Archiv: Haiti crisis 2024


30.03.2024 - 22:00 [ United Nations ]

Bold action needed now to address ‘cataclysmic’ situation in Haiti

With gang violence intensifying, and the national police unable to counter it, so-called “self-defence brigades” have continued to emerge and take justice into their own hands, the report said. At least 528 cases of lynching were reported in 2023 and a further 59 this year.

Additionally, despite an arms embargo, there is a reliable supply of weapons and ammunition for the gangs coming through porous borders, resulting in the groups often having superior firepower to the police.

The report calls for tighter national and international controls to stem weapons and ammunition trafficking into Haiti and reiterates the need for the urgent deployment of a multinational security support (MSS) mission to back up the police force.

The UN Security Council authorised the mission’s deployment in October 2023, and Kenya has offered to lead it.

15.03.2024 - 20:27 [ Wikipedia ]

United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti

The United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (French: Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti), also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of the French name, was a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti that was in operation from 2004 to 2017.

15.03.2024 - 20:20 [ CBC.ca ]

Canada‘s UN ambassador says gangs now control Haiti. What will the international community do?

(10.03.2024)

Haiti is gripped by chaos and disorder, as criminal gangs increasingly assert control over the country. Haiti‘s acting leader, Ariel Henry, is outside the country and attempting to negotiate a way home, even as the United States calls for him to resign and plan elections for a new government.

On Sunday, the U.S. said it had deployed additional security to its embassy in Port-au-Prince and airlifted some non-essential diplomatic staff out of the country.

15.03.2024 - 20:16 [ ModernDiplomacy.eu ]

Haiti: Gangs, Violence and a State in Total Chaos

(16.07.2023)

A few days ago, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made an official visit to Haiti, trying to shed light on the situation for the world to see. Tweeting from Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, Guterres expressed his solidarity with the Haitian people and called for an international response against the lawlessness and violence that has swallowed the country. It is not the time to forget Haiti, he said, but have his words fallen on deaf ears?

15.03.2024 - 20:10 [ Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) ]

Haiti: Nearly half of the population is facing acute hunger

(29.05.2023)

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis (March 2023), 4.9 million people in Haiti – nearly half of the country‘s population – are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity. This figure represents an increase of 200 000 people in just five months. And of the total number of people affected, 1.8 million are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) – up from the analyses in the last three years.

15.03.2024 - 19:45 [ Al Jazeera ]

Haiti President Moise’s widow, ex-PM among 50 charged in his assassination

(20.02.2024)

Joseph and the former director-general of the national police, Leon Charles, were also found to have “sufficient indications” of involvement in the killing. AyiboPost specified that the document did not clearly identify the masterminds of the assassination, nor their financiers.

15.03.2024 - 18:11 [ Associated Press ]

The widow and aides of assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse are indicted in his killing

(20.02.2024)

A judge in Haiti responsible for investigating the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse has indicted his widow, Martine Moïse, ex-prime minister Claude Joseph and the former chief of Haiti’s National Police, Léon Charles, among others, according to a report obtained Monday.

Others who face charges including murder are Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian-American pastor who visualized himself as Haiti’s next president and said he thought Moïse was only going to be arrested; Joseph Vincent, a Haitian-American and former informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration; Dimitri Hérard, presidential security chief; John Joël Joseph, a former Haitian senator; and Windelle Coq, a Haitian judge whom authorities say is a fugitive.

15.03.2024 - 17:43 [ Vice.com ]

Two US Citizens Are Accused of Assassinating Haiti’s President

(09.07.2021)

Solages also worked as a security guard for the Canadian Embassy in Port-Au-Prince. (…)

Despite an obvious failure in police operations, the masthead of the police force has not changed, with Charles remaining the Chief of Police, despite claims from Haitian journalists that he gave the order to allow the caravan of assassins into the President’s neighborhood. In February, the Haitian National Police began a partnership with Colombian police forces, but it is unknown if any of the mercenaries arrested participated in this arrangement.

In the two days since the attack, former Prime Minister turned interim President Joseph has consolidated power. In 2004, Joseph was a member of the group Grenn Nan Bouda (GNB) which means “balls up your ass” in Haitian Creole. GNB participated in the coup to oust President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that same year.

Joseph was not elected to his position, but was appointed in April by Moïse, and served only three months as Prime Minister. After declaring himself interim President, he has been breezily accepted by the international community, including the United States.

15.03.2024 - 17:04 [ Jacobin ]

Were Haiti’s Capitalists Behind the Assassination of President Moïse?

(07.09.2021)

Claiming to be agents with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (the DEA, which maintains a presence in Haiti to assist with counter-narcotics operations), the group gained entry to the home and killed the president.

(…)

What happened in Haiti on July 7?

KIM IVES There was a band of mercenaries with brand new Nissan Patrol vehicles. They clearly had knowledge of the layout of the presidential compound, where Moïse lived. They were clearly well-financed, well-prepared. It was a very sophisticated operation.

Who had the money to do that? And who would want to do that?

Haiti Liberté’s working hypothesis is that the mercenaries, more than likely, were hired by one or a consortium of the bourgeois families who are opposed to Moïse. Reginald Boulos is one. Dimitri Vorbe is another. There are several others who were unhappy with Moïse.

If this hypothesis is correct, their fear is of the uprising that is coming out of Haiti’s vast shantytowns, where the lumpenproletariat is organizing itself into armed gangs, which have now vowed to carry out a revolution against the bourgeoisie and “the rotten system,” as they call it in Haiti.

15.03.2024 - 16:07 [ International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ]

How US lawyers and bankers aided powerful Haitian tycoons now sanctioned over corruption by Canada

(07.02.2023)

In the early 1990s, the U.S. government sanctioned Bigio, his wife, son and others for their support of a military coup that ousted Haiti’s first democratically elected president. Years later, a member of a Haitian militia ‒ or private army ‒ accused Bigio and another businessman of paying for the 1993 assassination of a prominent democracy activist, according to Jeb Sprauge, author and University of California Riverside research associate. Authorities in Haiti did not charge Bigio with or accuse him of wrongdoing.

15.03.2024 - 15:30 [ New Republic ]

The Billionaire Oligarch Who’s Enabling Haiti’s Murderous Gangs

(16.12.2022)

For years, Haitians have said Bigio and other oligarchs are complicit in the violence strangling the nation: This year 1,448 people have been killed, with another 1,005 kidnapped for ransom. Until now, however, the international community has stayed mostly silent about Haiti’s corrupt elite. (…)

Daniel Foote, the former U.S envoy to Haiti who resigned in September 2021 to protest against the disastrous American policy, told me that he thinks Canada and the U.S. State Department are working together to economically punish Bigio and the others. But he suspects that the United States cannot follow Canada’s example by imposing stiff sanctions, possibly because Bigio may be a U.S. citizen and thus entitled to due process. In theory, however, U.S. prosecutors could bring cases against Bigio and other oligarchs for funding the vicious gangs whether these defendants have U.S. citizenship or not. As things stand, inaction is much more likely.