A better approach to U.K.-Caribbean relations – Virgin Islands Daily News

There is an old saying that you wait ages for a London bus and then two or even three come along at once. It is not an expression, as far as I am aware, that has ever been applied to policy statements affecting U.K.-Caribbean relations.

However, in the space of just 14 days four documents have appeared that will, in one or another way, guide future relations between a stand-alone Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean.

The most specific of these is a joint communiqu on the outcome of the tenth U.K.-Caribbean Forum held virtually on March 18, and more importantly its accompanying action plan. Both documents were agreed by ministers just as Britain was unveiling its long-term post-Brexit security, development, and foreign policy strategy and separately, explaining how the U.K. intends responding militarily to changing global threats

Although the latter two documents only touch indirectly on issues affecting the long-term U.K.-Caribbean relationship, they are of relevance as throughout they address shared concerns including the changing geopolitical and economic order, climate change, the environment, sustainability, values, and security. Both also reference the Overseas Territories in ways that imply the U.K. will remain locked into the region for the foreseeable future.

The defense review, Defence in a Competitive Age, additionally indicates a permanent if limited U.K. naval presence in the Caribbean, a joint approach with allies to counter narcotics interdiction, security, and humanitarian issues, and as the international order changes, greater military emphasis on science and technology-based responses.

The implication is that post-Brexit the Anglophone and Hispanic Caribbean relationship with Britain will adapt as the U.K.s global preoccupations change.

Helpfully, region-specific short to medium term responses can be found in the two documents summarizing the outcome of the UK-Caribbean Forum. Together they propose ways to maximize the opportunities presented by the post-COVID-19 and post-Brexit realities.

The Forums communiqu acknowledges the many problems now facing the Caribbean including the multidimensional challenge caused by COVID-19, the regions concerns about access to vaccines and medical supplies, the need for post-pandemic concessional financing, the challenge of long-term indebtedness, and the consequences of de-risking by international banks. It recognizes too the regions vulnerability and the threat posed by climate change.

It breaks new ground in two new areas.

The first is in accepting the need to right the disgraceful wrongs suffered by those in the Windrush generation living in the U.K. As such the joint communiqu formally recognizes the central importance of the Caribbean Diaspora in U.K.-Caribbean relations.

The second relates to the Caribbean and Britains shared security interests, addressing the potentially critical economic, political, and societal role cyberspace now plays in Caribbean life. In this context the future relationship will involve U.K. support with threats to cyber security, the protection of critical national infrastructure, the development of the regions cyber security capacity.

The communiqu also publicly commits the Caribbean and the U.K. to working together to share intelligence, facilitate training, exchange expertise and techniques when it comes to tackling threats from terrorism and serious and organized crime and to deliver meaningful cooperation on common security concerns.

Beyond this, what fundamentally sets this forum apart from the nine others that preceded it, is a detailed two-year action plan running up to the next full meeting in 2023. This separate document commits CARICOM and British ministers to a remarkable number of deliverables, enabling civil society to determine the extent to which a real post-Brexit Caribbean partnership exists.

Strikingly, the two-year plan creates what it describes as realistic commitments with a standing agenda for quarterly review between the London-based Caribbean High Commissioners and the British minister responsible for relations with the region. Unusually, the document adds that such meetings will agree joint action in cases where specific objectives are at risk of not being met and require a full audit of achievements against the plan after the first year and prior to the next forum.

Other commitments made include Britain making the case internationally for the Caribbean to benefit from vaccination roll-out in part to restart tourism; arguing in multilateral fora for Caribbean access to concessional and other soft loan packages to support post-pandemic recovery; holding a Chiefs of Defence Staff conference in 2021; and supporting the establishment of a Caribbean Military Academy in Jamaica.

On trade, the Ministerial, Parliamentary and Civil Society dialogues envisaged in the CARIFORUM-U.K. Economic Partnership Agreement or EPA are to develop a trade plan this year; a new U.K.-Caribbean business-to-business round table will be established; greater use of U.K. export credits will be encouraged; a U.K. minister will participate in the EPA Joint Ministerial Council; and trade and investment will be encouraged on a two-way basis, as will services exports.

CARIFORUM ministers have also signed up to meeting fully global standards for tax transparency and anti-corruption measures, and building regional cyber capacity supported by a dedicated U.K. regional cyber security officer based in Jamaica.

There are also other commitments relating to gender-equality, climate change, the Windrush compensation scheme, and even to a monument to the Windrush generation.

Much will now depend on ministerial will, and the sustained and genuine commitment of officials on both sides. Quite how this will work is unclear. Caribbean ministers have little ability to ensure their CARICOM counterparts deliver the joined-up approaches required, and successive U.K. governments have had a mixed track record when it comes to retaining the interest of its ministers.

In due course, a better understanding of how the U.K. will now relate to the Hispanic Caribbean and Overseas Territories will also be required, as will comparative figures for trade and investment flows as one measure of success. In addition, Caribbean nations will need to decide what future weight they intend placing in areas that overlap with arrangements the region has or is seeking with the E.U., the U.S., China and others.

Despite this, if the new approach genuinely finds ways that include business, the diaspora, women, and young people, and accountably reinvigorates, redesigns and strengthens the Caribbean partnership with Britain, it is to be commended.

David Jessop is a consultant to the Caribbean Council and can be contacted at david.jessop@caribbean-council.org.

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A better approach to U.K.-Caribbean relations - Virgin Islands Daily News