By Sir Ronald Sanders

The writer is a member of the Eminent Persons Group established by Commonwealth Heads of Government to report by October 2011 on strengthening the Commonwealth. The commentary below is an abridged version of a speech delivered to a Consultation of Heads of Commonwealth Organisations and diplomats on “Reinvigorating the Commonwealth”

Over the years of the Commonwealth’s existence much has been written about how it is perceived, how it can better project itself, how it can strengthen its institutions, and how it can remain relevant in a changed and changing world.

The difference between what has been written so far by academics, think-tanks, and parliamentarians, and the work of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) is that the EPG’s work has been specifically mandated by Heads of Government.

They have asked for a report that, in the words of the Affirmation issued at their meeting last November in Port-of-Spain, will ensure that “the Commonwealth will remain relevant to its times and people in future” and will help to build “a stronger and more resilient and progressive family of nations founded on enduring values and principles”.

The group must present ideas that Heads of Government can collectively endorse and implement. They must be ideas that are visionary as well as practical; ambitious as well as achievable; standard-setting as well as opportunity creating.

We have to be mindful that the Commonwealth is not an Organisation tied by Treaty whose rules are binding on member states. It is a voluntary association of sovereign states who have decided that because they share certain traditions, there is benefit in working together.

We must be heedful too that, in their association, Commonwealth governments have made commitments to democracy, human rights, human dignity and freedom, and that fulfilment of these commitments lie at the heart of the Commonwealth’s credibility and its relevance.

The EPG recognises that the Commonwealth should not and cannot attempt to tackle every issue that confronts mankind, and that focus should be placed on its strengths and how to make them more effective.

We recognised the important inter-linkages between democracy/governance/human rights/rule of law on one hand and poverty alleviation/sustainable development/economic empowerment on the other.

We acknowledged that just as democracy will not be upheld without development, development will not be sustained without democracy.

We have begun to explore a number of ideas such as a Commonwealth Charter that expresses an ethos of Commonwealth Community that reflects civil and political norms and through which member countries commit themselves to fundamental rights and freedoms, values and principles as contained in several declarations by Heads of Government.

Discussion has also focussed on the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) established to protect Commonwealth values and principles and to take action against member states that indulge in serious or persistent violations of them.

The Group regards CMAG as a bright jewel in the Commonwealth Crown; one that should not be allowed to tarnish, but should continue to sparkle as a tribute to Commonwealth commitment to its values. Tthe Group would like to see further empowerment of CMAG to take up the full gamut of its remit to deal with “serious or persistent” violations beyond unconstitutional overthrow of an elected government.

We regard the Secretary-General’s “good offices” role as equally important in addressing violations of human and civil rights before they become cancerous. Prevention is better than cure. But, we recognise that this role is under resourced and requires not only wider machinery to alert the Secretary-General to potential problems.

And, we are not neglectful of the need to promote social and economic development or of the global challenges of the moment that have a great impact upon many Commonwealth countries. These include climate change which threatens the very existence of some Commonwealth countries; and the need for special and differential treatment for small states by the international financial institutions and the World Trade Organisation.

We also recognise that to do its job effectively, the Commonwealth Secretariat requires more resources which cannot come from governments alone. They can also come from strategic partnerships with private sector groups and foundations even outside the Commonwealth. And, through these partnerships, the Commonwealth could make a big difference to inoculations against disease, improving infant mortality, and improving educational facilities.

We would like to see Youth brought into the mainstream of Commonwealth thinking and activity. Discussions have begun about the possible development of a youth programme aimed at promoting exchanges by young people between Commonwealth countries in which transfer of knowledge and volunteering would be underlying considerations.

We see it as a movement of young people across Commonwealth countries to live, study and commune in each other’s countries in a structured and organised programme that would leave each of them with a better knowledge and appreciation of each other’s culture and circumstances.

We are also considering the expansion of the four regional Commonwealth Youth Centres into larger Commonwealth regional offices for a wider range of activities.

The question has often been posed: if the Commonwealth did not exist, would we invent it? The answer is: we are lucky; we don’t have to invent it. It exists. It is a gift – an association of 54 countries, large and small, from all the continents of the world representing 2 billion people of all races and religions.

Together, the countries of the Commonwealth are responsible for more than 20% of world trade, about 20% of investment and approximately 20% of world GDP. According to the Commonwealth Business Council, “over $3 trillion in trade happens within the Commonwealth every year and the Commonwealth has seen over $200 billion worth of investment over the last 10 years”. A common language and common laws have brought down the price of doing business among Commonwealth countries by 20%.

This demonstrates that there is enormous potential within the Commonwealth for delivering benefits to its people, but Commonwealth leadership – in government and the private sector – must do something about it.

There is clearly an unlocked potential for boosting wealth in the Commonwealth. The key may very well be strict adherence to democracy and good governance by all Commonwealth countries that would encourage more trade and investment across the Commonwealth, improving the economies and social conditions of all its members.

BY Sir Ronald Sanders
(The writer is a Consultant and former Caribbean diplomat)

At a time of economic decline among the majority of countries of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and a recognition that the region is battling in an unfavourable milieu in terms of trade, aid and investment, the people of the area naturally look to their governments to devise strategies and mechanisms for improving their condition.
Instinctively, the people of each CARICOM country know that the challenges that confront them cannot adequately be met by their national governments alone. The hope is that governments, acting together and drawing upon the combined resources of each nation-state, will be better able to deliver benefits people urgently need including poverty alleviation, employment and economic growth.

From its outset CARICOM has been hobbled by the absence of machinery for implementing the decisions that are taken. The fact that the integration project has advanced at all over the 36 years of its existence is largely due to external pressures rather than internal initiatives. Hence, the Caribbean people have come to expect long statements and declarations from meetings of Heads of Government with little follow-up action and failure to fulfil pledges with deeds.

