Even as it’s true that Caricom has not
taken as much public credit for its current efforts for and concern over Haiti,
that country’s systemic difficulties have always been beyond the reach of the
regional grouping.
Yet, fully expect a painfully sincere
declaration and recommitment to assist (even more) when the Caricom Summit
closes in Montego Bay next week.
I don’t believe there is anything
particularly hypocritical about all this, except that our limitations are not
always fully acknowledged and the language of migrant rights in all our states
too often closely resembles what is accompanying ethnic purges elsewhere - near
and far.
The fact is this goes way beyond the
frequent, poetic refrain of “Haiti I’m sorry.” When emotions reach the point of
tangible intervention to change objective circumstance reality can sometimes
hit you squarely and firmly on the nose, as it has in this case.
Between provisional Caricom membership in
1998 and the full embrace of 2002, I truly believe there was every intention by
regional family of making a critical difference in the lives of Haitian people.
Back in the mid-90s then Jamaican prime
minister PJ Patterson and others had led eloquent expression of a process to
widen the integration movement and this helped open a welcoming institutional
door to Haiti.
I happened to be in Port-au-Prince as part
of a Caricom mission that followed US-led Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994
and the eventual return of forcibly exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
I recognised then, there was always cause
to be “sorry”, but that the depths of multi-layered crisis require the might of
guns and troops and global influence but only alongside the kind of
rehabilitative effort that emerges from within. Fixed templates of
interventionist rescue are woefully inadequate.
Today, there is little to suggest that a
turnaround from the deadly momentum set in train with the assassination of
Jovenel Moïse in 2021 is anywhere near the horizon. Even diplomatic temperance,
evidenced as fraternal wrist-tapping and regret within Caricom, is being
withheld by other international groupings including the OAS and the UN.
For example, UN Human Rights Chief Volker
Türk was minded, via UN dispatch less than a week ago, to exclaim that “the
human rights crisis in Haiti has plummeted to a new low” – as if it were
conceivable that violent mayhem could plumb depths beyond the kind of fatal
despair witnessed over decades.
And what is this current reality? This
cause for the deepest concern? Since 2021, the reach of militant insurgency
(expressed publicly as the work of “gangs”) has expanded beyond Port-au-Prince.
It is estimated that more than 1.3 million
people have been internally displaced (not including those externally displaced
and ritualistically turned back at sea and by air by neighbours to the north
and south).
The UN Human Rights Office estimates that
at least 2,680 people were killed between January 1 and May 30, including 54
children. True, this does not match the 17,000 plus babies and children
slaughtered in Gaza or the numbers being tallied in the conflict in Sudan. But
this is in our neighbourhood and among regional family.
Antigua and Barbuda’s US/OAS diplomatic
representative, Ron Sanders (who is not widely known for pulling his punches)
has been consistent in addressing the hemispheric imperatives of the Haitian
“maelstrom” and recently hinted at geo-politically motivated indifference.
He pointed to the fact that “(t)he United
Nations Security Council has repeatedly renewed the mandate of the Kenya-led
Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to support Haiti’s stabilisation
efforts.”
However, as Sanders argues, “China and
Russia - two of the five veto powers in the Security Council - have opposed the
idea, arguing that peacekeepers are meant to maintain peace, not combat urban
crime or rescue dysfunctional states.”
Sanders’ observation said aloud what the
recent meeting of the Caricom Council for Foreign and Community Relations
(COFCOR) politely refused to publicly address in its May 9 conference
communiqué.
Meanwhile, the Caricom-inspired
Presidential Transition Council (CPT), even in the words of COFCOR, is now
subject to “growing mistrust.” Such a condition is of the deadly variety and,
in a sense, indicates an inability to effectively excavate internal political
resilience and accompanying mechanisms to activate it.
Caricom’s Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on
Haiti comprises seasoned hands and heads and their most recent initiatives
require broad support, but optimism is running understandably thin.
Respectfully, though, the region’s support
for Haiti does not amount to zero and needs to continue in some fashion, but it
has clearly reached its limit.
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