Editorial | While Haiti’s elite twiddle

This week’s United Nations report on the expansion of gang violence to Haiti’s rural communities also draws attention to the failure at compromise by the country’s contending political elite, and of how their negligence could further exacerbate Haiti’s deep crisis of security.

The inability of internal stakeholders to agree on governance questions makes it more difficult to convince external partners to commit help in stabilising the security situation.

Haiti’s long-standing political and social problems worsened with the assassination two and half years ago of the country’s president, Jovenel Moïse, followed by the near complete collapse of the national police and the rise of gangs, whose leaders, such as Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier, operate with impunity. But hitherto, the gangs concentrated their violence on urban areas, primarily the capital, Port-au-Prince.

But the new UN report says they have spread their impunity to rural areas, including key agriculture-producing regions, which were previously considered safe. Rapes, killings and abductions now abound.

The report focused primarily on the region of Lower Artibonite, north of Port-au-Prince, where police presence is sparse to non-existent.

Between January 2022 and this past October, 1,694 people were killed in the area, and more than 1,100 injured. Over 80 per cent of the deaths were in 2023.

CROPS LOST

Additionally, by the first quarter of this year around 12,000 acres of crops were lost as farmers fled their fields. There is a risk of hunger among the region’s 1.7 million people.

“A climate of fear reigns in Lower Artibonite, where murders, sexual violence, theft, destruction of property and other abuses are committed against the population on an almost daily basis,” the report says.

It is not surprising, in the circumstances, that the UN officials have called for the urgent deployment of a multinational force to help the Haitian National Police protect critical facilities and guarantee people’s safety. Kenya has pledged to lead such a force, with the deployment of 1,000 police. That undertaking, however, is bogged down in the country’s judicial system.

A small Kenyan political party, which is challenging the constitutionality of deploying the country’s police abroad, gained a court injunction in October preventing President William Ruto’s government from acting on its decision. The court is to rule on the underlying constitutional question on January 26. Any judgment it passes is likely to be appealed, unless President Ruto seeks to circumvent the judiciary with legislative action.

Against this backdrop, broad consensus and cohesion among Haitian politicians and civil society groups, on the basics for moving the country forward, would help to provide the Kenyans – and others who intend to participate in the multinational force – with important political cover to advance that agenda. That, unfortunately, does not appear to be the case.

Earlier this year, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the regional economic and political organisation, established a three-member eminent persons group (EPG) of former prime ministers (Perry Christie, The Bahamas; Bruce Golding, Jamaica; Kenny Anthony, St Lucia) to help shepherd the Haitians through their political conundrum.

DEEPLY FRUSTRATED

The group last visited Haiti for a week up to November 14. Based on a CARICOM statement, the EPG would have left Port-au-Prince deeply frustrated, even as they continued with their mission.

“They were buoyed initially by the prospects raised by information that tentative agreement had been reached on some critical areas of convergence following concessions made by Prime Minister (Ariel) Henry during informal discussions, led by a facilitator, which had taken place during their absence,” CARICOM said.

However, instead of being able to build on that foundation, the EPG encountered a return to what CARICOM termed “the earlier intransigent position of some sections of the opposition group” who insisted on Henry’s resignation “as a precondition for meaningful discussions”.

“The governance concessions the prime minister was willing to make were brushed aside, perceived as an effort to prolong his tenure,” the CARICOM said.

In a context of diplomacy, that is a very blunt hauling over the coals. Nonetheless, the EPG apparently believes that it was able to retrieve sufficient of the lost ground to be in a position to “draft (a) framework of accord for their (Haitian stakeholders) consideration and discussion that takes into account the points the stakeholders have raised in the course of these engagements”.

For too long, Haiti’s political elite have pursued their own interests rather than the interests of the Haitian people, who are now in another cycle of brutish circumstances. Hopefully, they can extricate themselves from this historic pursuit of selfishness and prevent Haiti’s slide deeper into chaos and privation.