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Jamaica came to the rostrum of the United Nations General Assembly this week as a country that did everything right and was still struck down in a single afternoon. Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, turned that experience into the sharpest statement of the small island case heard during the 81st session’s general debate.
The numbers she placed before the Assembly were stark. Hurricane Melissa, which struck on 28 October 2025, caused damage and loss estimated at 56.7 per cent of Jamaica’s GDP. More than half a year’s national output was gone in a matter of hours. Jamaica had prepared. Years of fiscal discipline had built buffers, and catastrophe insurance and a catastrophe bond delivered immediate liquidity. Yet no amount of prudent national planning, the Minister said, can fully insulate a small developing state from an event of that magnitude. A country can do everything right, and one hurricane can still erase decades of progress.
From that experience came the heart of her argument. Income alone does not and cannot measure vulnerability. A country does not become less exposed to hurricanes because its per capita income has crossed an arbitrary threshold. Jamaica pressed again for multidimensional vulnerability indices to govern access to concessional and development finance, and called for climate finance that is accessible, affordable and predictable.
What gave the case its force was the record behind it. Jamaica’s debt, once above 140 per cent of GDP, had been brought down to 62 per cent before Melissa. Unemployment had reached a historic low of 3.4 per cent and stands at 3.7 per cent even now. Credit ratings have held or improved despite the storm. Jamaica, the Minister said, does not ask to be relieved of responsibility. It asks for an international system that gives responsible countries the space and support to succeed.
The address carried the wider CARICOM agenda with conviction. Jamaica joined its regional partners in backing Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana for Secretary-General, describing small states as bridge builders whose influence rests on credibility rather than size. On Haiti, it called for sustained support for the Gang Suppression Force, the Haitian National Police and the armed forces, and urged the Security Council to renew the Force’s mandate at what the Minister called a crossroads.
On crime, she repeated Prime Minister Andrew Holness’s call for a global war on gangs, reminding arms exporting states that illicit firearms do not manufacture themselves in Caribbean communities. She asked for tighter export controls and post-delivery verification. At home, Jamaica recorded its lowest homicide count in more than three decades in 2025, and the Global Peace Index now ranks it the most peaceful country in the Caribbean.
On reparations, the Minister confirmed that the petition delivered to Buckingham Palace has been referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and that Jamaica supported Ghana’s General Assembly resolution of 25 March. She defined reparatory justice as truth, acknowledgement, repair, compensation, development and reconciliation. Notably, she made no reference to the CARICOM Ten-Point Plan, framing Jamaica’s case through its own petition rather than the regional framework.
On Cuba, the passage was carefully balanced: concern for the suffering of the Cuban people, encouragement of domestic reform, and a call for engagement rather than isolation under the blockade.
Sixty-four years after raising the black, green and gold, Jamaica has given the region its most usable argument for the finance debate ahead. Vulnerability is structural, not a function of income, and Melissa supplied the evidence. The task now is to carry that case from the rostrum into the rooms where eligibility rules are written.
Julian Rogers MBE is the founder and publisher of Caribbean Bridges.
Caribbean Bridges by Julian Rogers . [email protected]
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