ReliefWeb

Haiti is reeling from the president’s assassination, a major earthquake and a severe tropical storm. The country needs urgent assistance, and its planned elections can wait. Outside powers should channel aid through local civil society groups, help investigate high-level crimes and support pressing reforms.

What’s new? The assassination in July of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, perpetrated with no apparent resistance from his elite security detail, and a bout of natural disasters weeks later have further destabilised an already fragile Haiti and intensified its humanitarian crisis at a time of extreme insecurity.

Why does it matter? Coming amid intersecting political, human rights, economic and humanitarian crises, Moïse’s killing and other recent events have exposed the chronic failings of state authorities and difficulties in ensuring that foreign support is deployed effectively. Growing insecurity is also driving instability and increased migrant flows within and outside the country.

What should be done? Funnelling aid to vulnerable people hit by recent natural disasters, preferably through local civil society, is the imperative. International backing for prosecuting high-level crimes, police reform and support for a broad-based representative and inclusive interim government stand a better chance than a rush to elections of helping restore stability.

Overview

Even before hit men assassinated President Jovenel Moïse in July and an enormous earthquake struck in August, Haiti was in a harrowing state of insecurity. Violence, largely perpetrated by criminal groups funded by powerful business leaders, politicians and drug dealers, had shut down much of the economy. These groups extended their sway as Moïse’s opponents contested his authority in an increasingly heated political climate. Although the killing’s aftermath has brought numerous arrests and promises of inclusive government from the country’s acting leadership, interim authorities face manifest threats of worsening political volatility and humanitarian crisis. They will need outside help to pull through. It is essential that Haiti accept foreign support to investigate high-profile crimes and set in motion long overdue economic and security reforms. Leading donors and the UN should take the cues of local political and civil society leaders as to when fresh elections should be held, and work with a broad-based coalition on recovery efforts in the wake of the earthquake and the ensuing tropical storm.

A snapshot of Haiti in the weeks prior to Moïse’s assassination reveals a country in deep distress. As of June 2021, more than 90 armed gangs operated throughout the country and controlled over half the capital Port-au-Prince, according to the UN. The entire southern half of Haiti was cut off from the rest due to gang roadblocks. Fuel could not be unloaded from tankers because of security concerns; shortages were increasing; and more than half the nation’s population subsisted on less than $2 per day. At least 15,000 people had been internally displaced, and many found themselves in overcrowded community centres that humanitarian agencies found hard to reach because criminals controlled the vicinity. Rape and sexual violence were common in these centres. COVID-19 was raging, having caused over 600 fatalities (likely a vast underestimate), including the death of the head of the Supreme Court in June, while the first vaccines arrived only in July. Moïse had also hollowed out the country’s political institutions, refusing to allow parliamentary elections and appointing surrogates to local posts.

Moïse’s killing itself starkly illustrated the state’s lack of control over Haitian territory. Assailants burst into his private residence in the early hours of 7 July, murdering him and seriously injuring his wife. Not one of the president’s large retinue of security personnel, many of them highly trained and heavily armed, was even lightly injured in the attack, leading to the widespread conclusion that they offered no meaningful resistance. A sprawling investigation led by the Haitian police with support from abroad, above all the U.S. and Colombia, has so far led to the arrest of close to 50 people, including eighteen Colombian former soldiers alongside high-ranking Haitian police officers. Still, many questions remain about who ordered the killing and why.

The assassination also raised the possibility of a bruising battle for political supremacy. Three people claimed to be the president’s legitimate successor straight after the murder. Eventually, largely due to pressure from the U.S., Canada, France, the EU and other members of the so-called Core Group, Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon and interior minister under former President Michel Martelly, became prime minister on 20 July. Although Henry has preached reconciliation, many Haitians refuse to recognise his government’s legitimacy and express disappointment in the official response to the August earthquake and severe weather that together killed at least 2,200, left hundreds of thousands homeless and prompted a new cohort of migrants to take to the high seas. Allegations that Henry was directly involved in Moïse’s killing are likely to intensify the political ferment.

As the country struggles through its third year of an economic slump and works to pick up the pieces after July’s assassination and August’s natural disasters, its interim leaders and donors must decide where to focus their energies. A planned constitutional referendum and elections have been postponed; these votes should not be the immediate priority, particularly given the challenges of organising credible polls amid the current tumult. The first steps should be to consolidate a caretaker government, with genuine broad-based support and participation, and to pursue measures that address the country’s security deficits, judicial impunity and humanitarian needs. These steps ought to remain the objectives even if the composition of Haiti’s interim government changes, for example as a consequence of allegations against Henry in relation to Moïse’s killing.

While outside actors should try to steer clear of the heavy-handed military and peacekeeping interventions that largely failed to achieve their goals from the 1990s through the 2010s, there is much they can constructively do. Donors should direct their assistance to supporting local civil society initiatives to restore housing, public services and people’s livelihoods. Until such recovery efforts are well under way, foreign governments, and the U.S. in particular, should halt any further deportations to Haiti so as to avoid putting further weight on overtaxed and resource-starved state institutions and local communities.

Donors should also invest in shoring up state institutions responsible for investigating high-level crime and start in on security sector reform. As for fresh elections, Haiti’s outside partners should stay in close touch with a wide range of local groups to gain a sense of when conditions will permit credible polls to be organised and safely held, and then work to make those successful, so that the country can begin to repair its broken political order and find its way onto a more stable footing.