Barbados officially became a republic this week -- with a midnight swearing in of President Sandra Mason in a Bridgetown ceremony. “Republic Barbados has set sail on her maiden voyage,” Mason said in her inauguration speech as the first president of the country, recognising the “complex, fractured and turbulent world” it would need to navigate. Barbadian singer Rihanna also attended the ceremony and was declared a national hero. "The republic is part of a wider agenda building steam across the Caribbean to forge a future outside a British framework," reports the Guardian. (See also New York Times.)
Barbados' decision to become a republic is intimately tied to last year's Black Lives Matter protests, and also reflects a debate in the Caribbean over the ongoing legacies of colonial era slavery, and a simmering demand for reparations from those who profited from the work of enslaved people. (Guardian, National Geographic)
"Slavery’s legacy is underdevelopment and dependency," writes Kareem Smith in Open Democracy. The transatlantic slave trade a "barbaric and brutal form of human trafficking, murder, torture, and rape made rich men of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. They amassed huge fortunes, which laid the foundations for multi-generational wealth."
Some voices in the Caribbean hope "that Barbados’ decision will be a catalyst for more changes in the region, or at the very least renew conversations about colonialism, reparations, and the legacy of the British monarchy, which built its wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans," writes Jacqueline Charles in National Geographic.
The debate is salient for current diplomacy, argues David Comissiong, Barbados Ambassador to CARICOM in Democracy Now. "The reality is that formerly enslaved and colonized nations and people like those in the Caribbean, including Barbados, have been inserted in that international order in a structurally subordinate and exploitative manner. So, many, many remnants of those centuries of enslavement, of colonial exploitation and domination that we are still trying to undo."
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Vaccine mandate protests in French Caribbean
Police reinforcements arrived in Martinique on Tuesday in the midst of ongoing unrest that erupted over Covid-19 measures, in particular the mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers. Protesters in Guadeloupe and Martinique have erected barricades and blocked roads this month as anger mounted over an order also in place in mainland France requiring health workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Hundreds of police reinforcements have also been sent to the islands, and strict night curfews implemented, reports AFP.
Paris announced that it would be postponing a requirement that public sector workers in Guadeloupe and Martinique get a Covid-19 vaccination. But the move has failed to quell unrest, which reflects long-standing grievances over living standards and the relationship between France's Caribbean islands and Paris, reports Reuters.
Martinique and Guadeloupe, islands of 375,000 and 400,000 people, respectively, are considered formal parts of France whose inhabitants hold French citizenship and are allocated representation in the French National Assembly. But the territories suffer higher poverty and unemployment rates than mainland France, and the protests have put a spotlight on local anger over broader issues with the French government, reports Al Jazeera.
Suspicion of public health policies is especially high in the French Caribbean, where the government authorized the use of a highly toxic pesticide called chlordecone on banana plantations for decades, despite repeated health warnings, notes the New York Times.
Democratic Governance
- Haiti's "best hope is a political transition in which inclusion provides legitimacy, leading to free elections," writes Monique Clesca, a member of the civil-society led Commission to Search for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis, in a New York Times guest essay. The group has proposed "an interim government whose members, in the absence of elections, will be nominated by various sectors to legitimately represent Haitians," and calls on the U.S. to support the commission's plan for democratization in Haiti.
- Haitian Interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry named a new cabinet last week. Ministers will be tasked with assisting Haiti to adopt a new constitution and elect a new president, parliament and local mayors, said Henry, who obtained the country's leadership following a power struggle after the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. “With the installation of a new government, we are entering a decisive new stage in the interim period,” he said. (Miami Herald)
- But the new list consists of only eight new changes in the 18-member cabinet, leaving some to speculate that two months after the signing of a political pact between Henry, political parties and other organizations, he still has not fully found a consensus on who should be in his interim government, reports the Miami Herald.
Public Security
- Haiti's increasingly powerful criminal gangs are carrying out a wave of extremely accute sexual violence, say health workers who are overwhelmed by the numbers of women affected and the sheer horror of the victims' ordeals, reports AFP.
Migration
- The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued the resolution "Protecting Haitians in Human Mobility Contexts: Inter-American Solidarity," which seeks to provide guidance for States in the region to protect the rights of Haitians who are migrants, refugees, stateless persons, or victims of human trafficking, or who have been displaced.
- Turks and Caicos police say they have recovered the bodies of seven undocumented Haitians who authorities say were attempting to illegally migrate from their country. (Miami Herald)
- Puerto Rico's historic Iglesia San Mateo de Cangrejos, in San Juan, helps Haitian migrants, part of a long history of aid to Afro-Caribbean people on the island. Between May and October of this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Puerto Rico detained 310 Haitian nationals in Puerto Rico, reports the Miami Herald.
Food Security
- In 2020, 59.7 million people in the Caribbean and Latin America suffered from hunger, according to a new U.N. report. The prevalence of hunger in the region increased by two percentage points last year, which means 13.8 million more people suffered from hunger in 2020 than the year before. Over the same period, moderate or severe food insecurity increased by nine percentage points and 41 percent of the population of the region is moderately or severely food insecure.
Economics, Finance and Debt
- Caricom Commission on the Economy proposed that participating member states should establish a single, independently operated, internationally credible and scrutinised agency that would deliver an anti-money laundering certificate that would be accepted by all government agencies and voluntarily any others in participating countries.This, it said, would dramatically reduce the cost and time of compliance for local and regional businesses and release resources for more productive use. (Trinidad Express)
Climate Justice and Energy
- Coastal mitigation efforts against rising sea levels stemming from climate change could cost some Caribbean countries more than five percent of their GDP each year, according to World Bank official Carlos Felipe Jaramillo. (Kaieteur News)
- "We must recognise that climate mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage are three different things requiring three different funding mechanisms for three distinct outcomes," wrote Avinash Persaud on Twitter, in reference to COP26 calls for climate financing.
- "The final Glasgow Climate Pact is a mixed bag," writes Ryan Assiu in an analysis of COP26.
- Trinidad and Tobago is currently the fifth highest emitter per capita in the world, but its ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are “not sufficiently bold," according to Dr. Devon Gardner, Head of the Energy Unit at the Caribbean Community Secretariat. He said that a perceived lack of ambition on the part of the Trinidad and Tobago government could cause other nations to question the region’s commitment to climate action. (Climate Tracker)
- Local Guyanese fisher-people say ExxonMobil’s ongoing oil operations in the country's waters have led to declining catch, but the oil company said impacts from its operations on marine life is minor to negligible. (Kaieteur News)
- An ExxonMobil report on its fourth project in Guyana, the Yellowtail development, estimates that greenhouse gas emissions are set to increase by as much as 30 percent, throughout the production stage. But the company argues that Guyana's forest will offset the environmental impacts. (Kaieteur News)
Racial Justice
- Scholars and activists criticize Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program for its lack of government oversight, disrespect for migrant rights and indentureship of foreign workers. "Sentenced for the season: Jamaican migrant farmworkers on Okanagan orchards," by Elise Hjalmarson, argues the program is predicated upon naturalised, deeply ingrained and degrading beliefs that devalue Black lives and labour.
Critters
- A mythic white sperm whale was captured on film near Jamaica. The type of whale immortalised in Moby-Dick has only been spotted a handful of times this century, reports the Guardian.
Events
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- AOSIS Fellowship Programme -- Fellows will work at their UN Permanent Mission in New York, receive comprehensive training on climate change, oceans, environmental protection, and sustainable development issues, and gain real-world negotiation experience working with their national delegations and AOSIS at related UN conferences.
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