The Bureau of Heads of Government of Caricom has mandated the Caricom Secretariat to establish this unit, which will be led by Caricom Assistant Secretary-General, Foreign and Community Relations, Ambassador Colin Granderson, the Caricom Secretariat at Turkeyen said in a recent news release.
The extended Bureau met in Paramaribo, Suriname, on Friday, hours before the start of a two-day Special Summit on Youth, to discuss principally the situation in Haiti.
According to the release, the Heads of Government received reports from Granderson, and Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) Jeremy Collymore, on the situation in Haiti and Caricom’s relief efforts.
Both Granderson and Collymore were recently in Haiti and they also attended a Coordination Committee Meeting in Montreal, Canada, on January 25 which laid the groundwork for an international conference on the reconstruction of Haiti.
The unit will liaise with CDEMA and other agencies involved in the Caricom response to the disaster.
Member states and associate members will be asked to identify focal points to work with the unit. The unit will work closely with Caricom’s special envoy on Haiti, the former Prime Minister of Jamaica, PJ Patterson.
The release said the Bureau also agreed on ensuring the continued operations in Haiti of the Jamaica contingent which has been on the ground since January 13 underpinning the Caricom relief effort.
Jamaica is the sub-regional focal point in the regional disaster response system established by CDEMA, the regional response mechanism.
