Above: Curacao (Photo: Curacao Tourism)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

CARICOM’s Council of Ministers has agreed to establish a working group to look at issues pertaining to the organization’s associate members, and two territories, Curacao and Sint Maarten, have expressed interest in joining.

There are currently five associate members of CARICOM: Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The Ministers were meeting on Tuesday at a one-day meeting at the CARICOM Secretariat’s headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, and appointed St Lucia to head the working group. The Council of Ministers is the second-highest decision-making body in the Caribbean Community.

Currently, Aruba and the former Netherlands Antilles have been observer members of CARICOM.

In 2005, the Netherlands Antilles made an official request for associate membership, but since its dissolution in 2010 into special municipalities, that seemed to have stalled; the new working group could revive the proposal.

Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are also observers in CARICOM.