CARICOM to mount fact-finding mission to Haiti

Even though the situation in Haiti is complex and there are a number of views on the way forward, it cannot continue without the intervention of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said at the news briefing following the conclusion of the 31st Inter-Sessional CARICOM Summit in Barbados earlier this month.

Skerrit said heads of government agreed to mount a mission led by Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, the CARICOM secretary-general. The mission will also include representatives from the Bahamas, Barbados and Jamaica.

“We recognize that Haiti is part of the Community and we have a responsibility and a duty and obligation to assist a Member State in unraveling its challenges and to work with it towards lasting solutions,” Skerrit said.

Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who chairs CARICOM, anticipates that the mission would have been completed when regional leaders meet for the CARICOM-Mexico Summit in March.

She expressed satisfaction about engagements with Haitian Foreign Minister Bocchit Edmond, and noted her earlier conversation with Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

“The first step is for us to have the legitimacy and the integrity of facts that we can rely upon, and that therein after we then work with the relevant players to see how best we can work with Haiti to ensure that they don’t face instability within their boundaries,” Mottley said.

The CARICOM chairman also noted that finding a lasting solution to the crisis in Haiti was critical to minimizing the fatalities which occur when citizens risk their lives by attempting to cross treacherous seas to get to places like Turks & Caicos and The Bahamas.