Dec 16
December 16, 2012 marks the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of negotiations of the CARIFORUM-EC Economic Partnership Agreement. During this time the controversies over the Caribbean EPA have not abated. In her review for the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly meeting held in Suriname last month, Joyce Van Genderen-Naar raises questions about the ratification and provisional application of the EPA, points to the losses of revenue and the preference erosion facing Caribbean countries, and discloses the major differences that have erupted between Caribbean and European officials over the tariff liberalisation schedules.
Oct 25
Professor Charles Soludo has been Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (2004-2009); Chief Economic Adviser to the President of Nigeria and CEO of the Nigerian National Planning Commission (2003-2004), Founding Chairman of the African Finance Corporation and consultant to 18 international organisations. A Board Member of the South Centre, this presentation showing why EPAs are contrary to the interests of Africa was made at a Forum in Geneva in Jul2y 2012.
Oct 03
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct 1 2012 (IPS) – P.J. Patterson, the former Jamaican prime minister, has had a long relationship with the European Union…
Jun 10
NATO has consistently blocked any attempt to scrutinise the war crimes it committed during the ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya.
Back in January Faiz Fathi Jfara of Bani Walid asked a simple question, “I just need an answer from NATO: why did you destroy my home and kill my family?” NATO refuses to answer him…
May 17
Communiqué from United Nations Press Office, 17 May 2012.
Demonstrating their on-going commitment to a peaceful resolution of their long-standing border controversy, on Tuesday 15 May officials from the Republic of Guyana and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela attended a technical workshop on related matters at UN Headquarters in New York…
Jan 15
The Lloyd Best Institute has announced the ‘Common Sense Convois’ to be held in Trinidad and Tobago March 18-25 2012, ‘a civic intervention designed to influence the shape of the next 50 years of the Caribbean and to network the region in a common conversation about the Caribbean and its future’.
Dec 11
Webmaster’s note: the inaugural summit of the recently concluded Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) was attended by 13 CARICOM leaders, several of whom spoke out strongly in support of the new organisation, which aims to consolidate the unity and independence of the entire region. Tamara Pearson, who covered the summit for Venezuelanalysis.com,, captures the feeilng and flavour of the historic meeting.
“Haha, Ortega doesn’t know what he’s talking about, neither does Evo, they don’t know anything about crime, there are reports out there that know more,” said a journalist from Bloomberg to his colleague. The journalist was sitting next to me in the press tent set up outside the CELAC plenary sessions in the Patio de Honor of the Bolivarian Militia University of Venezuela…
Final Declaration of Havana Approved
Declaration adopted by the Cuba-CARICOM Summit
CARICOM’S stinging rebuke to the United States Rickey Singh
US Committing blunder after blunder Raffique Shah
Nov 24
Keynote address at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Haitian Studies Association, UWI, Mona, Jamaica, Friday, November 11, 2011. Ambassador Reginald Dumas is a distinguished former diplomat of Trinidad and Tobago who served as the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Haiti in 2004.
Let me indicate at the outset what I shall not be talking about this morning…I shall not be talking about Haiti being the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. I shall not be talking about what we have come to call “Haiti’s glorious past”. I have the greatest admiration for the exploits and achievements of Boukman and Toussaint and Dessalines and Christophe and others who fought successfully for independence, but we should in my view be focusing less on the past and much more on Haiti’s somewhat less than glorious present, and on the possibilities for its future…
Comment: A Timely, Critical look at Haiti, Rickey Singh
Aug 15
Claude Chase is an attorney specialising in international trade and investment law and recently served an internship at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat. This paper was published in Legal Issues of Economic Integration 38, no. 2 (2011).
The inclusion of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) clauses in the EPA, that require CARIFORUM countries to extend to the EU any more favourable treatment granted to third parties in future Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), has generated some controversy. This note critically examines the arguments that have been leveled against the inclusion of these clauses from legal, and policy perspectives…
