Haiti - CARICOM missing in Action- by Andy Johnson

THE Caricom Secretariat, reeling under the impact of the poverty of concrete action from its representative member governments on the question of assistance to Haiti, issued a statement six days ago, announcing a decision to establish a small Haiti unit.

It is to be headed by Colin Granderson, the Trinidad and Tobago diplomat who is the most experienced hand on Haiti now at the Secretariat, but who is substantively the Assistant Secretary General, with responsibility for international relations.

Establishment of the unit was decided upon on January 29, by members of the Caricom Bureau, meeting in the Surinamese capital Paramaribo, on the margins of a Caricom Youth Forum.

From what the statement said, the decision was taken on the basis of reports presented to those Bureau members, from Granderson and Jeremy Collymore, the executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). Both men visited Haiti two weeks ago, and then attended the one-day meeting on Haiti in Montreal, Canada, on January 25. At that meeting, the Caricom statement said, ’groundwork’ was laid for the convening of a full fledged ’international conference on the reconstruction of Haiti’.

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