Above: Haiti President Michel Martelly with Bahamian officials in Nassau (Photo: OP Haiti)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti and the Bahamas have signed three new wide-ranging bilateral agreements, the two sides announced this week.

The agreements were signed during a visit to the Bahamas by Haiti President Michel Martelly.

The pacts covered agriculture, the promotion and protection of investment and wider bilateral cooperation in general.

The investment agreement covered the “need to create favourable conditions for investments” in both the Bahamas and Haiti, and urged each side to promote possible investments in one another’s private sectors, among other provisions.

The bilateral cooperation agreement covered a number of areas, from migration to culture and sports to public safety.

On the migration front, the two countries agreed that each would repatriate all nationals found illegally in their territory “and agree to accept its nationals without undue or unreasonable delay.”

They agreed that, where illegal migrants of one country are found on vessels illegally in the territorial waters of the other country, those migrants “shall be subject to immediate repatriation to their country of origin.”

The Bahamas also agreed to continue reviewing the status of Haitian nationals with no legal status and without criminal records who had either arrived in the Bahamas on or before Jan. 12, 1985; resided continuously in the Bahamas since that time, among other provisions.

The two sides also agreed that the Prime Minister of the Bahamas and the President of Haiti would meet in a summit every two years, alternating between the Bahamas and Haiti or another agreed location.