Violence in Haiti

By Roberto Morejon

Violence between armed gangs, inflation, other indicators of the economic crisis as well as the weakness of authorities and institutions, opened the way in Haiti to the promoters of a foreign intervention.

Shortages of food and fuel, a 100 percent increase of the latter and insufficient jobs that deepen poverty are additional ingredients towards desperation.

In this atmosphere, armed gangs are gaining ground with control of part of Port-au-Prince, the capital, where sexual assaults are used to instill terror and extort money.

As was to be expected, basic services including education and health are in a precarious state, as gang violence has skyrocketed and gangs are out of control, according to a report by the UN office in Haiti and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

To the general astonishment, the criminals use a variety of weapons, provided by the flourishing of this murky business in the United States.

It is true that the UN report calls to help Haiti to reinforce its police, health and judicial system to fight against impunity, but the demand for a foreign intervention, formulated by Prime Minister Ariel Henry, overrides this request.

Even the Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, advocated this alternative for a country through which civilian, military and political missions have passed in the last decades and which was occupied by the United States in the twentieth century, with disastrous results.  

As a consequence of one of the foreign interventions, a cholera epidemic was introduced, which caused the death of 9,000 people, as admitted by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.   

In addition to these factors, personalities, social and political groups argue that although the situation in Haiti is serious and even the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021 has not been clarified, the legal bases of the international order according to the UN Charter, regarding the preservation of sovereignty and self-determination, must remain untouchable.

Calls from sectors of society for the formation of a broad-based government should be heeded until elections are called, as a way to alleviate as much as possible the tragedy of a people exhausted by storms, earthquakes, corruption and insolent foreign interference.

CARICOM, the Caribbean Community, whose leaders have expressed their willingness to promote dialogue and consensus in Haiti, could help in the march towards this path.