In Focus
As we reflect on 2025 and look ahead to a new year, we do so at a moment of profound national significance. For the first time in more than three decades, Jamaica has recorded fewer than 700 murders in a single year. The provisional figure of 673...
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I was warned about what I would see before heading to Black River, but no image of the damage from Hurricane Melissa fully captured the devastation, and nothing prepared me for the horror of the stories people shared. I had visited Black River...
Last week’s story in The Gleaner - “When Kids Get Caught — Heartache as grandmother struggles with teen grandson’s sexual assault charges” - laid bare a heartbreaking but avoidable consequence of our current law. A 16-year-old boy - a prefect and...
Jamaica knows the Atlantic story too well. Between the early slave trade and abolition, somewhere between 600,000 and 900,000 Africans were forced onto the island. Shipping records show that a material share of Jamaica’s human cargo came from ports...
In my customary perusal of the Sunday Gleaner, December 7, two interesting articles caught my eye. The first questioned God’s purpose following Melissa’s untimely destruction of a country, which I remind you, has the most churches per square mile...
A useful parallel can be drawn in contemporary international relations between 1935, when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), and 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The comparison suggests that the war in Ukraine has...
I know this is a New Year. But will Jamaica take a new approach to overcome the fundamental obstacle to its progress? It’s neither political nor religious. The one issue blocking Jamaica from success is the way we educate our children. This isn’t...
Despite most of us having no clue where the time went it seems another new year is upon us. The thing about time is that it not only flies but changes direction, fortunes and perspectives while doing so. Time is multi faceted. And relentless. For...
Jamaica has agreed to a number of international agreements that bind it to providing an accessible and inclusive environment for persons with disabilities. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and the...
Jamaica’s prolonged mistreatment of Haitian migrants is often defended in the language of capacity, sovereignty, or political realism. Yet five years on — and now brutally exposed by Hurricane Melissa (a manmade weapon of mass destruction without...
Hurricane Melissa’s vastly different human and infrastructural impact between eastern and western Jamaica has continued into the early recovery stages. There is another, far less obvious, disaster divide that is affecting some of the most...
In many ways, it has to be more than just what you feel about me and significantly deeper than that. It has to be much more than that. I want to feel an intense connection. Closer than it could ever be. Somewhat more tender than anything could ever...
“… I will uncover your skirts over your face, That your shame may appear …” was spoken by God to the prophet Jeremiah about ancient Israel. Is this exposure applicable to post-disaster Jamaica? Hurricane Melissa making landfall on October 28...
The Maroons are a distinct but divided people. Some Maroons find their national identity through full membership of Jamaican society as Jamaican nationals, engaging in Jamaican cultural life, sharing as Jamaicans in the pleasures and pains of...
Drone footage and satellite images taken after Hurricane Melissa revealed a landscape littered with wreckage - trees stripped bare, vegetation ripped from the ground, roofing sheets, doors, windows, furniture, bedding, and every possible object...
The arrival of 117 Canadian electrical linesmen to assist the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) in restoring power after Hurricane Melissa has been greeted with official smiles, airport photo-ops, and an oddly incurious media tone. We are told...
