Haiti: Vote on Draft Resolution Renewing the Sanctions Regime*
Tomorrow afternoon (18 October), the Security Council is expected to vote on a draft resolution renewing the sanctions regime on Haiti for one year, until 18 October 2025. The draft text was authored by Ecuador and the US, the co-penholders on Haiti.
Background
On 21 October 2022, in response to the multidimensional crisis in Haiti, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2653, establishing a sanctions regime on Haiti that included targeted assets freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo measures. Resolution 2699 of 2 October 2023—which authorised member states to form and deploy a Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti—later expanded the arms embargo from targeted measures applying to designated individuals to a territorial embargo covering the country as a whole. Subsequently, resolution 2700 of 19 October 2023 renewed the entire sanctions regime for one year.
The 2653 Haiti Sanctions Committee most recently met on 11 September to discuss the final report of its Panel of Experts. The report, which was not public at the time of writing, apparently assessed that the arms embargo imposed by the regime remains largely ineffective at preventing the flow of illicit arms into Haiti that is fuelling the country’s rampant gang violence. This assessment is consistent with the panel’s findings in its interim report, submitted to the Committee on 1 March, that implementation of the arms embargo “remains weak”, hampered by limited enforcement resources and a lack of awareness of the embargo’s provisions among national and regional authorities.
Similarly, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has issued quarterly reports on the sources and routes of the illegal arms trade in Haiti, submitted to the Security Council pursuant to resolution 2692 of 14 July 2023 and resolution 2743 of 12 July, which renewed the mandate of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). Among other issues, the reports have described the main smuggling routes for arms trafficking into Haiti, considered the regional dynamics of the illicit trade, and reviewed the domestic characteristics of the arms trade within Haiti. According to the reports, the arms trafficked into Haiti are primarily shipped by sea from the US, principally through Florida, although some are also trafficked through intermediaries in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
The sanctions regime’s designation criteria include engaging in or supporting criminal activities and violence involving armed groups and criminal networks; supporting illicit trafficking and diversion of arms and related materiel; obstructing the delivery of humanitarian assistance to and inside Haiti; and attacking personnel or premises of UN missions and operations or providing support for such attacks. On 27 September, the 2653 Haiti Sanctions Committee approved the designation of two additional individuals. One was Elan Luckson, leader of the “Gran Grif” gang, which was responsible for a particularly deadly attack on 3 October in the town of Pont-Sondé that killed at least 115 people. The second was Victor Prophane, a former member of the Haitian parliament allegedly involved in arms trafficking. While the Committee had previously listed five other gang leaders under the regime, Prophane is the first designated individual from Haiti’s political class. (For information on recent political and security developments in the country, see the brief on Haiti in our October 2024 Monthly Forecast.)
Negotiations on the Draft Resolution
It seems that Council members generally agreed on the importance of renewing the sanctions regime and that negotiations on the draft resolution were relatively smooth. Ecuador and the US circulated an initial draft on 3 October and convened one round of negotiations on 9 October. On 11 October, they circulated a revised draft and placed it under silence procedure, which was broken by China and Russia. Yesterday (16 October), the co-penholders placed a second revised draft directly in blue without another silence procedure.
The draft resolution in blue renews the Haiti sanctions regime for one year and the mandate of the Panel of Experts assisting the 2653 Haiti Sanctions Committee for 13 months. Notably, in line with a recommendation that the Panel of Experts apparently made in its final report, the draft text amends the arms embargo, expanding its current scope under resolution 2699 from “small arms, light weapons, and ammunition” to a wider proscription that includes “arms and related materiel of all types”, as well as “technical assistance, training, financial or other assistance” related to military activities. This revision is based on agreed language from resolution 2653 that originally established the arms embargo as a targeted measure, but which resolution 2699 amended when expanding the embargo to a country-wide prohibition.
Acting on other recommendations made by the Panel of Experts, the draft resolution in blue adds as a designation criteria the “illicit exploitation or trade of natural resources” —apparently addressing an increase in illegal eel trafficking from Haiti to international markets. It also encourages greater coordination among the Committee, the Panel of Experts, and other UN and regional stakeholders on implementation of the sanctions regime, including by convening regular joint briefings for the wider UN membership to raise awareness of the sanctions measures. Other new provisions in the draft resolution include language expressing grave concern about indiscriminate armed gang violence against children in Haiti, based on a proposal made by Malta. It also features text recognising the need to safeguard due process for listed individuals, proposed by Switzerland and based on similar language from resolution 2745 of 30 July and resolution 2750 of 11 September, which most recently renewed the sanctions regimes on the Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan, respectively.
While the negotiations were generally smooth, it seems that one point of contention concerned a proposal made by China that would have required all member states to report within 90 days on actions taken to implement the sanctions measures. China apparently argued that this provision would help improve the effectiveness of the arms embargo and address concerns expressed by the Panel of Experts that countries were not responding to its requests for information needed to monitor sanctions implementation. Several other Council members opposed this idea, contending that such a broad reporting requirement would impose a burden on countries without any links to the illicit arms trade and result in unnecessary and unactionable reports.
In the first revised draft, it seems that the co-penholders sought a compromise on this issue by adding a new preambular paragraph encouraging—but not requiring—member states to regularly share with the Panel of Experts actions that they have taken to implement the provisions of the resolution. China broke silence on this language, however, stressing that it did not sufficiently reflect the intention of its proposal. Consequently, in the draft resolution in blue, the co-penholders turned the language into an operative paragraph and added a provision requesting the Panel of Experts to report on the implementation of the resolution in its regular reporting to the Council.
Another issue during the negotiations was the modified arms embargo. When incorporating this amendment in the first revised draft at the request of several Council members, it seems that the co-penholders drew on agreed language from resolution 2653 but slightly edited the wording, specifying that the prohibited material and activities were related to “gang activities” rather than the “military activities” originally stipulated by resolution 2653. Russia apparently broke silence on this revised language, arguing that the edit created ambiguity. In the draft resolution in blue, the co-penholders reverted this provision to the verbatim language of resolution 2653.
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Post-script: On 18 October, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2752, renewing the sanctions regime on Haiti for one year.