Unquestionably, there is disenchantment with CARICOM as an instrument for the improvement of the lives of the people of the Community.
None of this is the fault of the five Secretaries-General that have served CARICOM from its inception. Each of them from William Demas to Edwin Carrington believed in the regional project; recognised its importance – and necessity – to bargaining in a highly competitive global environment; and kept alive the promise that strong integration arrangements, respected and upheld by national governments, could help to deliver better conditions for the region’s people.

The people of CARICOM owe a debt of gratitude to all its Secretaries-General. After all, they were not heads of government. They could present the options, urge positions, and try to push the pace of integration, but at the end of the day, they could take the regional project no further than heads of government collectively allowed. Having worked with each of them, I know how hard each of them tried in his own way.
Against this background, it is unlikely that the recent proposal by a small group of Heads of Government to establish a “Permanent Committee of Ambassadors” as the answer for improved governance of the Community will imbue in the people of CARICOM a sense of confidence that a major step has been taken to advance regional arrangements in a way that will benefit them.
As it stands, the proposed Committee of Ambassadors is set on a collision course with established organs of CARICOM such as the Council of Ministers and the Secretary-General both of whom have established legal roles in the organisation.

But, it is as yet, still only a proposal, and one that has not been fleshed out.
In the next few weeks the proposal is to be examined and refined and then put to all CARICOM Heads of government at their next meeting. By then, hopefully, the organisational difficulties that the proposed Committee poses will be worked out satisfactorily.

However, what will not be worked out – unless the proposal is fundamentally changed – is the very thing that it is supposed to address and that is the implementation of decisions.

So, in seeking to maintain control at a national level, this latest decision may be one that will weaken not strengthen CARICOM at a time when it needs to be stronger not weaker to preserve and promote economic and social development of the region’s people and to bargain for their interests in the international community.
It is worth pointing out that in all the recommendations that have been made for improved governance of CARICOM and for effective implementation of decisions, it has never been suggested that any government should relinquish sovereignty. Even the recommendation of the 1992 West Indian Commission for the establishment of a CARICOM Commission did not suggest a contraction of sovereignty.

What was recognised was that “CARICOM commitments must be binding commitments – morally, functionally, legally” and, therefore they must become “Community law” which is enforceable in each member state. And, these commitments are not to be made or approved by any organ other than CARICOM Heads of Government themselves.
In other words, it is the considered decisions of Heads of Government in council with each other that would become law and would be enforceable and implemented. It would not be the decisions of any other group whether they are called “CARICOM Commission” or “Permanent Committee of Ambassadors”.
What could possibly be wrong with such a system? Heads of government are most unlikely to make decisions that are legally binding on their countries unless they have studied them carefully with the advice of their Cabinets and their Attorneys-General. These decisions would have to show benefits for their countries individually and the region collectively.

Whatever organ implements them, however, must have the force of law at the national level or the same drift, the same failures to implement, the same promises made and not fulfilled will continue, and CARICOM will further decline losing any hope that it offered to the region’s people and any moral force it proffered in the region’s dealing with the international community.

The issue boils down to this: regional decisions have to become law enforceable in each state, or implementation will be held up by any one government that is unwilling to act.

By Sir Ronald Sanders
(The writer is a Consultant and former Caribbean diplomat)

The G20 should be the ‘T20’ – trustees not just of the 20 rich countries that sit at their meetings but also of the 172 nations that are denied a seat at their table.
This powerful statement has been advanced jointly by the Secretaries-General of the Commonwealth and La Francophonie, two organizations whose members are mostly developing states.
The custodians of the G20’s self-bestowed mandate to oversee the world economy justify their monopoly of global decision-making on the fact that they account for 90% of global GDP. But, while that is so, 90% of the world’s countries are excluded from their discussions.
As the two Secretaries General (Kamalesh Sharma, Commonwealth and Abdou Diouf, La Francophonie) have argued: “The simple fact of globalization dictates that all countries, the world over, have been affected by a tsunami of crises – of finance and food, of energy and the environment. Equally, all have an interest in what goes into the G20 meeting, and what comes out of it”.
Almost a year ago (October 2009) in a commentary entitled ‘Can the Caribbean depend on the G20?’, I made the argument that “Membership of the G20 has little to do with fair representation and much to do with self interest. Together, the G20 countries cover more than eighty-five percent of world economic activity. They can afford to ignore, or at least pay lip service to, the other nations who account for the remaining fifteen percent of global economic activity, even as Ban-ki-Moon, the UN secretary-General, reminds that eighty-five percent of the world’s countries are not represented at the G20. In the end it is power that matters and power in this instance is purchasing capacity and market size.”
I argued then that the Caribbean collectively should argue for a seat at the G20 table to advance its own interests which are neglected by the International Financial Institutions that continue to apply traditional prescriptions and criteria to Caribbean problems, many of which are caused by events in the world’s richest economies such as the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Japan.
No initiative has been pursued by the Caribbean in this regard as far as I know.
Three G20 meetings have now been held without representation by the small states in Africa, Oceania, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. I acknowledge that Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, as Chairman of the last G20 meeting in Toronto did have a meeting with the Secretaries-General of the Commonwealth and La Francophonie to get an understanding of the challenges faced by the member countries of their organizations that were not represented at the meeting. But, Prime Minister Harper’s generous concern for non-represented countries, while laudable, is not a substitute for a structured and predictable participation in the G20 deliberations by the world’s small countries.

