November 2021

By Ken Cable

Haiti is once again in the news. It only features when there is a disaster or crisis of which there have been many in its troubled and complex history. These have usually been caused by a combination of a small but bitterly-divided dominant political elite allied to dominant foreign powers, once European but since the late nineteenth century the United States and now including the United Nations. The current situation is essentially no different, but in its combination of natural disaster and several inter-linked political crises it is different in its intensity, imposing even greater misery on the ninety per cent plus of Haitians who get absolutely nothing from the present system.

This figure is no exaggeration – if anything it is understated. After the 2010 earthquake in the capital Port-au-Prince, which killed more than 200,000 and left more than a million homeless, Paul Farmer, UN Deputy Special Envoy in Haiti and by training a medical anthropologist and doctor with more than twenty-five years’ engagement in the country, invoked a medical analogy to describe the situation as “acute-on-chronic”. It highlighted the effect of the earthquake on the pre-existing conditions of a desperate lack of housing, sanitation, healthcare and education. More than US$6.4bn was raised for reconstruction but Haitians saw little of it, mostly it went to foreign contractors, UN agencies, the US military and international nongovernmental organisations, with the result that Haitians largely remain poor, unemployed and homeless.

The majority of Haitians are now worse off than they were then (the World Bank estimates that 60% of the population are at or below the poverty line in 2021) which has fuelled mounting migration, growing political protest and accompanying crises, and failing foreign engagement. The result is the chaos that now grips the country where well-armed criminal gangs control large parts of Port-au-Prince, murdering and kidnapping for ransom at will.

DISASTERS FORCE MIGRATION 

Haiti is regularly struck by hurricanes, four in the last ten years. On most occasions the flooding and storms cause severe damage to roads and buildings along with loss of life. Sometimes this can be substantial. In 2008 alone four hurricanes hit the country killing 800 people and damaging 70% of the country’s crops. The last severe hurricane was Hurricane Matthew in 2016 which killed nearly 600 people and left more than 35,000 homeless.

It is also hit by earthquakes. The most recent was in August when a severe earthquake in south-west Haiti devastated the towns of Jérémie and Les Cayes killing more than 2,500 people and injuring 12,000. The difficulties of getting relief to an area where there is only one poorly maintained and severely potholed road was graphically shown on TV news.

To these natural disasters must be added the man-made environmental disaster across Haiti of deforestation and accompanying soil erosion, which, combined with population growth has put unsustainable pressure on the land. The mountainous terrain makes 20-30% of cultivated land unsuited for agriculture and more than 10,000 hectares of arable land is lost each year forcing peasants to abandon their miniscule landholdings and seek a living in the cities and abroad.

The population of Port-au-Prince and immediately surrounding areas has doubled in size in the last 20 years to around 3 million inhabitants, one quarter of the total population of Haiti. The majority of people are unemployed or underemployed and live in makeshift buildings without basic amenities. They live from day to day. Much the same goes for the rest of the country including the other major cities.

The answer has been migration to other countries - traditionally this was as temporary sugar cane cutters to neighbouring Caribbean islands, and especially to the Dominican Republic with which it shares a land border. The exact number of Haitians in the Dominican Republic is difficult to determine, and many persons of Haitian descent were born there. That however has not stopped the Dominican government denying them citizenship and deporting tens of thousands back to Haiti. More recently Covid has led to the Dominican Republic suspending temporary legal status to 150,000 Haitian workers, putting additional pressure on them to return home.

Many more Haitians target the United States and Canada. The Haitian immigrant population in the US has tripled in size since 1980 and now stands at more than 700,000 legally resident with probably around the same number there illegally. In the 1980s they frequently sought to land by boat in Florida but a US policy to return them led Haitians to seek alternative routes with much attention now focused on South and Central America. Many targeted Chile and Brazil where they found temporary work before moving through South and Central America to the US-Mexican border. Recent news stories have focused on the situation at Del Rio just over the border in Texas. More than 14,000 people, the majority Haitian, were seeking entry to the US. Pictures of them being rounded-up like cattle by US rangers on horseback caused global condemnation. The US government has responded once again by seeking to deter entry with a policy of enforced return to Haiti, deporting more than 2,000 people by air to Port-au-Prince.

POLITICAL CRISES 

The murder of Haitian President, Jovenal Moise, in July this year, in circumstances that are far from clear, has added to the growing political chaos in the country which was mounting even prior to this date and for which Moise himself bore a large part of the blame. Elected in November 2016 by less than 10% of those registered to vote, his regime was almost a carbon copy of the previous neo-Duvalierist regime of Michel Martelly, characterised by the same experiences of flawed and cancelled elections, massive corruption and rule by decree. (1)

Corruption and impunity have been at the centre of Moise’s government. It is exemplified by the PetroCaribe scandal that emerged in 2018. A report of the Haitian Senate showed that more than US$2bn of assistance provided by Venezuela had been systematically pillaged and mismanaged to the benefit of high-level government officials, including Moise.  At first he sought to block the report but continuing and escalating demonstrations throughout Haiti caused him to order further investigations which have seen the publication of successive reports by the CSCAA (in English Superior Court of Auditors) detailing the corruption. This showed it to be extensive with ‘irregularities’ involving 13 ministries, 15 state agencies, the prime minister’s office and the state university. To date no prosecutions have been brought. Likewise, there have none in numerous cases of police brutality and murder in poorer parts of Port-au-Prince, as well as in controlling demonstrations and silencing protestors and journalists.

