Much effort required in 2025 – outgoing CARICOM Chair on Haiti

…as Barbados set to takeover chairmanship

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will have to step up its efforts in the new year to ensure safety and security for the people of Haiti.
This is according to outgoing Chairman of CARICOM, Dickon Mitchell – the Prime Minister of Grenada.
In his year-end statement on Friday, PM Mitchell recalled that CARICOM leaders focused on resuming functional governance and security in Haiti during this past year, through engagement with Haiti’s political leadership, and facilitation with political, religious, private sector and civil society stakeholders by the CARICOM Eminent Persons Group (EPG).
“These engagements with key Haitian stakeholders led to consensus on the formation and installation of a Haitian-owned and led Transitional Presidential Council; selection of a Prime Minister and a Cabinet of Ministers; and the arrival of the first troops of the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission. The consensus remains very delicate and will require much effort in 2025,” the outgoing CARICOM Chair stated.
Despite in the installation of the new transitional Government back in April and the deployment of an international force by the Kenyan police officers in June, Haitians continue to suffer from heightened gang violence which were exacerbated after the 2021 assassination of President, Jovenel Moïse.

According to international reports, an estimated 85 per cent of Port-au-Prince is still under gang control.
The United Nations (UN) said some 5,000 people have been killed in violence in Haiti this year alone. In fact, only earlier this month, between December 6 to 11, over 200 Haitians including older people and vodou religious were killed by a gang in the Wharf Jeremie neighbourhood in Cite Soleil.
Then on Tuesday, two journalists and a police officer were killed by another gang at the reopening of the country’s biggest public hospital in Port-au-Prince. It was reported that the hospital had recently been recaptured from gangs by the Haitian Government in July.
Meanwhile, during the past year, PM Mitchell noted that CARICOM held true to the commitment to decisive leadership and collective action as intrinsic pillars to propel the prosperity and well-being of citizens of the Region.
This strong sense of Community, he added, was especially evident during this year’s Atlantic Hurricane Season, when CARICOM Member States rallied to support those who were adversely affected by Hurricane Beryl and other weather systems.
The Fourth International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) hosted in May saw a new ten-year programme of action, the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS, being articulated. There were also key high-level international meetings to address the ongoing challenges of the impact of climate change.
On Digital Resilience, the Grenadian Leader championed the Strategic Digital Resilience Framework 2030 at the July Meeting of CARICOM Heads of Government. “This was supported by existing plans for the CARICOM Single ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) Space, including digital skills and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Further bold and decisive action is particularly crucial as we prepare for 2025 and beyond, where the pace of regional and global change will demand a CARICOM that is digitally capable and resilient,” he stated.
To support food and nutrition security efforts, a regional agricultural insurance product was launched to assist CARICOM farmers. We ensured the involvement of women and young people with CARICOM BOOST – a two-year $1.6 million project to enhance sustainable production, climate resilience, and profitability for women and youth farmer groups across 10 CARICOM Member States. Additionally, a Regional Youth in Agriculture Strategy also heightened focus on education, capacity-building and market linkages.
Allied to the objective of reducing the food import bills has been efforts to increase air and maritime connectivity, to support, among other things, the regional transportation of food. Consequently, the Multilateral Air Services Agreement (MASA) is now in force in almost all Member States, and there has been significant increase in regional airlift and connectivity. Moreover, progress has been made on sea transportation following the announcement from Guyana, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago of a new ferry service.
“Underpinning all these activities has been attention to health and well-being; human and cultural capital development; youth participation, empowerment and development; and crime prevention and justice reform.  A key activity in this regard was the Second Regional Symposium on Crime and Violence, hosted by Barbados in Guyana, in November, which advanced critical knowledge sharing on successful preventative interventions for crime and violence in the Caribbean,” PM Mitchell stated.
He went onto to mention the continued partnerships with Third States, as CARICOM hosted a series of successful high-level engagements to discuss cooperation, including a Summit with the Republic of India,  an engagement with Brazil,  meetings with Canada and Japan, and representation in critical international fora such as the Fourth International SIDS Conference, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa, COP29 in Azerbaijan, the UN Summit of the Future, and the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly in  New York.
“Through it all, our modus operandi has been to speak with one voice and to premise all our interactions on the vision of a Caribbean Community, which is truly “A Community for All”,” the outgoing CARICOM Chair posited.
PM Mitchel will now be passing on the CARICOM Chairmanship to Barbados’s Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, expressing confidence that under her leadership, the Community will decisively further its integration goals.