Presentation by the CARICOM Secretariat to the 1st General Meeting of Representatives of the Caribbean Community and its Associated Institutions and of the United Nations System

• Author: Kenneth Hall/Myrtle Chuck-A-Sang
• Pages: 221-239

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Presentation by the CARICOM Secretariat

Since 1992 the Secretariat’s initiatives regionally and internationally

have focussed on promoting actions, projects, programmes and relationships

within the context of the new regional direction set by the Community to

address the significant challenges facing its Member States. Critical among

the issues facing the Region have been those of deepening and widening the

Community as well as positioning the Community in the hemispheric and

global environment.

Recognising the tremendous pressures facing its Member States to adjust

their internal policies, programmes and institutional arrangements, as well

as the need to enhance their capacity to find new modes of integration within

the radically changed internal environment, the Secretariat has pursued a

number of initiatives aimed at creating diplomatic and economic space for

members of the Community at the regional, hemispheric and global levels.

Internally, the Secretariat has recognised that to improve its capability

to service the needs of the Community and increase its own institutional

effectiveness required it to undertake a process of restructuring. Thus,

cooperation with both bilateral and multilateral agencies has been pursued

since 1992, and perhaps in a more proactive way in 1995 and 1996, in

relation to its capacity-strengthening and restructuring internally and the

design and implementation of support programmes for the regional and

external dimension of the Community’s work. (The Secretariat implemented

its Strategic and Restructuring Plan for the period 1994-1996).

The Secretariat pursues Community support initiatives and inter-agency

co-operation through fifteen (15) programme areas. These programme areas

focus their activities on a smaller number of priority themes which constitute

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16 Presentation by the CARICOM Secretariat

To the First General Meeting of Representatives of

the Caribbean Community and its Associated

Institutions and of the United Nations System,

New York, May 27-28, 1997

222 CSME: Genesis and Prognosis

the thematic framework for work programme elaboration and

implementation. For ease of reference, these themes are as follows:

(i) The Single Market and Economy;

(ii) Positioning CARICOM within the Hemispheric and Global

Environment/Milieu;

(iii) Increased focus on Service and Environmental Factors in

Sustainable Development;

(iv) Institutional Development and Functioning of the Community

(including Revision of the Treaty and Establishment of the

Assembly of Caribbean Parliamentarians);

(v) Strategic Resource Mobilisation;

(vi) Disaster Relief and Reconstruction Assistance to Member

States; and

(vii) Development of, and Trade in, Services.

During the biennium 1997 and 1998, the foregoing thematic priorities,

with the addition of Agriculture Development, will continue to inform

cooperation relations of the Community, as well as the Secretariat’s own

internal programming.

Under United Nations Resolution 49/141, adopted on 20 December 1994,

the CARICOM and United Nations Secretariats agreed to pursue “measures

to promote and expand co-operation and co-ordination between both

Secretariats in order to increase the capacity of the two organisations to

attain their common objectives”. Subsequently, in May 1996, the Twenty-

Second Meeting of the Standing Committee of Ministers responsible for Foreign

Affairs (SCMFA), held in Jamaica, endorsed the following areas for

cooperation:

(i) Follow-up to the recent global conferences, viz: United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED),

International Conference on Population and Development

(ICPD), the World Conference on Women, HABITAT II and

UNCTAD IX;

(ii) Law of the Sea;

(iii) Cooperation in the Follow-Up and Implementation of the Small

Island Development States (SIDS) Programme of Action;

(iv) Cooperation in the Development of Poverty Reduction

Programmes and Strategies;