Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch is a blog that tracks multinational aid efforts in Haiti with an eye towards ensuring they are oriented towards the needs of the Haitian people, and that aid is not used to undermine Haitians' right to self-determination.
On March 19, Haitian president Jovenel Moïse confirmed the first two cases of the novel coronavirus in Haiti. The number has since increased to eight. In response, the president has declared a state of emergency and ordered schools, factories, and religious entities to close; established a curfew; and closed the country’s borders. The government announced the new policies after previously suspending air travel from most countries.
The initial reported cases both related to individuals who had traveled internationally. There has, however, only been limited local testing. As of March 25, 58 tests had been administered nationwide, according to the latest epidemiological update. The Ministry of Health has outlined a plan to combat the pandemic in Haiti, estimating a budget of $37.2 million. Already, international and local organizations have been meeting to coordinate the response.
After nearly two years of sustained protests and government inaction, the economic situation in Haiti has already made life exceedingly difficult for the vast majority of the population. The currency has rapidly depreciated, inflation has remained elevated, and the government has been unable to increase revenues domestically or through international assistance. The Haitian government has few fiscal resources to draw upon in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, and Haitian families, many already pushed to the edge, are facing an increasingly perilous future.
There are multiple complementary aspects of the response to this virus in Haiti. One centers on the health care system and the ability to adequately detect, treat, and contain the virus. The other relates to the government’s ability to establish and enforce policies that encourage physical distancing. In addressing the latter, it is important to consider how the Haitian population interacts, lives, and survives in order to implement effective policies to contain the virus, protect the population, and ensure access to essential goods.
The cases reported have so far been marked as imported, but with the difficulties of enforcing a sustained national quarantine, Haiti is facing the very real risk of COVID-19 spreading locally. While declaring a state of emergency nationwide was a necessary step, it needs to be boosted by provisions for workers and the poor, and allocations for the health care system. The international community must also play a role, with the World Bank, IMF, and other multilateral development organizations immediately freeing up resources for Haiti and other developing nations to respond to the pandemic.
The Health Care System
Prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Haiti’s health care system faced many challenges. According to a 2019 study by the Research and Education consortium for Acute Care in Haiti (REACH), Haiti only has an estimated 124 ICU beds and 64 ventilators for a population of more than 11 million. Other public health experts have put those figures even lower. This is a serious concern, especially given the relatively high proportion of the population considered to be at an elevated risk.
Already, there have been reports from the State University Hospital (HUEH) of inadequate preparation and supplies of protective equipment, which has led to some health professionals refusing to work. The HUEH was one of the marquee post-quake international reconstruction projects, but, more than ten years later, those plans remain mostly unrealized.
Haiti’s health care system overall is extremely reliant on private actors, including foreign assistance and NGOs. Dr. Youri Louis told the Haitian Times that, as of 2013, 64 percent of Haiti’s health budget derived from international assistance. In many parts of the country, access to health care is only provided by nonstate actors.
In such a fragmented system, coordination will be critical. In this regard, it is positive that national and international organizations are already meeting and discussing coordinated response mechanisms. Health actors in Haiti can draw upon their experiences combatting the cholera epidemic, which spread in Haiti after its introduction by United Nations troops in 2010. While the response to cholera was woefully inadequate, more coordinated and concerted efforts in recent years have led to some positive developments. As Sandra Wisner of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti told the Haitian Times, empowering communities must be a key aspect of any successful response:
This includes access and ensuring services are available to communities ― so having available where people are, tracing, treatment; health facilities resources with the necessary supplies, and ensuring front line workers have the resources and tools they need to provide safe and effective care and treatment for patients.
Since the 2010 earthquake, the Haitian Ministry of Health has been one of the only government institutions that has received direct donor support. Nevertheless, a significant portion of foreign assistance bypasses national health systems. It is vitally important that efforts to respond to the current pandemic also focus on strengthening the government’s health care infrastructure. Though some improvements have been evident over the previous decade, national health spending remains woefully inadequate and has actually decreased in recent years.
The government has also appealed to Cuba for assistance in fighting the pandemic. The government announced there were 348 Cuban health professionals in the country to respond, many of whom were already in the country as part of Cuba’s decades-long assistance in providing health care in Haiti.
