Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Suriname; and Trinidad and Tobago. Two further states, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, signed the agreement on 15 February 2003, bringing the total number of signatories to 12. The Bahamas and Haiti, though full members of the CARICOM, are not yet signatories, and because of Montserrat's status as a British territory, they must await Instruments of Entrustment from the UK in order to ratify. The Agreement Establishing the Caribbean Court of Justice came into force on 23 July 2003, and the CCJ was inaugurated on 16 April 2005 in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, the seat of the Court. Appellate jurisdiction The birth of the CCJ came after a long and arduous period of planning. In March 1970, the Organisation of Commonwealth Caribbean Bar Associations (OCCBA) first raised the issue of the need to replace the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the court of last resort for the Commonwealth Caribbean by a regional court of appeal. Again in Jamaica, in April 1970, at the Sixth Commonwealth Caribbean Heads of Government, the Jamaican delegation tabled a proposal on setting up a regional Court of Appeal and the heads further agreed to take action on relinquishing the Privy Council as the Anglophone Caribbean's final appeal court and mandated a committee of CARICOM attorneys-general to further explore the question of the establishment of what was then being called a "Caribbean Court of Appeal". Further to the perceived need for an indigenous, regional court as a tribunal of last resort in civil and criminal cases, other factors eventually led to the strong support for the creation of a judicial arm of the CARICOM. In 1972 consideration was being given by the OCCBA for the proposed Caribbean Court of Appeal to serve as both a municipal court of last resort and an international tribunal to adjudicate disputes between CARICOM member states. In 1989 the West Indian Commission established by the CARICOM heads of government endorsed this proposed hybrid jurisdiction without qualification. As Duke Pollard, then director of the Caricom Legislative Drafting Facility, wrote in 2000: "the old Treaty of Chaguaramas provided for arbitration in the event of disputes concerning the interpretation and application of the Treaty. Unfortunately, however, the arbitral procedure was never used and serious disputes were never settled, thereby causing the integration movement to be hampered. Moreover, the rights and obligations created by