The call that inspired the American Revolution, “No taxation without representation”, is relevant today in the international political economy. G20 countries consume the majority of the world’s resources; they are its biggest polluters; and their actions, across a variety of areas, materially affect the survival of smaller countries. They should at least listen to the valid problems of others.
The G20 cannot claim economic leadership but deny economic responsibility and obligations.
The G20 countries – even the large developing countries such as China, India and Brazil – prefer to limit the number of nations in their council, keeping it as a club for large nations that now aims to set the economic parameters for the world to fit their purpose. It also suits them to keep their relations with small economies at a bilateral level where enough can be done to maintain influence over them without overhauling the global apparatus, such as the International Financial Institutions and the World Trade Organization in which they are disadvantaged.
Given this reality, small sates should seek to institutionalize the initiative taken by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to invite the Secretaries-General of the Commonwealth and La Francophonie for consultations prior to the meeting. They should push to ensure that the Chair person of every G20 meeting seeks proposals from the two Secretaries-General on behalf of their disenfranchised members, and that such proposals are tabled and considered by the meeting .
In the case of the Commonwealth, 32 of its 54 members are small states and five of its larger members – Australia, Britain, Canada, India, and South Africa – are members of the G20. La Francophonie has 56 member states. Ten countries are members of both organizations, which together comprise 72 countries that are not represented at the G20.
Surely, proposals from two persons representing 72 countries and almost a billion people should be welcome by the G20 in a spirit of genuine regard not only for international democracy, but also for dealing with the plight of small countries that have been hit particularly hard by the effects of the international financial crisis and who are still suffering from its consequences.
The two Secretaries-General have publicly observed that, for 2010 alone, the World Bank has indicated that US$315 billion is required to meet the gap between what developing countries require and what is currently available if they are to meet the Millennium Development Goals set by all nations. They have proposed that “the G20 should endorse a serious action plan to identify innovative potential sources of non-sovereign financing, embracing widespread consultation with those not at their table”.

If the Caribbean cannot collectively push for a seat at the G20 table, the region should at least join other small countries in seeking to institutionalize Prime Minister Harper’s initiative that the Commonwealth Secretary-General presents our case to which we should contribute well researched and viable arguments.

The military leader of Fiji, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, recently said that he would like to cut his country’s ties with neighbouring Australia and New Zealand and align with China. His statement would find little support amongst the people of Fiji who value their long and deep relationship with Australia and New Zealand.
Bainimarama’s reason for saying he would sever ties with Australia and New Zealand and align Fiji to China has nothing to do with the interests of his country or his people. It is entirely to do with Bainimarama’s perception that China would be tolerant of his government which resulted from a coup d’état four years ago.
Both Australia and New Zealand – countries to which many Fijians have emigrated and who are Fiji’s biggest trading partners – have seriously objected not only to the military coup, but also to the fact that Bainimarama has failed to hold democratic elections at which a civilian government could be elected. Neither country shows any sign of letting-up on their objection to a serious violation of democracy in Fiji.
The Commonwealth – a grouping of 54 nations of which Fiji was a member along with Australia and New Zealand – suspended Fiji from the Councils of the Commonwealth immediately after the Coup, and the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) suspended the country fully from the Commonwealth in 2009 after further gross violations of the Constitution by the Bainimarama regime including the dismissal of judges who ruled that his regime was illegal.
Australia and New Zealand are in the forefront of upholding CMAG’s position in Fiji. And, they are not alone. Other big Commonwealth nations such as Britain, Canada and India insist that a condition of membership of the Commonwealth must be adherence by governments to the democratic values and principles to which the organisation’s member states have declared themselves to be committed.
Fortunately for the people who live in the Fiji Islands, neither Australia nor New Zealand has imposed tough sanctions or bans. Had they done so the Fijian economy – already suffering from the consequences of a military government – would have collapsed, and the people of the Islands would have suffered extreme hardship. A significant amount of their exports and their tourism would have been adversely affected creating high unemployment and increased poverty. There would also have been a greater exodus of qualified people than there has been.
Australia and New Zealand have chosen instead to join their fellow members of the Commonwealth in keeping up pressure on the Fijian regime to restore democracy in the country. They have also relied on the “good offices” role of the Commonwealth Secretary-General to find ways of opening up an effective dialogue with the Fijian regime to return the country to democracy.
So far, these efforts have failed amid Bainimarama’s determination to maintain himself in power. In the meantime, the people of Fiji suffer, and the regime shops around for governments that would give it assistance despite its naked abuse of power.
But, Fiji’s immediate neighbours in the South Pacific have shown their deep concern about the abrogation of democracy by suspending the country from the 16-member South Pacific Forum last year.
Shopping around for support for an undemocratic regime is hardly the answer to the Fijian government’s unconstitutional status and the pariah status that the country is acquiring. Eventually, pressure will mount both internally and externally to isolate and remove a regime that clings to power without the will of the people.
China has been long in the game of international politics and it is unlikely to extend any great comfort to the Fijian regime for a sustained period, particularly as Fiji has neither an abundance of resources in which China is interested nor any particular strategic interest.
It is in the manner of the Commonwealth’s method of operation that it will not surrender the people of Fiji to an unelected government, particularly one that seized power at the point of a gun. In this connection, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Kamalesh Sharma, repeated the Commonwealth’s determination to help Fiji to restore democracy while continuing its suspension from the Association.
The point may come, however, when a determination will have to be made about how much longer an unelected regime is allowed by the international community to hold a country hostage to its will. The danger of a more prolonged “capture” of the state apparatus by Bainimarama and his military supporters is that it might encourage similar unconstitutional developments not only in the Pacific but in other regions as well. For, if other regimes feel that Bainimarama can get away with flouting democracy they may be tempted to do so themselves, especially if countries such as China give them succour however temporary.
The Commonwealth will have a unique and special role to play in all this. It is a value based association of 54 nations drawn from every continent of the world and representing one-third of the world’s people. Unlike many other multilateral organisations it has declared democracy, freedom, human and civil rights to be its core values, and in the past particularly on issues such as racism it was the world’s torch-bearer; its moral conscience even as many governments turned a blind eye to atrocities in Apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the interest of economic gain.
In a world where human and civil rights are increasingly being defiled, many will look to the Commonwealth to raise the banner of democracy and to push for it to be upheld. Fiji is one country where unconstitutionality will demand further and stronger action from the Commonwealth.

Zimbabwe, where the Robert Mugabe regime has practiced the worst form of discrimination and brutalized its own people, is another.
Human rights and democracy should not be for sale.

By Sir Ronald Sanders
(The writer is a Consultant and former Caribbean Diplomat)

The British government has recently launched an initiative to make its Ambassadors front-line persons in pushing British business abroad. There are lessons in this move for small states including those in the Caribbean, and governments should be taking note to revamp the outmoded structures through which they conduct their foreign affairs.

Over the last decade, the world has gone through cataclysmic changes which have had – and are still having – adverse effects on small countries. Among these are climate change, the spread of HIV/Aids, the fallout from the global financial crisis that started in October 2008, the rise of the ideology of trade liberalization leading to unfair terms of trade for small countries, and heavy constraints on financial services imposed by wealthy nations in the name of the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing.

Small states have no arsenal of foreign policy tools such as economic clout or military capacity with which to advance their interests or counter the constraints that are imposed on them by more powerful countries and institutions. They rely entirely on the capacity and forcefulness of their diplomacy.
Given the state of the international political economy, small states should be aggressive in doing precisely what the British government now expects of its diplomatic service – they should require their diplomats, as a primary task, to contribute to the earnings of the national treasuries by seeking out and expanding markets for their goods and services, and procuring investment. The exceptions to this would be the missions of a purely political nature, such as those accredited to the UN and its specialized agencies.
As part of the British initiative, the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, William Hague, has said that he intends to appoint businessmen to key Ambassadorial posts.
The Financial Times reports this development as “part of Mr Hague’s pitch for resources to the Treasury, casting the embassy network as an important driver of Britain’s economic recovery.”
The manner in which Foreign Ministries and Embassies (or High Commissions) were structured by Caribbean countries after independence, followed too slavishly the British model of the 1960s, and regrettably, they have remained so even while the British themselves have undergone periodic change.
Not enough emphasis was placed by Caribbean governments on the commercial aspect of Embassies – the business of actually promoting trade and investment. Very few persons working in Caribbean diplomatic missions have any experience in business at any level, and, therefore, they lack the knowledge and experience to understand what conditions attract businesspeople.
To be fair to these Caribbean diplomats, many of them also get little – if any – guidance or direction from their governments, largely because the foreign ministries to which they respond are also staffed with public servants who have not been exposed to, or trained in business.
Diplomatic training – such as it exists in the Caribbean – is also still too focused on traditional diplomacy. There is a gaping hole in commercial diplomacy – the business of promotion, marketing and negotiation.
In this context, Caribbean countries need to reform and revamp their foreign ministries and their diplomatic missions to put them in the forefront of promoting trade and investment. To do so, they would have to establish close working relationships with Chambers of Commerce, Hotels and Tourist Organizations, manufacturers and agricultural export organizations, and their financial services sector. The work programme of the foreign ministry in trade and investment should be devised and constantly revised by a joint board drawn from the private and public sectors.
Some governments may find the notion of a public-private board to drive foreign economic policy as too big a pill to swallow, inured in the belief that policy making and implementation is the government’s exclusive domain. But, this is an anachronistic concept.
In the member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) governments consult widely and deeply with their privates sectors before they agree to rules that apply within the group, and that the group then imposes on others. The OECD countries know well that it is their companies that trade and invest, and it is the profits of these companies that grow their economies. Governments, therefore, have an active interest in their success.
It is far more important for small states to reform and revamp their overseas missions than it is for industrialised nations, such as Britain, whose embassies, for the most part, have commercial capabilities. If Britain recognizes the importance of strengthening the commercial capacity of its embassies, it should be urgent for countries in the Caribbean.
One part of the British government’s initiative, is likely to pose difficulties requiring creative solutions for the same reason that it would present a problem in the Caribbean. Mr Hague wants to appoint businessmen to key Ambassadorial posts. The two constraints on this are: businessmen are unlikely to abandon their businesses for three years or more to become Ambassadors; and the pay for the job would be much less than businessmen earn.
But, this constraint should not stop top executives in small states from taking leave of absence from the private sector to work for governments on flexible contracts with realistic pay, and for limited periods to work on the international stage. They are much needed in Embassies in Brussels where the work of Caribbean governments on the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union is focused, and they should be in Caribbean missions to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) where trade rules are negotiated.
It would also be extremely beneficial if, in the Caribbean, there was a permanent private sector presence at the Secretariat of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and within the Office of the Trade Negotiator.
Another of Hague’s initiative also has a lesson for Caribbean countries. He is creating in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a team to co-ordinate strategy towards the emerging economic powers – Brazil, Russia, India and China – the so-called BRIC nations obviously because he recognizes them as sources of investment in Britain and markets for British goods and services.
This is an initiative that Caribbean countries should have launched over a year ago, assigning the CARICOM Secretariat the task of developing a joint strategy for promoting trade and investment with the BRIC nations on advantageous terms. Given that three of them are developing countries, a well thought out strategy may have yielded impressive success.
All this calls for a sea change in government thinking and attitudes toward the private sector in the Caribbean so that the relationship becomes one of genuine partnership. It is a sea change that has all the urgency of now.

Sir Ronald sanders

By Sir Ronald Sanders
(The writer is a Consultant and former Caribbean Diplomat)

Climate change is now undeniable according to a new study headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration. It is already having a disastrous effect on small island states. The very existence of some of them, particularly in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, is threatened. Caribbean islands too are endangered as are countries such as Belize and Guyana with low lying coastlands.
In the latter case, coastal erosion is reducing beaches that are crucial to the tourism industry on which all of the small Caribbean islands now depend. The Atlantic coasts of both Guyana and Belize are below sea level, but it accommodates most of their populations and their agricultural lands. Sea-level rise, therefore, threatens all of them.

The challenges that climate change poses to small states are not only overwhelming, they are impossible to be met from the scarce resources of the governments.

In a recent speech in Trinidad and Tobago, the Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines put the matter in clear terms when he said: “In mountainous States like my own, over 80% of our major infrastructure is located along our coastline, within a few feet of the inexorably rising seas. The cost of adaptation and preservation of our infrastructural developments are daunting, and beyond our individual capacity to address”.

While small states are the primary victims of climate change, they are the least contributors to the greenhouse gas emissions that are the biggest contributors to climate change and global warming. Together, the harmful emissions of greenhouse gases from all small states account for less than 0.1 per cent of the global total.

