New policy on the diaspora coming

A new policy is coming to facilitate how Government relates to Barbadians in the diaspora.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Kerrie Symmonds said the fact that Barbados currently does not have a diaspora policy is a “gaping hole” he wants to plug.

“I have expressed in no uncertain terms my dedication and determination that this ministry now have a diaspora policy,” he said yesterday in the House of Assembly shortly before concluding his ministry’s turn in the Well of Parliament during the debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2025.

“It will enable us to have some increased engagement . . . and participation in national development of the diaspora, wheresoever it is to be found, that enables us to do a number of things.”

The minister was responding to a question from Member of Parliament for St Michael South Central Marsha Caddle, who has returned to Government’s backbench in the House having resigned from Cabinet on Tuesday.

She asked about the work of the ministry’s Diaspora Unit, which is to “manage and leverage the engagement of the Barbados diaspora globally as a potentially key element in the social and economic development of Barbados” and has a $121 064 allocation in the 2025-2026 Estimates. Symmonds hoped that there could be a national conversation on the relationship with Barbadians in the diaspora.

This would take place “once we have the diaspora policy in place and ready to be submitted to Cabinet, to be discussed internally first, and then go out for a broader review in the interest of the people of Barbados.

“We can build partnerships with the diaspora in terms of a number of our sectors of this economy and society, because we know that there are skill sets [among Barbadians overseas], some of whom are exceptional in their expertise,” he said.

“And there are several other areas where . . . we have a deficiency in skills and I think our port of first call should, in fact, be the diaspora.”

The minister said it was equally important for Barbados to “put in place some standards for the way in which we ensure the well-being of people in host communities”.

“Barbadian people should not feel that they are left naked and alone in host communities when there is a hostility against how they look or where they have come from in those communities, where many of them are working two and three shifts a day,” he told the House.

“I feel that we have a duty to look after those people and to find a way of using our missions to ensure they can be connected . . . with entities like the Civil Liberties Union in the United States, and have opportunities to know and learn their rights and be facilitated in that regard.”

He also felt that “we have to have a better recognition of the diaspora associations and the way in which they function and . . . use them to help us to facilitate their reintegration, whether that reintegration . . . is forced or voluntary when they have to reintegrate into our society”.

Symmonds also saw Government having a role in ensuring that Barbadians in the diaspora “have a role and a voice in governance in those places overseas”, just as non-Barbadians did here. (SC)

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