For most citizens, international organisations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the G20 and even the Inter-national Monetary Fund (IMF), have little immediate significance. Like all remote international institutions and groupings, they resonate with the everyday only when their proposed solutions or rulings affect employment, the future of an industry, levels of taxation, or government’s ability to fund social services.
They have an image not helped by the high style in which their staff live and their intellectual remoteness from the lives of those whose fortunes their thinking and remedies touch.
Despite this, at this year’s United Nation’s General Assembly, almost every Caribbean Head and Foreign Minister spoke specifically about the importance of multilateralism – alliances of multiple countries pursuing a common goal usually through international groupings – and the threat the approach of the Trump Administration now poses to global institutions.