Caricom mobilises aid to Cuba

CARI­COM gov­ern­ments are prepar­ing to send hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to Cu­ba fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion an­nounced by CARI­COM chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew at the 50th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment in St Kitts and Nevis from 24 to 27 Feb­ru­ary 2026.

The CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at in George­town, Guyana is co­or­di­nat­ing the ef­fort. Mem­ber states will fund the pur­chase of sup­plies, in­clud­ing pow­dered milk, ba­by for­mu­la, non-per­ish­able food items such as beans, flour, rice and canned goods, as well as med­ical sup­plies, so­lar pan­els, bat­ter­ies and wa­ter tanks.

The Gov­ern­ment of Mex­i­co has iden­ti­fied sup­pli­ers and will fa­cil­i­tate de­liv­ery to the port of de­par­ture, while al­so pro­vid­ing free ship­ment to Cu­ba.

Mean­while, Bar­ba­dos’ Am­bas­sador to CARI­COM, David Comis­siong, con­firmed the re­gion­al push while ad­dress­ing a meet­ing of For­eign Min­is­ters of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States in Bo­go­ta, Colom­bia.

“We must al­so be de­ter­mined to en­sure that CELAC func­tions in a con­crete way as an in­stru­ment of de­vel­op­ment in our re­gion. But as we all know, there can be no de­vel­op­ment with­out peace!” he said.

“And so, we must all make a pro­found com­mit­ment to up­hold and de­fend CELAC’s his­toric 2014 ‘De­c­la­ra­tion of Ha­vana’ which pro­claimed our re­gion as a Zone of Peace.”

He added that mem­ber states must con­tin­ue their “de­nun­ci­a­tion and re­jec­tion of the ex­tra-ju­di­cial killings of our cit­i­zens by an in­trud­ing great pow­er” and main­tain op­po­si­tion to “the Unit­ed States’ il­lic­it uni­lat­er­al block­ade” of Cu­ba.

In an email state­ment to­day, Comis­siong said, “I can al­so con­firm that CARI­COM is en­gaged in an ini­tia­tive to send hu­man­i­tar­i­an sup­plies to Cu­ba.”

He said each mem­ber state has com­mit­ted to mak­ing a fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion, with the funds to be used to pur­chase sup­plies in Mex­i­co for ship­ment to Cu­ba.

How­ev­er, he said de­lays in the re­gion­al process prompt­ed Bar­ba­dos to act in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“Just last week Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley in­struct­ed that Bar­ba­dos should move ahead with alacrity to de­liv­er our do­na­tion of sup­plies to Cu­ba,” he said.

“The wheels have been set in mo­tion for the Bar­ba­dos Gov­ern­ment to pur­chase sup­plies of food and med­i­cine in Mex­i­co and have them trans­port­ed to Cu­ba.”