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.