David Jessop

In much of the world, young people feel economically marginalised, politically alienated and in a struggle against insecurity and inequity.

Last week, after months of growing street protests, detentions, escalating violence, at least 36 deaths, and shortages of almost all basic necessities, Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, announced the creation of a constituent assembly with the ability to re-write the country’s constitution.

Around the world, public health care systems are in crisis. From India to Australia, nations in the developing and developed world are struggling to meet the expectations of their local populations.

It is no secret that governments around the world regularly practice their response to security threats.

In just under a year’s time, if President Castro keeps to his previously announced timetable, he will step down and cease to lead Cuba’s Council of State and Council of Ministers.

One of the most common complaints about tourism is that it does not spread the wealth it creates into rural and urban communities.

On March 29, after forty years of membership, the British government formally gave notice that it will leave the European Union (EU) in 2019.

In a few weeks’ time, the European Union’s (EU) long running programme to support the development of the Caribbean rum industry will come to an end.

Before the end of this month, Britain’s Prime Minister, Theresa May, will invoke article 50 of the European Treaty, starting a process that will lead to the UK leaving the European Union (EU) in 2019. 

A few days ago, an astute observer of the US political scene told me: “Watch what the new administration and Congress does, not what the President tweets.

Unless the sugar industry in Caricom can develop in the coming months a co-ordinated and concerted plan of action, it is quite possible that in a few years’ time there will be little left of an industry which, for evil and good, has played a central role in the making of the Caribbean.

“Tourism is a vital sector to the economies of Member States”.

In the last few weeks, Washington think tanks, financial services analysts in New York and London, and publications from the New York Times to the Petroleum Argus, have all found a reason to express a view on Guyana, the Caribbean nation they now see as set to become one of the Western hemisphere’s major oil producers.

When it comes to Cuba, the world’s media tends to focus on the obvious: the possible outcome of the new US administration’s policy review, the multiple difficulties faced by Cuba’s over-centralised planned economy, or the implications of Fidel Castro’s passing.

In a few days’ time, Jovenel Moïse, will become Haiti’s forty-second President.

In the coming months, it is likely that the way in which governments think about international trade and their fundamental values will evolve rapidly, as the promises and threats that President Trump made on the campaign trail become US policy.

One of the few issues about which the new President of the United States has been consistent, is his approach towards Mexico.

A few days into the New Year, St Lucia’s Prime Minister, Allen Chastanet, suggested that all five of the Eastern Caribbean nations that sell Citizenship by Investment (CBI) should develop a joint approach through the OECS secretariat. 

Late last November the Government of Antigua gave notice to the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Disputes Settlement Body (DSB) that if the United States did not reach “an appropriate and beneficial settlement” in relation to a legal adjudication made previously in its favour, it would act to recover the revenue it has lost.

Few people understand how great the daily pressures are on a prime minister or a president.