An appropriate” and “futility”.
Those two key words were used by Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Dominica-born secretary general-designate of the 53-member Commonwealth Secretariat, to help explain why she has placed a crucial issue high on her list of priorities for action when she assumes duties next April in London.
The issue: the controversial continued use of gross domestic product per capita income figures by the World Bank, the United Nations (UN) and many of its specialised agencies, as well as donor agencies, including the United Kingdom, and a host of international organisations, when deciding which developing nations should receive assistance or low-interest loans.
Two Caribbean states which have suffered the most as a result of that absurd graduation policy are The Bahamas and Barbados. What’s so frustrating, and indeed tragic, is that the victims, mostly economic and geographical Lilliputians, have succeeding in lifting most of their people out of dire poverty by improving education and health services. They are the countries which have been penalised the most for their success.
Baroness Scotland, who is due to visit Barbados, summarised her stance in a straightforward way in an interview with BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY a few days after her remarkable and highly acclaimed election victory in Malta, engineered by a handful of committed Caribbean states, particularly Barbados, Dominica, and St Kitts & Nevis.
“The use of GDP per capita income as the sole criterion to justify whether a country was low, middle or high income was shown up for its futility” when overnight her birthplace was hit by an act of nature, a tropical storm that inflicted severe damage on 90 per cent of Dominica’s gross domestic product, said the life peer, the first woman chosen to lead the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Her declaration on per capita income data was probably music to the ears of Barbados and The Bahamas. Barbados has been waging the per capita income fight for decades, dating back to Errol Barrow, the first Prime Minister, and subsequent Prime Ministers Tom Adams, Sir Lloyd Sandiford, Owen Arthur, David Thompson, and now Freundel Stuart. Just two months ago Stuart told the UN General Assembly that it was about time the international community, including the UN, “develop and utilise appropriate measures for development that go beyond a simplistic reliance on a country’s gross domestic product per capita”.
Arthur and the late Thompson had at different times used different words to say essentially the same thing. But what’s particularly interesting is that the baroness, a brillian lawyer who defied the odds when she became Britain’s Attorney General and the top legal adviser to Queen Elizabeth 11, the first black woman to hold that position, has chosen to joint the fray. Just as important, her first test may be around the corner.
The secretary general designate, who knows more than most how the international and British systems of decision making work, cited the United Kingdom’s plans to create a £300 million (BDS$899 million) fund whose resources, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron, would be used as investment “in vital infrastructure in the Caribbean, such as roads, bridges and ports to help drive economic growth and development across the region”.
Sounds excellent, right? Wrong! As with most things, the devil is in the details. For while Guyana, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Jamaica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Lucia and Montserrat are on the published list of beneficiaries, Barbados, The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and St Kitts & Nevis, all of which need financial and technical assistance, were apparently left out in the proverbial cold.
“Too many Caribbean countries are held back because they remain vulnerable to severe economic or climate shocks,” said Justine Greening, the UK’s international development secretary, in explaining the reasons for the fund and why only eight nations were chosen as beneficiaries.
Speculation is rife that countries were ignored because of their relatively high per capita income profiles. In effect, they were being penalised for whatever economic success they had achieved. Britain should know better. Its diplomatic outposts in the English-speaking Caribbean – the high commissions in Bridgetown, Port of Spain and Nassau – should have been able to make an effective case for all countries, not simply eight of them.
But as Baroness Scotland gets involved, she will have her work cut out for her to bring about a change in British policy on aid in the Caribbean. It’s going to take time to achieve a turnaround on this question because the per capita policy is deeply embedded in the psyche of donors that favour the poorest of the poor.
She is a strong woman who can get things done but don’t expect her to be an overnight miracle worker. Barbados, The Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago have been denied hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and technical assistance and loans for decades and the situation cries out for change.
But a hard fact of life is that the influence of the Commonwealth Secretariat has been on the downward spiral for years and the baroness must now rebuild its clout with the rich Commonwealth nations – the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada – in the years ahead in order to get things done.
Is she up to the task? An emphatic yes. But it will take time.