The Economy
Even before the arrival of the novel coronavirus, the Haitian economy was projected to shrink by 1 percent on a per capita basis in 2019. The government’s directive to close businesses will bring additional economic hardship. Remittances, on which the Haitian economy relies, may also see a reduction as diaspora communities struggle in their own communities with quarantines and business closures.
Haitians’ reliance on the informal economy will make responding to the crisis even more difficult. Some 60 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Though the government has directed businesses to close, the reality is that many rely on the informal economy to survive.
In this regard, despite the government’s announcements, public markets and public transportation continue to operate. Local journalists have raised concerns about the lack of guidelines for drivers and passengers. While the public might be aware of the virus, most people still depend on public transportation and public markets to survive and get around. Unions have taken the lead by recommending a reduction in the number of passengers allowed on taxis and buses, but there has yet to be any clear initiative from the state to enforce the unions’ recommendations and regulate transportation.
While the government has ordered factories closed, it is unclear what, if any, financial support from the government will go to impacted workers. Antèn Ouvriye, an organization representing factory subcontractors, has criticized the government for not ensuring salaries will continue to be paid during closures. On March 25, de facto prime minister Joseph Jouthe announced that public workers and those working in the textile industry would receive one month of wages; however, it remains unclear exactly when that would take place and how much the government will be able to afford.
In order to ensure communities are able to take action to protect themselves and are able to stay at home, the government must act to provide the resources necessary to sustain people’s livelihoods, including access to food and water. Some countries have acted to reinforce and increase government spending on essential services and social safety net policies. Some have prioritized subsidizing revenue by ensuring salaries are maintained, while others are providing meals to those who rely on daily activities for their basic needs. Although Haiti’s resources are limited, the government response needs to incorporate economic relief for the population, especially for street vendors, factory workers, and small business owners, many of whom rely on the informal economy to make a living.
The government, however, has thus far relied on monetary policy ― increasing access to credit through the central bank and relaxing repayment schedules. This, however, is likely to have only a limited impact for the vast majority of Haitians. Without greater international assistance, it is unlikely the government will have the fiscal resources available to properly support the population throughout the crisis.
Price gouging has already started, putting a strain on an already fragile population. This is partly due to the fact that the Haitian food supply depends largely on imports, which are likely to decline during the current situation. While the government has announced measures to ensure food distribution, it must make a priority of protecting consumers from price spikes. This also presents an opportunity to invest in and expand the agricultural sector, which could provide stability for farmers and sellers, and increase national production.
International Aid
It is imperative to recognize that the Haitian state’s inability to adequately respond to the crisis is tied to a legacy of foreign domination, occupation, and exploitation, and to decades of foreign aid policies that have eroded the state’s capacity. Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear, as with the 2010 earthquake, that the Haitian government will not be able to adequately respond to the current crisis without increased support from the international community.
The IMF and the World Bank have issued a statement urging “all official bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments from IDA countries that request forbearance.” Though most of Haiti’s debt is concessional (loans provided at very low or even zero interest rates), bilateral and multilateral donors should immediately suspend any debt servicing requirements for the duration of the pandemic. The Inter-American Development Bank has also announced a special lending facility for countries impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The IMF could also provide an unprecedented influx of reserve assets to developing countries, including Haiti, through a Special Drawing Rights allocation. The IMF is reportedly considering this. With its dwindling reserves and reliance on the importation of goods, such a boost would be extremely valuable to Haiti.
It is also likely that a prolonged crisis will exacerbate an already fragile food security situation in much of the country. Many children rely on school feeding programs, which are often funded by international organizations. International assistance will be key in ensuring the government is able to reach the most vulnerable in responding to the pandemic, but international actors must be wary of repeating past mistakes. Food assistance should be designed to ensure local procurement of available goods, and to support investment in national production.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Haiti requires immediate and concerted action by local and international actors; but in a country where the failures of international assistance and intervention are so readily apparent, those involved in the response must make every effort to ensure a more sustainable future.
On March 19, Haitian president Jovenel Moïse confirmed the first two cases of the novel coronavirus in Haiti. The number has since increased to eight. In response, the president has declared a state of emergency and ordered schools, factories, and religious entities to close; established a curfew; and closed the country’s borders. The government announced the new policies after previously suspending air travel from most countries.
