Avoiding a "Prime Ministerial / Piecemeal / Paper-based / People-Less" Regional Integration in the Caribbean

"I can vividly recall in a public forum I recently attended, one lady in her verbal castration of regional leaders, described their approach to the integration movement, as a “Prime Ministerial, piecemeal, paper-based and people-less process” ".--Anselm Caines

Once in a while, you come across an article on regional integration that is just too juicy and poignant to let go off. This one, by one Anselm Caines, writing in SKNVIBES.com is one of them.

His article operates from the premiss of an insightful statement made by a lady of regional leaders, which I have quoted above.

Caines proceeds to expatiate his piece on the basis of the four points by the lady. I daresay many regional integration initiatives world-wide could do with a reading of this piece. Caines well and truly nips it in the bud with the following four points.

PRIME MINISTERIAL

Caribbean integration (like much integration processes) remains at the realm of abstraction. In other words, ordinary people do not feel any connection to the process. Whether this is the EU, ECOWAS, SADC, or MERCOSUR, I suspect that many of these regional integration initiatives(RIAs) must work harder on their communication strategies to ensure that integration process makes sense, is real and palpable. Despite the success of the Schengen area in the EU, it is reported that many Europeans have a problem with a Europe out there divorced from the realities of the EU's problems.

The lesson is for the diplomats to TAKE integration to the schools, the communities, the citizens.

ECOWAS's Community Development Programme, in this respect, looks interesting, but it is still problematic. This is because of how it has been structured--what with the identification of networks that will, in effect, serve as proxies for the policy-makers at the ECOWAS level.

PIECEMEAL

Integration initiatives fail because they are rarely endorsed by the public before they become policy. Radio and TV spots alone are insufficient. They must be sustained and dynamised.

In this respect the UEMOA-ECOWAS-sponsored "Caravan d'integration" that will end very soon (and which started in May in Senegal) remains a flop, because they passed through Ghana, but not one radio station was sensitised about their coming. For those of us who knew, too, we were not contacted to be briefed on updates. That is a whole opportunity to showcase West African regional integration efforts WASTED!

PAPER-BASED

These RIAs exist solely on paper. In my view, even passports are a symbolic representation of a regional integration on its way to being actualised Other solutions to counter this include Model meetings, as with The Hague International Model United Nations; Model AU; Model NATO; Model ECOWAS. Kids representing diplomats are sure ways of ensuring research is done, and energies motivated towards the idea of regional integration.

PEOPLE-LESS

Without people, a community of people around a regional integration initiative is baseless. Caines writes:

Remember, matters such as freedom of movement of persons and the right to establish businesses in any member state are very sensitive issues that cannot truly be expected to succeed if half of our populace is indifferent and apathetic to such principles.

What about the teachers union and doctors throughout our Federation? Were they thoroughly consulted so that they could offer their views as to the scope of the social shocks that will inevitably follow

The flip-side is that we, as citizens, must also take an interest in what the implications of these initiatives are for us. If we are business-inclined, we might want to get to know what freedom of movement means so that we can maximise our opportunity as community citizens in the sub-region. Freedom of movement is an important and critical element, for example, for the informal sectors in, say, the ECOWAS sub-region. While the traders might be clueless about what is contained in the 1979 ECOWAS protocols on freedom of movement, they at least know they can -- challenges of bribes notwithstanding -- move across borders with a mere passport.

A more literate person would want to go further and find out how freedom of movement can help with his business across the sub-region.

In the final analysis, if I have not pointed out the article already, let me do so here. You can read it by clicking here.

These are some of the ideas we need to facilitate a critical and progressive outlook on regional integration!

Communicating the ASEAN Message

"I think many journalists are not aware of the impacts of ASEAN's many achievement on us. It seems that if it is not a corruption case then they will not publish it. We realize that we have to change this" -- Dian, Foreign Ministry's director general for ASEAN affairs

Haven't we been here before?

Communicating the ASEAN message graced this blog, when I first started writing it in this way back in April 2007. Then, it was the Malaysian ASEAN Youth/Sports Minister who was encouraging the youth to face up to both global and regional challenges by learning about ASEAN.

Now, like a boon to the minister, we read that most youngsters are actually in tune with what ASEAN is doing:

It found students from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were most likely to identify themselves with the ASEAN, with 96 percent, 93 percent and 92 percent respectively.

Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam are the newest members of ASEAN, having joined the 10-nation grouping in the 1990s.

They are often referred to as the newest four, or CMLV, and their development lacks behind the other six member countries.

Students in Singapore had the weakest affinity toward the grouping, with some 49 percent saying they were citizens of the grouping.

