Caribbean Community leaders facilitated a significant round of political negotiations in Kingston, Jamaica in June 2023, bringing together Prime Minister Ariel Henry, Haitian political parties, civil society groups, and diaspora representatives in an attempt to find a consensus path toward elections and political normalization. The CARICOM Eminent Persons Group, consisting of three former Caribbean prime ministers, provided mediation designed to leverage regional credibility and relationships.
The Kingston talks produced the Kingston Joint Declaration, signed by some political parties and civil society groups, which called for a national unity government, a specific timeline for elections, and the installation of a democratically elected government by 2024. The declaration represented genuine progress in articulating shared political goals even if its signatories did not include all major Haitian political actors.
However, consensus proved elusive on the most fundamental questions. The negotiators could not agree on Henry’s role in any transitional arrangement, on the specific composition of a unity government, or on the security preconditions needed before credible elections could be organized. Nine major Haitian human rights organizations and a US diaspora group issued a statement calling on the international community to stop supporting those they blamed for Haiti’s crisis and to back a transitional government of technocrats committed to organizing credible elections.
The Kingston process represented the most sustained regional engagement with Haiti’s political crisis in years and reflected CARICOM’s recognition that instability in Haiti had direct implications for the broader Caribbean region. Whether the process could produce the genuine breakthrough that years of similar efforts had failed to deliver remained the central question as talks continued.