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CARICOM Countries Urged To Fully Embrace CCJ

Posted by CaribShout on July 10, 2009 at 8:08pm
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC - Eminent Caribbean jurist Sir Shridath Ramphal last Thursday made an impassioned plea for all Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to fully join the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), as he weighed-in on the ongoing immigration debate across the region. “It is almost axiomatic that the Caribbean Community should have its own final Court of Appeal in all matters. A century-old tradition of erudition and excellence in the legal profession of the region leaves no room for hesitancy,” Sir Shridath said, as he delivered the feature address at the inaugural conference of the Caribbean Association of Judicial Officers. The former Commonwealth Secretary General told the three-day conference, which is being attended by senior judicial officials from CARICOM, including chief justices, magistrates and senior attorneys, that ending the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was actually treated as consequential on Guyana becoming a Republic 39 years ago. “I am frankly ashamed when I see the small list of Commonwealth countries that still cling to that jurisdiction - a list dominated by the Caribbean. “Now that we have created our Caribbean Court of Justice in a manner that has won the respect and admiration of the common law world, it is an act of abysmal contrariety that we have withheld so substantially its appellate jurisdiction in favour of that of the Privy Council. “We who have sent judges to the International Court of Justice, to the International Criminal Court and to the International Court for the former Yugoslavia, to the Presidency of the United Nations Tribunal on the Law of the Sea; we from whose Caribbean shores have sprung in lineal descent the current Attorneys General of Britain and of the United States,” he added. The CCJ was established in 2001 by regional governments to replace the London-based Privy Council as the region’s final court. But while most of the Caribbean countries have signed on to the original jurisdiction that deals mainly with the interpretation of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas governing the regional integration movement, only Barbados and Guyana have signed onto the court’s appellate jurisdiction. Sir Shridath, the former Chairman of the now defunct West Indian Commission that was tasked with deepening the regional integration process, said Caribbean countries must move forward quickly in endorsing the appellate jurisdiction of the CCJ. “This paradox of heritage and hesitancy must be repudiated by action - action of the kind Belize has just taken to embrace the appellate jurisdiction of the CCJ and abolish appeals to the Privy Council,” Sir Shridath said. He said the decision by Belize must be applauded by the entire region and not just the legal fraternity. “Those countries, still hesitant, must find the will and the way to follow Belize - and perhaps it will be easier if they act as one. “The truth is that the alternative to such action is too self-destructive to contemplate. If we remain casual and complacent about such anomalies much longer we will end up making a virtue of them and lose all we have built,” Sir Sridath warned. He said to against such a scenario as well as to give confidence to the people of the Caribbean, regional Governments must be as assiduous in demonstrating respect for all independent constitutional bodies, like the Director of Public Prosecutions, and “as the Caribbean Court of Justice itself must be in demonstrating its own independence. “In the end, the independence of Caribbean judiciaries must rest on a broad culture of respect for the authority and independence of all Constitutional office holders so endowed.” He said the region must act positively with regards to the CCJ. “We must not abolish appeals to the Privy Council merely because we disagree with its rulings in capital punishment cases; that abolition, which must come, must be a consequence of our determination to endow our own Caribbean Court of Justice with the status of our final Court of Appeal in all matters; a consequence of the exercise of our right to self-determination in judicial matters too. “We have not established the Caribbean Court of Justice to give decisions to our liking; but to give decisions under law,” Sir Shridath warned. The three-day conference is being held under the theme “Caribbean Judiciaries in an era of Globalisation: Meeting the Challenges of the Time” and the organisers said the goals of the forum are geared towards the further development, enhancement and progression of the judicial services and systems of the region. In his address, Sir Shridath urged closer unity among the peoples of the region, but warned also of the policies and practices that were deepening the Caribbean divide. While he did not single out any Caribbean country by name, it was obvious that Sir Shridath was making reference to the ongoing controversy over the immigration policies of some Caribbean states that are resulting in the deportation or prevention of Caribbean nationals residing in places other than their home country. “The knock on the door at night is not within our regional culture; still less are intimations of ‘ethnic cleansing’. “No Caribbean leader would countenance such departures from our norms and values; but all must not only believe, but also act as if they believe, that we forget our oneness at our peril; whether the ‘otherness’ that displaces it is an accidental place of regional birth, or otherness of any kind,” he said. “CARICOM is at risk”, we have been warned. So it is; and few are blameless. Political leaders, in particular, have to be less casual about CARICOM, less minimalist in their ambition for it, less negative in their vision of it. Its foundations have been built on our oneness; not on the geography of a dividing sea.” He said the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas is not just embellished parchment, but the “logic of that oneness in a world which threatens our separate survival”. Sir Shridath also warned of the various international Conventions to which all CARICOM countries are parties and “relevant to our rights and obligations to each other as human beings, much less family. “The Caribbean Community is now our regional mansion within a global home. We have to make it more secure and habitable - through reaching goals like the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy) or even the CSM, and reaching them together.” He reminded delegates that in July, the region would observe the 20th Anniversary of the Grand Anse Resolution on Preparing the Peoples of the West Indies for the 21st century and that nearing the end of the new century’s first decade, “we are still ‘preparing’. “No wonder ‘CARICOM is at risk’. In the era of globalization, we retrogress if we simply mark time while the world moves ahead. As CARICOM’s political directorate meet in Georgetown next week at their 30th Summit they must demonstrate credibly that they still believe in Caribbean integration, that they care about securing it against risk, and that they are serious in their commitment to the objectives of the Treaty of Chaguaramas. “I believe the people the Caribbean yearn for that assurance from inspired leadership,” he added. Sir Shridath said that without CARICOM, a number of initiatives such as the CCJ and the CSME would not be around and warned that the “the siren song of separatism” that led to the failure of the West Indian Federation 47 years ago was once more raising its head.

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