Ralph Maraj

For 52 years, Cari­com coun­tries have col­lab­o­rat­ed on the prac­ti­cal, prag­mat­ic pur­suits based on its four main pil­lars: eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion; for­eign pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion; hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and se­cu­ri­ty. All con­sti­tut­ing the in­te­gra­tion ar­chi­tec­ture to­wards the com­mu­ni­ty’s stat­ed ob­jec­tives.

But, as I have asked, amidst all this fun­da­men­tal work, is there suf­fi­cient aware­ness it is a Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion we have been con­struct­ing? Our founders called our re­gion the ‘Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty’. With that de­lib­er­ate de­f­i­n­i­tion, they placed the con­struc­tion of civil­i­sa­tion at the core of our as­pi­ra­tion. They saw it as the in­evitable re­sult of the great com­mon­al­i­ty in our his­to­ry. They would have ex­pe­ri­enced even more ful­some­ly, the feel­ings of fam­i­ly, so­ci­ety and to­geth­er­ness that still come eas­i­ly in this col­lec­tive. It has been in every­thing Cari­com: cul­ture, crick­et, writ­ing, mu­sic, art, even the painful mem­o­ry of the failed Fed­er­a­tion.

We saw it re­cent­ly when, in ex­tend­ing con­grat­u­la­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley on a his­toric third elec­tion vic­to­ry, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke of her “en­dur­ing re­spect and af­fec­tion” for Bar­ba­dos and its peo­ple and said, “The re­la­tion­ship be­tween our two coun­tries re­mains root­ed in shared his­to­ry, cul­ture, com­merce and re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty. To­geth­er, we con­tin­ue to ad­vance food and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, cli­mate re­silience, eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion and a stronger, more in­flu­en­tial Caribbean voice on the glob­al stage.”

In­deed, hav­ing worked for ten years as this coun­try’s for­eign min­is­ter, I can at­test to the fam­i­ly feel­ing among Cari­com col­leagues, es­pe­cial­ly when abroad to­geth­er to ad­vance our re­gion’s cause.

It would be in­spi­ra­tional and al­so strength­en our re­solve if it ac­tive­ly en­gaged our con­scious­ness that we are in­deed build­ing a civil­i­sa­tion out of the ru­ins and rem­nants of our his­to­ry. It would give back­ground and depth to our in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive achieve­ments dur­ing and af­ter colo­nial­ism, pre­vent­ing any ten­den­cy by oth­ers to treat us light­ly. When we em­body our con­tri­bu­tions to glob­al civil­i­sa­tion, whether through fu­elling the build­ing and wealth of Eu­rope dur­ing slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship and colo­nial­ism; the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, which marked a piv­otal mo­ment in the fight for hu­man rights and the abo­li­tion of slav­ery; our out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­a­ture and acad­e­mia; and our rich cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty with roots in Africa, Asia, Eu­rope and the Mid­dle East, we stand equal to any in the glob­al are­na. With this and more at the fore, ours will be a ful­ly fu­elled in­te­gra­tion process, strength­en­ing our stand­ing in the world.

Cari­com is one of the world’s most en­dur­ing in­te­gra­tion process­es, the old­est in the de­vel­op­ing world. It emerged in the af­ter­math of the Sec­ond World War, when the de­coloni­sa­tion process pro­duced moves to­wards self-gov­ern­ment through­out our re­gion. Cari­com’s roots stretch back to the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion (1958–1962), the first at­tempt to uni­fy the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean un­der a sin­gle po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic frame­work. The Fed­er­a­tion col­lapsed but laid the foun­da­tion for the deep­er co­op­er­a­tion that came with the at­tain­ment of in­de­pen­dence by the for­mer colonies of Great Britain.

The Caribbean Free Trade Area (CARIF­TA), es­tab­lished in 1968, was a pre­cur­sor to Cari­com to pro­mote eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion among Caribbean coun­tries. In 1973, CARIF­TA was trans­formed in­to Cari­com with an ex­pand­ed man­date to in­clude co­op­er­a­tion in ar­eas like ed­u­ca­tion, health and for­eign pol­i­cy, in ad­di­tion to eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion.

To­day, Cari­com con­sists of 21 de­vel­op­ing coun­tries: 15 Mem­ber States and six As­so­ciate Mem­bers, stretch­ing from The Ba­hamas in the north to Suri­name and Guyana in South Amer­i­ca. It is home to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 mil­lion cit­i­zens, 60% of whom are un­der the age of 30. The com­mu­ni­ty is mul­ti-lin­gual, with Eng­lish as the ma­jor lan­guage, “com­ple­ment­ed by French and Dutch and vari­a­tions of these, as well as African and Asian ex­pres­sions.”

Cari­com must de­vel­op a civil­i­sa­tion­al aware­ness of it­self. The his­to­ry of strug­gles in each na­tion, the he­roes who led and the mon­u­ments and ar­ti­facts that rep­re­sent our strug­gles, pains and tri­umphs, con­sti­tute his­tor­i­cal, so­cial and cul­tur­al wealth that re­flects our re­al­i­ty. It is not just sun and fun in these is­lands. There is ed­i­fi­ca­tion here. The chil­dren must know and be proud of their Cari­com civil­i­sa­tion and want to en­rich it for pos­ter­i­ty, so­lid­i­fy­ing their right­ful place at the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra of de­lib­er­a­tions and de­ci­sions.

But the con­di­tions that fos­tered the birth and growth of Cari­com are to­day un­der threat. I re­fer to the mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism that gained mo­men­tum af­ter the Sec­ond World War and from which emerged a rules-based in­ter­na­tion­al or­der that recog­nised and re­spect­ed the sov­er­eign­ty of na­tions, all fur­thered by the end of the Cold War and the East/West di­vide. That mod­ern glob­al or­der is now threat­ened by in­creas­ing uni­lat­er­al­ism and un­set­tling geoe­co­nom­ic/po­lit­i­cal con­fronta­tion, mak­ing the threat of nu­clear con­fla­gra­tion now more re­al than be­fore.

Strong, com­mit­ted, ef­fec­tive mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism is need­ed more than ever. The Unit­ed Na­tions, the Eu­ro­pean Union, the As­so­ci­a­tion of South East Asian Na­tion, the African Union, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and all oth­ers in every part of the world must stand to­geth­er and strong. Hu­man civil­i­sa­tion is at risk. The more the Caribbean un­der­stands it­self as a civil­i­sa­tion, the stronger it would be, the greater it could play its part at this most crit­i­cal time in hu­man his­to­ry. Stand up, Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion!