Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Haiti's Worsening Migration Crisis: Is Solving It Solely Haiti's Responsibility?
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Haiti's Worsening Migration Crisis: Is Solving It Solely Haiti's Responsibility?
The Americas continue to witness an unmitigated outflow Haitians from Haiti, sometimes receiving them with open arms, but more often treating them with contempt. We saw, for instance, the United States (US) forcibly deport Haitians from its Mexico border to land them in Haiti with nothing but their measly personal belongings in cheap plastic bags. That can't be right, right? What would your government have done? On this episode, we talk about how the region and the world should respond to the migration crisis, and all whose job it is to help stabilize the Haiti.
The host is Kieron Murdoch. The guests are:
Background:
In the last week, images of Haitians either sheltering or being chased at points along the Mexico-Texas border were shared widely. Such sights are always vexing, but we should admit that we've become accustomed to seeing people, often destitute, clamoring to be allowed into a country, often a developed one, where their chances in life will be better. The migration crises of the developed world are a regular feature of our daily news. So it is that we're now so accustomed to seeing human beings at their least dignified, ragged, unwashed, hopeless, and desperate, trying to gain entry to somewhere that does not want to receive them.
For Caribbean people, the images we saw from Texas and the ones we later saw later of hundreds of Haitians intercepted in Bahamian waters stokes a special unease. For Black people especially, it brings on a pang of jaded despair at the common misery of the Pan-African experience. Why should Haitians have to endure this, simply to live a peaceful life with health, security, and the opportunity to work? Well, Haiti is a country in dire straits if you'll excuse the cliché, and it has been so for many years.
Gang war, massacres, kidnappings, Covid-19, the August 14th earthquake, and the July 7th assassination of its President have, this year, added to a decade of chronic poverty and struggle that followed the catastrophically destabilizing and ruinous 2010 earthquake. Now, the pace of Haitian migration is picking up again as the country's circumstances make it impossible for millions of its people to live happily. Added to that, Haitians who were once living in South America and Central America, are on the move as well, as Covid-19'seconomic fallout pushes them from comfortably living on the margins of those societies to being further without opportunity.
So what's the solution? Well, the problem is the solution: Haiti. Haiti needs political stability, economic opportunities for its people, and public security right now, or its people will keep arriving at other borders. But achieving those things, as has always been the case, requires a long, complex, and moderated mix of foreign involvement and domestic initiative - a mix that is difficult to create and sustain when gangs run entire swathes of the country and it's current de facto leader is being investigated for suspected involvement in the murder of the country's last leader.
This programme first aired on NewsCo Observer Radio 91.1 FM on October 3rd, 2021. Get the latest news from Antigua and Barbuda at the Antigua Observer online.
View all episodes
By The Big Issues Production TeamThe Americas continue to witness an unmitigated outflow Haitians from Haiti, sometimes receiving them with open arms, but more often treating them with contempt. We saw, for instance, the United States (US) forcibly deport Haitians from its Mexico border to land them in Haiti with nothing but their measly personal belongings in cheap plastic bags. That can't be right, right? What would your government have done? On this episode, we talk about how the region and the world should respond to the migration crisis, and all whose job it is to help stabilize the Haiti.
The host is Kieron Murdoch. The guests are:
Background:
In the last week, images of Haitians either sheltering or being chased at points along the Mexico-Texas border were shared widely. Such sights are always vexing, but we should admit that we've become accustomed to seeing people, often destitute, clamoring to be allowed into a country, often a developed one, where their chances in life will be better. The migration crises of the developed world are a regular feature of our daily news. So it is that we're now so accustomed to seeing human beings at their least dignified, ragged, unwashed, hopeless, and desperate, trying to gain entry to somewhere that does not want to receive them.
For Caribbean people, the images we saw from Texas and the ones we later saw later of hundreds of Haitians intercepted in Bahamian waters stokes a special unease. For Black people especially, it brings on a pang of jaded despair at the common misery of the Pan-African experience. Why should Haitians have to endure this, simply to live a peaceful life with health, security, and the opportunity to work? Well, Haiti is a country in dire straits if you'll excuse the cliché, and it has been so for many years.
Gang war, massacres, kidnappings, Covid-19, the August 14th earthquake, and the July 7th assassination of its President have, this year, added to a decade of chronic poverty and struggle that followed the catastrophically destabilizing and ruinous 2010 earthquake. Now, the pace of Haitian migration is picking up again as the country's circumstances make it impossible for millions of its people to live happily. Added to that, Haitians who were once living in South America and Central America, are on the move as well, as Covid-19'seconomic fallout pushes them from comfortably living on the margins of those societies to being further without opportunity.
So what's the solution? Well, the problem is the solution: Haiti. Haiti needs political stability, economic opportunities for its people, and public security right now, or its people will keep arriving at other borders. But achieving those things, as has always been the case, requires a long, complex, and moderated mix of foreign involvement and domestic initiative - a mix that is difficult to create and sustain when gangs run entire swathes of the country and it's current de facto leader is being investigated for suspected involvement in the murder of the country's last leader.
This programme first aired on NewsCo Observer Radio 91.1 FM on October 3rd, 2021. Get the latest news from Antigua and Barbuda at the Antigua Observer online.