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Stakeholder country consultations have been ongoing within the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), an 11-member regional grouping, on a wide range of initiatives intended to improve integration within the region and to enhance the general well-being of citizens in several domains of life.
One of the initiatives being looked at is the establishment of an OECS ID, a digital identification system that will utilize biometrics and collate personal information from all the different types of government-issued IDs to create an individualized ID number for each citizen, according to a press release.
Stakeholders say such an ID would be a big step forward toward unblocking travel barriers within the sub-region, and is in accordance with a decision taken by heads of state and government of OECS in 2011 to facilitate hassle-free travel by ensuring OECS citizens can move within the Eastern Caribbean Economic Union (ECEU) with a valid government-issued picture ID such as a driver’s license, national identification card, or voter card.
The leaders originally agreed on the mutual recognition of driver’s licenses in 2011, which means that OECS citizens can drive within any ECEU member state using a valid driver’s license issued by their home country.
At the close of last year, the country consultation missions, fronted by the OECS Commission, were in Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The exercise, which is expected to wrap up this month, will among other things, promote national action aimed at supporting the full implementation of the free movement of persons regime.
Regional leaders believe an easy travel regime for the region will render many other activities easier including labour migration, social security benefits portability, access to education and healthcare, social development, intra-regional transportation, intra-regional trade, national border security, and access to digital services and consumer protection.
“These stakeholder engagements will help guide the national actions that can be moved in the immediate and medium term to deliver on these contingent rights benefits,” says Dr. Didacus Jules, director general of the OECS. “This includes efforts to advance the Contingent Rights Model Bill and the development of administrative instruments that can help make the free movement of persons regime a more accessible reality for ECEU citizens.”
There are regional ID card initiatives in other parts of the world such as the ECOWAS National Biometric ID Card (ENBIC) in West Africa which aims to eliminate travel hurdles related to identity, as well as to drive up the level of economic and social integration among the 15 member countries of the regional bloc.