate for some form of redress not only for himself but for all journalists who were caught up in the deadly attacks almost 36 years ago. During the ensuing Commission of Enquiry between 2011 and 2013 there had been largely ignored mention.

Then came Saturday and attacker Cole Tomas Allen’s insanity. News reached us in Marseille, France where the Council of IFEX – the global network of free expression organisations – was meeting in the absence of Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Jodie Ginsberg.

Where, then, was Jodie? The following morning, she explained there had been “the disorientation of being pulled to the ground by a man sitting next to me and told to get under the table as Secret Service flooded into the room …”

She told of being hustled out of the building and into a side street “with no instructions of where to go or how to get back into the Hilton (where I was staying).”

“The part of my brain that deals daily with attacks on journalists can’t help but wonder … what if they (Trump and his senior colleagues) weren’t the target? What if journalists were the target?”

Then she reminded us that in that room there had been journalists “who have been kidnapped, wrongfully detained, and shot at. Journalists who have been violently arrested. Journalists who cover politics here in the United States who - along with their families - are subjected to daily death threats. Journalists who have been assaulted at protests and political rallies.”

This not only made me think about the journalists in other parts of the world where they are frequently targeted, killed, and maimed, but also of our own media professionals who confront different kinds of serious assaults and remain unacknowledged and generally defenceless. Cannon fodder at the mercy of propagandists, sycophants, and hostile politicians.

It is true that few things attract such a scenario more than poor quality reporting, but it is also a fact that the importance of favourable political imaging tends to outweigh the value of professional journalism.

And when this happens - like Jiang and her colleagues, like Raoul Pantin, Dominic Kalipersad, and others - journalists often find themselves exposed and alone. On hands and knees. At precisely the moments when their role matters most, there is too often no protection, no support, and no one truly there.

The fear factor

There is a constant call - amid the outrageous and macabre developments of recent days, month, and years - to avoid an irresistible urge to yield to fear and a sense of diminished hope on questions of social peace, cohesion, and calm.

For certain, the impact of fear can contribute to the undermining of the confidence and resilience required to advance any country’s development agenda.

But it is clearly inadvisable to suggest that fear can be seamlessly and elastically enjoined to statistical performance or gratuitous expressions of political assurance. Things just do not work that way.

You see, the minute fear is casually dismissed as baseless irrationality or described as being cynically contrived there are always realities guaranteed to smack you in the gut and stomp on your steel-tipped toes. Witness the last few days.

Last week in this space, in citing several instances that conspired to establish such a point, I concluded that pervasive recklessness – to put it mildly - had conspired to transform daily life here into a precarious, often deadly gamble.

Between then and now have come more killing; claiming in the process the lives of children, discovery of mass, apparently unlawful human burials, and the brutally audacious “security breach” (speak of euphemism) at the San Fernando Municipal Police Station. Among other things.

A subsequent newspaper photo-op featuring two government ministers, the commissioner of police, a coast guard officer, and other security personnel marching resolute and shoulder to shoulder must have tempted the caption: “Never fear. We are here.”

But I am yet to witness unreserved purchase of the goods on display.

Fear and panic, the commissioner had proposed just one week prior, are just as bad as crime itself. “Why aren’t people feeling that (the statistics)? Why isn’t anyone talking about that? Because fear has gripped this country for so long that we can’t even see when change is coming,” the commissioner said.

Guilty, as charged! We all seemed to respond. For credibility is earned not through selective application of favourable data – and one may wish to cite unreferenced, appallingly low criminal detection rates and bland efforts to determine and influence causative factors – but through the comfort of believing that somebody is in charge and people are taking joint responsibility through knowledge, resources, and individual capacity.

Such assets include truth-telling of the highest calibre. Who, for instance, really believes that the current, extended state of public emergency was constitutionally justifiable as a way to address grand, specific existential threats? Where is the progress report on this?

Even so, we are instead being told that all of this can be expected to generate concurrent (not just core) benefits. This has been an argument that has spanned at least 15 years, across the political divide.

Yet, the “updates” have grown to focus exclusively on statistical gains related to matters outside the purported threats for which there was extreme recourse. Instead, what was meant to be a very last resort on specific constitutional grounds has now become a readily available default for everything else. As asked right here last week: In the face of growing fear and a sense of futility, what do you do for an encore?

Additionally, I recall in the years following the murderous assault of July 1990 numerous admonitions, including from this writer, to resist the temptation to reduce all of this to the status of political row and advantage.

Blood, we are constantly being told, remains a stain on the hands of politicians and not necessarily smeared on the walls of civic institutions from school to community centre to places of worship.

“Solving crime” has since become more firmly entrenched as manifesto bullet points, verses, and chapters. Political opportunity has been grasped with both hands.

People have clamoured for “the good old days” of the heavy hand (or ropes) around our necks, and election campaigns with five-year cycles have responded accordingly.

Meanwhile, those under whose portfolios reside obligations to address such challenges would do well to spurn the temptation to announce victory on the battlefront even as the war continues.