United Nations (UN) Special Representative in the Guyana/Venezuela border dispute Professor Norman Girvan has died. He was 72. Girvan, who earlier this year suffered a serious fall while in The Dominican Republic, died in Cuba on recently.
His appointment was a response to a request from the parties to resume the Secretary General’s good offices, which were suspended in 2007 due to the death of the Secretary General’s last Personal Representative Oliver Jackman.
Caricom Secretary General Irwin LaRocque in a statement said he received the news of Girvan’s death with great sadness.
“Girvan’s ideas and ideals placed him in the upper echelons of Caribbean intellectuals,” LaRocque said. He said Professor Girvan’s life’s work was underlined by unremitting dedication to a vision of an integrated Caribbean.
“His service as main author of Towards a Single Development Vision and the Role of the Single Economy, a visionary document to guide the development” of Caricom, was a prime example of the commitment that Professor Girvan had to his region,” LaRocque said.
He added: “I extend sincere condolences to his wife and family and to the Government and people of Jamaica on the loss of a true Caribbean icon.”
Professor Girvan had suffered a serious fall while he was in The Dominican Republic earlier in January, leader of the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) in Trinidad and Tobago David Abdulah, a close friend of the eminent Professor had told the T&T Guardian.
On January 9, two days after Girvan’s fall, Abdulah posted about the incident on his Facebook page. He wrote that Girvan “had to be airlifted to Martinique and is due to undergo surgery. His situation is serious.”
Abdulah would not confirm whether Girvan was in Trinidad and reiterated that his family wished for privacy. A political economist and Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Girvan is a former Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
The Jamaican-born Girvan, 72, had lived in Trinidad. He was in The Dominican Republic in light of turmoil over a new law expelling people born in the country, who have Haitian heritage.
On September 23, The Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court stripped citizenship from over 210,000 Haitians born in the country after 1929. Since then, hundreds of undocumented Haitians continue to face arrests and expulsion from the country, and have been left stateless.
The court ruling cannot be appealed. In December 2013, Girvan co-signed a letter to the Caribbean Community (Caricom) on behalf of the International Relations Institute (IIR) at UWI, saying the new law had the potential to denationalise hundreds of thousands of people. Girvan has been an advocate against the law, contending that the mass expulsion should stop.
Until recently, he was Professorial Research Fellow at the UWI Graduate Institute of International Relations. In 2010, he was appointed United Nations Secretary General’s Personal Representative on the Guyana-Venezuela Border Controversy. In 2002-2011, he was a Board Member of the South Centre and served as Vice Chairman from 2006 to 2011. Since 2009, he has been a member of the United Nations Committee on Development Policy. He has been Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States, Professor of Development Studies and Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies, and head of the National Planning Agency of the Government of Jamaica.
He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at the University College of the West Indies and his PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics. He has published extensively on the political economy of development in the Caribbean and the Global South.
He is the recipient of several honours and awards. Regarding his role in the Guyana/Venezuela border controversy, the UN had said that he would assist the two countries in resolving the long-standing issue.
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