PROMOTING CULTURE OF RIGHTS, RESPONSBILITIES AND RESPECT IN CARIBBEAN

The Caribbean citizen should be encouraged to adhere to the universal commandment that “thou shalt not steal” because they cannot succeed without the input of intellectual and financial resources which focus on the particular needs of our region while referencing the international community. Since, they have not been constrained in their political and economic relationship, it is perhaps the most important reason that they have generated the condition s for innovation and creativity that mark Caribbean culture forms from language, religion and music to family structure.   

As Derek Walcott, a Caribbean writer and winner of the Nobel prize for literature once wrote” colonials, we began with this malarial enervation: that nothing could ever be built among these rotting shacks, barefooted backyards and moulting shingles, if there was nothing there was everything to be made, and made they have.

The practice of everyday life as well as the development of expressive and communicative culture and religion might fruitfully be seen through the prism of creolization’s term “pidgin” refers to specialized trade or contact jargons, and a creole language comes into existence when population in contact engage in regular interaction and the pidgin becomes the language of the home.

Movement has always been a feature of Caribbean society, and its very basic is caught up in the idea of migration. Caribbean music-reggae, calypso, salsa, merengue, rhumba has gained worldwide notoriety and acceptance and influence other musical styles.

Hence, it is important to understand that without a Caribbean Intellectual property legal and regulatory framework there is little opportunity for the development of intraregional and international business and that the aspirations of the Caribbean single market and economy will not be realised where there is piecemeal accountability and regional dissonance.  The international community has scant regard for issues which do not serve their interests and little patience with the vagaries of Caribbean life .The WIPO rules are useful guidelines and since most Caribbean countries are signatories to the TRIPS(Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual property rights) agreement because of the world trade organisation requirements, this provides a good foundation for a cumulative framework.

Hence, the universal principle do onto others as you would have them do onto you also applies in promoting respect and responsibility. Further there needs to be a region wide effort to sensitize the public about IP rights which must be carried out with the same vigour and energy apportioned to other important issues such as HIV/AIDS and human rights.

Among the problem faced by the Caribbean citizen are the lack of an adequate legal and regulatory encompasses the need of the single market and economy taking into account matters of private international law, consumer law as well as the mechanism for dispute resolution which must include alternative dispute resolution in the form of mediation arbitration and negotiation.

It is the need of the moment that the cultural rights, responsibilities and respect of the Caribbean must be preserved and promoted.