Caribbean Coverage of the 35th CELAC-CAF International Seminar
By: Kimberly Ramkhalawan
August 23, 2022
“Give more political muscle to CELAC, as every integration movement is only as strong and as resolute and political will that drives it”.
The words shared as part of a list of recommendations put forward by Director General of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, Dr Didacus Jules, as he addressed the 35th Meeting of National Coordinators of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and an international seminar on the future and integration of the region members that took place in Argentina in recent days.
Dr Jules said “with the greater recognition of the Caribbean within the hemispheric grouping, there was a need for it to be further advanced by strengthening the institutional structures of CELAC”. However, in the same breath, he shared that “in undertaking this institutional strengthening, steps must be taken to avoid expensive institutional bureaucracy and instead focus on leveraging existing structures that display the required agility to advance the CELAC agenda”.
And coming from the pandemic, and all that came with it such as supply chain disruptions, as well disasters associated with climate change, as well as criminal activity, Dr Jules says there were ‘practical solutions’ that can be shaped by pooling its resources and capacities to improve the lives and the livelihoods of people and communities. This he said can only be achieved if CELAC makes a “stronger expression of the most elemental and consensual of political will of its member states by focusing on core political principles that uphold the sovereignty of its nations”.
While these issues may not be novel, Dr Jules pinpoints the difference at this point in the region’s timeline having now reached at what he calls a “tipping pint of no return”.
But with the Caribbean being a member state of many regional integration organisations such as the OAS, CELAC, SICA, and CARICOM, the OECS Director himself said the imperative was a matter of “ designing greater institutional capability through simple mechanisms that utilize existing national and regional institutions serving as network of supports and delivery on key urgencies facing” its people.
Part of his remark was that “the greatest contribution CELAC can make, not just to the region, but to the world, is integration for peace. In the long matter of these three, humanity has faced episodic catastrophe that seemed in that generational moment, to signal the end of the world, but life has continued”.
He added while there were many efforts to build a house of unity, it was “truly about a variation of multi-integration that represent a dynamic tension”.
Dr Jules said in every instance there is an attempt to provide distinction and character to each, but the differentiation was too often blurred, but also noted “it would be idealistic to believe that there is one construct that can fit every purpose”. However, remarked it was the region’s “responsibility to dispassionately critique the results of these configurations so that we can place them in a clearly defined purpose”.
The OECS Director General shared while “our hemisphere has historically been an arena of hegemonic contestation in which the more powerful seek to dictate the agenda and prescribe the aspirations for continental unity”, the idea of unity was not far lost. Drawing reference to CARICOM members states lined up in the Caribbean Sea, Dr Jules said, this regional body has already been “an inspiration to other regions seeking to establish and maintain the neutrality of geographic corridors for the movement of people and goods, that contribute to the prosperity of all in the neighbourhood”.
With the CARICOM model in mind, despite what he calls “the contradictions of the geopolitical current”, he notes “some enduring ideals of sovereignty and self-determination that have maintained the threads of unity that binds it”. Another inflection point he shared which faced today’s regional counterparts, was globalization appeared to be in ‘tatters’, while regionalization was becoming popular as “an amphitheater of both convergence of common interest and contestation for better advantage”.
In confronting also the crises that come in a multidimensional form during this historic time period, Dr Jules pledged the OECS’s commitment to CELAC revisiting and sharpening its sense of purpose, our why must be clear enough that it justifies the effort and focuses the agenda”.
For this he says, “the process of determining a more clinical, incisive and decisive purpose for CELAC must be grounded and informed by an understanding of history, geopolitical ideological and the dominant impulses that create and shape the integration constructs. It must define the contours of the integration ambition that will drive it and the practical expressions of that ambition that will impact the trajectory of common good of all participating societies”.
This year’s meeting involves some 33 CELAC member nations who gathered to discuss the institutional strengthening of the only integration mechanism that brings together all the States of Latin America and the Caribbean without exclusions.