In a fatuous argument, the US Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre had rated Trinidad and Tobago at number 9 in the worst emitters of harmful gases in the world in the year 2007. However, the measurement was based on population size, not on the volume of emissions. To underscore the silliness of the argument, the tiny Caribbean island, Montserrat, with a population of 10,000 people and no manufacturing or industrial production of any magnitude, was rated at number 17 in the world.
The reality is that, despite the per capita argument that developed countries and international institutions are fond of using to measure a range of issues to procure a desired (but illusionary) result, small states contribute little to global warming but they are its primary victims as evidenced by sea-level rise, stronger and more frequent hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters.
These same small states are also the victims of the worst trading arrangements in the world.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) makes no provision for their special circumstances, nor does the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Hence, small islands such as St Lucia (100,000 people) and St Kitts-Nevis (50,000 people) are treated in the same way in the WTO as the United States (350 million), Canada (33 million) or the European Union (400 million). No special rules apply.
In the IFIs, many small states – and certainly all those in the Caribbean – are “graduated” from concessional financing because, on the measurement of per capita income, they are rated as middle-income countries.
The point is that small states are the casualties of climate change but the large industrialized nations that cause the problem are doing little to help them cope with the difficulties that have already been created and that are worsening. The member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which are the world’s most industrialized countries, are responsible for an estimated 77 per cent of the total greenhouse gases which were emitted in the past.
The IFI’s that are controlled by the OECD governments have no machinery in place to provide small states (especially those in the Caribbean who have been graduated from concessional financing) with soft loans or grants to help them mitigate the impact of climate change, on their key trade sectors including agriculture, fisheries, forestry and tourism.
And, the terms of trade are punitive rather than helpful. A case in point is the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the European Union (EU) and individual small countries in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Nowhere in the EPA is there an acknowledgment by the EU that its greenhouse gas emissions are adversely affecting climate change and harming small island states and states with vulnerable coastlines. And, nowhere is there a correlation drawn between the cost of such harmful effects and trade benefits that could be granted.
Indeed, small states are punished twice for their innocence. Their key trade sectors are compromised by climate change caused by industrialized nations, and then they are made to open up their markets for a flood of goods and services from the industrialized nations on the false idea of reciprocal treatment.
The WTO admits that “global greenhouse gas emissions have roughly doubled since the beginning of the 1970s. Current estimates indicate that these emissions will increase by between 25 and 90 per cent in the period from 2000 to 2030”.
China, India and Brazil (now G20 countries) will be three of the large developing countries contributing to the projected increases, and they too have a responsibility to face up to the harm that they are doing to small countries that lack the financial means to pay for adaptation and mitigation.
There is clearly need for a major change in the IFIs in their policies toward small and vulnerable economies. The insistence on per capita income as a measure to graduate countries from concessionary financing has proven that, by itself, it is an illogical calculation for the capacity of small countries.
But, the trade rules in the WTO also have to be adapted to cater for small and vulnerable states more widely and effectively than they do. A special category of special and differential treatment for small states is necessary both to provide these countries with the means to cope and, also, to make the WTO relevant to their needs.
Small countries should refuse to sign any more agreements until their plight is acknowledged and machinery established to address the harmful effects of climate change on them.
A growing body of literature now exists on the problems of climate change and trade for small states. But, the governments of small states themselves should be making the case in the WTO and the IFI’s in a persistent fashion.
A high-level team drawn from the Caribbean, Pacific, and the Indian Oceans should be created to press their case at the next meeting of the G20. It would be a good occasion for frank talk between offenders and sufferers on an issue of human survival.

Don’t Burn Our Bridges: The Case for Owning Airlines” is the title of a book authored by Jean Holder, the current Chairman of the Caribbean airline, LIAT. It is a serious work which should be read by all who are concerned with both Caribbean economic integration and the growth of the services industries at both the national and regional levels.

Holder is uniquely placed to write the book, not only because of his position with LIAT but also because of his past work as Secretary-General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization and the Caribbean Tourism Research and Development Centre.
His basic argument is that Caribbean governments must own a regional airline. “To those who say Caribbean governments cannot afford to do this, I reply that they cannot afford not to”, he emphatically declares.

As Holder sees it, the countries of the Caribbean archipelago “depend on air transportation services to connect them with the world and each other, and for this, they cannot rely solely on foreign carriers, which would take decisions about services, routes, schedules and financial performances according to the best interests of their owners and shareholders”. He argues that “such decisions will not, and cannot, always coincide with the best interests of the Caribbean states”.

One of the compelling reasons that Holder advances for an airline that is a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) carrier, is the ambition to create a Single Market and Economy among the 15-member states of the grouping.

“In a vibrant, working, single market and economy where there is a greater harmonization of regional and international policies than currently exist, the political directorate of the CARICOM member states must know for certain that it is not a hostage to external forces, for either political or economic reasons”.
“It should not be possible” he says, “for it (the Caribbean Single Market) to be cut off from the rest of the world and the member states from each other, simply because it offends some other country or some other person outside the community”.

