President of the Dominican Republic makes an appeal for help on behalf of Haiti: ‘Let’s prevent it from ending up devastated by chaos and anarchy’

Luis Abinader after his intervention at the U.N. Security Council, this Monday in New York.

The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, made a desperate appeal for help to “save” Haiti from the wave of violence that has caused thousands of people to flee, primarily to Dominican territories. “Let’s prevent Haiti from ending up devastated by chaos and anarchy. We will not allow the crisis it is experiencing to spread throughout the entire region,” demanded the president on Tuesday, in an appearance before the United Nations Security Council in New York. While asking U.N. members to reinforce aid to the Caribbean country, Abinader also issued a warning: “Our slogan from now on will be: either we fight together to save Haiti, or we will fight alone to protect the Dominican Republic!”

Abinader’s remarks come in the wake of a new clash between the organized crime groups who are wreaking havoc in Haiti. On Monday, hundreds of residents in the northern part of the capital Port-au-Prince fled their homes in the face of violent attacks linked to turf disputes. The internal war is victimizing the impoverished Caribbean nation, and local and national authorities have been unable to offer any response. The U.N. has reported that more than 800 people died in January due to the clashes, and the organization’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned that Haiti is among the nations with the highest rates of hunger, which only serves to exacerbate the chaos and violence. “An empty belly is fuel for unrest,” Guterres has said.

Abinader put out an urgent call to the global community to reinforce aid to Haiti and for international forces to be deployed in the small country to confront the emergency generated by years of political and social crisis. “Since September 2021, our government has denounced, before various U.N. bodies, the continuous deterioration of social conditions in Haiti. Unfortunately, the grave situation that our neighboring country is experiencing has not been addressed with the urgency and forcefulness it deserves,” said the Dominican president. “The result is that today, Haiti, with a large part of its territory controlled by criminal gangs, is on the verge of a civil war,” he continued. “The time for promises is over. As of today, we enter the time of realizations, either the money comes now, or the collapse of Haiti will be irreversible,” stated the Dominican president.

Residents of Cite-Soleil, north of the capital of Haiti, leave their neighborhoods due to the increasing number of armed conflicts between criminal groups, on February 12.

Haiti has become a nation sinking towards total collapse. The crisis it is suffering worsened in 2021, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse at his residence in Port-au-Prince at the hands of an armed commando group of at least 28 assassins. To date, 11 people accused of involvement in the assassination have been arrested in the United States. Among those accused are 24 ex-military personnel from Colombia, who entered the room where Moïse, 53, slept with his wife, Martine Moïse, and opened fire on the couple. Martine saved her life by pretending to be dead. She said in her statement that after the shooting, gunmen searched the room for documents.

The Haitian-Chilean businessman Rodolphe Jaar was sentenced to life in prison in June 2023 by a U.S. federal judge, after being charged by prosecutors with “conspiracy to commit murder or kidnapping outside the United States and providing material support resulting in death.” According to this accusation, Jaar “was responsible for providing weapons to Colombian accomplices to facilitate the operation” in which Moïse was killed. Jaar was arrested in the Dominican Republic in January 2023 and agreed to voluntarily travel to the United States, where in March of the same year he pleaded guilty to providing support to the commando group that assassinated the Haitian president.

Violence plaguing Haiti has sparked a diplomatic crisis with its neighbor, which has demanded that the Port-au-Prince government take action against criminal gangs. The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution early last year to authorize a multinational security support mission in Haiti, but Abinader has complained that such aid commitments have come to nothing. The “collapse” of Haiti, said the Dominican president, “will be a threat to us and to the region. That is why I wish to caution the international community today that the Dominican Republic will fight with all its might to avoid being dragged into the same abyss as Haiti.” The official made a desperate appeal: “Let us prevent Haiti from ending up chaos and anarchy; let us not allow the crisis there to spread throughout the region. The international community cannot allow the Haitian catastrophe to continue for one more day.”

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