Governance and the New Imperium

• Author: Shridath Ramphal
• Pages: 14-24

14 THE GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE

let me start, Mr Chairman, by apologising for my absence last evening at the

Opening of the Conference. The Vice Chancellor has, I believe, explained

how the imperatives of the closing stages of the Belize-Guatemala Facilitation

Process under the auspices of the OAS in Washington made that absence

unavoidable. I thank you all for your understanding.

At 4 o’clock yesterday morning that process, in which I was the facilitator

for Belize, reached its fulfilment: the resolution of the over a century and a half

controversy about Belize’s borders with Guatemala – a controversy that once

threatened Belize’s independence itself. The details of the settlement are

embargoed for a few weeks while some technical annexures are being finalised;

but yesterday morning in Washington the OAS secretary general received from

the facilitators our work in fulfilment of our mandate – the resolution of the

territorial dispute.

It was a historic moment for peaceful conflict resolution in the hemisphere.

It was a moment of monumental significance for our CARICOM member state,

Belize. In allowing me to complete my role in it, the university, and this

conference, shared in that fulfilment.

We are meeting in this 2002 Mona Academic Conference committed to

exploring ‘the governance challenge’. The segment of that challenge that is the

focus of my remarks is the global dimension – the challenge of global governance.

It is a dimension with many differences; not just the spatial one. Yet despite

these differences, it is not wholly independent of the other challenges of

governance at the national and regional levels and, in some important respects,

it both impacts on them and is in turn impacted by them.

As most of you know, I was co-chairman of the International Commission

on Global Governance, a chairmanship I shared with the former prime minister

of Sweden, Ingvar Carlsson, the Social Democratic leader who succeeded Olof

Palme when he was so brutally assassinated in Stockholm – and who carried

with him into the commission Sweden’s and Palme’s passionate commitment to

internationalism.

GoverNaNCe aNd

The New imperium

SHRIDATH RAMPHAL

CHAPTER TWO