Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley will not be at­tend­ing the 33rd Cari­com In­ter-Ses­sion­al meet­ing which starts in Be­lize this morn­ing - and which will be the first In­ter-Ses­sion­al where re­gion­al lead­ers meet face to face since 2020.

Row­ley’s non-at­ten­dance was con­firmed by Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day.

The For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed that For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne, the Min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary and an of­fi­cer from the Min­istry’s Cari­com di­vi­sion are rep­re­sent­ing T&T.

Cari­com sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett yes­ter­day con­firmed it’s the first In­ter-Ses­sion­al where lead­ers are meet­ing face to face since 2020 due to the pan­dem­ic and it’s ex­pect­ed many im­por­tant mat­ters in­clud­ing the re­gion’s post-pan­dem­ic eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery will be dis­cussed.

It’s un­der­stood that Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness won’t be at­tend­ing the meet­ing ei­ther.

Ja­maica’s For­eign Min­istry is rep­re­sent­ing.

Row­ley re­turned to T&T from Qatar last Fri­day night. He’s yet to speak about his Qatar trip.

The day he re­turned, five divers at­tached to Tarou­ba-based LM­CS com­pa­ny dis­ap­peared when an in­ci­dent oc­curred while they were do­ing un­der­wa­ter main­te­nance on a pipeline at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. They were sucked in­to the pipeline.

Yes­ter­day, Bar­nett said se­cu­ri­ty is on the In­ter-Ses­sion­al’s agen­da. T&T is Cari­com’s lead on se­cu­ri­ty. Bar­nett was asked about crime as an agen­da is­sue since Ja­maica was rat­ed num­ber one on an in­ter­na­tion­al list of coun­tries with high homi­cide rates, Be­lize at Num­ber five and T&T, num­ber four.

She said se­cu­ri­ty is a top pri­or­i­ty in all Cari­com coun­tries.

“Par­tic­u­lar­ly be­cause of the pan­dem­ic fall­out, we see cer­tain kinds of ac­tiv­i­ties in­crease - transna­tion­al, cy­ber­crime and vi­o­lent crime; in the home and so­ci­ety,” she added

Bar­nett said the Russ­ian/Ukraine con­flict isn’t on the agen­da but it’s a mat­ter Cari­com has been dis­cussing and mak­ing pro­nounce­ments on. Cari­com’s two state­ments called for calm, then a re­turn to diplo­ma­cy to set­tle dis­putes.

She said these con­sid­er­a­tions go deeply to the core of what Cari­com stands for - ter­ri­to­r­i­al in­tegri­ty and use of diplo­ma­cy to set­tle mat­ters rather than war.

Bar­nett said in­di­vid­ual Cari­com states is­sued sim­i­lar calls for ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties and re­turn to diplo­ma­cy not on­ly due to the wrong­ness of the sit­u­a­tion’s im­pact on Ukraine but al­so on the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and econ­o­my.

The In­ter-Ses­sion­al is ex­pect­ed to ad­vance Cari­com’s Agri-Food sys­tems agen­da with rec­om­men­da­tions for re­gion­al food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty with the ob­jec­tive of re­duc­ing the re­gion’s food im­port bill.

A draft pro­to­col will be pre­sent­ed to as­sist fur­ther Cari­com and Sin­gle Mar­ket econ­o­my move­ment if a sub­set of coun­tries can move to­geth­er on the CSME even if some oth­ers aren’t ready.

Cari­com will dis­cuss how it can be more help­ful in as­sist­ing Haiti. Bar­nett said it’s al­so felt Cari­com needs to en­cour­age the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to con­sid­er the long term de­vel­op­ment plan for Haiti. Cari­com isn’t at the stage of send­ing peace­keep­ing forces to Haiti since there’s no Unit­ed Na­tions de­ci­sion on that.

Bar­nett was asked if she was sat­is­fied with Cari­com’s hu­man rights record since a con­sul­tant was un­able to leave Suri­name 500 days af­ter they went there.

Since Suri­name as­sumes Cari­com chair­man­ship in Ju­ly, she was asked what mes­sage Cari­com was send­ing on hu­man rights. Bar­nett said she wasn’t in a po­si­tion to re­spond as she wasn’t aware of the spe­cif­ic case. She main­tained Cari­com has is­sues at var­i­ous times and var­i­ous places, “As a Caribbean com­mu­ni­ty we tend to keep each oth­er on the straight and nar­row re­gard­ing hu­man rights.”

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