Caribbean privacy regulations fast-changing, complex
Ten years ago, only five Caribbean countries had privacy legislation in place.
Today, thirteen of the 15 CARICOM Members States have either enacted data protection laws or are taking steps to do so. Most Dutch territories and overseas French departments have privacy laws in effect. The story is similar in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean also.
At the date of this article, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has prepared a bill that it hopes will lead to unified legislation for all its territories.
Things have been changing fast.
Despite all the movement on a similar path, the regulatory requirements for data protection and privacy in the region do not all mirror each other. Differences in definitions of core concepts (who is a data subject, what is personal information etc), the relevant threshold for reporting breaches, and even compliance timelines, are just some of the myriad ways in which privacy laws diverge. This can make it difficult, particularly for organisations that operate in several jurisdictions, to maintain effective oversight of their compliance obligations.
Businesses forced to change in complex regulatory environment
Understanding that the landscape is diverse, and complex is just one of the compliance challenges. Added to that are organisational misconceptions, built up over decades, about the role of privacy in generating and collecting personal data. The practical result: years of collecting large volumes of (sometimes unnecessary) data on customers and employees which statutorily-backed privacy principles now require organisations to minimise and identify lawful bases for processing it in the first place.
The entrance of data privacy laws now mean entities are faced with the task of imploring their (sometimes long-standing) vendors and suppliers to update their data protection practices or risk being exposed to regulatory fines and potential reputational harm.
With a combined population of roughly 20 million, the CARICOM Member States and Associates Members are, with some exceptions, united by a common language (English) and shared colonial heritage. However, business practices in each country have evolved in directions that reflect a milieu of factors, including population size, major industries and even their stage of development. With close to three million residents, Jamaica is the most populous of the English-speaking countries, and Montserrat with about 5,000, the least. Tourism is the main industry in many territories, but consumer services, banking and finance, manufacturing and petroleum are also significant drivers in others.
When we zoom out to look at the wider Caribbean, including the Francophone, Spanish and Dutch-speaking territories, the complexity and diversity grows even more.
GDPR-inspired commonalities
One ground on which data protection in the region has seen some uniformity is the inclusion of aspects of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
A 2020 study by the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean examined this alignment in the data protection laws of six countries— Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cayman Islands, and Jamaica.
“Three of the newer laws, Barbados’ Data Protection Act 2019, the Cayman Islands’ Data Protection Law 2017 and Jamaica’s Data Protection Act 2020, have at least one area of full alignment and several areas of substantial alignment. These recently enacted laws have benefited from being drafted to achieve close alignment with international best practice for data protection, following the adoption of the GDPR in 2016,” a report on the study said.
Sector-specific regulation adds to the compliance considerations
In line with the enactment of broad-based legislation, sector specific laws have been passed by legislatures throughout the region and industry-specific bodies have also published their own data protection and cybersecurity-focused regulations.
The Central Bank of Barbados, for example, published its Technology and Cyber Risk Guideline in 2023 to govern banking entities in the financial services space. The Dominican Republic has passed laws around the protection of data that is specific to the telecoms space.
What all this means for Companies in the Caribbean
The pace of promulgation of different laws and regulations to govern data privacy has been advancing rapidly across the Caribbean. With nations differing in size and economic priorities, the resulting compliance landscape is complex. This demands a thoughtful approach to strategically integrating the various requirements into a cohesive compliance and governance programme by organisations while maintaining efficiency and cost-effectiveness as the lode star.
Do you need support with making sense of how these various data privacy laws and regulations translate into actionable compliance steps? Get in touch and learn how we can help.