Elections won't solve Haitian crisis, say gov't critics (March 25, 2021)

The U.N. Security Council issued a unified call for Haitian President Jovenel Moïse to tackle the country’s deepening security and institutional problems while advancing preparations to ensure that free, fair and credible legislative and presidential elections take place this year, reports the Miami Herald. Observers say the U.N. statement shows that the U.S., under the Biden administration, is growing more critical of Moïse. 

For some it also shows that the international community is equating democracy to elections, missing other crucial good governance factors. “People need to realize that elections are not inherently equivalent to democracy,” Jake Johnston, a research associate for the Center for Economic and Policy Research told the  New York Times. Moïse is increasingly unpopular, and critics say elections scheduled for this year under his tight control are not a path to democratic legitimacy. Moïse has scheduled a constitutional referendum in June, and a general election later this year, but opposition leaders and legal experts say the whole process is a farce, reports CNN.

"Time is fast running out to avoid further worsening of the situation in Haiti," warns Sir Ronald Sanders, noting that the window for dialogue between President Jovenel Moïse and opponents is closing. (Caribbean News Global) Haitian democratic instability is closely linked to the international community, writes Pooja Bhatia in the London Review of Books. "The US exercises influence without acknowledging it; subverts genuine democrats and then claims they lacked popular support; props up autocrats and ignores both the letter and the spirit of the law in the name of stability and ‘what’s best for Haitians’; preaches self-reliance while flooding Haitian markets with rice grown in Arkansas; evangelises human rights while denying asylum-seekers a chance to show credible fear; propounds elections instead of democracy."

The Security Council statement also recognizes and encourages CARICOM's engagement with Haiti. (Caricom Today)

Immigration advocates called on the U.S. to end deportations to Haiti and offer a new Temporary Protected Status designation for Haitians living in the U.S., a move that would provide immigration protection for thousands of people, reports the Miami Herald. Since February 1, there have been at least 21 ICE charter flights returning no fewer than 1,200 expelled Haitians to Port-au-Prince. The U.S. Biden administration has so far deported more Haitians in a few weeks than the Trump administration did in a whole year, according to a new report, The Invisible Wall, published by a coalition of immigrant rights groups. The deportations have taken place under Title 42, reports the Guardian.

Indigenous and Afro-Descendent Rights

• The Raizal community on Providencia, a Colombian island in the Caribbean, said Colombia's Navy is using hurricane reconstruction tasks as cover for advancing projects on their territory, reports La Silla Vacía. Local leaders are concerned that reconstruction plans by the Colombian government are out of touch with local realities, and could be a foothold for massive tourist development and detrimental to local communities' territorial rights. (Liga Contra el Silencio)

• Raizal leaders and advocates have warned that the destruction wrought by Hurricane Iota last year on the island could contribute to pushing the Afro-Caribbean community off their traditional lands. (See Just Caribbean Updates for March 18 and Dec. 16.) 

• Experts weigh in on the Colombian government's reconstruction failure, 100 days after Hurricane Iota destroyed most of the Providencia's edifications. (Un Periódico)

Climate Justice and Energy

• The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has released a publication that presents a sustainable ocean economy classification for tradable goods and services, applicable to any country at any time. The report emphasizes that classification systems will enable the collection of trade-related and other statistics for the monitoring and analysis of ocean-based sectors at global and national levels, from a supply or a demand perspective, and as a whole or by sector. 

• Oil and gas sectors will play a key role in Guyana's development over the next few years, according to President Irfaan Ali. He projected that there will be at least seven oil producing platforms in Guyana’s waters by the end of 2027 and said foreign capital was crucial to converting the country’s natural resources into wealth. (Stabroek News)

• Flaring at ExxonMobil's Liza Phase One operation in Guyana releases carbon equivalent to the destruction of thousands of acres of the country's forests, reports Kaieteur News.
• Guyana was warned by a host of oil experts and good governance advocates to not rush the approval of Payara, ExxonMobil’s third field development project in the Stabroek Block. The project was approved last September, by the newly installed People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Government for its intended 2024 start-up, reports Kaieteur News.

• According to the Environmental Permit for the Payara Project ExxonMobil, has up to September 23, 2021 to submit an updated Environmental and Socioeconomic Monitoring Plan. (Kaieteur News)

• Guyana needs to secure “solid financial assurance” from Stabroek Block operators to ensure the country is protected in the event of an oil spill, argues international lawyer, Melinda Janki. (Kaieteur News)

• Financing could help entrepreneurs in the Caribbean and Pacific battle the ever more dramatic effects of climate change, according to the Investment Climate Reform Facility.

