Social conditions
All residents have access to health care, and a social insurance system was introduced in 1967. Visit AbbreviationFinder to see the definitions of BRB and acronym for Barbados.
The country’s only prison had to be evacuated in April 2005 following serious devastation due to a prison riot that lasted several days and cost 2 inmates life and 25 wounded – including 6 prison guards. The prison riot was triggered because authorities had rejected complaints of a prisoner’s sexual assault. Seventeen of the prisoners were charged with arson. Check to see Barbados population.
After more than 20 years of dispute between Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago on fishing rights, an arbitration court in The Hague in April 2006 decided that the fishing area between the two countries should be defined by a line drawn in the middle of the sea between them.
The government declared in February 2007 that at the end of the year, a Finance Commission was set up to “strengthen the oversight and regulation of Barbados’ financial institutions”.
The parliamentary elections in January 2008 were won by the DLP who got 20 seats in parliament, while the BLP had to settle for 10. The BLP’s 15-year monopoly on power was thus broken. DLP chairman David Thompson was subsequently deployed as prime minister.
Many Call Centers have moved from the US and Canada to Barbados, which has benefited local employment.
Freundel Stuart became prime minister in October 2010 when David Thompson died of cancer. He joined the UN Sustainability Panel in 2011.
Stuart’s DLP won the parliamentary elections in February 2013.