Months after the UN and Haiti’s prime minister begged for action in the country wracked by violence, international powers are looking for fresh solutions with no country ready to take the initiative.
On a visit to Brazil, which led a previous UN-led operation in Haiti and sits on the Security Council, a top US diplomat sought progress on Haiti as part of the most recent effort.
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The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, stated that she left with the impression that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Brazil cares about Haiti.
Thomas-Greenfield told AFP on her flight home from Brasilia, “They want to see something done, and they committed to working with us in the Security Council to find a path forward.”
She noted, “We’re making some progress but we’re all frustrated that we have not been able to make more progress more quickly.”
Armed gangs now dominate much of Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, as Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, is ripped apart by intertwined security, political, and health crises.
In his statement to the Security Council, Volker Turk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, said that Haiti was “dangling over an abyss.”
Initial U.S.-led efforts planned for another country to take command of an operation to restore fundamental government and security services and open the door for a political revolution.
Diplomats noted that because no government has expressed interest, alternative options now include organizing a traditional peacekeeping organization with contributions from all across the world.
With significant operations in the early 20th century and the 1990s, the United States has long been a prominent player in Haiti. Recently, it has concentrated on sanctions and financing the nascent national police.
Although his government has pledged assistance if another nation assumes the initiative, President Joe Biden, who brought an end to the US war in Afghanistan, has made it clear that he would not put Americans in danger.
Canada was thought to be the front-runner, but Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, also seems to believe such an operation would be too hazardous.
Maria Isabel Salvador, the UN’s special envoy for Haiti, expressed her continued optimism that either a single nation or the Caribbean region as a whole will step forward.
However, she said that the moment has come for the UN to start being innovative and finding other ways to supply this force.
Brazil has frequently requested UN leadership. Any Security Council initiative would require the support of the veto-wielding China, which resents the fact that Haiti is one of the decreasing numbers of nations who recognize rival Taiwan.
“It’s pretty simple. No one wants to do it. There’s just no country that right now feels either a responsibility or a compulsion to do this, “according to Keith Mines, head of the Latin America program at the US Institute for Peace.
He claimed that hope still existed for Haiti. The idea for a transitional administration, which would result in elections by the end of 2023, was endorsed on December 21 by a coalition of political leaders, members of civil society, and business representatives.
But there’s a “chicken-and-egg problem because it’s difficult to see how a political process can go anywhere as long as there’s this collapse of security,” he added.
In a recent testimony to Congress US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines expressed doubt about Haiti, stating, “It does not look as if it is going to get better anytime soon.”
In October, Haiti’s prime minister, Ariel Henry, sought for help. However, there have been concerns raised about his validity given that Haiti has not held elections since 2016 and that the last victor, president Jovenel Moise, was slain in 2021.
After Henry’s plea, a coalition of Haitian civil society organizations and left-leaning allies rejected military involvement, arguing that it would “only perpetuate and strengthen Henry’s grasp on power while doing little to ameliorate the root causes of today’s crisis.” They expressed their opposition in an open letter to Biden.
An earlier UN peacekeeping mission was damaged by the spread of fatal cholera to Haiti and the discovery of serious reports of child sexual assault by Sri Lankan soldiers during a UN investigation.
Mines, however, criticized the commonly held belief of “constant catastrophe” in Haiti operations and said that Chilean, Brazilian, and Canadian soldiers had been successful on the ground.
“We’re riding this wave of anti-nation building right now which I think is very unfortunate.” She added, “There are tools that are going to go unused as nations like Haiti just collapse.”
