BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbados has become the latest Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country to indicate that it will participate in a multinational security force seeking to restore peace and stability in Haiti.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Kerrie Symmonds.Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Kerrie D. Symmonds, said that Bridgetown will be providing support to the proposed United Nations Security Council-authorized multinational security force for Haiti.
He said that the support will come in the form of security personnel dispatched in coordination with the Barbados-based Regional Security System (RSS).
Barbados will join the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda as well as Belize that have already indicated a willingness to be part of the multi-national force to be led by Kenya.
Earlier this week, Belize Prime Minister John Briceño said CARICOM has a “moral responsibility to do something” regarding the situation in Haiti, noting “as you all know that Haiti is a really bad state and innocent people are being murdered, women are being raped, even children are being raped.
“And, it is just a sense of lawlessness and I believe we in CARICOM have a moral responsibility to do something,” Briceño told reporters.
CARICOM leaders addressing the just concluded 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) had used the occasion to urge the international and more particularly, the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution allowing for the multi-disciplinary force to enter in Haiti.
Haitian Prime Minister Dr. Ariel Henry, told the UNGA last Friday that he had “come here today on behalf of the people of Haiti to tell you that we are ready for that change we have been waiting for almost two centuries”.
But he noted that “freedom can only be complete if it enables each citizen to live in dignity and descent conditions”.
Ariel, who heads the interim government here following the July 7, 2021 assassination of President Jovennel Moise, has in the past called on the international community to send in a multi-national force to maintain peace and security in the country.
In its statement on Wednesday, Barbados said that it will also provide additional in-kind support in the form of training and capacity-building to the Haitian government on the basis of jointly-identified objectives.
