Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2010

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2010 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2010 in Six Lines

• Haiti Earthquake Kills 230,000 on 12 January: Diaspora Responds
• Jamaica’s Dudus Extradition Crisis Shakes Governance and Diaspora Standing
• UK Elects First Coalition Government in 65 Years: Cameron and Clegg
• 4th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference Advances Institutional Framework
• FIFA World Cup South Africa: First on the African Continent
• Jamaica Remittances Recover to Approximately US$1.9 Billion

The Year in Review

2010 began with the worst natural disaster in the hemisphere since the 1970s. The Haiti earthquake of 12 January — measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, with its epicentre 25 kilometres west of Port-au-Prince — killed an estimated 230,000 people, injured 300,000 more, and left approximately 1.5 million homeless. For Jamaica’s diaspora communities, Haiti is both neighbour and complex other: a shared Caribbean history, a different colonial and linguistic inheritance, and a humanitarian emergency that demanded response. The Caribbean diaspora’s giving mobilisation was the largest in its history — church networks, professional associations, remittance infrastructure, and community foundations all channelled resources to Haiti in the immediate aftermath and through the longer recovery period.

At home, Jamaica faced a governance crisis of its own making. The Dudus affair — the Jamaican government’s initial resistance to the US extradition request for Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the leader of the Shower Posse gang, and the May 2010 security operation in Tivoli Gardens that killed 73 Jamaican civilians before Coke was eventually extradited — produced the most serious damage to Jamaica’s international reputation in years and created intense anxiety in diaspora communities about governance standards and the rule of law on the island. Prime Minister Golding’s admission that his party had paid US$50,000 to a law firm lobbying against the extradition request compounded the reputational damage. The crisis cast a shadow over the year’s other events and tested the diaspora community’s ability to advocate for Jamaica in its host societies.

In the United Kingdom, the May general election produced the first hung parliament since February 1974 and the first coalition government since the Second World War. David Cameron’s Conservatives formed a coalition with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, with Cameron as prime minister and Clegg as deputy. The new government’s emergency budget and spending review announced austerity cuts that would reshape British public services for the decade ahead — with direct implications for Caribbean-British communities whose members relied disproportionately on the NHS, social housing, and local government services. The FIFA World Cup in South Africa — the first hosted on the African continent — united diaspora communities in celebration of a milestone whose symbolic significance for African and Caribbean communities was profound. Annual remittances to Jamaica recovered to approximately US$1.9 billion, partially reversing 2009’s recession-driven dip.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2010 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2010, and January 2011.

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