The initial reported cases both related to individuals who had traveled internationally. There has, however, only been limited local testing. As of March 25, 58 tests had been administered nationwide, according to the latest epidemiological update. The Ministry of Health has outlined a plan to combat the pandemic in Haiti, estimating a budget of $37.2 million. Already, international and local organizations have been meeting to coordinate the response.
After nearly two years of sustained protests and government inaction, the economic situation in Haiti has already made life exceedingly difficult for the vast majority of the population. The currency has rapidly depreciated, inflation has remained elevated, and the government has been unable to increase revenues domestically or through international assistance. The Haitian government has few fiscal resources to draw upon in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, and Haitian families, many already pushed to the edge, are facing an increasingly perilous future.
There are multiple complementary aspects of the response to this virus in Haiti. One centers on the health care system and the ability to adequately detect, treat, and contain the virus. The other relates to the government’s ability to establish and enforce policies that encourage physical distancing. In addressing the latter, it is important to consider how the Haitian population interacts, lives, and survives in order to implement effective policies to contain the virus, protect the population, and ensure access to essential goods.
The cases reported have so far been marked as imported, but with the difficulties of enforcing a sustained national quarantine, Haiti is facing the very real risk of COVID-19 spreading locally. While declaring a state of emergency nationwide was a necessary step, it needs to be boosted by provisions for workers and the poor, and allocations for the health care system. The international community must also play a role, with the World Bank, IMF, and other multilateral development organizations immediately freeing up resources for Haiti and other developing nations to respond to the pandemic.
The Health Care System
Prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Haiti’s health care system faced many challenges. According to a 2019 study by the Research and Education consortium for Acute Care in Haiti (REACH), Haiti only has an estimated 124 ICU beds and 64 ventilators for a population of more than 11 million. Other public health experts have put those figures even lower. This is a serious concern, especially given the relatively high proportion of the population considered to be at an elevated risk.
Already, there have been reports from the State University Hospital (HUEH) of inadequate preparation and supplies of protective equipment, which has led to some health professionals refusing to work. The HUEH was one of the marquee post-quake international reconstruction projects, but, more than ten years later, those plans remain mostly unrealized.
Haiti’s health care system overall is extremely reliant on private actors, including foreign assistance and NGOs. Dr. Youri Louis told the Haitian Times that, as of 2013, 64 percent of Haiti’s health budget derived from international assistance. In many parts of the country, access to health care is only provided by nonstate actors.
In such a fragmented system, coordination will be critical. In this regard, it is positive that national and international organizations are already meeting and discussing coordinated response mechanisms. Health actors in Haiti can draw upon their experiences combatting the cholera epidemic, which spread in Haiti after its introduction by United Nations troops in 2010. While the response to cholera was woefully inadequate, more coordinated and concerted efforts in recent years have led to some positive developments. As Sandra Wisner of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti told the Haitian Times, empowering communities must be a key aspect of any successful response:
This includes access and ensuring services are available to communities ― so having available where people are, tracing, treatment; health facilities resources with the necessary supplies, and ensuring front line workers have the resources and tools they need to provide safe and effective care and treatment for patients.
Since the 2010 earthquake, the Haitian Ministry of Health has been one of the only government institutions that has received direct donor support. Nevertheless, a significant portion of foreign assistance bypasses national health systems. It is vitally important that efforts to respond to the current pandemic also focus on strengthening the government’s health care infrastructure. Though some improvements have been evident over the previous decade, national health spending remains woefully inadequate and has actually decreased in recent years.
The government has also appealed to Cuba for assistance in fighting the pandemic. The government announced there were 348 Cuban health professionals in the country to respond, many of whom were already in the country as part of Cuba’s decades-long assistance in providing health care in Haiti.
The Economy
Even before the arrival of the novel coronavirus, the Haitian economy was projected to shrink by 1 percent on a per capita basis in 2019. The government’s directive to close businesses will bring additional economic hardship. Remittances, on which the Haitian economy relies, may also see a reduction as diaspora communities struggle in their own communities with quarantines and business closures.
Haitians’ reliance on the informal economy will make responding to the crisis even more difficult. Some 60 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Though the government has directed businesses to close, the reality is that many rely on the informal economy to survive.
