By: Staff Writer
July 1, 2022
Caribbean and Commonwealth elder statesman, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has released papers on the Internet, covering 72 years of public life in the Caribbean, the Commonwealth and internationally.
A recipient of numerous awards and honours from several countries, international bodies and academic institutions, including Knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen of England, he has served with distinction the people of his nation, the Region and the wider international community in a multiplicity of roles.
His involvement with the movement for a West Indies Federation as Assistant Attorney General marked the commencement of a distinctive record of advancing the process of Caribbean development.
The high esteem with which he is held internationally is evident by his membership of several important International Commissions.
Over his lifetime, in various capacities, as Attorney General and later Foreign Minister of Guyana, as the Caribbean’s spokesman in international trade and economic negotiations, as a voice of small developing countries, as a nemesis of UDI and apartheid in Southern Africa, as Secretary General of the Commonwealth of over 50 nations, as an advocate of the messages of change of the many international Commissions on which he served, in the national, regional and global contexts of his life – Shridath Ramphal spoke and wrote copiously.
As the longest-serving Commonwealth Secretary- General from 1975 to 1990, Sir Shridath played a lead role in ending institutional racism in Southern Africa, particularly in terminating Apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela said of him: “He is one of those men who have become famous because, in their fight for human justice, they have chosen the whole world as their theatre”.
Sir Shridath, said “In settling my CV over a period of some 75 years – from the time I was 18 in 1946 I was pleased, but also a little embarrassed,”
“What am I trying to do?” he continues. ‘Not, of course, to down-grade my CV. – which I attach. By no means; I am proud of it, and happy. But my life cannot be said to be an example entirely of cultivated aims and pursued ambitions – more of following instincts. It does not invalidate that counsel; but it is not an example of wholly personal virtue.’
His 1970 speech to the National Press Club in Trinidad and Tobago called for the Caribbean to make a decision on where it wanted to go as a region on issues that still challenge us today, particularly a Free Trade Area, Caribbean Integration and the preeminence of the CARICOM Secretariat as the primary vehicle for our island states diplomacy with larger nations.