‘Not the time to forget’ troubled Haiti, UN chief says on visit

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Haiti on Saturday for a lightning visit, saying that “this is not the time to forget” the Caribbean nation mired in overlapping security, political and economic woes.
For months, the world body’s leader has raised the alarm bell about the situation in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, which has been wracked by gang violence, a worsening public health situation and political instability.
“I’m in Port-au-Prince to express my full solidarity with the Haitian people and call on the international community to continue to stand with Haiti, including with a robust international force to assist the Haitian National Police,” Guterres said on Twitter a few minutes after his arrival. “This is not the time to forget Haiti.”
Guterres – making his first visit to Haiti as UN secretary-general – is expected to meet Prime Minister Ariel Henry as well as other political leaders and members of civil society, his spokesperson said.
The United Nations and Henry have repeatedly made the case for a multinational force to stabilise Haiti, which has not held national elections since 2016.
However, nine months after Guterres first asked the Security Council for such a force, no country has been willing to step forward to lead one, fearing high risks and uncertain success.
Canada and Brazil have both been heavily involved in discussions, and several Caribbean nations have backed a multinational force.
President Joe Biden has made clear that the United States, which has a long history of intervention in Haiti, will not lead a force and instead wants to focus on bolstering the fledgling national police.
Guterres told the UN Security Council in April that he viewed the insecurity in Port-au-Prince as “comparable to countries in armed conflict”, and said Haitians were facing one of the worst human rights crises in decades.
He said that gangs have been tightening their grip around metropolitan Port-au-Prince, “where no commune is now spared from gang-related turf wars”.
“In many violence-affected areas, economic activity remains completely paralysed. At the same time, there has been an increase in the number of people leaving Haiti, both by sea and across the land border to the Dominican Republic,” he said.
The UN refugee agency said some 73,500 people fled Haiti last year.
The United Nations says 5.2mn – nearly half Haiti’s population – need humanitarian assistance in 2023.
It has appealed for $720mn to deliver aid this year, but so far it is only 23% funded.
Guterres has said the Haitian police estimate there are seven major gang coalitions and around 200 affiliated groups.
They have ambushed and attacked the security forces, while “other gang tactics include spreading terror by indiscriminately shooting at passengers on public transport and rape”.
In September last year gangs worsened the humanitarian situation by blocking a fuel terminal for six weeks, halting most economic activity.
The UN Security Council in October sanctioned Haiti’s most powerful gangster, who was accused of leading the blockade to protest government fuel subsidies cuts.
The United States and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Haitian political figures and business people.
The United Nations has meanwhile been clear about the nightmare suffered by many Haitians on a daily basis – shootings, kidnappings, rapes are frequent.
“Haitians and our team there tell me it’s never been worse than it is now,” UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) executive director Catherine Russell said this week after returning from Port-au-Prince.
She highlighted “unprecedented hunger and malnutrition, grinding poverty, a crippled economy, resurgence of cholera, and a massive insecurity that creates a deadly downward spiral of violence”.
Compounding the crises, the flooding and earthquakes that have repeatedly ravaged the country “continue to remind us all just how vulnerable Haiti is to climate change and natural disasters”, she told a briefing.
And then Russell recounted the horrific story of an 11-year-old girl who was kidnapped by five men – and raped by three of them.
“She was eight months pregnant when we spoke and gave birth just a few days later,” she said, recalling that armed gangs control more than 60% of the capital and large swathes of the countryside.
Faced with such violence, residents have occasionally taken matters into their own hands.
In April, a group of civilians beat to death several suspected gang members who were in police custody and burned their bodies in the street.
And in June, Haiti’s minister of planning and external co-operation, Ricard Pierre, warned of the risk that the country could descend into civil war if an international assistance force is not deployed soon.
“The risk of civil war is very real,” he said.
Some 5.2mn Haitians – nearly half of the country’s population – need humanitarian assistance. Three million of those in need are children.
Guterres is also planning to “underscore the need for a Haitian-led, inclusive political pathway towards elections and the return of constitutional order in Haiti”, his spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Henry, who was named to his post shortly before the July 2021 assassination of president Jovenel Moise, has faced questions about his own legitimacy.
He has pledged to leave office by February 7, 2024, after repeatedly postponing elections citing first an August 2021 earthquake that killed more than 2,000 people, and then the gang violence.
Following his stop in Haiti, Guterres will head to Trinidad and Tobago for a summit of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also attend that meeting, where he plans to meet Henry.
UN peacekeepers were deployed to Haiti in 2004 after a rebellion led to the ouster and exile of then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Peacekeeping troops left in 2017 and were replaced by UN police, who departed in 2019.
Haitians are wary of an armed UN presence.
The country was free of cholera until 2010, when UN peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river. More than 9,000 people died of the disease, and some 800,000 fell ill.