In this regard, despite the government’s announcements, public markets and public transportation continue to operate. Local journalists have raised concerns about the lack of guidelines for drivers and passengers. While the public might be aware of the virus, most people still depend on public transportation and public markets to survive and get around. Unions have taken the lead by recommending a reduction in the number of passengers allowed on taxis and buses, but there has yet to be any clear initiative from the state to enforce the unions’ recommendations and regulate transportation.
While the government has ordered factories closed, it is unclear what, if any, financial support from the government will go to impacted workers. Antèn Ouvriye, an organization representing factory subcontractors, has criticized the government for not ensuring salaries will continue to be paid during closures. On March 25, de facto prime minister Joseph Jouthe announced that public workers and those working in the textile industry would receive one month of wages; however, it remains unclear exactly when that would take place and how much the government will be able to afford.
In order to ensure communities are able to take action to protect themselves and are able to stay at home, the government must act to provide the resources necessary to sustain people’s livelihoods, including access to food and water. Some countries have acted to reinforce and increase government spending on essential services and social safety net policies. Some have prioritized subsidizing revenue by ensuring salaries are maintained, while others are providing meals to those who rely on daily activities for their basic needs. Although Haiti’s resources are limited, the government response needs to incorporate economic relief for the population, especially for street vendors, factory workers, and small business owners, many of whom rely on the informal economy to make a living.
The government, however, has thus far relied on monetary policy ― increasing access to credit through the central bank and relaxing repayment schedules. This, however, is likely to have only a limited impact for the vast majority of Haitians. Without greater international assistance, it is unlikely the government will have the fiscal resources available to properly support the population throughout the crisis.
Price gouging has already started, putting a strain on an already fragile population. This is partly due to the fact that the Haitian food supply depends largely on imports, which are likely to decline during the current situation. While the government has announced measures to ensure food distribution, it must make a priority of protecting consumers from price spikes. This also presents an opportunity to invest in and expand the agricultural sector, which could provide stability for farmers and sellers, and increase national production.
International Aid
It is imperative to recognize that the Haitian state’s inability to adequately respond to the crisis is tied to a legacy of foreign domination, occupation, and exploitation, and to decades of foreign aid policies that have eroded the state’s capacity. Nevertheless, it is increasingly clear, as with the 2010 earthquake, that the Haitian government will not be able to adequately respond to the current crisis without increased support from the international community.
The IMF and the World Bank have issued a statement urging “all official bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments from IDA countries that request forbearance.” Though most of Haiti’s debt is concessional (loans provided at very low or even zero interest rates), bilateral and multilateral donors should immediately suspend any debt servicing requirements for the duration of the pandemic. The Inter-American Development Bank has also announced a special lending facility for countries impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
The IMF could also provide an unprecedented influx of reserve assets to developing countries, including Haiti, through a Special Drawing Rights allocation. The IMF is reportedly considering this. With its dwindling reserves and reliance on the importation of goods, such a boost would be extremely valuable to Haiti.
It is also likely that a prolonged crisis will exacerbate an already fragile food security situation in much of the country. Many children rely on school feeding programs, which are often funded by international organizations. International assistance will be key in ensuring the government is able to reach the most vulnerable in responding to the pandemic, but international actors must be wary of repeating past mistakes. Food assistance should be designed to ensure local procurement of available goods, and to support investment in national production.
The onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Haiti requires immediate and concerted action by local and international actors; but in a country where the failures of international assistance and intervention are so readily apparent, those involved in the response must make every effort to ensure a more sustainable future.
• HaitiHaitiLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeUS Foreign PolicyPolítica exterior de EE. UU.
On February 20, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the situation in Haiti. The Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles reports:
Both U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ representative in Haiti, Helen La Lime, and Marie Yolene Gilles, a leading human rights activist in the country, painted a climate of deteriorating human rights and disappearing rule of law. Gilles said Haitians are subject to raging malnutrition, kidnappings for ransom, rapes and gang violence that have forced the courts in Port-au-Prince to be closed since September.
“The two associations of magistrates in the country have deserted the tribunals until safety returns,” she said.
Gilles, who heads the human rights group La Fondasyon Je Klere [FJKL], said while there are 23 known armed gangs in the capital, around a third of Haiti is under gang control.
