The Kingston Joint Declaration, produced through the CARICOM-led political negotiations in Jamaica in June 2023, represented one of the most sustained regional efforts to find a political solution to Haiti’s governance crisis. The declaration called for a national unity government with representatives from across Haiti’s political spectrum, a specific electoral timeline leading to a 2024 installed government, and international support for both the political transition and the security conditions needed to make elections possible.
The declaration’s significance lay not just in its content but in the process that produced it. The CARICOM Eminent Persons Group had facilitated months of engagement with Haitian political actors, building relationships and testing proposals in ways that had begun to narrow the gap between previously irreconcilable positions. Some political groupings that had refused to engage with Henry’s government were willing to participate in CARICOM-facilitated processes that maintained a degree of political distance from the prime minister.
However, the declaration’s limitations were also significant. Not all major Haitian political actors signed it. The fundamental questions about Henry’s role in any transitional arrangement remained contested. And the security conditions needed to implement the electoral timeline the declaration envisions were nowhere near existing, making the 2024 target appear aspirational rather than realistic.
Haitian civil society organizations that had participated in the Kingston process emerged with mixed assessments. Some found genuine value in the CARICOM engagement and the relationships it had built. Others remained skeptical that any process that did not first address the security crisis could produce meaningful political progress, arguing that the sequencing of security before politics was essential rather than optional.