He may be over emphasizing the case to make the point. It is hardly likely that the region would ever be entirely cut off from the rest of the world by all foreign carriers. Equally, it is unlikely that all air transportation within the region would be cut off by all carriers at the same time. Some airline or airlines will always remain to pick up the slack and the business, even though it may be at a higher cost to the region.
But, it is the case not only that some foreign-owned airlines could desert some countries in the region if they considered that the destinations had become uneconomic, but also that the airlines that remain could demand higher prices for the services they provide. In this regard, it is important that all CARICOM countries should have a carrier, owned within the region, on which they can rely and which they can use to calm prices, provided that the governments of all the countries understand that they cannot expect other regional governments to subsidize their routes.
This is the contention right now about LIAT – the airline that serves the Eastern and Southern Caribbean.
LIAT is owned and financed by only three of CARICOM’s governments – Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados and St Vincent & the Grenadines. The St Vincent Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves, makes the point repeatedly that many other CARICOM countries (not Bahamas, Belize Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname) depend on LIAT to provide air transportation for people, the services industries and some goods, but they decline to contribute to the cost.
It is quite remarkable that some of the Caribbean countries that refuse to participate financially in LIAT have no hesitancy in providing subsidies to large foreign owned airlines to continue flying into their countries. British Airways, American Airlines and even German airlines have been the beneficiaries of such subsidies.
The Caribbean has also witnessed the financial failure of airlines that have been owned within individual states – either by governments or private sector companies. BWIA, owned by the government of Trinidad and Tobago, collapsed under a mountain of debt and had to be closed-down to rid itself of many of its unsustainable obligations. The Trinidad and Tobago government assumed much of the debts of BWIA and launched Caribbean Airlines which now flies much less routes.
Jamaica, too, saw Air Jamaica seamlessly accumulate huge debt in a transition from government to private sector and back to government ownership, until the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made it clear, as part of its conditions for a loan to the government to prop up the economy, that Air Jamaica had to be sold.
In an arrangement between the governments of Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, Caribbean Airlines now owns Air Jamaica. Even though the name “Air Jamaica” will remain, the airline is now effectively owned by Caribbean Airlines and will be merged with it.
It has long been argued that the airlines, owned by individual Caribbean states in pursuit of their ‘symbols of nationhood and sovereignty’ were luxuries they could not afford.
When Holder was writing this book, he could not have envisaged that the Trinidad and Tobago owned, Caribbean Airlines, would have bought out Air Jamaica a few months later. He said: “The move from national ownership and control, to what I refer as community ownership and control, would require a sea change in the thinking of the region, not only among political leaders but also at the level of the people themselves”.
That sea change has begun to happen, swelled by a huge tsunami of necessity that is wrecking weak national capacity and underscoring the urgency of more robust capability from deeper Caribbean economic integration.
It has taken severe economic collapse in Jamaica to cause pride to be swallowed and a single airline to be created for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.
Caribbean Airlines should also buy out LIAT and merge it into the entity that now owns Air Jamaica, and shares in the merged entity should be bought by all CARICOM governments. In turn, the services of the merged single Caribbean carrier should extend to Belize and the Bahamas in the North and to Suriname in the South creating, at last, the bridge throughout the countries of CARICOM that has long been needed.

In 1992, the West Indian Commission in its report, “Time for Action” called on regional governments to formalize a CARICOM policy on sea and air transportation. They stressed its importance for tourism, for integrating production and trade and most critically “in terms of helping to foster among West Indian people a sense of community in a West Indian homeland”. The recommendation has laid unattended these last 18 years.
Jean Holder’s book lays out the justification for all this, and much more besides. Surely, the establishment of a single Caribbean airline cannot be a bridge too far. Its necessity should now be painfully obvious.

A fake Internet website caused a stir for at least 24 hours when it purported to be a government of France website announcing that the government “is repaying the historic debt of 90 million gold francs Haiti paid to France following the former’s independence at the dawn of the 19th century”.

Even the BBC was taken in, carrying the story on one of its official news websites before hastily withdrawing it.

More astute followers of French politics clearly wondered about the legitimacy of the announcement since it made the remarkable statement: “For too long, Haiti has been saddled with the burden of foreign debt. Her development crippled by foreign debt service payments, she has for too long staggered from catastrophe to catastrophe. The disaster that has befallen the Haitian people is clearly not merely the result of January’s earthquake. It is in part the result of long-term economic and social policies”.

No doubt it was such political commentators who alerted the French foreign ministry to the website causing the French government to denounce it immediately.

The reality is that the French government would know well that “the long term economic and social policies” of the Haitian government were severely constrained by the treatment of Haiti by the government of France and the government of the United States for over a century.

And, there was no way that any French government, however contrite about its brutality in its former colonies, would have exclaimed that “Bastille Day is a perfect occasion to celebrate the cherished values of our Republic -values that were also a beacon to the Haitian people when they cast off the shackles of slavery, and founded the second republic of the Americas”.

Such a statement would have been so brass-faced that France would have been ridiculed all over the world. There would be few who would not know that far from welcoming the historic and courageous struggle of the Haitian revolution, successive French governments did everything they could to keep Haiti and its people shackled and oppressed.

It will be recalled that in February this year on the first visit of a French President to Haiti, Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged “the wounds of colonization” and said he knows well “the story of our countries on the question of debt”. At that time, he announced the cancellation of all of Haiti’s US$77 million debt to France and promised to provide aid of US$400 million over the next two years.

Official agencies have reported that France is one of several countries that have not followed through on their pledges.

What is certain is that while suffering in Haiti has dropped out of the world’s sight because for the most part, the international media have moved on to the next story, the plight of the majority of the Haitian people has not ended and, over the next three months, their situation could get worse if the predicted active hurricane season comes to pass.

After the January earthquake, the Inter-American Development Bank calculated that the rebuilding programme will cost US$14 billion and will take at least 10 years. A further natural disaster will cause the figure to escalate astronomically even though some rehabilitation work has taken place.

In terms of emergency work in Haiti, the World Bank has spent tens of millions of dollars since the earthquake. It has been necessary and welcome work, but insufficient.

Several international financial institutions have cancelled Haiti’s debt to them – that is useful, since it frees up revenue earned by the Haitian government for expenditure on delivering goods and services to the Haitian people. But, the donor community, that made pledges last March under the lights of television cameras, has not lived up to its promises so far.

At the United Nations Donor Conference US$5.5 billion was pledged for Haiti. And, specifically, US$500 million was promised for a Haiti Reconstruction Fund. But, to date only US$97.5 million has been delivered to the World Bank as the agent for the Fund, with Brazil (US$55 million) and Norway ($31.2 million) delivering the greatest part.

The sum of US$97.5 million adds up to only 2 percent of what was pledged and, it is not good enough.

The United States pledged US$1.15 billion at the meeting. It has paid nothing. Incidentally, Venezuela promised even more – US$1.32 billion. It has also paid nothing, although it has written off some of Haiti’s debt.

In this connection, all praise to Brazil for being a caring neighbour, but even more praise for distant Norway which was not a colonizer and oppressor in Haiti.