La Lime, who heads the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), had hoped to arrive at the Security Council meeting bearing news of progress in long-stalled efforts to break the political deadlock in Haiti. However, in nearly two years of protests and political conflict, the Haitian government and international actors have failed to lead meaningful talks. At the Security Council, La Lime once again appealed for all political actors to enter into dialogue. While supporting those efforts, ambassadors from the United States, France, and Germany, among others, called for the timely planning of legislative elections — and the prioritization of elections over constitutional reform, the latter of which President Jovenel Moïse began promoting after parliamentary terms expired in January.
“The Haitian people must have a voice in selecting its leaders. And further, while constitutional reforms are necessary and welcomed, they must not become a pretext to delay elections,” US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Kraft said.
Incidentally, the UN Security Council met a few days after BINUH and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) released a report on gang violence and human rights abuses in the popular Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Bel Air. This report detailed events that took place last year between November 4 and 6. Bel Air residents had erected barricades and participated in a two-month period of protests known as “Peyi Lock.” According to the UN report, three different gang leaders entered Bel Air in an attempt to get residents to remove barricades in exchange for money. Those efforts failed, and were followed by a series of attacks over a period of three days.
More than 50 armed men were seen opening fire on civilians and setting fire to private vehicles and at least 30 homes, the UN found. At least three people were killed and six were wounded. Local rights organizations have put the toll even higher.
The violence in Bel Air, as Gilles told the Security Council, was not a new development. Local rights organizations, including Gilles’s FJKL, have documented a series of violent attacks, often with the involvement of police officers, in popular neighborhoods throughout the capital. In the case of Bel Air, the UN report mentioned the presence of at least three police officers, signaling that there were political motives behind this attack.
The UN report also alleged that a former police officer, Jimmy Cherizier, also known as “Barbecue,” led the November Bel Air attacks. Local human rights organizations, as well as the UN itself, have also alleged the involvement of Barbecue in the La Saline massacre in November 2018, in which dozens of civilians were massacred. More than 100 members of the US Congress condemned that attack in early 2019.
The UN report notes:
… more than a year after the fact, the lack of progress is particularly worrying and the involvement of Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbecue, in other similar acts demonstrates the direct impact of impunity on the recurrence of violence and on the population. Of the thirteen recommendations made in the June 2019 report on the La Saline case, none has been fully implemented.
But while the UN is now calling for an end to impunity and the political protection that perpetuates it, the organization’s own record reveals the shallowness of these pleas.
In November 2017, UN police officers “secured the perimeter” of a school in the Grand Ravine neighborhood of Port-au-Prince as part of a joint raid with the Haitian police. Inside that school, Haitian police officers, including Jimmy Cherizier, massacred nine civilians.
That Cherizier has been able to continue to operate, and led the raid on Bel Air even after his involvement in two previous massacres, is a testimony to the privilege of immunity that many politically protected gangs enjoy. These reports show that gangs have unlimited access to a supply chain of both arms and money when it comes to political repression and violence. But the UN’s own actions relating to Cherizier reveal the hypocrisy of their recent calls for accountability, and may point to one of the reasons the institution has failed to play a productive role in the current situation.
In early 2018, Susan Page, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) and head of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), applauded progress made in regard to the Petrocaribe investigation and called for accountability for the victims of the Grand Ravine massacre. She was seriously criticized by the Haitian government and the UN quickly acquiesced, replacing Page with Helen La Lime.
In its report on Bel Air and at the Security Council meeting last week, officials pushed for accountability and a more consistent fight against impunity in Haiti. But the road to empowering local authorities and institutions must start with the culture of impunity within international institutions. UN police were involved in the raid that resulted in Cherizier and other officials massacring nine civilians in 2017, but violent UN raids are not simply a recent phenomenon. After the deployment of thousands of foreign military soldiers to Haiti in 2004, UN troops repeatedly led raids into poor neighborhoods of the capital, often resulting in civilian deaths. Though the Dominican Republic’s representative to the UN pointed to recent violent actions as the “result” of the departure of UN soldiers in 2017, the more appropriate lesson is that a policy of combating violence with violence has been an abject failure.
The UN’s credibility crisis, however, goes even deeper. It took six years for the UN to accept any responsibility for introducing cholera in 2010, which has since killed at least 10,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands more. The UN has still failed to properly respond to the epidemic.
Far from addressing root causes, the billions the UN spent on “peacekeepers” in Haiti has instead consolidated a political and economic system that bears significant responsibility for the on-going violence and instability of the country.