Even if these are the latecomers expressing this opinion, it cannot hurt for ASEAN to know that they might be getting something right.

Furthermore, it was not that they were only in tune with what the regional grouping was doing but that they also identified themselves as citizens of ASEAN.

In my view, this is a great start, and very welcome news to the South East Asia grouping, especially in the light of the establishment of its Charter last year.

Work to be done
In the meantime, much needs to be done by the media--the purveyors of information, and often the putative gatekeepers to society--to showcase the works of ASEAN. This, at least, was what Indonesia was saying.

Superficially speaking, blame can be apportioned to the media for failing to write about ASEAN. Truth be told, if there is little interest in the first place, how can you expect editors to consider writing about it. Therein lies the paradox of reconciling a responsibility to encourage citizens to feel more in tune to the regional grouping, and highlighting what it means for them, with reporting actual news about the organisation--even if it is considered bad.

On communicating regional integration to citizens, there are hardly any black-and-white areas: these agreements are realities--whether we like it or not, and so it becomes incumbent on all and sundry in the media to do its level best to understand the issues inherent in them, and if it is not happening, use the media itself to question why it is not happening.

Surely, that can only be a small step to obtaining that critical and progressive view of regional integration?

ECOWAS -- The "Mother of all Regional Economic Communities in Africa"? (So Says EAC)

At least, this was what the visiting ambassador from the East African Community, Julius Onen, to the ECOWAS Commission on 24 July said. He is reputed to have said this when he was "exposed" to the ECOWAS Operational system.

This was no ordinary visit. It was one from no less than the five-member East African Community, which recently accepted Rwanda and Burundi in its fold. What is most significant about this visit is that it goes to underscore the very essence of the regional integration I had been adavocatinig ever since I started this blog, and way back in 2004, when I set up RegionsWatch.

It was conceived of, inter alia, as a way of sharing information about different kinds of regionalisms. To see that even without my instrumentality, this is happening(!) is a very positive sign. Maybe. it's possible that the long enough you preach your word out there on the internet, the more likely someone, somewhere is going to see and pass the word on;-) Someone might be patting their back for promoting this exchange, I'm sure!

Either way, it is all-so-exciting to see such important developments, and when these are expressed through information sharing and best practices, it becomes all the more interesting...and uncanny!

Best practices on regional integration are not new; the UN's Economic Commission for Africa created the Assessing Regional Integration in Africa(ARIA) as a way of doing just that.

In my estimation, however, it had served more to use ARIA as a way of monitoring and evaluating regional integration than using it to look at best practices in regional integration.

Either way, I'm grinning like a chesire-cat at the idea that suddenly, as if by magic, it is being discussed in no less than a place like ECOWAS that has moved progressively on communicating what it does to the ECOWAS citizens--and beyond--albeit in a painfully slow manner.

A quick look at the Communications department of the ECOWAS Commission reveals some interesting ideas about where ECOWAS would like to see itself. As to the operationalisation of these ideas, one lives in hope. It is good to see that some of the following have been slated:

Activities



· The West African Bulletin

· ECOWAS in Brief

· Publication on ECOMOG

· Brochure on the new ECOWAS Commission

Coming back specifically to the context of the press release from the newly-designed ECOWAS Commission website, it is important to disclose one very important piece of information about the future of EAC-ECOWAS relations, as well as the EAC itself:

Ambassador Onen disclosed the EAC’s plans to transform into a commission and
intensify its collaboration with African States and RECs as evidenced by the
bi-annual tripartite meetings with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern
Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

I've blogged a number of times about the EAC, and quite a few times about ECOWAS.

The last comparison I made between EAC and ECOWAS yielded in this post. It was all about communication.

I'm glad to be blogging about something more concrete now. Let's keep fingers crossed for more of these positive developments!!

ASEAN, for Youth and Posterity's Sake

It is a given that a regional organisation without adequate communication of its effects and/or its work is a regional organisation that has failed the people. So, it’s fantastic news to read that in its fortieth year, ASEAN is encouraging no less than the youth to "learn and understand Asean's history since its formation in 1967 until what it is today"


The Malaysian ASEAN Youth and Sports Minister Azalina Othman Said maintained at the end of a Youth convention :

"the younger generation must get ready to face regional and global challenges"

. The minister also stressed the importance of learning more than one language to face the challenges of globalisation, as well as being exposed to

the diverse cultures of the people in the 10-member grouping to better understand each other.”

This is very sound advice ALL African RECs (regional economic communities) need to post in their conference rooms—not to forget the youth who will come and inherit their problems some day!!