CARICOM (Caribbean Community) Heads of Government are worried about the treatment of Caribbean, African and other “non-European” citizens fleeing Ukraine, and have been calling for guarantees of their safety and security, now, more than ever.

The Caribbean Heads, at their recent (March 1-2) Intersessional Summit in Belize, discussed the ongoing reports of discrimination against People of African Descent, including Caribbean students, being prevented from boarding buses and/or trains to safe borders.

Jamaican students were caught up early in Ukraine, and walked long and hard to eventual safety, while Guyana and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with students in Moscow, said they’ve been guaranteed that they were safe.

But while the CARICOM Heads expressed appreciation for the neighbouring countries accepting refugees from Ukraine, they also expressed strong concern about “the plight of and discrimination against non-European nationals… who are seeking to leave Ukraine.”

By mid-March, elements of racism and racist responses continued emerging — from abandonment of children of mixed-race, to continuing discrimination against “non-Europeans”.
A UK report highlighted the fate of children born to Ukrainian mothers and African fathers who ended up being virtually dumped at orphanages, due to societal rejection of mixed-race children with an African parent.

The stigma was already strong before the Russian intervention, and has worsened since, as the children affected still have no social protection from a State that doesn’t treat them like citizens, though born in Ukraine.

In the case of the almost three million Ukrainians who fled to Poland and other parts of Europe, evidence has also emerged from statements and comments by journalists and politicians across Europe that they were being received with wider-open arms than refugees from Iraq or Afghanistan, Libya or Sudan, Haiti or Havana, simply because “They look like us…”

It’s hard to know whether Ukraine, Russia, Poland, or even the UK, were moved to move on the concerns expressed by 14 Caribbean nations, but this experience, like all others, again underlines the need for a common regional policy on these issues.

CARICOM member-states have bilateral ties with all the countries involved in the Ukraine crisis, and it should be the duty of each in the area of conflict to offer assurances and guarantees of the safety and security of their allies’ citizens.

The reports from Ukraine in the first week about the treatment of Black and other non-White refugees at border crossings and boarding points for buses and trains looked and sounded like 21st Century versions of the USA in the ‘60s, when Americans of African descent were told, “If you’re Black, stay back!”

It is only to be hoped that the fact that the plight of Caribbean citizens in areas of conflict has been highlighted sufficiently in Ukraine to have become a CARICOM Heads of Government Summit agenda item, will now be followed-up by the necessary action to ensure no similar repetition in the next global conflict, wherever and whenever.