• CARICOM countries, partnering with the FAO's “Cooperation for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in the Caribbean” initiative, are embarking on a drive to help the region adapt to climate change through the application of digital technologies. (Stabroek News)

Economic and Fiscal Justice

• The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the cracks in the existing development pattern, and revealed its limitations, around the world, but particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, in addition to short-term relief, there must be a response to structural problems. The goal cannot be to reinstate the previous development pattern, but to move towards a new one. A new ECLAC report looks at how the pandemic provides an opportunity for a systemic approach to disaster risk for the Caribbean.

• A new Inter-American Development Bank publication, Economic  Institutions  for  a  Resilient  Caribbean, seeks to offer  a  viable  path  for Caribbean  countries  to  improve  their  economic  institutions,  and  thus their economic performance. 

• A new Eurodad report shows that the coronavirus crisis led to a net negative resource transfer on public debt from developing countries of US$ 194 billion in 2020. The public sector transferred resources to their creditors on a net basis in at least 58 countries. "This figure is a damning indictment of the inadequacy of the ongoing multilateral response to the crisis."

Democratic Governance

• "Puerto Ricans — not Congress — should be allowed to chart their political future, whether that’s statehood or independence," write Tom Perriello and Karina Claudio Betancourt in Roll Call. "This is why supporting a process, instead of backing a specific solution, is the right approach. Process is as important as the outcome following years of imperialism and colonial dynamics that have suffocated a real debate on the issue." (See March 5's Just Caribbean Updates on alternative bills in the U.S. Congress regarding Puerto Rico's political status.)

• Puerto Rico has been granted immediate access to $912 million in U.S. federal funds that had not been available to students in public and private schools on the island as a result of restrictions imposed by the previous administration. (NBC News)
  

Corruption

• A company that was blacklisted by the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) for alleged financial malpractices in Guyana has been awarded a $1.6 million contract for the procurement of laboratory and pathology supplies, reports Kaieteur News.
  

Covid-19 Impact

• A growing number of Jamaican prison inmates have tested positive for Covid-19, and, last week, the Department of Correctional Services placed the entire Hilltop Juvenile Correctional Centre under quarantine following the discovery of a COVID-19 cluster there. (Jamaica Observer)

• Covid-19 vaccines are plentiful in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Locals are hesitant to get the jabs, and roughly 3 percent of the 33,000 Covid-19 vaccines administered thus far have gone to tourists. The case is an example of the many ways in which vaccine access across the world is shaped by race, circumstance and privilege, reports the New York Times.

• Puerto Rican authorities are cracking down on tourists flouting coronavirus health measures, reports the Associated Press.

Human Trafficking

• Bahamian Our Sanctuary has joined an international group of anti-human trafficking organizations by being named to the Global Modern Slavery Directory. (Enews)

• The United States Coast Guard law enforcement teams have interdicted several Caribbean nationals in a suspected human smuggling venture off the south coast of Florida. Since October 1, 2020, the US Coast Guard said crews have interdicted 78 Bahamians, eight Jamaicans, 182 Haitians, 194 Dominican Republicans. (St. Lucia Times)

Culture

• The Getty Conservation Institute worked with communities and cultural experts in Barbados and Jamaica in order to highlight the cultural heritage of both islands in ways that give voice to those who have been historically disenfranchised. Getty developed free, open-source, cultural data management software called Arches, allowing for collaboration with local communities to determine which cultural heritage sites are meaningful to them, a shift that is especially meaningful in post-colonialist regions like the Caribbean, writes Janine Mendes-Franco in Global Voices.

• Negra cubana tenía que ser is a selection of texts published in the last 13 years by Sandra Abd’Allah-Álvarez Ramírez. Many of the pieces incorporate reflections, opinion articles on universal themes, such as racism or gender violence, or more local issues such as gentrification and prostitution in Cuba. In the same way, this volume also includes first-person and third-party testimonies that give an account of an alternative, underground and non-normative Cuban society that is usually outside the media focus -- Repeating Islands.

• Puerto Rican journalist and cookbook author Von Diaz writes about the country's "essential dishes" in the New York Times.

• The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States Commission, in collaboration with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and MeCurator Art Gallery, launched a virtual art exhibition entitled “Climate Change: An Eastern Caribbean Journey.”
  

Events

27 March

• In Search of Mami Wata -- Guyana SPEAKS 

31 March

• Contemporary Archipelagic Thinking: Towards New Comparative Methodologies and Disciplinary Formations launch -- Rutgers’ Center for Cultural Analysis
  

5 April

• Dr. Jorge Duany, in conversation with Dr. Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel -- The Cuban Research Institute at FIU and The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami

29 May

• Navigating the Opportunities and Imperatives in Guyana’s Oil and Gas Economy – Queen’s College of Guyana Alumni Association New York

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