That the UN is now willing to expressly call for accountability in response to incidents such as Bel Air may be a positive development, but it must also be deepened to reflect a recognition of the responsibility of international organizations. This entails depicting a more complete picture of repeated attacks on popular neighborhoods. The police force in Haiti continues to be politicized with the tacit support of international actors, who have supported it with billions of dollars. Meanwhile the institution has proven itself more at the service of the sitting government than the population it is meant to protect.
An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite who sponsor these violent outbursts with arms, money, and protection — a phenomenon that transcends political affiliation. Nevertheless, the UN investigations into the massacres of La Saline and Bel Air, as well as research by local human rights organizations, make abundantly clear the relationship between the current government and its allies and the ongoing repression in popular neighborhoods throughout the capital.
To move forward, the international community must first recognize its own role in stoking Haiti’s current political, economic, and social crisis. Until they do, international calls for accountability — and pleas for dialogue — will continue to ring hollow.
On February 20, the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the situation in Haiti. The Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles reports:
Both U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ representative in Haiti, Helen La Lime, and Marie Yolene Gilles, a leading human rights activist in the country, painted a climate of deteriorating human rights and disappearing rule of law. Gilles said Haitians are subject to raging malnutrition, kidnappings for ransom, rapes and gang violence that have forced the courts in Port-au-Prince to be closed since September.
“The two associations of magistrates in the country have deserted the tribunals until safety returns,” she said.
Gilles, who heads the human rights group La Fondasyon Je Klere [FJKL], said while there are 23 known armed gangs in the capital, around a third of Haiti is under gang control.
La Lime, who heads the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), had hoped to arrive at the Security Council meeting bearing news of progress in long-stalled efforts to break the political deadlock in Haiti. However, in nearly two years of protests and political conflict, the Haitian government and international actors have failed to lead meaningful talks. At the Security Council, La Lime once again appealed for all political actors to enter into dialogue. While supporting those efforts, ambassadors from the United States, France, and Germany, among others, called for the timely planning of legislative elections — and the prioritization of elections over constitutional reform, the latter of which President Jovenel Moïse began promoting after parliamentary terms expired in January.
“The Haitian people must have a voice in selecting its leaders. And further, while constitutional reforms are necessary and welcomed, they must not become a pretext to delay elections,” US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Kraft said.
Incidentally, the UN Security Council met a few days after BINUH and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR) released a report on gang violence and human rights abuses in the popular Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Bel Air. This report detailed events that took place last year between November 4 and 6. Bel Air residents had erected barricades and participated in a two-month period of protests known as “Peyi Lock.” According to the UN report, three different gang leaders entered Bel Air in an attempt to get residents to remove barricades in exchange for money. Those efforts failed, and were followed by a series of attacks over a period of three days.
More than 50 armed men were seen opening fire on civilians and setting fire to private vehicles and at least 30 homes, the UN found. At least three people were killed and six were wounded. Local rights organizations have put the toll even higher.
The violence in Bel Air, as Gilles told the Security Council, was not a new development. Local rights organizations, including Gilles’s FJKL, have documented a series of violent attacks, often with the involvement of police officers, in popular neighborhoods throughout the capital. In the case of Bel Air, the UN report mentioned the presence of at least three police officers, signaling that there were political motives behind this attack.
The UN report also alleged that a former police officer, Jimmy Cherizier, also known as “Barbecue,” led the November Bel Air attacks. Local human rights organizations, as well as the UN itself, have also alleged the involvement of Barbecue in the La Saline massacre in November 2018, in which dozens of civilians were massacred. More than 100 members of the US Congress condemned that attack in early 2019.
The UN report notes:
… more than a year after the fact, the lack of progress is particularly worrying and the involvement of Jimmy Cherizier, alias Barbecue, in other similar acts demonstrates the direct impact of impunity on the recurrence of violence and on the population. Of the thirteen recommendations made in the June 2019 report on the La Saline case, none has been fully implemented.
But while the UN is now calling for an end to impunity and the political protection that perpetuates it, the organization’s own record reveals the shallowness of these pleas.
In November 2017, UN police officers “secured the perimeter” of a school in the Grand Ravine neighborhood of Port-au-Prince as part of a joint raid with the Haitian police. Inside that school, Haitian police officers, including Jimmy Cherizier, massacred nine civilians.
