How­ev­er ur­gent, trag­ic, and com­pelling, the deep­en­ing cri­sis in Haiti is un­like­ly to oc­cu­py con­sid­er­able topline space at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA), which opened yes­ter­day.

In fact, the agen­da is so tight­ly packed that by the time the Gen­er­al De­bate is over, glob­al news agen­das would have flood­ed us with in­nu­mer­able, le­git­i­mate pri­or­i­ties cov­er­ing un­prece­dent­ed, vast ter­rain.

These in­clude the Gaza geno­cide (how­ev­er framed by dis­cus­sants), re­lat­ed recog­ni­tion of Pales­tin­ian state­hood, wars in­volv­ing Ukraine and Su­dan, US ac­tions re­gard­ing Venezuela, and gen­er­al con­cern for the fu­ture of the UN it­self af­ter 80 years.

There is al­so the cli­mate cri­sis and our glob­al en­gage­ment in shap­ing a col­lec­tive Caribbean de­vel­op­ment greater than the sum of in­di­vid­ual growth paths.

These pre­vail­ing and emer­gent is­sues all have di­rect rel­e­vance to our tiny Caribbean states. But there are oth­ers we dare not leave un­at­tend­ed-the ques­tion of Haiti in­clud­ed.

It is hoped, for in­stance, that UN­GA con­tri­bu­tions by Cari­com mem­ber states, in par­tic­u­lar, will in­form UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) de­lib­er­a­tions to fol­low, dur­ing which a fu­ture ap­proach to the Hait­ian cri­sis will hope­ful­ly find con­sen­sus.

On Sun­day, UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res met with pres­i­dent of the Cari­com-con­ceived Tran­si­tion­al Pres­i­den­tial Coun­cil (TPC) of Haiti, An­tho­ny Franck Lau­rent Saint-Cyr.

They con­clud­ed that “ur­gent in­ter­na­tion­al ac­tion is need­ed to help re­store se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing ef­forts to ad­dress gang vi­o­lence, cre­ate con­di­tions for the hold­ing of cred­i­ble, in­clu­sive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry elec­tions and mo­bilise greater hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance.”

On Mon­day, Cari­com led an in­ter­na­tion­al round­table dis­cus­sion on the mar­gins of the UN­GA on “Mak­ing the Case for Haiti”.

Both the US and Pana­ma have mean­while de­vel­oped a UN­SC res­o­lu­tion propos­ing the con­ven­ing of a “Gang Sup­pres­sion Force” com­pris­ing up to 5,500 per­son­nel. It al­so calls for a UN sup­port of­fice pro­vid­ing lo­gis­ti­cal and op­er­a­tional as­sis­tance.

The back­drop to this is the Oc­to­ber 2 ex­pi­ra­tion of the man­date of a Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Mis­sion (MSS) es­tab­lished in 2023, which em­ploys Kenyan troops. This oc­curred with 1,000 of a promised 2,500 troops – re­duced be­cause of fund­ing deficits. Es­sen­tial tools, such as he­li­copters, for in­stance, have al­so been ab­sent.

In fact, the suc­cess of much of what is be­ing pro­posed via the UN­SC and pro­posed ac­tions iden­ti­fied by the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) is high­ly con­tin­gent on fi­nan­cial in­vest­ments to as­sure at least the ba­sic needs of Hait­ian re­new­al.

The con­se­quences of on­go­ing fail­ure have been grave. Vi­o­lent gangs have be­come more, rather than less, en­trenched in key ar­eas, in­clud­ing the cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince. It has al­so not helped that the TPC has been a high­ly chal­leng­ing mech­a­nism.

Re­mark­ably, there re­mains a view by some Hait­ian politi­cians that elec­tions, if con­duct­ed in phas­es in some ar­eas, can hap­pen pri­or to the TPC’s agreed Feb­ru­ary 7, 2026, dis­so­lu­tion. The ini­tial pro­jec­tion was for No­vem­ber elec­tions. We shall see.

Cari­com’s Em­i­nent Per­sons Group (EPG), com­pris­ing for­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Ken­ny An­tho­ny of Saint Lu­cia, Bruce Gold­ing of Ja­maica, and Per­ry Christie of The Ba­hamas, has not been suf­fi­cient­ly cred­it­ed with en­gag­ing this in­tractable chal­lenge.

The prob­lem is that the two prin­ci­pal ar­eas of im­me­di­ate con­cern—vi­o­lence and pol­i­tics—per­sist along­side grow­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an crises. There is hunger, dis­place­ment, and a gen­er­al sense of hope­less­ness in nu­mer­ous quar­ters.

Around 90 per cent of Port-au-Prince is cur­rent­ly un­der gang con­trol; more than 5,600 peo­ple have been killed, and there are over 1.3 mil­lion dis­placed per­sons, 25 per cent of whom are chil­dren.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, close to five mil­lion Haitians face “acute food in­se­cu­ri­ty”, 60 per cent lack clean wa­ter, and few­er than 25 per cent of health fa­cil­i­ties in crit­i­cal ar­eas func­tion.

So, even if the vi­o­lence sub­sides and there are elec­tions—lim­it­ed or not—there will re­main is­sues of sys­temic de­pri­va­tion with which the coun­try will need to con­tend.

The OAS Roadmap of­fers a co­her­ent, com­pre­hen­sive pre­scrip­tion–al­beit one con­tin­gent on heavy fi­nan­cial sup­port. There are coun­tries whose rep­re­sen­ta­tives will, even if fleet­ing­ly, raise the is­sue of Haiti over the com­ing days at the UN­GA. They will have to put their mon­ey where their mouths have ven­tured.

As for us in T&T and the rest of the Caribbean, we need to more ur­gent­ly con­sid­er the Hait­ian cri­sis to be a part of our own re­al­i­ty. In T&T, we ig­nored the shenani­gans of our trou­ble­some neigh­bour to our west un­til its prob­lems be­came ours. Our re­cent diplo­mat­ic mis­steps are clear­ly re­flec­tive of a mis­in­formed, un­der­de­vel­oped un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues and our place in all of this.

In fra­ter­nal states such as The Ba­hamas and Ja­maica, there will be a fear that com­pla­cen­cy on the part of the rest of us on the ques­tion of Haiti can and will be at our col­lec­tive per­il.

Our per­for­mance at the UN­GA ought to sig­nal such a re­al­i­ty.