That and issues around the cost of living and unemployment have fuelled the continuing protests. So also were the actions of Moise in suspending the House of Deputies and two-thirds of the Senate at the beginning of 2020, claiming they had forestalled elections which should have been held the previous October. In turn, he was accused of planning to remain in office after the end of his own presidential mandate in February 2021. That proved to be the case. Moise claimed that a new constitution was needed before elections could take place and that he had commissioned the drafting of one which he would put to a constitutional referendum to be held later in the year. In the meantime he ruled by decree, one of which severely weakened the powers of the CSCAA. Other decrees have strengthened the powers of the executive and the security and intelligence agencies.

One of Moise’s last acts just 24 hours before his assassination was the appointment of a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, who is currently also serving as ‘interim head-of-state’. True to form, he has postponed any elections citing unfinished electoral reform and insufficient preparation. In this he is supported by some 150 civil society organisations and The Core Group of international actors with a particular interest in Haiti - the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, the European Union, the Organisation of American States and the United Nations. Opposing it are a national coalition of 200 plus local and regional organisations formed into the Commission for a Haitian Solution to the Crisis who want Henry to step down.

EXTERNAL INTERFERENCE

In recent years the US and the UN have been heavily involved in Haiti. The former is pre-eminent and charts the general direction of that involvement and on occasion even the details of policy. US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show it has in the recent past chosen who was or was not to be president, and its ambassador in Haiti remains perhaps the most important person in the country. To achieve its objectives the US government has committed military forces and spent US$4.4bn in foreign assistance from 2010-2018, around half of it from its development fund USAID. Of that only 2% went directly to Haitian organisations and firms while some US$1.2bn went to US firms located in Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia alone. USAID has since cut back its funding but the US remains supportive of programmes to strengthen the police, including the provision of training and weapons. The Biden administration to date has made no significant changes to policies developed by Trump, including deportation. In September this led the Biden-appointed United States Special Envoy to Haiti, Dan Foote, to resign after only two months in office citing US policy as “deeply flawed”, “inhumane” and “counterproductive”. He was followed a few days later by Harold Koh, a senior State Department legal adviser, who called the deportations “illegal”.

The UN has been involved in Haiti since 2004 in a variety of forms, including the stationing of foreign troops to maintain order. In 2010 these numbered more than 9,000 and by the time they were stood down at the end of 2017 the UN had spent more than US$7bn. The experience has been traumatic.  In 2010 Nepalese troops assigned to the UN brought cholera, previously unknown in Haiti. Insanitary conditions and lack of clean water in rural and urban areas quickly saw the disease spread throughout the country. Over 800,000 were infected and nearly 10,000 died. The UN at first denied responsibility, admitting it only after six years and a campaign to force it to do so. Cholera is now contained but compensation for victims has been inadequate and delayed. UN forces have also been accused of systematic sexual exploitation and abuse. Action on this has again been slow to follow with less than 100 cases being identified while there is ample evidence of many more. To date very few if any suspects have been prosecuted.

Both US and UN policies in Haiti have comprehensively failed to deliver their stated aims of stability, democracy and development. There is some recognition of this in parts of the US Congress and of the international system but so far little has been done to change direction.

HOPE FOR HAITI?

On October 4^th the UN Security Council met to discuss the situation in Haiti. It had before it the regular report by its Special Representative in Haiti, Helen La Lime. She described the situation as “bleak”. The Security Council however did not reach any conclusions for further action other than to continue its policy of muddling through, which in effect meant following the lead of the US and of prime minister Henry in promoting elections toward the end of next year. Given the demonstrably failed process of elections in the recent past this is likely to resolve nothing without more thoroughgoing change.

Haiti has moved from a situation of acute-on-chronic to paralysis, which the unchecked Covid-19 pandemic has now made worse. There is no agreed way forward which is why increasing numbers of Haitians are leaving the country, including attempting once again to enter the US by hazardous boat journeys to Florida. What is clear, however, is that the actions of the international community in Haiti are more of a hindrance than a help. The future for Haiti needs to be determined by its civil society organisations alone, of which there are more than 500 covering the whole spectrum of society. At present they are divided but they were once united. In 1986 they came together, almost spontaneously, to overthrow the nearly 30-year rule of the Duvaliers and to usher in a period of change. This was ultimately frustrated but such a movement needs to be attempted again if there is to be any hope for Haiti.

(1) The Duvalier regime, father (Papa Doc) and then son (Baby Doc), dominated Haiti from 1957-86. They ruled by a mixture of fear and reward with an emphasis on the former so that all opponents were murdered, imprisoned without trial or exiled. Those who were favoured largely managed to avoid arrest when the regime was overthrown, returning to power in 2010 as supporters of Martelly. They even sheltered Baby Doc when he returned from exile in 2011, and so were known as 'neo-Duvalierists'. For a discussion of the Martelly regime see: Experience of Haiti: exclusion by election by Ken Cable The Socialist Correspondent No. 28, Summer 2017.

Gonaïves, Haiti after the 2008 hurricanes. Pic by Roosewelt Pinhiero/ABr

The murder of Haitian President, Jovenal Moise, in July this year, in circumstances that are far from clear, has added to the growing political chaos in the country which was mounting even prior to this date and for which Moise himself bore a large part of the blame.