Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2014

Annual Review | Published: 31 December 2014 | Jamaica Homes News

Key Takeaways: 2014 in Six Lines

• 6th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference: Deepening the Framework
• Ebola Crisis in West Africa Tests Global Humanitarian Response
• Scotland Votes No to Independence in September Referendum
• Ferguson Shooting of Michael Brown Sparks US Racial Justice Reckoning
• ISIS Declares Caliphate Across Iraq and Syria in June
• Jamaica Economy Shows Early Signs of IMF Reform Stabilisation

The Year in Review

The 6th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, the most mature edition of the series to that point, reflected a decade of accumulated institutional learning. Working groups were more specific; implementation monitoring was more systematic; the diaspora delegates’ expectations were better calibrated. The conference produced commitments on returnee investment facilitation, digital diaspora engagement, and healthcare professional pathways that reflected the shifting demographics and economic profile of the diaspora — increasingly second-generation, increasingly professional, increasingly digital in its transatlantic interaction.

The Ebola crisis that spread through West Africa from March 2014 — the largest Ebola outbreak in history, ultimately killing more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — activated African diaspora giving networks that included Caribbean community organisations in solidarity with West African communities. The crisis also produced the first cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States and Europe, triggering a public anxiety about disease transmission that tested governments’ public health communication and had implications for the treatment of African and African-heritage people in public spaces across the diaspora.

Scotland’s independence referendum of 18 September — which produced a 55-45 No vote, retaining Scotland within the UK — was followed by British-Jamaican communities in the UK as a constitutional question with implications for the governance structures that shaped their lives. The shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on 9 August, and the subsequent grand jury decision not to indict Wilson, produced the national street protests and the “Black Lives Matter” mobilisation that would grow into one of the most significant racial justice movements in American history. For African-American and Caribbean-American diaspora communities, Ferguson was both a specific grievance about a specific death and the opening of a broader national reckoning about race and policing that the year did not resolve but could no longer defer. Jamaica’s economy showed early signs of stabilisation under the IMF reform programme, with fiscal targets being met more consistently than in the early years, even as the growth dividends of reform remained modest.

Jamaica Diaspora Annual Roundup 2014 | Jamaica Homes News. Compiled from four quarterly editions published April, July, October 2014, and January 2015.

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