Cari­com now faces an even big­ger chal­lenge of seek­ing to re­verse the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Haiti, ow­ing to a deep­en­ing of the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Port-au-Prince and the re­cent elec­tion of Don­ald Trump in the Unit­ed States.

Trump’s vic­to­ry has added a new lay­er of un­cer­tain­ty for the coun­try, which is al­ready grap­pling with in­creas­ing gang vi­o­lence, food in­se­cu­ri­ty and dis­place­ment, and no doubt ea­ger to see whether the US pres­i­dent-elect will in­deed car­ry through with his plan for mass de­por­ta­tion of mi­grants once he takes of­fice in Jan­u­ary.

To make mat­ters worse, the main air­port in Port-au-Prince was shut down on Mon­day af­ter a Spir­it Air­lines flight was hit by gun­fire. In re­sponse, Unit­ed Na­tions spokesman Stephane Du­jar­ric warned yes­ter­day that this would mean "lim­it­ing the flow of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid and hu­man­i­tar­i­an per­son­nel in­to the coun­try.”

This amounts to an­oth­er ma­jor set­back for Haiti, where near­ly half of the pop­u­la­tion is al­ready ex­pe­ri­enc­ing acute food in­se­cu­ri­ty, and 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple are at risk of famine. 

While Cari­com, which ac­cept­ed Haiti as a full mem­ber in Ju­ly 2002, has sought sev­er­al path­ways to bring about re­lief, in­clud­ing its re­cent fo­cus on cre­at­ing and fa­cil­i­tat­ing the tran­si­tion­al pres­i­den­tial coun­cil in the in­ter­est of good gov­er­nance and en­sur­ing broad­er par­tic­i­pa­tion be­yond tra­di­tion­al po­lit­i­cal elites in Haiti, that too suf­fered a blow this week as the coun­cil fired prime min­is­ter Gar­ry Conille af­ter six months in of­fice and named Al­ix Di­di­er Fils-Aimé his suc­ces­sor.

This tells us that work to­wards po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, which is so crit­i­cal to Haiti re­gain­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of its peo­ple and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, is at the start­ing block once again.

Cari­com must now re­dou­ble ef­forts to en­sure that both the coun­cil and prime min­is­ter pri­ori­tise the needs of the Hait­ian peo­ple above any per­son­al in­ter­ests if this cred­i­bil­i­ty is to be re­turned while al­low­ing more de­vel­oped coun­tries with bet­ter re­sources to work to­wards the sup­pres­sion of gang ac­tiv­i­ty and re­turn­ing the coun­try to a state of safe­ty. 

Time, how­ev­er, is not on Haiti’s side, as there is no cer­tain­ty that the in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion would de­lay the threat­ened de­por­ta­tion of Hait­ian mi­grants un­til the coun­try is sta­ble again.

And there­in lies a se­ri­ous chal­lenge for the re­gion along po­lit­i­cal and so­cial lines.

Any im­me­di­ate move by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­turn Hait­ian mi­grants to the coun­try as it is to­day must be re­ject­ed on hu­man­i­tar­i­an grounds by Cari­com, speak­ing as one voice in in­ter­na­tion­al fo­ra.

This could se­ri­ous­ly strain diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with the US, which so many Cari­com coun­tries re­ly on for their own eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Then there are the eco­nom­ic ram­i­fi­ca­tions of in­creased de­por­ta­tions, as re­mit­tances sent by Haitians liv­ing in the US to their fam­i­lies in Haiti con­tribute to the coun­try's strug­gling econ­o­my.

World Bank da­ta shows that re­mit­tances are a cru­cial source of in­come for many Haiti fam­i­lies, amount­ing to rough­ly US$3.5 bil­lion in 2023, and as de­por­ta­tions rise, this flow of mon­ey would di­min­ish sharply, ex­ac­er­bat­ing pover­ty lev­els in Haiti and po­ten­tial­ly desta­bil­is­ing its econ­o­my fur­ther.

With the coun­try un­able to of­fer prop­er rein­te­gra­tion pro­grammes or sup­port, the ex­pec­ta­tion is for an in­creased spillover im­pact, with more Haitians seek­ing to mi­grate to neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and Ja­maica–which have been strug­gling with this prob­lem.

The over­all im­pact will de­pend sig­nif­i­cant­ly on how both US poli­cies evolve with­in the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and how Cari­com re­sponds col­lec­tive­ly to these chal­lenges.

What is clear now, how­ev­er, is that if Cari­com does not pri­ori­tise Haiti as an ur­gent prob­lem now, it is like­ly to be­come a big­ger chal­lenge in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture.