Black Immigrant Daily News

The first point in the Caribbean-led reparatory justice programme jointly championed by The University of the West Indies (The UWI) and CARICOM calls for ‘formal and sincere apology’ as a precondition of healing for descendants of enslaved peoples.

The Trevelyan Family apology on Monday, February 27, during a forum co-hosted by the Grenada National Reparations Committee (GNRC) and The UWI shows the successful application of this framework, which has come to be known as the “Ten Point Plan”.

Birthed from close consultations with Professor Sir Hilary Beckles in his dual lead roles as Vice-Chancellor of The UWI and Chairman of the Caribbean Reparations Commission (CRC), the Trevelyans delivered a public apology and an initial ?100,000 to begin righting the wrongs of their ancestors who owned more than 1,000 slaves in the 19th Century.

Accompanied by a group of seven of her relatives, British-American BBC anchor/correspondent, Laura Trevelyan read an apology, signed by 104 of the descendants of the part owners of six plantations in Grenada.

The Trevelyans in their collaborative statement acknowledged slavery as “a crime against humanity,” and noted, “its damaging effect continues to present day.” “We repudiate our ancestors’ involvement in it, and urge the British government to enter into meaningful negotiations with the governments of the Caribbean in order to make appropriate reparations through CARICOM and bodies such as the Grenada National Reparations Committee,” said family spokespersons.

Sir Hilary who brokered and guided conversations with the Trevelyans and the Government of Grenada affirmed the transformative significance of the family’s initiative. “These are developments that are transforming the world. These are developments that require courage and commitment to look into your history, your past and to recognize that a crime has been committed. A crime that has led to your own enrichment and privilege and to be able to say this was wrong. It was inhumane.”

“The reparations movement is a call for partnership,” Sir Hilary asserted. “It’s a call for diminishing the debt owed to the people of this region. And it’s a call to have a shared vision for the future.” He clarified, “We’re not calling for racial strife. We’re not calling for international conflict. We believe reparations is the key for a win-win strategy for both sides of this conversation.”

As an activist institution, The UWI continues its championing of reparatory justice and the advocacy, consciousness-raising and support for the CARICOM Reparations Commission’s Ten Point Plan. The Trevelyans credited the Ten Point Plan as “the road map” guiding the Family’s journey to this juncture. Sir Hilary reinforced that the framework calls for “an apology, where there is an acknowledgement of a crime and a genuine and sincere desire to participate in an act of repair.”

Laura Trevelyan’s personal contribution of ?100,000 will be used to establish an education fund for The UWI Open Campus, with details of the fund to be determined by the GNRC in collaboration with The UWI and the Government of Grenada. Other Trevelyan family members have also made commitments towards bursaries for The UWI Open Campus, Grenada, the Grenada Education and Development Programme, while others have offered their time to ongoing projects in Grenada.

With members of his cabinet in full attendance, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell Mitchell accepted the Trevelyan apology on behalf of all CARICOM citizens as the beginning of a step in the right direction. “As a Head of Government,” he said, “I want to take the opportunity to join in a public request to my fellow Head of Government of the United Kingdom to accept our kind invitation to commence dialogue in an open, transparent, frank and dignified manner to talk of the need for reparative justice for the citizens of CARICOM.”

The Forum also included Arley Gill, Chair of the GNRC, and Dr Nicole Phillip-Dowe, GNRC’s Vice-Chair and Deputy Director (Ag.) of The UWI Open Campus Country Sites (OCCS), other government officials and CARICOM Reparations advocates, along with affiliates of the Rastafarian community and primary and secondary school students from across Grenada. It was held at the Annex, Grenada Trade Centre, and streamed live via The UWI’s public information platform UWItv.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Gender imbalances in access to employment and working conditions are greater than previously thought and progress in reducing them has been disappointingly slow in the last two decades, according to a new ILO brief.

A new indicator developed by the ILO, the Jobs Gap, captures all persons without employment that are interested in finding a job. It paints a much bleaker picture of the situation of women in the world of work than the more commonly used unemployment rate. The new data shows that women still have a much harder time finding a job than men.

According to the brief, New data shine light on gender gaps in the labour market , 15 per cent of working-age women globally would like to work but do not have a job, compared with 10.5 per cent of men. This gender gap has remained almost unchanged for two decades (2005-2022). In contrast, the global unemployment rates for women and men are very similar, because the criteria used to define unemployment tends to disproportionately exclude women.

The jobs gap is particularly severe in developing countries where the proportion of women unable to find a job reaches 24.9 per cent in low-income countries. The corresponding rate for men in the same category is 16.6 per cent, a worryingly high level but significantly lower than that for women.

The brief points out that personal and family responsibilities, including unpaid care work, disproportionately affect women. These activities can prevent them not only from being employed but also from actively searching for employment or being available to work at short notice. It is necessary to meet these criteria to be considered unemployed, so many women in need of a job aren’t reflected in the unemployment figures.

