PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - From her busy schedule of travel and other obligations, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar must make time for an ugly crisis engulfing two member states of Cariforum, which shares membership with Caricom, of which she also serves as chairman. The crisis has been triggered by a Dominican Republic constitutional court ruling that threatens a devastatingly disparate impact on many thousands of people in that republic, descended from Haitian immigrants.
The ruling, which is not subject to appeal, denies citizenship rights to an estimated 200,000-plus residents born in the country but to Haitian parents. Suddenly, this segment of the population appears to have been reduced to a condition of statelessness. People born in the Dominican Republic, with nowhere else to call home, have been plunged into bewilderment, in desperate hope that the international community will come to their rescue. “Soy Dominicano, (I am Dominican)”, said placards raised in protests against the ruling.