The message in that false Internet website should sear the conscience of the French government and shame them into not only making reparation to Haiti, but also to honouring their more recent pledges of help.

As for the US, like France, it severely underdeveloped Haiti, entering Haitian waters with gunboats 24 times between 1849 and 1913, brutalising the society, crippling the economy, and forcing the country and its people to depend on the US. Since 1913, the US has done little for Haiti but destabilise elected governments, help to establish sweatshops for American manufacturers and decimate Haitian agriculture by flooding the island with cheaper products subsidized by the US government.

Despite all the US TV news coverage that conveyed the impression that the US was the sole mover and shaker in bringing order and relief to Haiti after the earthquake, the reality is that the US government has honoured only a small portion of its pledges.

The US State Department is reported to have said it has given about US$675 million through the US Agency for International Development, but quite how that money was spent has not been detailed and, therefore, it is difficult to determine how much of it was actually spent on projects that benefitted the needy and desperate in Haiti.

Granted the work of its military and official aid workers was important at the height of the crisis, but since then it has been a “2 percent” activity as Washington Post Columnist Dana Milbank pointed out. “Only 2 percent of promised reconstruction aid has been delivered. Only 2 percent of the rubble has been cleared. And not quite 2 percent of the dislocated have been moved into housing. Others live under fraying tarps and tents in a situation that Bill Clinton, spearheading the reconstruction campaign, calls “horribly frustrating.”

Two per cent is not good enough. Not from President of Chavez and the rhetoric of Bolivarism, and certainly not from the US and France who bear the responsibility for the desecration of Haiti and the ruination of its society.

Some leaders of countries of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) often suggest that the slow progress of regional integration is due to a lack of “trust and understanding” among the people.
Certainly this was a view expressed by Bruce Golding, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, at the opening of the 31st CARICOM Heads of Government Conference in Jamaica. Interestingly Golding also said that integration also requires “building trust and understanding” among the leaders themselves.

He is right on both counts. But, if the people of CARICOM countries lack trust and understanding of the benefits of regional integration, the blame lies with the leaders.
Over the last 20 years of CARICOM’s existence, the people of the region have been fed a regular diet of CARICOM bashing in the media. That bashing was – and is – conducted by CARICOM leaders. The media simply report it.
Instead of resolving trade disputes at the table of quiet diplomacy, government representatives choose to amplify them with heated exchanges through the media, creating the impression that CARICOM’s trade arrangements don’t work fairly. Yet, the CARICOM Treaty provides for the amicable settlement of disputes through consultation with recourse to the Caribbean Court of Justice only a last resort.

New governments in CARICOM do not appear to be immune from the virus of injudicious public statements. Thus, the new Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persaud-Bissessar, declared publicly that her country was not an “ATM machine” from which other CARICOM countries could draw money as they want it.
Such statements would not endear Trinidad and Tobago to the rest of the CARICOM countries, nor would it encourage citizens of Trinidad and Tobago to regard other CARICOM citizens with anything but contempt.
In reality, the relationship between Trinidad and Tobago and other CARICOM countries, particularly the smaller nations of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), is far more mutually beneficial than is conveyed by the analogy of the “ATM machine”. Other CARICOM countries are a lucrative and protected market for Trinidad and Tobago’s manufactured products and financial services under the CARICOM Treaty. Were it not for their membership of CARICOM, these countries could purchase most of what they buy from Trinidad and Tobago at cheaper prices elsewhere in the world.

Barbados, too, benefits significantly from the export of goods and services to CARICOM. It is Bardados largest area for exports. This is one of the reasons why the Barbados government was concerned with the intention of the previous Patrick Manning government in Trinidad and Tobago to forge an economic union with the members of the OECS.
The point is that membership of CARICOM is not a one-way street, nor indeed is it a one-way street only for the marketing of goods and services. Of equal importance is the bargaining strength which collective negotiations in the international community bring to each of the countries individually.
But, little credit is given to the benefits of regional cooperation. It is seldom, if at all, mentioned by governments in their parliaments or in their media conferences.
The impression left in the minds of the people is that CARICOM is a useless organisation that brings no benefit to them, and that they would be better off shedding it and dealing with the world on their own.
Of course, leaders know better.
That is why none of them have abandoned CARICOM, and more recent leaders, such as Bruce Golding, have significantly altered the almost hostile attitude to CARICOM with which they started out.
There are a multitude of crucial matters that CARICOM countries cannot manage on their own and for which each of them needs to be bolstered by the collective effort of all. Dealing with drug trafficking is one example. There are myriad others such as coping with the effects of natural disasters and bargaining with the international community.
Serious observers within the Caribbean and many more, including governments and international financial institutions, had hoped that the recent summit would address two matters with the gravity and urgency they deserved and so reinvigorate regional integration and reignite interest – if not passion – for it among the Caribbean people and the wider world.
The first is the twin issues of governance and implementation of decisions by CARICOM. Having laboured over the matter since 1992 when the West Indian Commission recommended the creation of a Caribbean Commission (similar to the European Union Commission), leaders pondered it yet again at the Jamaica meeting only to appoint a fifth group to consider the matter and report in February of next year. This new group consists of seven Heads of Government – all of whom are busy with the demands of their domestic constituencies. They are to be advised by a technical group who will have to be miraculously inspired to generate anything more sound than the numerous studies already produced on this matter.
What is certain is that the leaders do not want a Caribbean Commission similar to the European Commission. They have said so. It is reported that they are toying with the idea of a Council of Ambassadors similar to the weak mechanism adopted by the members of the OECS in their yet to be operationalised Economic Union Treaty. Such a mechanism – nationalistic in its composition and representation – would be nothing more than a further layer of delay in decision-making. It would have to await the consent of the most reluctant country to proceed.
The second issue on which urgent action was reasonably expected from the Jamaica summit was a plan to recover from the global financial and economic crisis.
A flame of hope flickered momentarily when the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, “agreed to review the issue of special and differential treatment” for Caribbean’s small states.
But, no CARICOM government alone and not all of them collectively can turn Strauss-Khan’s “review” to “commitment”. CARICOM requires the best brains in government, the private sector, the trade union movement and the academic community from throughout the region to devise a plan that could command international respect and action.
It would have been hugely beneficial if the Conference had mandated the assembly of such a Caribbean team under a High Representative (otherwise known as a Commissioner) tasked to produce a plan using as a basis the work of three separate task forces that governments commissioned over the last year. Alas, this did not happen.
The people of the Caribbean remain caught in a long tunnel of stagnation with no end in sight. They should not be blamed for the region’s failures.