Gender imbalances in decent work are not limited to access to employment. While vulnerable employment is widespread for both women and men, women tend to be overrepresented in certain types of vulnerable jobs. For instance, women are more likely to be helping out in their households or in their relatives’ businesses rather than being in own-account work.

This vulnerability, together with lower employment rates, takes a toll on women’s earnings. Globally, for each dollar of labour income men earn, women earned only 51 cents.

There are significant differences between regions, the brief finds. In low and lower-middle income countries, the gender disparity in labour income is much worse, with women earning 33 cents and 29 cents on the dollar respectively. In high-income and upper-middle income countries, women’s relative labour income reaches 58 and 56 cents respectively per dollar earned by men. This striking disparity in earnings is driven by both women’s lower employment level, as well as their lower average earnings when they are employed.

The new estimates shine light on the magnitude of gender disparities in labour markets, underscoring how important it is to improve women’s overall participation in employment, to expand their access to employment across occupations, and to address the glaring gaps in job quality that women face.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is urging countries to tackle the main driver of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the Americas, including the Caribbean.

On World Obesity Day on Saturday, PAHO said front-of-package warning labels, restrictions on the marketing of processed and ultra-processed products high in fats, sugars and salt, and taxes on unhealthy food and beverages are among the measures being promoted to tackle the growing problem of obesity in the region of the Americas.

According to PAHO, obesity is one of the main risk factors for several noncommunicable diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, as well as several types of cancer.

In 2021, PAHO said obesity was responsible for 2.8 million deaths from NCDs in the Americas.

PAHO said rates of overweight and obesity have tripled in the region over the past 50 years, adding that these conditions now affect 62.5 percent of the population, the highest regional prevalence in the world.

Levels of overweight and obesity among children is also on the rise, affecting 33.6 percent of children and adolescents aged 5-19 years in the Americas, PAHO said.

It said this is primarily due to low levels of breastfeeding, and poor diets that are low in fruits and vegetables and high in ultra-processed food and drink products.

“Noncommunicable diseases are the biggest killer in the Americas, accounting for 80 percent of all deaths in the Americas, one-third of which are preventable,” said Fabio da Silva Gomes, PAHO’s regional advisor on Nutrition and Physical Activity. “Halting the rise in obesity is essential to combat the growing burden of NCDs and improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in the Americas, including the next generation.”

To tackle the growing trend of obesity in the Americas, PAHO said it works with countries on the implementation of proven strategies to prevent and reduce the problem.

These include – protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding, which reduces the risk of overweight and obesity by 13 percent in children; improving nutrition and promoting physical activity in pre-schools and schools; taxes on sugary drinks and the regulation of food marketing; and intersectoral actions through health promotion, surveillance, research and evaluation.

PAHO said it is also working with countries of the Americas in the implementation of the World Health Organization (WHO) Acceleration Plan to STOP obesity, discussed during the 75th World Health Assembly in 2022.

“The aim of the plan is to accelerate progress towards reducing obesity, with a focus on high-burden countries,” PAHO said.

In December 2022, PAHO experts met with representatives from Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago in Brasilia, to start the development of country roadmaps to implement the plan in the Americas.

PAHO said World Obesity Day is celebrated every year on March 4 “to raise awareness of the urgent need to address the global obesity epidemic.”

The theme of 2023 is “Changing Perspectives: Let’s talk about obesity.”

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Black Immigrant Daily News

Paul Pierrilus was deported two years ago from the U.S. to Haiti, where he has been trying to survive in a chaotic and violent country where he wasn’t born and had never lived.

Both his parents are Haitian, but they emigrated to the French Caribbean territory of St. Martin where Pierrilus was born. The family did not apply for citizenship for him in either Haiti or St. Martin and later moved to the U.S. when he was 5 years old. He grew up in New York speaking English.

Deported — after a long delay — because of a drug conviction two decades ago, Pierrilus is now in Haiti, where he does not speak Haitian Creole, has been unable to find work, and has little savings left as he hopes for a way to leave the increasingly unstable country.

“You have to be mentally strong to deal with this type of stuff,” Pierrilus said. “A country where people get kidnapped every day. A country where people are killed. You have to be strong.”

The 42-year-old financial consultant spends most of his days locked inside a house reading self-help, business and marketing books in a neighborhood where gunshots often echo outside.

Lawyers for Pierrilus in the U.S. are still fighting his deportation order, leaving him in legal limbo as the Biden administration steps up deportations to Haiti despite pleas from activists that they be temporarily halted because of the Caribbean country’s deepening chaos.

