High Tide, High Time: Climate Change in the Dutch Caribbean
22 September 2026
Curaçao faces a high cost of living, heavy dependence on imports, and, together with Aruba, it is one of the main destinations in the region for migrants from Venezuela, straining housing, healthcare and social services. With around 151,000 residents on 444km², Curaçao is the most densely populated and most populous of the three southern islands. Like Aruba, its position outside the main Atlantic hurricane belt means drought, rather than storms, is its primary climate risk.
The Netherlands Red Cross on Curaçao, founded around 1931, operates as one of six branches of the Netherlands Red Cross across the Dutch Caribbean, alongside Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Saba and Sint Eustatius, all under the same 1988 Dutch Royal Decree. The branch is run by local staff and volunteers, and forms part of a wider network of more than 300 volunteers across all six islands combined.
What we work on
The Netherlands Red Cross supports the Curaçao branch across a range of areas, from everyday community support to strengthening the branch’s own disaster-response capacity.
Reaching people the safety net misses
Through the Social Economic Programme, the Netherlands Red Cross provides food, hygiene support, shelter assistance and medical help to vulnerable residents on Curaçao, including undocumented migrants who often fall outside other support systems. As one of the ABC islands, this work is funded through the Netherlands’ own resources rather than through the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, which covers the BES islands instead.
Building first aid capacity
The Curaçao branch trains local residents in first aid, building a layer of emergency response that does not depend on outside help arriving in time. This work sits alongside the branch’s broader role in community support and disaster response.
Strengthening the branch itself
Running a branch on a small island brings standing organisational challenges: HR, IT, logistics and communications all need to function reliably with limited local capacity. The Netherlands Red Cross supports the Curaçao branch in strengthening these essentials, so it can operate consistently rather than only during a crisis.
Marking nearly a century of service
The Red Cross on Curaçao is approaching its 95th anniversary, founded around 1931, and each May the branch holds a month-long fundraising drive, visiting the Governor and collecting donations across the island. Recent campaigns have gone toward a new Red Cross building in Suffisant and a new ambulance, since the branch relies entirely on donations and fundraising to carry out its work rather than on structural government funding.
How the Red Cross network fits together
Curaçao is one of four countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, alongside the Netherlands, Aruba and Sint Maarten, each with its own government, a status Curaçao has held since the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010. Because Curaçao is a separate country, The Netherlands Red Cross operates here as it would in any partner country.
In practice, this means the Curaçao branch runs its own day-to-day operations, led by local staff and volunteers, while the Netherlands Red Cross provides funding, coordination and technical support from a regional and national level.
The branch’s legal footing rests on a Dutch Royal Decree issued in 1988 and amended in 2011, which gives the Netherlands Red Cross its auxiliary role across the whole Kingdom, Curaçao included. Because there is no separate National Society here, there is no partnership start date to anchor this section to, the 1988 decree is the closest equivalent.
