Bo­bie-lee Dixon

As the 32nd Cari­com Sum­mit end­ed last month, a group of young in­di­vid­u­als at UWI are call­ing for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion to be at the fore of Cari­com's plans to de­vel­op the re­gion.Ke­ston Per­ry, founder of the group, Caribbean Move­ment For Civ­il Em­pow­er­ment (CM­FCE), has been lob­by­ing for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion to be in­clud­ed and viewed as a ma­jor fo­cus in cer­tain fac­ul­ties at the cam­pus. He ar­tic­u­lat­ed that while there were cer­tain as­pects of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion in­clud­ed in some aca­d­e­m­ic pro­grammes, there was noth­ing thor­ough on it that could serve as a com­plete course."Re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion is so im­por­tant as it re­lates to a grow­ing econ­o­my, yet there is no fo­cus placed on this in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem."We have peo­ple who don't even know what re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion is and as such they are un­able to ap­pre­ci­ate it be­cause of their lack of knowl­edge," ex­plained Per­ry.He al­so al­lud­ed to Gov­ern­ment heads be­ing re­spon­si­ble for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion not be­ing ful­ly en­dorsed by Cari­com states. "Cari­com was de­vel­oped to fos­ter re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion among the is­lands. How­ev­er, plans that are made by the Gov­ern­ment heads seem to stay at that lev­el, those plans are hard­ly ever im­ple­ment­ed or ac­tu­al­ly fol­lowed through."The ma­jor fo­cus of Cari­com has al­ways been on po­lit­i­cal eco­nom­ic in­sti­tu­tions and about forg­ing clos­er ties and link­ages along those lines."We un­der­stand that is im­por­tant, but what about cul­tur­al co-op­er­a­tion, so­cial ties and un­der­stand­ing his­tor­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence?" Per­ry asked."Spe­cial in­ter­est groups do not par­tic­i­pate in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process by Cari­com heads, be­cause that op­por­tu­ni­ty is not af­ford­ed to them. When the Sum­mit is over, the heads re­turn to their re­spec­tive coun­tries, and just go back to deal­ing with their do­mes­tic is­sues and noth­ing is done," he added.

CM­FCE's fo­cus

Ac­cord­ing to Per­ry, CM­FCE's fo­cus is go­ing to be on ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple through net­work­ing with oth­er civ­il move­ments in the re­gion. He dis­closed that be­fore the year's end, the pub­lic would be­come much more fa­mil­iar with what re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion was all about and why it was need­ed."We would be rais­ing aware­ness through var­i­ous cam­paigns. Part of our func­tion is to let peo­ple learn about our­selves as a peo­ple, so that self-ap­pre­ci­a­tion is de­vel­oped."Us­ing all medi­ums of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we in­tend to in­form and ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion through tele­vi­sion and ra­dio shows, pub­lic de­bates/out­reach pro­grammes, news­pa­per and mag­a­zine ar­ti­cles, sum­mer camps, trips and school tours," ex­plained Per­ry.He not­ed one of the group's main con­cern was the fact that the top­ic of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion was not on the syl­labus for pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary schools. He be­lieves if it was be­ing taught to chil­dren in schools from a very young age, to­day the is­lands would have been much clos­er work­ing in har­mo­ny."If our young peo­ple don't even have a ba­sic knowl­edge of what our his­to­ry or her­itage is, how can we ex­pect them to lob­by for re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion?"It has been rec­om­mend­ed to the UWI Guild to start sen­si­tis­ing stu­dents on cam­pus about re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. This we will do once we have the full co-op­er­a­tion of stu­dents and even lec­tur­ers.

Re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion need­ed

"There is this false opin­ion by most of the lead­ers that if they were to re­al­ly go in­to a deep­er in­te­gra­tion of the is­lands, each will lose its sov­er­eign­ty, but this is not true."There is al­so the fear that T&T may have to car­ry the re­gion if we de­vel­op re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion, but that fear can be can­celled once we re­alise the large ben­e­fits that would be de­rived. An is­land in this vi­cious world can­not stand up to the in­ter­na­tion­al forces by it­self, but if we come to­geth­er with every­thing unique about each is­land, the Caribbean would be a force to be reck­oned with."