France and the West Indies

France and the West Indies
Cooperation policy and French network in the West Indies
Customs, security and defence cooperation
Environmental and health cooperation
Cultural cooperation and the French language
Trade

France and the West Indies

France is part of the West Indies through two of its overseas communities, Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy, and two of its departments, Martinique and Guadeloupe, which it would like to see fully integrated in the region. It is concerned about helping to bring security to the Caribbean islands, participating in their economic development, encouraging the establishment of its companies there, and strengthening cultural ties that bind it to a region that is home to one million French nationals and more than ten million French speakers and Creole French speakers.

Cooperation policy and French network in the West Indies

France’s six embassies [1] and the four economic missions set up in the West Indies cover all of the countries in the region. Playing an active part in the different regional cooperation processes, France is represented by an ambassador at the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), of which it is an associate member through the French Departments of the Americas (FDA: Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana).

Promoting French and the culture of the French language is based on the 24 Alliances françaises in the region, a cultural institute (Haiti), and two French secondary schools (in Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

France’s commitment to sustainable development in the region is manifested in a very considerable amount of official development assistance. Two regional cooperation departments act in the Greater Antilles from Trinidad and Tobago and in the Lesser Antilles from St. Lucia in collaboration with the General Secretariat of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The French Development Agency (AFD) is set up in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and works in several OECS countries from Martinique. Finally, more than ten technical assistants support cooperation projects developed in the region. At the European level, France is contributing up to 19.55% to the tenth European Development Fund that is opening cooperation budgets for the period 2008-2013 for countries in the region totalling nearly 700 million euros.

France is paying close attention to the evolution of its relations with Haiti, a French-speaking country with which it has strong historic ties, the poorest country in the region, and which is coming out of a period of institutional and social chaos. It participates actively in making it secure and in its political and economic reconstruction. Thus, France contributes enormously to the actions of the international community and fully supports the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). This operation mobilizes 10,600 agents, civilians, police officers and soldiers in support of the Haitian government. In addition, France’s bilateral cooperation has been growing constantly in Haiti since 2004, to reach an annual amount of 30 million euros today.

With regard to Cuba, France would like to see this country evolve, in a free and sovereign manner, toward a pluralist democracy. It maintains a frank dialogue with the government in Havana about the human rights situation, an area in which it expects significant improvements to be made. Like its European Union partners, since 1996, France has voted for the United Nations General Assembly resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed against Cuba”. As Cuba has decided to suspend bilateral state cooperation, cooperation actions are now being developed by NGOs, local communities and universities only.

Customs, security and defence cooperation

Fighting organized crime and drug trafficking is a priority for the harmonious development of the West Indies and its democratic stability. It’s also a necessity in order to protect the French departments from these blights. France supports the local governments in terms of equipment, training, and administrative and operational management.

To this end, it is mobilizing the Technical International Police Cooperation Department (SCTIP), which has seconded four national police officers to the French embassies in the region(to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and St. Lucia). In Haiti, these departments implemented 20 recruitment and training actions last year and in 2008 are opening a multiannual programme supporting the criminal police and boasting a budget of one million euros. In the Dominican Republic, such a programme has been in existence for two years and is striving to train personnel tasked with fighting crime: recruiting, teaching forensic science methods, developing suitable judicial proceedings.

France, in the fight against drug trafficking, is also providing local governments with the skills of the government departments present in the FDA: Interministerial Anti-Drug Training Centre (CIFAD), the Caribbean branch of the Central Office Against Illegal Drug Trafficking (OCRTIS) in Martinique. France is also trying to promote cooperation in this field within the network of the Inter-Caribbean Customs Conference and in the context of the regional maritime and air cooperation agreement for the Caribbean, called the Aruba agreement.

In the area of immigration control, France has signed readmission and movement agreements with St. Lucia (in April 2005) and Dominica (in March 2006), in particular granting nationals from these two countries a visa exemption for their stays of less than 15 days [2] in the French Departments of the Americas (FDA). Other agreements of this type are under negotiation.

In terms of defence cooperation and in order to promote mutual understanding of national defence tools, the following are organized each year: unit exchanges (with Barbados, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Netherlands for Aruba and Curaçao), multilateral exercises (“Caribbean” exercise, amphibian exercises with Barbados and the Dominican Republic), section exchanges for training purposes (with Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago), stopovers (of ships posted in the region and in 2008, a stopover of the training ship “Jeanne d’Arc” in Trinidad and Tobago).

Environmental and health cooperation

In view of the risk of natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions) with which the West Indies is confronted, France places importance on a prevention scheme.

Thus, French solidarity is expressed not only through emergency aid at the time of natural disasters, but also by participating in and establishing networks that make it possible to understand natural phenomena, prevent risks, organize aid and rescue systems for the populations affected and reduce the consequences of disasters. Accordingly, French civil security based in Martinique intervenes and provides training. Earthquake-resistant construction reference standards have been made available to governments in the region, which also benefit from the work of high-performance seismological and volcanological observatories in Guadeloupe and Martinique and from environmental warning systems, such as theRainette network (weather warning system for agriculture) developed in Guadeloupe by the Centre for International Cooperation in Agronomical Research for Development (CIRAD).

