What's In Blue

Posted Tue 21 Jan 2025
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Haiti: Briefing and Consultations

Tomorrow afternoon (22 January), the Security Council will hold an open briefing, followed by closed consultations, on Haiti. Special Representative and Head of the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) María Isabel Salvador is expected to brief on recent developments in the country and the Secretary-General’s latest report on BINUH, which was circulated to Council members on 13 January. UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Executive Director Ghada Fathi Waly is also scheduled to brief.

Salvador is expected to update the Council on Haiti’s political situation. The Secretary-General’s report describes continuing challenges and delays in implementing the transitional governance arrangements outlined in the 11 March 2024 agreement among Haitian political stakeholders facilitated by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). These arrangements are aimed at stabilising the country’s security situation and holding elections to restore democratic governance and inaugurate a new president by February 2026. According to the Secretary-General’s report, recent months were marked by increasing tensions between the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) established by the 11 March agreement and former Prime Minister Garry Conille, whom the TPC appointed in May 2024. Among other issues, the disagreements were about the appointment of certain cabinet ministers, the division of responsibilities between the TPC and Conille, and the handling of corruption allegations against three TPC members, who have been accused of attempting to solicit bribes from the chairman of Haiti’s National Bank of Credit in exchange for allowing him to remain in his position. The stand-off came to a head on 10 November 2024, when the TPC issued a decree firing Conille and naming businessman and former Haitian Senate candidate Alix Didier Fils-Aimé as his successor.

These developments have stoked internal divisions within the TPC. On 12 December 2024, four TPC members sent a letter to CARICOM that reportedly accused the current head of the TPC’s rotating presidency—Leslie Voltaire, who represents the Fanmi Lavalas political party—of taking unilateral and partisan decisions, including the dismissal of Conille and the appointment of relatives to diplomatic posts abroad. The letter requested CARICOM’s Eminent Persons Group on Haiti—comprising three former prime ministers from the region: Perry Christie of the Bahamas, Bruce Golding of Jamaica, and Kenny Anthony of Saint Lucia—to facilitate new consultations among Haitian stakeholders with a view to establishing new and more inclusive transitional governance arrangements.

Amid these challenges, the Secretary-General’s report highlights the completion of the Provisional Electoral Council as a positive development in advancing the political transition. The 11 March agreement tasked the TPC with establishing this body to prepare the country for elections, but its full formation had been delayed due to internal disagreements among two civil society sectors—representing human rights and women’s rights organisations, respectively—that were to serve on the body. This dispute was eventually resolved, however, allowing the TPC to appoint members from these two sectors on 4 December 2024.

At tomorrow’s briefing, Salvador is also expected to provide an update on Haiti’s dire security situation. The Secretary-General’s report describes an “intensified and renewed wave of coordinated gang violence” during the reporting period, as a coalition of gangs seeking to destabilise the political transition staged repeated attacks against state institutions and critical infrastructure in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, including police stations, prisons, hospitals, and the main international airport. The airport was consequently closed from mid-November to mid-December 2024—the second closure that year—while the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a flight ban prohibiting US aircraft from entering Haitian airspace until 12 March, posing operational difficulties for some international humanitarian organisations.

Gangs have also continued to target the civilian population. According to the Secretary-General’s report, BINUH recorded 1,881 homicides from September to November 2024, while the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) subsequently reported that over 5,600 people were killed as a result of gang violence in 2024—an increase of over 1,000 from the year before. Recent atrocities allegedly perpetrated by gangs include a 3 October 2024 assault on the town of Pont-Sondé in which 115 people were killed, as well as a massacre that took place over several days in early December in the neighbourhood of Cité Soleil, in which at least 207 were killed, many of whom were elderly. The Secretary-General’s report also describes continued widespread sexual violence and the forcible recruitment of children by gangs, as well as retaliatory lynchings and extrajudicial killings committed by vigilante “self-defence” groups.

In this context, the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission that the Security Council authorised under Kenya’s leadership through resolution 2699 of 2 October 2023 to help Haitian authorities re-establish security has continued to face operational constraints amidst a resource and personnel shortfall. On 18 January, a contingent of 216 Kenyan police officers deployed to Haiti, joining the approximately 400 Kenyan officers already stationed there, alongside smaller contingents of police and military personnel from The Bahamas, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Jamaica. The most recent deployment reportedly brings the total number of deployed officers to just under 800, which remains well short of the target force strength of 2,500. Meanwhile, the UN trust fund for the mission has received pledges totalling $101.1 million, according to the Secretary-General’s report, which says that “[m]uch more is needed”.

The challenges faced by the MSS mission have continued to spur Council discussions on alternative forms of international support to Haiti. In October and November 2024, Council members negotiated a draft resolution proposed by the US and then-member Ecuador—the Council’s co-penholders on Haiti—that would have directed the Secretary-General to initiate planning to transform the MSS mission into a UN peacekeeping operation. The draft resolution was opposed by China and Russia, however, which referred to the chequered history of past UN peacekeeping operations in Haiti and reiterated their position that the country’s political and security conditions were not conducive to a new operation. As a compromise, the Council sent a letter dated 29 November to the Secretary-General requesting him to provide strategic recommendations on the full range of options for UN support for Haiti. The Council will receive those recommendations in February.

Waly is expected to brief the Council on UNODC’s latest quarterly report on sources and routes of illicit arms and financial flows in Haiti and on relevant UN activities and recommendations. The Council originally requested UNODC to report to the Council on these issues concurrently with BINUH’s reporting cycle through resolution 2692 of 14 July 2023, and it subsequently reiterated this request in resolution 2743 of 12 July 2024, which most recently renewed BINUH’s mandate. It seems that UNODC’s latest report, which had not been circulated to Council members at the time of writing, considers the sharp increase in gang-related violence in Haiti from October to December 2024, identifying political and economic actors complicit in sustaining criminal networks. The report also explores Haiti’s evolving drug trafficking dynamics, which it ascribes to a small network of political and business elites benefitting from the illicit trade. Additionally, the report provides updates on arms and ammunition trafficking, migrant smuggling, and recent cases of corruption and money laundering, including illegal activities tied to the Haitian and international eel trade.

At tomorrow’s briefing, Council members are likely to reiterate their call on Haitian authorities to accelerate the country’s political transition in order to restore democratic governance and hold elections by the professed deadline of February 2026—a goal that the Secretary-General’s report cautions is “in jeopardy”, as political disagreements among transitional authorities and other stakeholders persist. In this regard, Council members may welcome the full formation of the Provisional Electoral Council, while stressing the importance of progress on other transitional tasks, such as the constitutional review. Members are also expected to express their deep concern about Haiti’s disastrous security situation, and some may highlight its disproportionate effect on vulnerable groups as gangs continue to perpetrate widespread sexual violence against women and forcibly recruit children. Additionally, several members may echo the Secretary-General’s repeated call on the international community to step up its support for the MSS mission to enable it to reach its foreseen operational capacity and fully implement its mandate. Some may also signal their expectations for the Secretary-General’s upcoming recommendations on options for UN support for the country, which could include a peacekeeping operation.

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