That Cherizier has been able to continue to operate, and led the raid on Bel Air even after his involvement in two previous massacres, is a testimony to the privilege of immunity that many politically protected gangs enjoy. These reports show that gangs have unlimited access to a supply chain of both arms and money when it comes to political repression and violence. But the UN’s own actions relating to Cherizier reveal the hypocrisy of their recent calls for accountability, and may point to one of the reasons the institution has failed to play a productive role in the current situation.
In early 2018, Susan Page, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) and head of the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), applauded progress made in regard to the Petrocaribe investigation and called for accountability for the victims of the Grand Ravine massacre. She was seriously criticized by the Haitian government and the UN quickly acquiesced, replacing Page with Helen La Lime.
In its report on Bel Air and at the Security Council meeting last week, officials pushed for accountability and a more consistent fight against impunity in Haiti. But the road to empowering local authorities and institutions must start with the culture of impunity within international institutions. UN police were involved in the raid that resulted in Cherizier and other officials massacring nine civilians in 2017, but violent UN raids are not simply a recent phenomenon. After the deployment of thousands of foreign military soldiers to Haiti in 2004, UN troops repeatedly led raids into poor neighborhoods of the capital, often resulting in civilian deaths. Though the Dominican Republic’s representative to the UN pointed to recent violent actions as the “result” of the departure of UN soldiers in 2017, the more appropriate lesson is that a policy of combating violence with violence has been an abject failure.
The UN’s credibility crisis, however, goes even deeper. It took six years for the UN to accept any responsibility for introducing cholera in 2010, which has since killed at least 10,000 Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands more. The UN has still failed to properly respond to the epidemic.
Far from addressing root causes, the billions the UN spent on “peacekeepers” in Haiti has instead consolidated a political and economic system that bears significant responsibility for the on-going violence and instability of the country.
That the UN is now willing to expressly call for accountability in response to incidents such as Bel Air may be a positive development, but it must also be deepened to reflect a recognition of the responsibility of international organizations. This entails depicting a more complete picture of repeated attacks on popular neighborhoods. The police force in Haiti continues to be politicized with the tacit support of international actors, who have supported it with billions of dollars. Meanwhile the institution has proven itself more at the service of the sitting government than the population it is meant to protect.
An honest accounting of the violence in Haiti must also address the political and economic elite who sponsor these violent outbursts with arms, money, and protection — a phenomenon that transcends political affiliation. Nevertheless, the UN investigations into the massacres of La Saline and Bel Air, as well as research by local human rights organizations, make abundantly clear the relationship between the current government and its allies and the ongoing repression in popular neighborhoods throughout the capital.
To move forward, the international community must first recognize its own role in stoking Haiti’s current political, economic, and social crisis. Until they do, international calls for accountability — and pleas for dialogue — will continue to ring hollow.
• HaitiHaitiLatin America and the CaribbeanAmérica Latina y el CaribeWorldEl Mundo
Magnitude of earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010: 7.0
Years since an earthquake of that magnitude struck Haiti: 168
Number of aftershocks, over 4.5 magnitude, in the week after the initial tremor: 51
Total number of government ministry buildings, before the earthquake: 29
Number of government ministry buildings that stood after the earthquake: 1
Number of United Nations troops and police stationed in Haiti, at the time of the earthquake: 9,057
Date on which the United Nations voted to increase the number of troops by 4,000: January 19, 2010
Number of US military personnel sent to Haiti, or stationed on ships off Haiti’s shores, by the end of January 2010: 22,200
Number of US citizens evacuated from Haiti in 2010: over 16,000
Cost of the US military’s response to the earthquake: at least $461,000,000
Official death toll: 316,000
Estimated death toll, based on survey data: 46,190 to 84,961
Estimated value of damages and losses, in percent of Haiti’s 2009 GDP: 113
Amount pledged by donors for short- and long-term reconstruction at a March 2010 donor conference: $10.7 billion
Percent of $2.4 billion in donor provided humanitarian assistance that went to the Haitian government from 2010 to 2012: 0.9
Billions in humanitarian and reconstruction aid disbursed by donors from 2010 to 2012: $6.4
