Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and Senior Minister responsible for the Productive Sector, Kerrie D. Symmonds, has announced that Barbados will provide support to the proposed United Nations Security Council-authorised multinational security force for Haiti.
The support will come in the form of security personnel despatched in coordination with the Regional Security System.
Barbados 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.
During her recent statement to the UN General Assembly, Prime Minister Hon. Mia Amor Mottley also called for the UN Security Council to issue a robust mandate for the multinational force and for the international community to mound a comprehensive, long-term development plan for Haiti.
Barbados therefore joins the Bahamas and Jamaica among the CARICOM nations willing to lend resources to the stabilization of Haiti.
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. He noted that Haiti is in “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.
Most of the other members of CARICOM have yet to publicly express an opinion even though the situation in Haiti was the elephant in the room at the CARICOM meeting in Trinidad as recently as August. However it seems that gradually more members are climbing onboard.
Source: Barbados Government Press Release.
