What OACPS is and how it works

The clause that names no place

The admission rule sits in one article and it has two limbs. On the recommendation of the Committee of Ambassadors, the Council of Ministers may recommend to the Summit that membership be granted to independent states belonging to the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions, or to independent states with comparable economic structures or needs, irrespective of their geographical location. Admission then turns on three tests: recognition by a majority of the members, a commitment to be bound by the agreement, and the ability and willingness to assume the rights and obligations it carries. The Summit decides by consensus on the Council's recommendation, and an applicant is admitted on depositing an instrument of accession.

The second limb is what makes the grouping unusual. Most groupings take a place as the entry condition and settle the roster by reading a map. This one names three regions and then says, in the same article, that a state outside all three may qualify on its economic structure instead. Every member on the roster today sits inside the first limb, and the second is written into the text regardless.

Internally the organisation is not divided into three either. The agreement organises it on six geographical regions, Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, or any other configuration the Summit agrees to. The Caribbean in that list is wider than the sea it is named after: Belize sits on the Central American isthmus, and Guyana and Suriname on the South American mainland.

The negotiation came first and the organisation second

The first Lome Convention was signed in Togo on 28 February 1975, between the European Economic Community and forty-six African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. The Georgetown Agreement was signed at Georgetown, Guyana, on 6 June 1975 and entered into force on 12 February 1976. The order is the point. The states bargained as a bloc before they constituted themselves as one, and the institution took the shape of the bargaining: its Secretariat stands in Brussels, in the city where the institutions on the other side of the table sit, and the revised text still provides that the Summit may move it to a member state if it decides to.

The founding text made English and French the working languages. The revised text makes English, French, Portuguese and Spanish official, together with any other language the Summit stipulates, which is a fair record of how the membership grew after 1975.

Cotonou, and the member outside it

The Cotonou Agreement was signed at Cotonou on 23 June 2000 and entered into force on 1 April 2003. It was revised on 25 June 2005 and again on 22 June 2010, was due to expire on 29 February 2020, and was carried forward by successive decisions of the joint Council of Ministers to no later than 31 October 2023.

Cuba is a member of this organisation and was never a party to that agreement. The European Parliament's briefings on the partnership record the gap plainly: the membership of the group and the list of parties to the European partnership have been two different lists since 2000. Anyone reading the roster here as the roster of a European aid programme is reading it wrong by at least one country.

A common part, and three protocols

The successor was signed at Apia on 15 November 2023 and has been applied provisionally since 1 January 2024. Its structure is a general part that binds every party, with three regional protocols that bind the European side and the African, the Caribbean and the Pacific members respectively. A member is therefore bound by the common text and by one protocol, not by all three, and what the partnership obliges of a country here depends on which region it sits in. Full entry into force waits on the European Union, its member states, and two thirds of the membership on this page depositing their consent.

The name changed before most of the members had ratified

Decision No. 1/CX/19 was taken by the Council of Ministers at its 110th session in Nairobi on 7 December 2019 and endorsed by the Summit of Heads of State and Government at Nairobi on 9 and 10 December 2019. The revised agreement enters into force thirty days after being signed or ratified by one third of the members, which is a low bar by design. Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines carried the tally over that threshold in the second week of March 2020, and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States became the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States on 5 April 2020. Ratifications by other members went on for years after the name had changed.

Leaving runs the other way and takes longer. A member that decides to withdraw notifies the Summit in writing through the Secretary General, and the agreement ceases to apply to that state one year from the date of the notice unless the notice is revoked. Financial obligations already assumed survive the departure.

Where the edges are argued

The roster reaches across Africa, the Americas, Oceania and Asia as this catalogue files them, and no single one of the three regions in the organisation's name describes it. Timor-Leste is filed here in Asia and counted by the organisation among its Pacific members. Both filings are in print and neither is settled on this page.

The Cook Islands and Niue are parties to the agreement and hold no seat at the United Nations. This catalogue files both as dependencies rather than as sovereign states, and the admission article speaks of independent states; both are in free association with New Zealand and both sign treaties in their own name. The catalogue records the position each document takes and takes none of its own.