by Wes­ley Gib­bings

The screen­ing of The Chal­lengers by the UN­HCR at the IMAX fa­cil­i­ty in PoS last week of­fered as much from the film it­self as did the ac­tu­al host­ing of the event.

As is of­ten the case at such events, the un­spo­ken is as im­por­tant as what is said and ab­sen­tees as note­wor­thy as those who turn up.

Es­ti­mat­ed that way, the en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence is ca­pa­ble of vast­ly ex­ceed­ing the sum of the parts of such an oc­ca­sion.

So, we can vir­tu­al­ly re­flect on the screen­ing with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly re­view­ing the nuts and bolts of a 20-minute film.

It was a pro­duc­tion com­pris­ing mod­est filmic val­ues but con­tain­ing enor­mous­ly im­por­tant per­son­al in­sights in­to one of the more crit­i­cal is­sues of the day – this coun­try’s awk­ward em­brace of its oblig­a­tions as a mem­ber of the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty, and some of the trag­ic out­comes of our fail­ure to sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly do so.

The Chal­lengers is thus rich with op­por­tu­ni­ty as a tu­to­r­i­al on chal­lenge, op­por­tu­ni­ty, and suc­cess and as a guide to some of the key fea­tures of the mi­grant sto­ry in T&T.

Here is a pro­duc­tion that in 1,200 sec­onds in­tro­duces the myr­i­ad el­e­ments of an is­sue be­ing con­front­ed the world over - in as many dif­fer­ent ways as there are coun­tries in­volved. You see, no­body seems to have got this en­tire­ly right.

This is al­so dif­fi­cult diplo­mat­ic ter­rain for an agency such as the UN Refugee Agency, for whom the use of words and phras­es can serve as trig­gers for in­tem­per­ance and ig­no­rance – “mi­grants”, “asy­lum seek­ers” and “refugees” con­se­quen­tial­ly stretched to the cau­tious lim­its of tech­ni­cal cor­rect­ness.

True, the event could have end­ed on the point of a co­he­sive Venezue­lan vol­ley­ball team, but the or­gan­is­ers sensed the need for more. And here is where things got even more in­ter­est­ing.

For ex­am­ple, the lead sto­ry by any jour­nal­ist could have come from when UN­HCR Na­tion­al Of­fice Head Miri­am Aertk­er asked why the chil­dren of Venezue­lan im­mi­grants weren’t ac­com­mo­dat­ed at our schools. In vain, I scanned the crowd for a des­ig­nat­ed plant from the min­istry of ed­u­ca­tion, or any re­lat­ed agency, for a re­sponse/ex­cuse/ex­pla­na­tion.

Yet, the de­nial of the right to an ed­u­ca­tion for chil­dren is an ac­knowl­edged re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of every sin­gle state on the plan­et. Our coun­try has boast­ed of a com­mit­ment to achieve the goals of the UN Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child while wil­ful­ly ig­nor­ing Ar­ti­cle 28 which ex­plic­it­ly calls for com­pli­ance “no mat­ter who they are.”

The “close the bor­ders” crew who were ei­ther not in­vit­ed (though they should have been) or chose to be ab­sent ought to have been there to of­fer an opin­ion or an­swer. Their main po­lit­i­cal spon­sors al­so ap­peared to have been ab­sent.

As one of the sto­ries of the day, there is al­so the head­line re­gard­ing le­gal sta­tus – some­what set­tled by an en­light­ened but de­fi­cient “reg­is­tra­tion” process in 2019 that ef­fec­tive­ly im­posed a prag­mat­ic cap on in­flows - not tidi­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law but viewed in some places as a sen­si­ble thing to do.

There is in­deed a case to be made for small, re­source-scarce spaces such as ours. But this has to be nu­anced against hu­man­i­tar­i­an oblig­a­tions at law and through con­science. I had hoped for a re­sponse to that ele­phant in the room, but there was no one there to sub­stan­tial­ly do so. Where was the min­istry of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty?

Is it that such a ques­tion is asked and an­swered in dis­creet spaces? I do not know. But not at last week’s screen­ing.

There is, as well, the dis­com­fort of hav­ing to ad­dress a prob­lem in­volv­ing neigh­bours who al­so hap­pen to be friends. They beat their spous­es every day and hang dirty un­der­wear out the win­dow fac­ing you.

But “good morn­ing” and “good evening” are what good neigh­bours do … and there’s al­so the ques­tion of an over­hang­ing man­go tree.

So, this is no easy trans­ac­tion – though you need to call the po­lice on them for the beat­ings and find a way to at­tend to the un­der­wear ques­tion with­out jeop­ar­dis­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ties man­go sea­son brings.

I lis­tened to the min­is­ter of for­eign and Cari­com af­fairs be­ing in­ter­viewed on Sun­day. He sounds like the in­formed, po­lite neigh­bour who can pull this off. Yet, I looked for him last week and he wasn’t there.

Peo­ple can­not be every­where at every time, but this is one of the sto­ries of our time and film­mak­er, Rhon­da Chan Soo, found ways to cre­ative­ly ask all the per­ti­nent ques­tions. Too many re­main unan­swered be­cause there were those who chose not to be there. What a shame.