Owen Arthur, the former Prime Minister of Barbados, is probably one of the best Commissioners of a Caribbean Commission that the region does not have but ought to have.
Indeed, had Caribbean Community and Common market (CARICOM) governments implemented the recommendation of the 1992 West Indian Commission to establish a Caribbean Commission, we may today have as its President, PJ Patterson the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, Owen Arthur as one of its Commissioners and someone from the OECS of the regional calibre of say, Ralph Gonsalves the present Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, or Vaughan Lewis former Prime Minister of St Lucia, as the third Commissioner.
Had such a Commission been in place and operating, CARICOM countries may have been dealing with their current financial and economic crises in a collective and cohesive fashion, and much better than they are currently.
As it is, each country has struggled to deal on an individual basis with the walloping effects not only of the global financial crisis, but also of the consequences of the collapse of CLICO and British American.
While it is true that in mid-June, the governments of the seven small members of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) signed a Treaty to establish an Economic Union among themselves, that treaty is not yet operational and while, once it is operational, it will represent progress, it remains insufficient. It is the wider CARICOM region that has to deepen its integration arrangements and especially its machinery for joint decision-making and implementation.
Regrettably, Owen Arthur is not looking for a job as a Commissioner or even Head of a Caribbean Commission. Indeed, one interpretation of a comment he made recently in the Bahamas suggests that he may be interested in being Prime Minister of Barbados once again.
In a very important speech to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean at its annual meeting in the Bahamas on June 25, Arthur said: “You should allow me to begin by stating how very pleased I am to be able to share the same platform once again with Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham who until recently, like I do now, carried the title of Former Prime Minister. His presence fortifies my belief in the concept of the second coming”.
Whatever Arthur meant by that comment, the rest of his statement was a telling analysis of the present financial and economic condition of the Caribbean Community, and a blistering revelation of the lack of support from the International Financial Institutions (IFI’s).
It has to be said, however, that while the IFI’s have not been as responsive to the Caribbean as they could have been, and the IMF in particular has applied the usual prescriptions for providing Stand-By arrangements to Jamaica and Antigua and Barbuda, CARICOM countries failed to provide the IFI’s and major world economies with a clearly defined plan of what they need, for what, and how they plan to repay it.
It should be recalled that when the global financial crisis erupted, the world, and the Caribbean Region within it, faced an economic crisis of unprecedented proportions. Globalisation threatened to overwhelm the Caribbean with a world-wide recession, and indeed it did. Growth in every country except Guyana (according to the IMF) declined in 2008 and 2009. In some cases, there was negative growth. The ratio of debt to GDP escalated everywhere even in normally cautious Barbados. Tourism, on which the entire region (except Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago) now relies, declined everywhere if not in numbers, certainly in spending.
No State, no Government, no society within the region was immune from the economic consequences of the global financial crisis and the effects of the collapse of CLICO and British American. In that context, CARICOM societies expected their governments to come together to explore measures they could take in concert to enlarge the capacity of the region. Indeed, several regional commentators urged such action in very specific terms. As it turned out, CARICOM governments set up two separate task forces and both reported, but no joint plan was put to the IFI’s and none to the major world economies.
Owen Arthur reminded his audience in the Bahamas that “in April 2009, the G20 countries pledged provision of an additional $1.1 trillion to the IMF and the Multilateral Development Banks to enable them to carry out a programme to restore credit, growth and jobs to the world economy”, and he observed that “we have witnessed the carrying out of a rescue and recovery programme for the world’s developed economies, involving an unprecedented commitment of financial resources and the incurring of fiscal deficits on a scale that has hitherto been unimaginable”.
But, while the developed countries were bailing themselves out, they failed to deliver on the pledge “to make available an additional $850 billion of resources through the IMF and the multilateral development banks to support growth in emerging market and developing countries by helping to finance counter-cyclical spending, bank recapitalization, infrastructure, trade finance, balance of payments support, debt rollover and social support”.
Arthur pointed out that the IMF introduced a new Flexible Credit Line through which the bulk of additional IMF financing was to be channelled. As he said: “It was also especially intended to herald a fundamental change in the procedures for accessing IMF funds and meeting IMF programming tests”.
However, it could not be used by Caribbean countries and the facility into which $500 billion was pledged to support recovery in the developing world was used by countries in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
In the Caribbean, the IMF has agreed to two Stand-by Arrangements, one for $1.3 billion with Jamaica, and the other for almost $120 million with Antigua and Barbuda for which all the traditional IMF conditionalities apply.
As Arthur concludes: “It however cannot fairly be said that IMF response has or will assist in any major material way in achieving the grand overarching objectives stated on April 2nd, 2009 of fostering counter-cyclical stimulation, spurring employment creation nor attending to the needs of structural diversification in Caribbean economies”.
The space allowed in this commentary does not permit discussion of Arthur’s analysis of the lack of adequate response by other IFI’s to the Caribbean. But, his statement should be compulsory reading for all.
His conclusion is also extremely important. He said: “Where there is common threat, we must devise and pursue a common response. Should this global crisis engender such a common response to the common threats faced by the societies of the region, it will have served to usher in a better way of doing things in the Caribbean and will help to ensure that our best days are still ahead of us”.
In simple terms, Owen Arthur has made the case for a Caribbean Commission. If it were in existence, and if someone of his calibre – if not he himself – was Commissioner for the Community’s finance and trade negotiations, the region as whole might have got from the IFI’s a reasonable share of the resources it has been denied – largely because it failed to produce a clearly defined plan that could be effectively argued