Caricom’s Haiti question

A few weeks ago, a seasoned career diplomat asked me the shocking question: “What can Caricom do about Haiti?”

I replied tersely: “An honest response to your question will make me hate myself.”

After all, who am I? Haiti’s continued disintegration has been the subject of numerous academic studies and diplomatic actions and is the focus of constant attention by multilateral financial institutions, global NGOs, parachute journalists, and by no means least, the gaze of rich and powerful nations.

I made my first visit to the country in 1994 not long after the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide following his expulsion in the coup d'état of September 1991. A Caricom staffer at the time I was the least of the apostles, with a camera and notepad. I subsequently visited twice, on other assignments.

More than a year after the 2010 earthquake that claimed at least 200,000 lives, while on the way to the south, I noted that the streets of Port-au-Prince remained littered with rubble. I thought then that the government should have insisted that self-serving NGOs and missionaries flooding the country should have had to clear at least some portion of the mess before getting down to whatever they were there to do.

I also knew that remote, single-cause and over-simplified resort by ideologues to the tale of colonial depravities had been insufficient to grasp contemporary disorders.

Inspired in part by CLR James’s 1958 “natural unity” case for the Commonwealth Caribbean and Haiti, some regional politicians and officials had aggressively advanced the case for Haitian accession to the Caricom grouping.

For contrast, by 1994, full membership by Suriname – another non-English speaking nation with a different history, constitution, and systems of law and politics – was short months away.

Suriname’s integration into the community experienced bumps and diversions in the early years, but grew into a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship.

Haiti however presented a qualitatively different challenge. It remained a target for opportunistic foreign interference, possessed of chronic socio-political dysfunctionality including systemic inequality, plagued by abysmally low economic performance, and lacked basic resilience in the face of high vulnerability to natural disasters.

In 1994, with the supposed return to democratic functionality, Caricom had offered support in strengthening the public service - as if the remnants of our own embrace of British colonial civil service culture had not included serial challenges of their own.

I remember the long table at Hôtel Montana and the smug offer of orderliness in government business in the midst of an environment in which the notion of a cohesive state was virtually non-existent beyond the walls of the National Palace.

Those talks went nowhere. In fact, the main feature of the ongoing relationship has been in the area of diplomatic support. It is not that Haiti has been the movement’s most reliable ally either. Reciprocation has been uneven, and the flare-ups have been sharply instructive. Loyalty is clearly among the main casualties of survival mode.

Regionally inspired development support has also been problematic at best, and satisfaction of needs left largely to arrangements resulting from geo-political shenanigans.

PetroCaribe funding, for example, led to what has been described as “an orgy of corruption”, and the presence of other global powers has been financially bountiful but minus durable, long-term results.

Numerous international NGOs, faith-based organisations, and other philanthropic agencies of all varieties have been engaged.

Yet, the country’s pandemic response has been among the most appallingly deficient. The health sector is in shambles. Current vaccine uptake is around 2%.

The much-adored Barbados lifted, then reimposed, visa requirements for Haitian visitors while most of the rest of us never budged. Visa-free Guyana became a transit point for Haitian economic migrants.

Back in 2001, the very first act of the Association of Caribbean Media Workers was a call for justice in the murder of renowned journalist/broadcaster Jean Dominique.

Last Sunday, Haitian freelance journalist, Romelo Vilsaint, was killed by the police in Port-au-Prince while protesting the detention of a colleague. This followed the murder of radio journalist, Garry Tess, and just over a week ago, the shooting of Le Nouvelliste reporter, Roberson Alphonse.

Last week, Alphonse’s newspaper – the country’s most reputable news publication, founded in 1898 – painfully suspended its print edition over security fears.

I have spoken with journalists there who now venture out only after elaborate planning. Gangs rule and what calls itself a government has summoned external intervention (again). There is thus an open invitation to invasion.

Land today, at Toussaint Louverture, and tell me what you see, feel, hear.

What can Caricom do about Haiti? Can we honestly, without guilt and self-loathing, answer the question?