Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders head to bloc headquarters Guyana this week for the first of their biannual summits, with the situation in strife-torn Haiti a key agenda item, as a number of member states say they are ready to send police officers and soldiers to the country as part of a multinational peacekeeping and support force to assist local police.
What’s left of Haiti’s shaky and beleaguered government has asked the international community to put together a force to help local police dismantle heavily armed gangs that have been ravaging the country for the past three years, especially in the aftermath of the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise at the hands of hired mercenaries.
Police in Haiti and in the U.S. have arrested several people linked to the plot to kill Moise. Some have been convicted and sentenced in the U.S. Others remain in detention in Haiti.
The issue dominated the past two summits in the Bahamas last February, and the other in Trinidad in July. Several regional countries, especially the Bahamas and Jamaica, have already identified and trained police and soldiers for deployment to Haiti, but this has been stymied by a recent court ruling in Kenya deeming Kenyan participation as illegal.
Kenya had agreed to be the lead country in the deployment, but deployment has been delayed by the recent court ruling. Haiti, with the help of the U.S. and Canada, is now working out a bilateral request agreement to get around the ruling and allow for boots to be deployed to the country of more than 11 million people as gangs continue to kill people, burn and loot buildings, and extort money from others.
It is unclear whether Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has resisted widespread calls for his resignation, will attend the summit, but officials at the Guyana-based Caricom secretariat say the leaders will hear from a three-person group of former prime ministers they had appointed last year to try to broker a peace deal in the country, bring disparate stakeholders together to help Haiti prepare for fresh elections nationwide.
Because of the protracted crisis, the island is operating with no functioning parliament or elected officials. The same is true for the mayorship of several towns.
The eminent persons group, composed of former prime ministers Bruce Golding of Jamaica, Perry Christie of the Bahamas, and Kenneth Anthony of St. Lucia, is expected to brief the leaders on the progress of their mediation with various political and civil society groups, having held several rounds of discussions with them in bothHaiti and Jamaica in the past year. They have reported encouraging signs from the sessions.
Haiti is the last nation to join the 15-nation integration grouping, back in 2002. The Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Turks and Caicos islands, all of which are close neighbors to Haiti, have said they are most anxious for a solution to the crisis because they are often the recipients of hundreds of refugees.
“The Bahamas remains committed to helping the people of Haiti find peace and stability,” Bahamas PM Phillip Davis told a recent international conference in Uganda. “Along with other members of Caricom, we remain committed to help the Haitian people find a Haitian solution, led by the people of Haiti.
“In the face of humanitarian and other disasters, we consider that there is a moral imperative to help, but we also do so in the knowledge that our own national interest is well-served by having peace and security in Haiti. Their misery translates into surges in irregular migration, resulting in security issues at and within our borders.”
Other key agenda items include preparation and planning for the T/20 Cricket World Cup, which the various member states are hosting in June; energy and food security; improving the regional single market and economic system; climate change challenges; and border issues, including the simmering Guyana-Venezuela demarcation row and the Belize-Guatemala border line claim.
Specially invited guests will include Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had helped to stave of possible military conflict between Guyana and Venezuela in December by brokering peace talks; Ilan Goldfajn, president, Inter-American Development Bank; Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Saudi Arabia; and Reem al Hashimy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Some leaders are also expected to attend the summit of Latin American and Caribbean states (CELAC) that follows immediately after in the Eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent.
