CARICOM: Caribbean Community
The Caribbean Community and Common Market was established on August 1st 1973 and its goal is to promote regional integration of the Caribbean Islands, such as the Bahamas and Haiti, and the neighboring main land countries. The Bahamas has been a member of the Caribbean Community since July 4th 1983, and Haiti is the last country that joined CARICOM as a member on July 3rd 2002. This union, which is between fifteen countries in the Caribbean, aims to prosper the economic and political status of the countries and strengthen the foreign affairs among the neighboring countries. The CARICOM has four pillars of regional integration which are economic integration, foreign policy coordination, human and social development, and security and they are used to improve the standards of living by expanding trade and economic relations with other countries. Although Haiti is the oldest nation in the Caribbean to gain its independence, it the newest member of the CARICOM Community.
Haiti has been attempting to be a member of the Caribbean Community since the early years of the institution, however, there was not much support from the Caribbean Community. Haiti is one of the only countries in Caribbean that is Afro centric, which has formed different ideologies from the Caribbean countries which take pride in their European roots. One might argue that this might be due to the issue of language difference since the main language spoken in Haiti is Creole, however others were skeptical and concerned about Haiti’s intentions for joining the community. In a report from 1998, “Jerry Tardieu commented that ‘… Haiti’s admission into CARICOM appears to be more politically motivated than economically justified’” (Smith, 184), however, this suggests that Haiti would be isolated from its neighboring countries in the Caribbean and as a result, it would face extreme disadvantages due to lack of diplomatic relations with them. By 2004, two years after joining, “CARICOM was slowly realizing the seriousness of the internal tensions in Haiti” (Smith, 190) and the importance of building a relationship with Haiti to resolve its fundamental problems.