The often-voiced commitment to the betterment of the people made by a government of a country must be judged by what policy measures it designs and implements to assist the most vulnerable people to achieve a better quality of life. The same standard holds for the international community.

The most vulnerable countries in the international community are those that, based on the difficulty of their circumstances, are finding it hardest to achieve a decent and improving quality of economic and social development for their citizens. Put another way, those countries whose development prospects and opportunities are severely constrained by poverty and/or small size.

Small developing countries, particularly small island developing states, widely known now as SIDS, have to struggle to overcome the disadvantages of being small in land area, population, and GDP. Small size is not an insurmountable barrier to economic development, but it is an additional constraint. For example, small size deprives production benefits related to economies of scale and scope.

Since small island developing states are among the most vulnerable economies in the world, then the international community, if it is genuinely committed to economic development for all countries — as is often professed — must put in place measures to assist these countries. In this regard, the onus must be on the most able, which are the rich, to help developed countries.

The governments of the developed countries, however, resile from the commitment to help small island developing states by pointing out that many of them, including those in the Caribbean, have relatively high per capita incomes. This is a disingenuous technique which deliberately obscures the vulnerability of these economies.

The point is that these SIDS are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances, but they remain vulnerable to a single exogenous event, such as the price of oil or a hurricane, that can discombobulate the economy and set back or obliterate progress already made, often at great sacrifice.

Rather than helping these countries to help themselves, the developed countries have deprived them of assistance. The Caribbean is a clear example. The developed countries have dismantled preferential trade arrangements for bananas entering the European Union market, graduated countries from most concessional financing, sought to squeeze them out of the niche of offshore financing, blocked funding for projects in so-called high-end tourism, and imposed stringent International Monetary Fund programmes, for example Jamaica’s, which is far harsher than that on Greece.

The developed countries must live and let live. Their governments make provisions for the vulnerable in their own countries such as small businesses and small farmers. They must make provisions for the vulnerable countries in the world community.