The United Nations Development Programme does not deal in hyperbole. When the UNDP publishes its 2026 Democracy and Development Report for Latin America and the Caribbean, the world takes note. And what it found about Jamaica should shake every corner of Gordon House.
More than half of all Jamaicans — not a disgruntled minority, not a fringe of malcontents — more than half of the Jamaican population intends to leave this country within the next three years. To work elsewhere. To live elsewhere. To build their futures somewhere other than the land of their birth.
In the entire Latin America and Caribbean region, only Haiti — a nation in the grip of gang warfare, state collapse, and humanitarian catastrophe — ranks above Jamaica in the share of its population planning to emigrate. That is the company we keep. That is the mirror Andrew Holness's government has given us.
The Brain They Drained
Let us be precise about what "brain drain" means in practice. It is not merely that Jamaicans are leaving. People have always left in search of better lives. What the UNDP data tells us is that the educated — the nurses, the engineers, the accountants, the teachers trained at taxpayer expense — are the ones going first and fastest.
Over 80 percent of Jamaicans with tertiary-level education who live abroad were trained in Jamaica. Less than a quarter of the country's entire tertiary-educated class remains on the island. Jamaica is, in effect, running a foreign aid programme for the health services of the United Kingdom and Canada, paying for the training and then gifting the result to wealthier nations.
"When more than half your people want to leave, you do not get to call yourself a leader. You get to call yourself a reason."
— Shaquille Ramsay, The OpinionTen Years. One Man. One Record.
Andrew Holness has been Prime Minister of Jamaica since 2016. He has now governed this country for a decade. In that time, Jamaica's brain drain score has reached 9.5 out of 10 — the worst in the entire Caribbean, the worst in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that time, more than half the country has told a UN survey that they are planning to leave.
This is not fate. It is not geography. It is not the lingering ghost of colonialism. It is governance — or the precise, measured failure of it.
The UNDP's broader report identifies the causes clearly: crime and violence, lack of economic opportunity for qualified citizens, an absence of social mobility, and institutional distrust. Every single one of those is a policy responsibility. Every single one of them has worsened or remained unresolved under this administration.
Corruption Is Not Always Cash in a Bag
When Jamaicans think of government corruption, we think of the obvious: the brown envelope, the crooked contract, the inflated invoice. And those are real. The Integrity Commission's findings regarding Andrew Holness's properties — an offshore company in St. Lucia, assets of unexplained origin — deserve their own accounting.
But there is another form of corruption that is harder to prosecute and easier to forget. It is the corruption of neglect. It is the corruption of promising communities roads and schools and safety and delivering none of it. It is the corruption of presiding over a crime epidemic — Jamaica consistently ranks among the world's highest for homicide rates — while offering press conferences as policy.
When the environment becomes so unlivable that more than half your people would rather start over elsewhere, that is a form of corruption too. It is the theft of the future. It is governance that steals hope so quietly, so gradually, that people only notice when they are filling out immigration forms.
What a Real Government Would Do
We do not write this merely to indict. We write this because the data demands a response — not another committee, not another press release, not another Vision document that sits on a shelf until the next election cycle.
A government serious about reversing this crisis would address crime as though the economy depended on it — because it does. It would ensure that qualified graduates have competitive employment at home. It would invest in the public institutions that make a country worth staying in: hospitals, schools, roads, courts that function.
Instead, we have a Prime Minister who governs through announcements, who measures success in photo opportunities, and who has watched the country's most capable citizens file for visas for a decade while calling it a development story.
The UNDP did not name Andrew Holness. The data does not need to. When more than half a country's population tells the United Nations they plan to leave within three years, the indictment is written in the numbers. It is signed by the people.
"Jamaica is not broken by accident. It is broken by management."
— Shaquille Ramsay, The OpinionThe Verdict the Ballot Box Has Not Yet Delivered
Elections are won on promises. Governance is judged by outcomes. The outcome here is unambiguous: Jamaica has become a country that the majority of its own people are trying to leave. Not someday. Not in theory. Within three years.
If that is the legacy of a decade of JLP governance under Andrew Holness, let it be stated plainly, sourced from the United Nations, and entered into the record.
The people are not wrong. They are not ungrateful. They are rational. And when rational people, in their millions, choose to leave — that is not a migration story. That is a governance story. And the name on the door of the Office of the Prime Minister is the name on that story.