Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

A re­gion­al ap­proach to mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is near­ing its end and will be sub­mit­ted to Cari­com mem­ber states ahead of a high-lev­el meet­ing in No­vem­ber.

The heads of gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed the de­vel­op­ment of a re­gion­al mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy at the 19th Spe­cial Sum­mit on Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty in Port-of-Spain in 2019. The ini­tia­tive was launched last Au­gust dur­ing a two-day work­shop by Cari­com, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion (IOM) in Bar­ba­dos.

Back then, Cari­com stat­ed, “The over­ar­ch­ing goal of the re­gion­al ap­proach to mi­gra­tion is to en­sure uni­ty among Cari­com Mem­ber States in util­is­ing the ben­e­fits of mi­gra­tion for crit­i­cal sec­tors that con­tribute to re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment.”

How­ev­er, de­spite this pro­gres­sive step, crime con­tin­ues to loom large in the Caribbean re­gions.

T&T has al­ready sur­passed 430 mur­ders for the year so far, while oth­er Caribbean is­lands such as Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia have al­so been bat­tling a crime scourge.

Eas­ing the red tape for thou­sands of Caribbean cit­i­zens to make mi­gra­tion eas­i­er through­out the re­gion, how­ev­er, al­so presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the crim­i­nal el­e­ment to al­so have eas­i­er ac­cess.

In an ap­pear­ance on The Big In­ter­view pro­gramme last Sun­day on CNC3, Sher­win Toyne-Stephen­son, who is the Cari­com Pro­gramme Man­ag­er for Crime and Se­cu­ri­ty, ac­knowl­edged the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects crime has on these small is­lands.

He said, “The se­cu­ri­ty chal­lenges with­in the re­gion are quite con­cern­ing for move­ment, but we need to un­der­stand that move­ment it­self is much broad­er and re­quires a much broad­er treat­ment if we are to be able to evolve as a so­ci­ety and to be able to take full ad­van­tage of the eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties that al­low for and through per­sons mov­ing from place to place.”

The pol­i­cy has three the­mat­ic ar­eas, bor­der pro­tec­tion, hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, and cli­mate change. Al­though it is a re­gion­al pol­i­cy, con­sul­ta­tions have been on­go­ing sur­round­ing mem­ber states’ pri­or­i­ties.

He fur­ther ex­plained, “There will be some pro­to­cols in there look­ing in terms of how we con­nect with oth­er states; what are some of the Mem­o­ran­dums of Un­der­stand­ing that we need to re-es­tab­lish, and a prime ex­am­ple of that is de­por­tees. How do we en­gage and en­sure that the sys­tem is very fair and it is well man­aged?”

Toyne-Stephen­son ad­mit­ted there is no one-size-fits-all with the pol­i­cy, and so, in­di­vid­u­al­ly, Caribbean is­lands will be able to adopt the spe­cif­ic parts of the pol­i­cy that can bet­ter serve their needs.

He added, “The pol­i­cy is de­vel­op­men­tal in fo­cus, so it looks at those ar­eas where the re­gion as a whole can ben­e­fit from the move­ment of per­sons. It is not a ban­dage that pre­scribes every­thing but a guide for mem­ber states to then adapt to their own pe­cu­liar cir­cum­stances and their own pri­or­i­ties as to how much of the frame­work they in­cor­po­rate. It’s like set­ting up a toolk­it to es­tab­lish na­tion­al poli­cies.”

Be­yond crime, an­oth­er po­ten­tial hur­dle for the Re­gion­al Mi­gra­tion Pol­i­cy is in­tra-re­gion­al trav­el. Con­nec­tiv­i­ty is the ma­jor con­cern, but high air­fares are al­so a stick­ing point.

Toyne-Stephen­son re­it­er­at­ed that the pol­i­cy will not be an all-out panacea for the re­gion’s woes.

How­ev­er, he said, “When we’ve pulled the kinds of da­ta that we want to pull to­geth­er and put those sys­tems in­to place, it is go­ing to al­low the de­ci­sion mak­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those as­so­ci­at­ed with air trav­el, to make bet­ter, in­formed de­ci­sions in terms of in­ter-re­gion­al trans­port.”

He said there is a lot more in­volved in in­ter-re­gion­al trans­port than the mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy it­self.

An­oth­er key fac­tor in the pol­i­cy will be the im­pact of cli­mate change on the re­gion. In the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Beryl in late June, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley opened up T&T to child vic­tims of the dis­as­ter. Back then, he said, “Giv­en the lev­el of to­tal dev­as­ta­tion ex­pe­ri­enced on these is­lands, the gov­ern­ment of T&T, ac­knowl­edg­ing the deep fa­mil­ial ties be­tween these is­lands and T&T, has of­fered to al­low school-age chil­dren from the dev­as­tat­ed zones to be al­lowed in­to T&T if they have fam­i­ly here who may wish to house them dur­ing the school hol­i­day pe­ri­od.”

The Unit­ed States al­so of­fered fi­nan­cial help to the dis­placed sur­vivors.

Toyne-Stephen­son said Cari­com has been study­ing the im­pli­ca­tions for dis­place­ment across the re­gion when it comes to cli­mate change.

“This is a grow­ing cat­e­go­ry of per­sons that the mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy is treat­ing with be­cause there has been in­creased and more in­ten­sive weath­er phe­nom­e­non with re­spect to hur­ri­canes, but it is al­so look­ing in terms of floods, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters with­in the re­gion, and hur­ri­canes,” he said.

The pol­i­cy sets the foun­da­tion blocks for the young peo­ple of the re­gion to live in a Caribbean that is more ac­ces­si­ble to each coun­try. He in­sist­ed that the pub­li­ca­tion of the pol­i­cy is not the end of the process but the be­gin­ning.

Toyne-Stephen­son ex­plained, “What is re­quired is that we are go­ing to be able to have a plan for ca­pac­i­ty build­ing through­out the re­gion that is go­ing to con­tin­ue to build on the skills re­quired to move the pol­i­cy for­ward. It is not an end to a spe­cif­ic means, but it is a process.”

He said an­oth­er aim of the pol­i­cy is to help mem­ber states grap­ple with some of the is­sues fac­ing Caribbean na­tions in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

“Quite a bit of the chal­lenges we have to­day may not ex­ist to­day. The pol­i­cy aims to pro­vide a sys­tem­at­ic guide in terms of how you ad­dress those emerg­ing things through a de­vel­op­men­tal as­pect,” he con­clud­ed.