In addition, France signed the regional cooperation agreement of the ACS in the area of natural disasters and the AFD is contributing through CARICOM to the creation, under the aegis of the World Bank, of an insurance fund for natural disasters in the small states of the Caribbean (CCRIF), which will allow for the immediate payment of budgetary aid to the countries affected.

More widely, French cooperation is participating in the protection of ecosystems. In particular, France is a signatory to the Cartagena Convention for the protection and development of the marine environment in the Caribbean region. The AFD is also involved in several sustainable environmental management projects: the OPAAL project protecting maritime areas, preliminary studies on the use of geothermal resources in Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia, protection and development of natural resources in the Dominican Republic (reforestation, management of watersheds, environmentally-friendly agriculture), water drainage and management in an urban environment in Haiti.

Health is also a key sector for French cooperation. Partnerships have been established between the university medical centres of the French islands and the regional hospitals. In Haiti, projects to fight AIDS and to screen for cervical cancer are being developed with their support. The French Development Agency has also just committed a six million euro programme in this country for the fight against maternal and neonatal mortality. Every year, about 50 expert missions from hospitals in Marseille, Amiens, Lille, Nantes, and Strasbourg, etc. take part in transfers of knowledge. In the Dominican Republic, France has been supporting the national school health programme since 2004. Technical attachés have been made available in the Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados branches of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHA).

Finally, an animal health network, CaribVET, is led by CIRAD and France has set up a project to regionalize and harmonize animal disease epidemiological surveillance networks run from the Dominican Republic.

Cultural cooperation and the French language

The French language and culture hold an important place alongside “créolité” in the Caribbean basin.

Accordingly, the “Caribbean in creation” programme, spearheaded by the operator CulturesFrance, was launched in 2007 starting with Haiti. It aims to professionalize local cultural institutions, to give regional artists access to international distribution circuits, to promote the resources of the French departments, and to strengthen their artistic and cultural exchanges with the other countries in the region.

Similarly, in 2006, France launched the cultural site of the OECS (www.oecsculture.net), establishing a virtual network of Caribbean cultural players, bringing together some 60 cultural organizations of the region. An extension of this network, “Strabon Caribbean” (Multilingual and Multimedia Information System for Caribbean Heritage and Tourism, www.strabon-caraibes.org) is a project that focuses on the sustainable development of regional tourism by disseminating multimedia and multilingual information on the cultural and tourist heritage of the Caribbean. It is coordinated by the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in partnership with the University of the West Indies and Guyana.

The French language is also an important vehicle for our cultural cooperation as French remains the first foreign language taught within the OECS, for example. In addition to Haiti, St. Lucia and Dominica are also part of the International Organization for the French-Speaking World (OIF). Radio France International (RFI) has FM broadcast relays in Haiti and, since May 2004, in the Dominican Republic and soon in St. Lucia.

To increase the access of the region’s young people to the higher education and vocational training offered in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana, in 2008 the AFD launched a reduced rate loan programme in St. Lucia. Eventually, it is expected to be applied to all the OECS countries.

Trade

On 16 December 2007, the CARIFORUM was the first group of States to enter into an economic partnership agreement (EPA) on reciprocal market openness with the European Union. In addition, a representative office of the European Investment Bank for the Caribbean region was opened in 2007 in Fort-de-France to help improve cooperation between the EU and the countries of the region.

Major French companies (such as AIR France, ALSTOM, BOUYGUES, TOTAL, and VINCI) are active in the national markets. As the Caribbean is the leading tropical tourist destination, with a stream of more than 12 million tourists each year, French companies (ACCOR, CLUB MED, etc.) are very involved in this sector.

In addition, intra-regional trade offers attractive development opportunities for small and medium-sized companies of the French islands. It is promoted by initiatives like the organization of trade shows (trade forum with the countries of the CARIFORUM in May 2007 in Guadeloupe, 2007 MadinTech/Novatech show in Martinique in June 2007) and trips made by entrepreneurs to the countries in the region (delegation from Guadeloupe visited Haiti in July, November 2007 and February 2008, delegation from Martinique in November 2007).

Lastly, France wants to participate in major regional projects following the example of the installation of the digital submarine cable linking Puerto Rico to Guadeloupe and the OECS countries (and eventually Haiti, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana) and the creation of a port hub, a platform between Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica and St. Lucia.

Useful links:

Regional councils: www.cr-guadeloupe.fr and www.cr-martinique.fr

General councils: www.cg973.fr (Guadeloupe) www.cg972.fr (Martinique)

Prefectures: www.guadeloupe.pref.gouv.fr and www.martinique.pref.gouv.fr

Association of Caribbean States (ACS): www.acs-aec.org

Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM): www.caricom.org

[1] In Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, St. Lucia (has jurisdiction over the six countries of the Eastern Caribbean) and Trinidad and Tobago (has jurisdiction over Barbados as well).

[2] Up to 180 days a year.