His case has become emblematic of what some activists describe as the discrimination Haitian migrants face in the overburdened U.S. immigration system. More than 20,000 Haitians have been deported from the U.S. in the past year as thousands more continue to flee Haiti in risky boat crossings that sometimes end in mass drownings.

Cases like Pierrilus’ in which people are deported to a country where they have never lived are unusual, but they happen occasionally.

Jimmy Aldaoud, born of Iraqi parents at a refugee camp in Greece and whose family emigrated to the U.S. in 1979, was deported in 2019 to Iraq after amassing several felony convictions. Suffering health problems and not knowing the language in Iraq, he died a few months later in a case often cited by advocates.

Pierrilus’ parents took him to the United States so they could live a better life and he could receive a higher-quality education.

When he was in his early 20s, he was convicted of selling crack cocaine. Because he was not a U.S. citizen, Pierrilus was transferred from criminal custody to immigration custody where he was deemed a Haitian national because of his parentage and ordered deported to Haiti.

Pierrilus managed to delay deportation with several legal challenges. Because he was deemed neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, he was released, issued a work authorization and ordered to check with immigration authorities yearly.

He went on to become a financial planner.

Then, in February 2021, he was deported without warning, and his lawyers don’t know exactly why his situation changed.

Lawyers for the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization in Washington have taken up his cause. “We demand that the Biden administration bring Paul home,” organization attorney Sarah Decker said.

French St. Martin does not automatically confer French citizenship to those born in its territory to foreign parents, and his family did not seek it. They also did not formally seek Haitian citizenship, which Pierrilus is entitled to.

Though he could obtain Haitian citizenship, his lawyers have argued that he is not currently a Haitian citizen, had never lived there and should not be deported to a county with such political instability.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a brief general statement to The Associated Press that each country has an obligation under international law to accept the return of its nationals who are not eligible to remain in the U.S. or any other country.

In 2005, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed an appeal by Pierrilus’ previous attorneys to halt his deportation, saying “it is not necessary for the respondent to be a citizen of Haiti for that country to be named as the country of removal.” Decker, his current attorney, disagrees with that finding.

Pierrilus said that while he was being deported, he told immigration officers, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not from where you’re trying to send me.”

Overpowered and handcuffed, he said he stopped resisting. As he boarded the flight, he recalled that women were screaming and children wailing.

After being processed at the airport, someone lent Pierrilus a cellphone so he could call his parents. They gave him contacts for a family friend where he could temporarily stay. Since then, gang violence has forced him to bounce through two other homes.

Warring gangs have expanded their control of territory in the Haitian capital to an estimated 60% since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, pillaging neighborhoods, raping and shooting civilians.

The U.N. warned in January that Haitians are suffering their worst humanitarian emergency in decades. More than 1,350 kidnappings were reported last year, more than double the previous year. Killings spiked by 35%, with more than 2,100 reported.

Pierrilus rarely goes out and relies on his faith for hope. He says he stopped going to church after he saw a livestreamed service in April 2021 in which gangs burst into the church and kidnapped a pastor and three congregants.

He talks to his parents at least once a week, focusing on the progress of his case rather than on challenges in Haiti.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) and the United Nations Universal Postal Union (UPU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate and promote digital transformation in postal services in the Caribbean region.

The MoU was signed by the heads of both organisations, Rodney Taylor, Secretary-General of the CTU and Mr. Masahiko Metoki, Director General of the UPU.

Under the terms of the MoU, the CTU and the UPU will collaborate to promote and carry out the deployment of the UPU’s Digital Readiness for E-commerce assessment in the Caribbean in order to contribute to the harmonisation of the region’s digital transformation agendas. The aim is to provide seamless end-to-end e-commerce and e-government services throughout the Caribbean Region.

Speaking from the UPU headquarters in Geneva, SG Rodney Taylor stated, “The partnership between CTU and UPU will be a crucial element in promoting digital transformation and e-commerce in the Caribbean region. We believe that the deployment of the UPU’s initiatives will greatly benefit the citizens and businesses in the region.”

The MoU will also explore the adoption of the UPU’s sponsored “.POST” top-level domain within the postal sector in the region in order to enhance the authenticity and cybersecurity of the associated services provided by the UPU.

The parties further agreed to the implementation of the UPU’s Connect.post initiative in the region with a view to ensuring complete internet access of all of the region’s post offices.

Importantly, the collaboration will greatly assist in the CTU’s efforts to bridge the digital divide and promote digital inclusion in the Caribbean and to provide opportunities for growth and development in the postal and telecommunications sectors.

The CTU and the UPU are committed to working together to achieve their shared goals and objectives, so as to ensure the people of the region benefit from the opportunities offered by their nations becoming digital economies.

The aim of the UPU is, among others, to secure the organisation and improvement of postal services and to promote the development of international collaboration and technical cooperation.

The CTU looks forward to deepening ties with the UPU through the execution of this important MOU.

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