LaRocque to be given Caribbean’s highest award

Outgoing CARICOM Secretary General, Irwin LaRocque of Dominica.  caricom.org
Outgoing CARICOM Secretary General, Irwin LaRocque of Dominica.
caricom.org

Former Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General, Irwin LaRocque is to be awarded The Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC).

The communique issued following the recent CARICOM Inter-Sessional Summit in San Pedro, Belize, said the Dominican-born LaRocque, who served as served as secretary general from 2011 to 2021, is being honored for “his services to the Community.”

The Order of the Caribbean Community is an award given to “Caribbean nationals whose legacy in the economic and cultural metamorphoses of Caribbean society is phenomenal.”

The award was initiated at the English Conference of Heads of State and Governments of CARICOM in 1987 and was first bestowed in 1992.

LaRocque, the seventh CARICOM secretary general, began his service at the Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat in September 2005, when he assumed the position of assistant secretary general Trade and Economic Integration, providing strategic leadership for the continuing implementation and further development of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).