Challenges of Caribbean Society in Achieving National Unity

894 Words2 Pages

Challenges of Caribbean Society in Achieving National Unity

There have been many attempts for the Caribbean nations to come

together as one, leading to national unity in the region. Some

attempts at unity include: Federation, CARICOM (Caribbean Community),

CARIFTA (Caribbean Free Trade Association), CDB (Caribbean Development

Bank), UWI (University of the West Indies), CXC (Caribbean

Examinations Council), and recently CSME (Caribbean Single Market and

Economy), which is still in the process of being carried out. The

Caribbean’s aim is to come together socially, economically, and

politically and to try to work as one nation. However, there are many

cultural differences between the countries, which constantly impede

amalgamation of the Caribbean territories; aspects of culture such as

race, religion, language, governmental systems, history, values and

morals and so on, are all different in each territory and place a

barrier between any integration of the countries. While cultural

diversity among the islands is good for tourism, since tourist can

think of each island as a different experience, and always want to

come back to a different one for a different experience, cultural

diversity is also one of the chief prohibitions of Caribbean unity.

One big challenge due to differences in different territories is

religion. With Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Rastafarians and so on all

in the region, it is hard for the Caribbean to try to run as one body

with all different beliefs. For example, if a Muslim were to be chosen

to be the leader of the combined countries, conflict would arise, as

Christian and Muslims do not believe in the same t...

... middle of paper ...

...ne that is stable? Or do they put the most common

one? Whatever the decision, once again, everyone is not going to

agree, and this could become a serious problem, especially at

governmental level. A different stable currency for all Caribbean

islands, however, would put us higher on the world trading market.

For all the Caribbean territories to merge, full cooperation and hard

work needs to be put in. At the current moment, there are too many

differences between islands for a merger to happen. While a merger

would be the ideal event we as the Caribbean need in order to survive

on the world market, many people in the islands do not want it to

happen. With globalisation coming into effect, this amalgamation

should rapidly occur, but it is not going to happen, because of all

the challenges the cultural differences pose.

More about Challenges of Caribbean Society in Achieving National Unity

Open Document