It has taken Caricom leaders a long time, but when they open their three-day meeting in The Bahamas today the frightening and rapidly deteriorating conditions in our sister Caribbean nation Haiti will be top of the agenda.

A wire service report at the weekend told us that some Caricom member states are pushing to get key Haitian stakeholders to a neutral nation in the region to reach a consensus on holding elections in the country that has been stripped of all democratically elected institutions.

However, the problem is that elections cannot be held until the violence ends.

Last Friday, Haiti’s Foreign Minister Jean Victor Généus warned, during a meeting of the Organization of American States, that insecurity has risen and will spill over into neighbouring countries.

“We must absolutely tackle this problem in Haiti because no one else in the Caribbean will be spared,” he said.

Mr Généus’ warning has surely resonated with some Caricom leaders, especially Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis, who has persistently complained about the cost of repatriating thousands of Haitians as well as hundreds of Cubans in the past year.

We endorse Prime Minister Davis’s call for Caricom to help find a solution to the catastrophe in Haiti. It’s a position we have been advocating in this space since the crisis worsened after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

Last Friday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mr Volker Turk called on world leaders “to urgently consider the deployment of a time-bound specialised support force”.

Mr Turk made the appeal while highlighting a UN report released Friday which pointed out that the Cite Soleil commune in the capital Port-au-Prince has seen a sharp increase in mass incidents of murder, gang rape, and sniper attacks in recent months.

“The findings of this report are horrifying: It paints a picture of how people are being harassed and terrorised by criminal gangs for months without the State being able to stop it,” Mr Turk said in a press release. “It can only be described as a living nightmare.”

We are told that in Cite Soleil alone more than 260 people were killed in gang violence during the second half of 2022, and nearly 60 cases of gang rape of women and girls were recorded. Additionally, more than half a million Haitian children living in gang-controlled areas have little access to education.

Mr Turk said Haiti’s police force “needs immediate coordinated international support commensurate to the challenges to strengthen its capacity to respond to the security situation in a manner consistent with its human rights obligations”.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Andrew Holness signalled Jamaica’s willingness to participate in an international force in Haiti, obviously in response to a call made by Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Mr Holness stated that any such involvement would be “under the appropriate jurisdictional parameters to support a return to a reasonable level of stability and peace, which would be necessary for any inclusive democratic process to take root”.

There’s no doubt that Haiti is in dire need of help. Caricom should act on that need in cooperation with other members of the international community.