As economic and social conditions in Haiti continue to undergo a cataclysmic decline in the face of the collapse of key governance structures, and the replacement of a legitimate political administration with forcibly installed criminal gangs, Haiti has once again reared its head as the Caribbean Community’s ‘tear-away’ delinquent, in the face of mounting evidence that the country’s dire circumstances are, for now at least, outside the ‘control’ of the rest of the Community. Here, it is not a question of engaging in successive rounds of ‘soft’ diplomacy that will lead to the ‘signing off’ by the parties concerned on some kind of remedial arrangement.
Haiti, not for the first time, has opted to ‘sort out’ its internal political differences by having criminal gangs hold sway, for a while at least, and following excursions into the most heinous bouts of bloodletting, returning to a predictable interlude of relative calm under succeeding political administrations that instantly appear as fragile as their predecessors did. Put differently, Haiti’s problems are way above CARICOM’s ‘pay grade.’ What to do about Haiti has become, by far, CARICOM’s most taxing challenging question, the Community’s impotence in the face of an overwhelming ‘family tragedy’ being severe enough to cause the regional movement, more often than not, to keep its distance.