Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron gingerly inched towards the cold, hard fact that France continues to play a major role in the demise of Haiti, its former colony.
Macron admitted that his country had been wicked, inhumane, and unrelentingly brutal in its treatment of the Caribbean state. France, he said, “subjected the people of Haiti to a heavy financial indemnity” and imposed a historic injustice on the Haitian people when they demanded millions from the formerly enslaved in exchange for their independence 200 years ago.
From his high seat in Paris, Macron was taking a long look through history at strife-torn Haiti on the 200th anniversary of the Independence document issued by King Charles X of France on April 17, 1825.
The document, which recognised Haiti’s independence after a bloody slave revolt, imposed a 150 million gold francs debt as compensation for the loss of France’s colony and enslaved labour force.
Macron carefully skimmed the harsh truth from a distance and stayed clear from addressing Haiti’s demand for reparation as he announced the creation of a joint French-Haitian historical commission to “examine our shared past’’ and assess relations.
While Macron was seeing Haiti through a looking glass darkly, Jamaica, along with other Caribbean nations, was also preparing to deploy another task force to the crisis-hit neighbour to further strengthen the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission there.
As gangs continue to ravage the Haitian society, the majority of the population loses their grip on any semblance of normalcy. Gray water running down the drains of Port-Au-Prince is harvested by many families living without potable water, on the brink of starvation, and in abject squalor along the hillsides.
The hunger crisis in Haiti is now so acute that 97% of households in some areas around the capital are on the brink of starvation. In some instances, sand biscuits are baked in the sun and fed to starving school-aged children.
It is a country of extremes. The extremely wealthy reside in posh mansions along the white sandy beaches in secured, gated communities away from the very poor masses, who are left to fend for themselves.
The dry, parched land screams desperation and poverty. It is defiled, stripped of plant life, formal agriculture, or even topsoil. The scorched stones that form the ragged hillsides grin like discoloured teeth under the merciless heat of the sun.
This is a nation that is crying out for urgent spiritual as well as physical help. Violence in the streets of Port-au-Prince is only a symptom of the major worries within and the turmoil beneath the surface. Haiti is like a ticking time bomb on the verge of exploding.
Even as hunger rolls like thunder in millions of bellies, anger escalates and crime surges. While the United Nations and CARICOM seek to quell the violence, not much is being said about the immediate need to address the threat of starvation that the people are facing.
Many Haitians, who flee their homeland looking for better, would have counted all costs and determined that the choice of dying at sea with an unrelenting hope to escape the grip of poverty is better than facing a certain, albeit slow, painful death at home by starvation or the gun. Haiti is facing the worst hunger crisis in its history as armed gangs continue to murder and cause mayhem for control.
When mothers cradling babies, with young children pulling at their skirt tails, scramble shoulder to shoulder with strong men to board perilous canoes, they risk life and limb to seek better for their families. Meanwhile, the governments of fitter countries scoff at their arrival, turn up their noses, and shoo them away, pretending they are acting in their best interest.
Countries like the United States, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and others blatantly dishonour the core principles of the United Nations 1951 Convention on refugees, to which the majority are signatories. This agreement, which is still in effect, asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. Refugees have the right to housing, work, and education while displaced so they can lead a dignified and independent life.
What many of these wretched governments fail to understand is that by turning their backs on the poor, desperate, and destitute strangers, they add to the future suffering of their own countries. When we give to the poor (expressing our love and pity towards them), we aren’t wasting our money. It is like lending money to the LORD Himself.
According to the United Nations, about 5.2 million people – nearly half of Haiti’s population – desperately need humanitarian assistance to eat. About three million of those suffering are children. An explosion of violence in recent months from the gangs, which control about 80% of the capital, has exacerbated already severe hunger levels.
While Haiti may be at the extreme end of the spectrum, there are several other nations, in the region and elsewhere, that are on the way to the very same destination.
Thousands of families in Jamaica live on one unbalanced meal per day. A United Nations report stated that 8.3% of the Jamaican population experienced undernourishment for the period 2020 to 2022. At the same time, 25.6% faced severe food insecurity, while 54.4%, more than 1.4 million, experienced moderate food insecurity.
The United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report claims that 15.4% of people in the Caribbean experienced undernourishment for the period 2020 to 2022, while 28.8% experienced severe food insecurity and 61.8%, moderate food insecurity.
In highly polarised societies like Haiti and Jamaica, where the very rich control governments and industries and the people exist on menial jobs, living hand-to-mouth, criminal activity thrives.
When government engorges itself on huge salaries, corruption, and the best of the land, while giving crumbs to public servants, and celebrates the palpable standard of living of the majority, the economy is placed on a precarious brink and falling fast. With the removal of God from the seat of highest honour and the rejection of righteousness as the central standard of life and governance, the cursed outcome is certain.
Jamaica is not too far from Haiti. The bloodletting continues, and the dalliances with the occult are abominable. This is an election year, quite a lot of bellies are rolling, and despite the many promises, inequity thrives, and the basic cost of living is still beyond the means of the ordinary folk.
Know this: when a nation rejects righteousness, there is nothing that the United Nations can do to stop God’s judgement. No amount in reparation, visits by top United States officials, nor the deployment of security forces can quell the fire of God’s wrath against any nation whose people have become a reproach to righteousness.
There is only one way to heal such a nation, and that is the way of repentance, prayer, seeking the face of God, and turning away from wickedness. Jamaica has been warned.