Caribbean Community Secretariat highlights continuing commitment to implementing Landell Mills’ report findings
In a recent statement to commemorate Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Day 2021, the outgoing Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, recommitted to restructuring the organisation’s Secretariat, in line with recommendations from a 2012 report published by Landell Mills. His commitment has been borne out in practice with the recommendations cited as guidance for some recently tendered regional projects. The report, entitled ‘Turning around CARICOM: Proposals to restructure the Secretariat’, included proposals for a redesign and restructuring of the Secretariat’s operations, with the authors, Richard Stoneman, Justice Duke Pollard and Hugo Inniss, noting that CARICOM was then already ‘in a fight for survival.’
The report was produced as part of the 2011-2012 ‘Consultancy to conduct an organisational restructuring of the CARICOM Secretariat’, in which Landell Mills was contracted to assess the effectiveness of the Secretariat’s organisational structure and identify the constraints to deepening regional integration within the community. The team, comprising expertise in institutions and governance, legal and constitutional reform and financial management, developed a set of recommendations for restructuring the Secretariat that would enhance its capacity, improve monitoring of decisions and increase collaboration with other community organisations.
As well as seeking to improve the procedures and mechanisms of the Secretariat, the report also looked at the identity and aspirations of CARICOM as a regional entity and sought to define its role as the key player in regional integration. The work was seen as so crucial to the future of the Caribbean Community that the team was tasked to report directly to the 14 Prime Ministers and Presidents of the Community’s Member States. Findings from the report included key requirements, such as clearly defining priorities over the short to medium term, while maintaining the operations of the Secretariat, in order for CARICOM to deliver successfully its mandate of bringing member states together in a prosperous and increasingly integrated regional community.
The recommendations from the report were accepted by the Caribbean Heads of Government at their bi-annual meeting on 8th March 2012, which took place in Surinam. Their unanimous support for the recommendations was followed by an award of funding from the UK government to implement the changes.
More recently, the outgoing Secretary-General highlighted that during his 10-year tenure at CARICOM, the Secretariat has ‘had to do more with less’, as a result of a 25% decrease in financial support, largely due to a decline in donor resources. Despite this, the Secretary-General emphasised CARICOM’s commitment to making the Secretariat ‘more efficient, strategic, agile and effective,’ in part by implementing further changes from the 2012 Landell Mills report.
More information about the report can be found here.
