The press also asked Secretary-General Barnett for her views on a push by Caribbean governments to compel its citizens to take the COVID vaccines.
Here in Belize, a vaccine mandate for public officers was scheduled to take effect tomorrow, but after the Government met with the leadership of the Public Service Union, they pulled it back.
Here are the CARICOM's Sec Gen's comments on vaccine mandates generally from Caribbean governments:
Dr. Carla Barnett - Secretary-General, CARICOM
"We follow very closely, and we receive that the legal advice that was procured by the OECS Secretariat. We don't feel that if we were to procure separate advice, that it would be substantially different. One of the realities of our organization as well is that as independent member states, we also have to look at what each country's laws provide for. And within each member-state, there is a very deep discussion about the extent to which governments can implement vaccine mandates. Even if we were to - at the level of CARICOM, for argument's sake - say that the right thing to do is to implement a vaccine mandate in every single country. The way that would need to be implemented is through each country's legal system And therefore, the countries at the national level have to sort through what's most appropriate, what's legally possible, what's doable for each of them. It's not something that could be implemented at all from a secretariat point of view or even from a community decision point of view. It would have to work through the national legal systems of each country. Yes, you have a constitutional right to not take a vaccine if that's what you don't want to do. But, the other members of society have a constitutional right to be protected from infections and that sort of thing. So we have to be very cognizant of where rights and responsibilities across one another. There is no right that I am aware of that does not have some kind of expectation around how that the right is exercised, whether the right to free speech or the right to whatever. There are limits around what you can say, for example, what you can print in your newspapers. So, you know that all rights are circumscribed by responsibilities. And therefore, as a society, the governments have a responsibility to ensure an acceptable level of protection. And so, if you want to exercise your right - and this is what's been said to me. If you want to exercise your right to not be vaccinated, then you would have to accept the responsibility to be tested that as you move around, you are not infected and therefore spreading the infection so that other people who have a right to have their health protected are not compromised."
