Caribbean Community (CARICOM) states would find it harder to tackle social and economic challenges unless a more profound regionalism is embraced, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves has said, even as he hailed the Caribbean Court of Justice’s (CCJ) decision in the Shanique Myrie case and its implication for regional integration.
“It is evident to all reasonable persons of discernment that our region would find it more difficult by far to address its immense current and prospective challenges unless its governments and peoples embrace strongly a more mature, more profound regionalism,” he said on Tuesday, speaking at the Distinguished Open Lecture series hosted by the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine in Trinidad. “That ought to be a noise in the blood, an echo in the bone of our Caribbean civilization,” the PM and Chairman of Caricom said.
Gonsalves explored the topic, “Free Movement of People, Shanique Myrie and Our Caribbean Civilisation” and reviewed the Myrie case in the context of community law for CARICOM and the CCJ as envisioned by the 22nd meeting of the Conference of Heads of State.
The CCJ last year awarded Jamaican Myrie Bds$75,000 (or J$3.6M) in damages after finding that she had been wrongfully denied