Haiti crisis: International intervention 'not the solution', expert says

Now it’s time for today’s perspective, and it is estimated that over 53,000 people have fled from the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. That is 8 out of 10 people, and that is in March alone, comes amid ongoing extreme violence on the island and a government collapse. Haiti’s been without a president since the assassination of Joven and Wise in 2021. It’s been ravaged for decades, so by poverty and natural disasters as well. And now, since February, Haiti’s powerful gangs have joined forces to attack police stations, prisons, the airport as well. Now, though, an internationally backed transitional council has been formed back council, starting the process of working out how to try to tackle the problems. First of all, how to take back control. Well, joining us now is Professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading, Rosa Friedman, also been a member of the UN Secretary General’s Civil Society Advisory Board on preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Thanks very much for being with us on the programme today. First of all, we talk a lot on France 24 here about Haiti, but sum up for us if you can, in your words just how bad you think the situation has become there. Well, this cycle of violence is certainly the worst. For many decades, possibly since Devalia’s time, the situation on the ground is that hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, have fled their homes, 1/4 or more of the country is facing food insecurity or potential famine. We’ve seen that the prison gates now have been broken and burnt down and there’s at least 4000 prisoners, criminals in the in the capital running through the streets. The gang violence has got worse and worse since the transitional council was created and and really this is a a terrible wave of violence for Haiti. How? How has it got so bad over the years? Really? To understand Haiti, we have to go all the way back to colonial times. Haiti is the first black sovereign state in in the world. It overthrew France as the colonial power and then had to pay back reparations for each individual slave. That was that. That was freed through that revolution. Since that time, there’s been international interference after international affairs. In Haiti’s affairs, the United States occupied the country between the two world wars. Every time Haitians have elected their own governments, they’ve been deposed and puppet governments put in. And that’s left a vacuum, a vacuum of power. You have very corrupt, very rich elites. You have the gangs, many of whom actually started under the Duvaliers and then again under Aristide, and the gangs are often in bed with the elite, but sometimes are in bed with public governments on the ground. And it leaves this huge vacuum of power in which these waves of violence occur. And I mentioned at the top there specifically that you were a member of the UN Secretary General’s Civil Society Advisory Board on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse. I mean, it’s been particularly bad throughout this period, hasn’t it, for women on the island. It’s been, it’s been absolutely terrible for women and for girls on the island, both in terms of gang rapes, but prior to that, in terms of UN peacekeepers who sexually exploited and abused Haitian women and girls, and prior to that under under the the, the values. If we go back to that time, we know that women and girls in these situations are particularly vulnerable not only to food insecurity, not only to to having to leave their homes and their possessions behind, but particularly to rapes, to sexual violence, to trafficking and exploitation. And we’re seeing waves of that on the ground across the country. We’ve now got this internationally then backed transitional council in place. They’ve been in place for less than a week. They’ve appointed a leader and a Prime Minister as well. Do they have any chance amid what you’ve just said there, do you think of succeeding? Well, the starting point is that this transitional council was originally supposed to have civil society members. There are two civil society members, but they don’t have any voting powers. The transitional council met to appoint a president and then appeared 2 1/2 hours later and said that they’d also appointed a Prime Minister in what many see as a very underhand and backroom dealings. The Prime Minister that they’ve appointed was previously the Minister for Sports. I’m not sure how many Haitians know of him or even know that there is a Minister for sports in the country. And it it seems that even though the the United States was backing this transitional council that even they are having slightly cold feet about this appointment because they’ve not made any statement about his appointment. So first of all, the legitimacy of the council is called into question. Then the legitimacy of this new Prime Minister that’s been appointed. And there are many who are commenting that once again a puppet government is being put into place, which again leads back to that vacuum of power in which gang violence it’s spreading across the country. Yeah, you’ve already said previous attempts at international interference, if that’s the right word, have failed, haven’t they? Absolutely. What Haitians need, what Haitians demand, and what Haitians should be listened to over the entirety of of the country’s existence as the first black sovereign state is for Haitian solutions to Haitian problems. What we need are free and fair elections, and that will take time. There’s always controversy about who runs those elections. And we need to listen to Haitian civil society, particularly people like the Montana Accord, who have put in place plan after plan for put. Putting those elections into place. For making sure that information gets out to the countryside and to all voters. And for making sure that there is a Prime Minister and a government that the people respect, that the police will back and that the armed forces will listen to and follow. Is that really possible? I mean, for a start, with the violence going on, how do you organise that? But also when you’ve got these gangs that have been fighting each other for so long, how on earth can you find some kind of body that can bring them all together? Well, let’s be clear that in the region, whether we’re talking about Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, there is gang violence and and there are waves of gang violence. And yet we don’t ask whether or not those countries are able to quell the gang violence with free and fair elections, with legitimate government and with the support of the international community rather than an international intervention. And so their questions are always raised about why is it that Haiti is treated so differently to its neighbours within the regions who are facing similar problems? And the answer is that because of these, the occupation of Haiti and the constant interference, there seems to be this and this idea that Haitians don’t know how to govern over themselves, whereas the truth is that Haitians had never been given the opportunity to truly govern over themselves. What we need is not an international intervention, A Kenyan police force or a Kenyan task force who don’t speak the language, who don’t know the local context. What we need is international support for these elections and then international support for the police forces and the armed forces to come in and follow the government to quell the gang violence and to hopefully rebuild Haiti to make it stronger moving forwards. Yeah, I mean there’s been an awful lot of suspicion, for example, of the UN, hasn’t there, after a series of sexual scandals involving UN peacekeepers. Also that cholera scandal when EU ES, the UN Nepalese contingent, was accused of being a potential source of a huge cholera outbreak in October 2010. I mean, those kind of situations also add to that feeling that international organisations just can’t do the right thing, I suppose, in Haiti. But even even going a step back from the cholera epidemic and from the sexual exploitation and abuse which peacekeepers perpetrate in all peacekeeping operations around the world, the question was raised as to why there were peacekeepers, why there were boots on the ground in a country with political instability but not with a war. And we don’t see that anywhere else. In terms of peacekeeping forces, the stabilisation mission from the UN actually puts soldiers on the ground rather than bringing development aid and support for the country and for and for fair elections and political solutions. So the suspicion of the UN and of international organisations generally is the suspicions that Haiti has had ever since it it secured its freedom through revolution, which is that the international community simply does not want and does not trust it to govern over itself. There will be no solution through international interventions that are at the top down. The only solutions will be to support and to grow Haitian infrastructure which it was not allowed to grow through having to pay these reparations back to France and not having the money to be able to develop its own education systems and health systems using those those finances. That will be the only way forward. What what people are worried about and concerned about is that there will be yet another top down intervention for a kind of quick fix solution which will lead to the next wave of violence being even worse than this one. Greater torture on the programme. Good to get your views. Thank you very much. Professor of law, Conflict and Global development at the University of Reading, Rosa Friedman. Thank you. Thank you. And if you do want to catch that interview and all our other previous perspective interviews once again, you’ll find them on our website [email protected]. So do have a look at that.