Story on Haiti from the meeting held with Congressmember Clarke on Monday 18 March, 2024.
As the news flash and we, Carib News have carried those news stories – as the phones continue to ring from Haiti of relatives and friends in dire distress, as those calls kept coming, the distress in the diaspora increases. The alarm has been going off for years, but now, it is a time of desperation. Calls are coming into Carib News from many from the Haitian community that we have worked with for years.Carib News has been carrying these stories and the situation seems very dire, Dr. Kernisant and Dr. Compas, whom we ABC have worked with through the years at the annual Business Conference looking at the development in other Caribbean countries, reached out to request that a meeting be organized with our leaders particularly Congressmember Yvette Clarke, who is Chair of the Caribbean Congressional Caucus and Vice Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and who also represents a large Haitian community in her constituency. She has been very keen on helping Haiti and the region in these tough times.
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When Carib News reached out to Rep. Clarke, she was willing to accommodate the request, in spite of her tight schedule to get this done on the same day the request was made. She sensed the urgency and she has been in the in touch with her colleagues and administration the latest information and pushing for action on the part of Haiti.
We were able to get an organized meeting with representative Clarke in two hours. We got more than 30 leaders of the community on the Zoom meeting to discuss with Rep. Clarke for urgent matters of Haiti and hear from her what was in the works as action was needed by the Biden Administration, Congress, CARICOM, UN and all the forces of goodwill to be a solution for Haiti in these desperate times.
Congressmember Clarke gave a full briefing on the efforts bing made on her part to mobilize quickly to the issues or Haiti need for a mobilization of individuals, organizations, and resources to get action particularly from Congress and Republicans in the house because they were blocking the bill to provide the funds to go to Haiti for security and to bring about stability in a vacuum that currently exist of lack of leadership and would bring a faster transition to a government by the people through the election mechanism.
Rep. Clarke shared:
At this stage, with the resignation of Prime Minister Henry, and I don’t believe he’s returned to the island, and I doubt he will, given the current status of what’s taking place.
With respect to the overtaking of governance for lack of a better term, by the gangs, we are in a very critical stage in the life of the Haitian people in Haiti. What the US Government was working on to this point was hopefully to serve as a facilitator and a funder, if you will, of the security forces that have been negotiated to go into Haiti to bring stability and security to the people of Haiti. That has yet to occur. There have been a number of setbacks initially.
Canada was taking the lead. They then stepped back. At another point in time there was a discussion with the Government of Rwanda that did not meet the standards of the US. So that scenario was discarded. And then finally, Kenya stepped up to say that they could lead a security force to Haiti to bring some stability and safety to the nation – them alongside CARICOM, which has been playing a very constructive role!
The prime ministers of the region have really come together to work with Henry to transition out of office, but also to provide whatever resource they could muster, including boots on the ground to help bring stability to Haiti, and the security that’s required in order for there to be some level of governance pursuit in the country that has not taken place yet.
Part of the challenge, quite frankly, has been with the United States Congress. We have been trying to pass an emergency supplement to our appropriations to get funding put in place that would fund the new security force so that we could get boots on the ground in Haiti, push back on the gangs and in the interim, the gangs have just grown in strength and in destabilizing of the nation. We know that recently they enabled a prison break which now adds a whole other level of insecurity to the nation that basically, all of the essential services that provide a lifeline to the people of Haiti have been cut.
Rep. Clarke believes that Haiti has been in this situation for far too long so herself and her colleagues have done a couple of things.
While she agrees this is a crisis that’s been unfolding for more than three years, it will take the effort of everyone to ensure the people of Haiti get help.
1. Recently, alongside Senator Markey of Massachusetts, a letter was sent to the White House asking for an extension, a redesignation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, because we know that under these circumstances, you know, those who are able will most likely try to flee and leave the country, whether it’s to come to the US or other nations in the region, and we want to be able to receive people with dignity and the ability to integrate themselves into the US.
2. We’ve also requested that we provide the resources again for the security force, which is being held up by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives, a gentleman named Michael McCall who chairs the Committee on Foreign Affairs. We want to impress upon them the urgency of the matter that this is not the time to play political games. This is a time for us to be good neighbors and humanitarians, and address this issue head on.
Dr. LaTortue, President of Haitian Medical Association Abroad shared his deep concern for those suffering as the General Hospital closed amidst the chaos. He said, “We always talk about the death from the violence. But nobody ever really addresses the other deaths that occur because of the situation, such as mothers dying given birth, such as diabetics dying because their sugar is not controlled. They’re going to diabetic coma, such as people dying from malnutrition, people dying from dehydration, and I can guarantee you those are far more than those who are dying from gun violence, and that’s a worry.”
He suggested that what needs to happen right now is boots on the ground immediately…“because the longer we wait the tougher will be for Haiti to get back to where it should be.”
