The Bonaire Human Rights Organization (BHRO) hereby issue a urgent SOS to the international community. Bonaire is facing a silent humanitarian and demographic crisis that threatens the long-term survival of the native Bonerian people.
In 2004, Ramonsito Booi of the UPB Bonaire’s main political party, together with Burney Elhage, Arthur Sealy, James Kroon, Jopie Abraham and other political leaders were among the principal architects and persons responsible of the constitutional process that dismantled the Netherlands Antilles, and degraded Bonaire without the consent of the people into a new subordinated constitutional status as “public entity” externally administered and governed from The Hague, as Bonaire’s population stood IN 2004 at approximately 10,008, consisting predominantly of native Bonaireans. In 2017, the Democratic Party, Clark Abraham and MPB Party Elvis Sjin Asjoe and Daisy Coffie approve in Bonaire’s parliament for Holland to anchor Bonaire in the Dutch Constitution without the freely expressed will of its people.
By 1 January 2026, Bonaire’s population had skyrocketed to 27,611, with recent population growth driven overwhelmingly by immigration. In 2025 alone, Bonaire recorded 252 births, 170 deaths, and 2,116 immigrants, demonstrating that migration—not natural population growth—is the principal driver of the island’s population increase.
This data is from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is the Netherlands’ independent national statistical authority, responsible for collecting, analyzing, and publishing the country’s official demographic, social, and economic statistics. According to the official CBS Population Forecast for the Caribbean Netherlands (2025–2050), Bonaire’s population is projected to increase further from 26,600 in 2025 to approximately 34,200 by 2035.
CBS also projects that the share of residents born on Bonaire will continue to decline as migration remains the primary source of population growth.
According to these official demographic projections if the current trends continue, native Bonaireans could become less than 15 percent of the island’s population within the next decade, transforming the indigenous people into a small minority in their own homeland.
Many other institutional factors contribute to this demographic and cultural destabilization such as declining birth rate among native Bonaireans, increasing mortality, and mounting economic hardship since the constitutional changes of 10 October 2010.
Also, the rising land taxes, increasing property taxes, soaring housing prices, higher living costs, and growing financial pressures have compelled many native Bonaireans to sell ancestral lands, family homes, and local businesses or to leave Bonaire altogether in search of affordable opportunities elsewhere.
All these and more combined pressures, together with sustained immigration, are accelerating the demographic and cultural erosion of the native Bonerian people.
BHRO therefore issues this urgent SOS to CARICOM, COPPPAL, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), the Organization of American States (OAS), the United Nations, the United Nations Human Rights Council, governments throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, international human rights organizations, civil society, and all people of goodwill to urgently examine the situation in Bonaire and take appropriate action to help safeguard the fundamental human rights, identity, culture, language, heritage, and future of the native Bonerian people before this silent humanitarian crisis becomes irreversible.
