Even as it’s true that Cari­com has not tak­en as much pub­lic cred­it for its cur­rent ef­forts for and con­cern over Haiti, that coun­try’s sys­temic dif­fi­cul­ties have al­ways been be­yond the reach of the re­gion­al group­ing.

Yet, ful­ly ex­pect a painful­ly sin­cere de­c­la­ra­tion and recom­mit­ment to as­sist (even more) when the Cari­com Sum­mit clos­es in Mon­tego Bay next week.

I don’t be­lieve there is any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal about all this, ex­cept that our lim­i­ta­tions are not al­ways ful­ly ac­knowl­edged and the lan­guage of mi­grant rights in all our states too of­ten close­ly re­sem­bles what is ac­com­pa­ny­ing eth­nic purges else­where—near and far.

The fact is, this goes way be­yond the fre­quent, po­et­ic re­frain of “Haiti, I’m sor­ry.” When emo­tions reach the point of tan­gi­ble in­ter­ven­tion to change ob­jec­tive cir­cum­stance, re­al­i­ty can some­times hit you square­ly and firm­ly on the nose, as it has in this case.

Be­tween pro­vi­sion­al Cari­com mem­ber­ship in 1998 and the full em­brace of 2002, I tru­ly be­lieve there was every in­ten­tion by re­gion­al fam­i­ly of mak­ing a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence in the lives of Hait­ian peo­ple.

Back in the mid-90s, then Ja­maican prime min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son and oth­ers had led elo­quent ex­pres­sion of a process to widen the in­te­gra­tion move­ment and this helped open a wel­com­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al door to Haiti.

I hap­pened to be in Port-au-Prince as part of a Cari­com mis­sion that fol­lowed US-led Op­er­a­tion Up­hold Democ­ra­cy in 1994 and the even­tu­al re­turn of forcibly ex­iled pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide.

I recog­nised then that there was al­ways cause to be “sor­ry,” but that the depths of mul­ti-lay­ered cri­sis re­quire the might of guns and troops and glob­al in­flu­ence, but on­ly along­side the kind of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ef­fort that emerges from with­in. Fixed tem­plates of in­ter­ven­tion­ist res­cue are woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate.

To­day, there is lit­tle to sug­gest that a turn­around from the dead­ly mo­men­tum set in train with the as­sas­si­na­tion of Jovenel Moïse in 2021 is any­where near the hori­zon. Even diplo­mat­ic tem­per­ance, ev­i­denced as fra­ter­nal wrist-tap­ping and re­gret with­in Cari­com, is be­ing with­held by oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al group­ings, in­clud­ing the OAS and the UN.

For ex­am­ple, UN Hu­man Rights Chief Volk­er Türk was mind­ed, via UN dis­patch less than a week ago, to ex­claim that “the hu­man rights cri­sis in Haiti has plum­met­ed to a new low”—as if it were con­ceiv­able that vi­o­lent may­hem could plumb depths be­yond the kind of fa­tal de­spair wit­nessed over decades.

And what is this cur­rent re­al­i­ty? This cause for the deep­est con­cern? Since 2021, the reach of mil­i­tant in­sur­gency (ex­pressed pub­licly as the work of “gangs”) has ex­pand­ed be­yond Port-au-Prince.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that more than 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple have been in­ter­nal­ly dis­placed (not in­clud­ing those ex­ter­nal­ly dis­placed and rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly turned back at sea and by air by neigh­bours to the north and south).

The UN Hu­man Rights Of­fice es­ti­mates that at least 2,680 peo­ple were killed be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and May 30, in­clud­ing 54 chil­dren. True, this does not match the 17,000 plus ba­bies and chil­dren slaugh­tered in Gaza or the num­bers be­ing tal­lied in the con­flict in Su­dan. But this is in our neigh­bour­hood and among re­gion­al fam­i­ly.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da’s US/OAS diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Ron Sanders (who is not wide­ly known for pulling his punch­es), has been con­sis­tent in ad­dress­ing the hemi­spher­ic im­per­a­tives of the Hait­ian “mael­strom” and re­cent­ly hint­ed at geo-po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed in­dif­fer­ence.

He point­ed to the fact that the “Unit­ed Na­tions Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil has re­peat­ed­ly re­newed the man­date of the Kenya-led Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port (MSS) mis­sion to sup­port Haiti’s sta­bil­i­sa­tion ef­forts.”

How­ev­er, as Sanders ar­gues, “Chi­na and Rus­sia—two of the five ve­to pow­ers in the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil—have op­posed the idea, ar­gu­ing that peace­keep­ers are meant to main­tain peace, not com­bat ur­ban crime or res­cue dys­func­tion­al states.”

Sanders’ ob­ser­va­tion said aloud what the re­cent meet­ing of the Cari­com Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (COF­COR) po­lite­ly re­fused to pub­licly ad­dress in its May 9 con­fer­ence com­mu­niqué.

Mean­while, the Cari­com-in­spired Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion Coun­cil (CPT), even in the words of COF­COR, is now sub­ject to “grow­ing mis­trust.” Such a con­di­tion is of the dead­ly va­ri­ety and, in a sense, in­di­cates an in­abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly ex­ca­vate in­ter­nal po­lit­i­cal re­silience and ac­com­pa­ny­ing mech­a­nisms to ac­ti­vate it.

Cari­com’s Em­i­nent Per­sons Group (EPG) on Haiti com­pris­es sea­soned hands and heads and their most re­cent ini­tia­tives re­quire broad sup­port, but op­ti­mism is run­ning un­der­stand­ably thin.

Re­spect­ful­ly, though, the re­gion’s sup­port for Haiti does not amount to ze­ro and needs to con­tin­ue in some fash­ion, but it has clear­ly reached its lim­it.