OAS says CARICOM has role to play in Haiti’s future direction

WASHINGTON (CMC):

The Secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Albert Ramdin, on Wednesday said the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping will have a “critical role” to play in the ongoing efforts to restore stability and security in Haiti.

Ramdin, addressing the OAS Permanent Council on ‘Towards a Haitian-Led Roadmap for Stability and Peace with Regional and International Support’, said that there is need for more effective coordination in a transparent manner, providing all the information available to all member states, allowing them to pinpoint what and where they can do more.

The Roadmap is a hemispheric proposal to support Haiti that seeks to link immediate stabilisation with long-term structural reforms. It is conceived as a flexible and dynamic framework, informed by Haitian leadership and by close coordination with regional and international partners.

“So coordination, in the first instance, in the Inter-American system; the coordination role will also be with CARICOM and with the United Nations. But as we speak for the hemisphere, it will be for the OAS.

“We will facilitate as much as can be political support…because beyond that we can’t go. We do not have a mandate for peacekeeping operations to manage,’ he said, adding that “we can do a lot in the context of facilitating that process”.

Ramdin said that the 15-member CARICOM grouping, which also includes Haiti, will play a critical role “and they have done, already, a lot of good work in terms of political facilitation with Haitian stakeholders”.

He said whether that needs to be expanded or not is up for discussion, and it will be done in close cooperation with the Haitian authorities, including the Transitional Presidential Council and the prime minister’s office.

‘Engagements with the Haitian stakeholders are important in the context of one of the issues that we have to deal with, and that is the expiration of the term in office of the Transitional Presidential Council, whose mandate ends in early February next year.

“We need to see what will come after, because this is not a pLan for six months only. This is far longer. So that is a political issue, and we believe that CARICOM can be very helpful. And with the support of both the OAS and the UN, we look forward to the guidance of their experience on the engagement process,” Ramdin said.

He said that for the United Nations, the peacekeeping mandate remains within the remit of the UN Security Council(UNSC) and “the possibility of a resolution to fine-tune how that is going to work in the future, I hope that will be brought to the table of the UNSC very quickly”.