Editorial | CARICOM’s obligation to Haiti

Although last weekend’s earthquake in Haiti was not nearly as catastrophic as the one 11 years ago, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), including Jamaica, must be no less generous in its humanitarian relief and support than it was back then. Indeed, CARICOM has a moral and fraternal obligation to help. Which is why we expect the region’s Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency – with Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management as its northern hub – to be already coordinating with the Haitian authorities on the region’s assistance.

CARICOM’s solidarity, however, must not only be about ameliorating the immediate suffering of the Haitian people. It must involve a deeper engagement of the country that includes assistance in building and strengthening Haiti’s institutions of politics and governance, the weaknesses of which are long-standing and notorious. This goes beyond the region’s inability to pour money in Haiti, but to a sharing of intellectual capacity.

To be absolutely clear, although the number pales in comparison to the quarter-million people killed in the 2010 earthquake, the death of at least 1,300 in a single disaster, as has happened in Haiti’s southwestern region, is, in any circumstance, a major trauma. It is decidedly worse for a poor country that has far from recovered from the earlier, and subsequent, catastrophes and is still reeling from the assassination of its president merely a month ago.

CARICOM SUPPORT

In the near term, Haiti’s concentration will likely be on how to provide food, shelter, and medical assistance to its citizens. CARICOM can offer some support on this front. The region has expertise in the logistics of disaster management and relief. And while its health systems, especially Jamaica’s, are stressed by their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our doctors and nurses are skilled in the treatment of medical trauma, help, which is, no doubt, needed in Haiti at this time. Like in 2010, when a contingent of doctors, nurses, and security personnel, led by the Jamaica Defence Force, was among the first outside relief groups to reach the country, Haitians, we expect, will now also welcome Jamaican and other Caribbean expertise.

CARICOM, however, must see any support it offers to Haiti at this time in a context larger than a mere provision of catastrophe relief. It should, in part, be about drawing Haiti, a member state, from the periphery to the centre of the community.

In this regard, CARICOM has to make two important assessments: what is in it for Haiti, and what is the return to CARICOM the institution and its individual members. In other words, CARICOM has to have a reason to persist with the process even when its overtures appear not to be embraced and the community feels it is being marginalised in favour of powerful and influential players like the so-called ‘core group’.

Such persistence starts with appreciating that despite its long history of social and political problems, and its absence of an economic breakthrough, Haiti is not inherently unstable and that its problems are fixable. It should be clear to CARICOM, too, that although Haiti can, no more than the rest of the region, avoid natural catastrophes like earthquakes and hurricanes, its institutional weaknesses exacerbate their impact. A weak and unstable Haiti is less capable of formulating and implementing policies to ensure the safety, security, and well-being of its citizens.

It is in Haiti’s interest, therefore, if its institutions, as too often is the case, do not collapse at the first stress. That begins with building public trust in the institutions of governance and the establishment of polity in which the participants adhere to the established rules. Such things do not just happen. These institutional arrangements have to be systematically worked at, and, in some circumstances, will require coaxing and delicate refereeing.

ARRANGEMENTS NEEDING URGENT ATTENTION

In Haiti, the institutional arrangements needing the most urgent attention are those to determine who gets political power, which is to say its electoral process, in which people have little faith. The legitimacy of the last several presidential legislative elections has been questioned. CARICOM, with member states that have evolved from notoriously bad voting arrangements to good ones, can help Haiti develop a credible electoral system. This, however, is not something to be rushed.

CARICOM, therefore, should impress upon Haiti’s interim leader, Ariel Henry, that the postponement until November of a successor to the assassinated president, Jovenel Moïse, is not sufficient time to establish a voting system that has public trust. Instead, the election should be put off for about 18 months to two years, during which a broad-based unity government would run the country while the new voting arrangements are put in place. This would also provide Haiti with political breathing space while affording key political players an opportunity to begin to develop the art of political negotiation.

For CARICOM, a politically stable Haiti can only contribute to the stability of the Caribbean and, thus, the security of regional states. Further, with a population of over 11 million, Haiti dwarfs the rest of CARICOM combined. Even poor countries import goods and services and offer economic opportunities. Haiti’s CARICOM partners have potential first dibs on its markets. These will be enhanced if Haiti is stable and is enjoying economic growth.

At the bottom line, though, Haiti, for most of the rest of the Caribbean, is kith and kin.