Percent of that which was disbursed directly to Haitian organizations, institutions or companies: less than 0.6 percent
Percent of US families that donated to earthquake relief efforts: 45 percent
Estimated amount of private money raised, predominantly by NGOs: $3.06 billion
Number of homes destroyed by the earthquake: 105,000
Number of homes damaged: 208,000
Estimated number of individuals displaced by the earthquake: 1.5 million
Number of individuals evicted from camps for the internally displaced, between June 2010 and March 2011: 230,000
Estimated number of individuals living in damaged or destroyed houses in 2011: 1,036,174
IDP camp population in December 2019: 33,000
Population of Canaan, an area about 15 kilometers outside of the capital, at time of earthquake: 0
Population of Canaan now: at least 300,000
Amount of money raised by the American Red Cross for Haiti: $486,000,000
Number of new houses built by American Red Cross (as of June 2015): 6
Number of new houses USAID planned to build after the earthquake: 15,000
Original estimated cost of those 15,000 houses: $59 million
Number of houses USAID actually built: 900
Miles from Port-au-Prince where the original housing construction site was planned: 8
Miles from Port-au-Prince where 750 of the 900 houses were actually built: 130
Projected average cost of the new houses: $8,000
Final average cost of the 750 houses built in Northern Haiti: $77,125
Number of those 750 houses originally built to earthquake standards: 0
Amount spent by US taxpayers to fix structural problems with the 750 houses: $21,237,888
Date by which the two main US contractors involved in housing construction were suspended from receiving US government contracts: March 25, 2015
Amount the two suspended contractors were fined: $0
Total USAID spending for Haiti since January 2010: $2,479,512,152
Percent of that amount that went to contractors inside the Beltway (Washington, DC; Maryland; and Virginia): 54.1 percent
Percent of USAID spending that went directly to local Haitian companies or organizations: 2.6 percent
Amount disbursed to Chemonics International and Development Alternatives Incorporated: $473,992,419
Amount spent in 2012, on lobbying against USAID reforms, by the Coalition of International Development Companies (which includes Chemonics and DAI): $250,000
Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the international community’s flagship postquake project: $350 million
Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: October 22, 2012
Number of jobs the State Department promised the new industrial park would create: 65,000
Total number of jobs at the industrial park, as of 2017: 10,214
Amount allocated by USAID to build a new port in support of the industrial park: $72 million
Date on which USAID abandoned its plans to support a new port in northern Haiti: May 2018
Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400
Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: December 8, 2018
Daily minimum wage, in Haitian gourdes, in 1990: 15
Daily minimum wage, in Haitian gourdes, in 2019 (adjusted for inflation, in 1990 gourdes): 9.6
Millions of dollars in textiles exported to the United States in 2009: $491
In 2019: $740
Year in which per capita GDP reached its pre-earthquake level: 2013
Average annual per capita GDP growth in the years since 2013: 0.1 percent
Exchange rate at time of earthquake (Haitian gourdes per US dollar): 40.5
Exchange rate today: 92
Inflation rate in 2009: 3.43
Inflation rate in 2019: 17.58
Number of United Nations missions in Haiti since the earthquake: 3
Total number of years that the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) remained in country: 13
Number of Sri Lankan peacekeepers who abused children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007: at least 134
Number of those peacekeepers removed from Haiti: 114
Number of those peacekeepers imprisoned: 0
Number of Haitians reporting children fathered by UN troops or other personnel: 265
Minimum number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation at the hands of UN troops or other personnel in Haiti, from 2004 to 2016: 150
Date the first Haitian contracted cholera: October 19, 2010
Number of days it took the United Nations to admit responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti: 2,129
Official number of cases registered since: 819,000
Official number of deaths: 9,789
Factor by which epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux believes this underestimates the death toll: 8
Cost of the 13-year MINUSTAH mission: $7,207,843,300
Fraction of that which donors spent in responding to the cholera outbreak: 1/10
Amount raised by the UN’s multidonor cholera trust fund: $10,615,595
Haiti’s ranking in the UN Human Development Index in 2009: 149
In most recent update: 169
Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2008 to 2010): 5 million
Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2016 to 2018): 5.4 million
Number of people in Haiti in need of “urgent food assistance” now: 3.7 million
Dollar amount of food imported by Haiti in 2009: $483.9 million
In 2018: $909.9 million
In 2019: $729.1 million
Dollar amount of food exported by Haiti in 2009: $28 million
In 2019: $20.7 million
Percent increase in rice consumption, 2009 to 2019: 40.7
Percent increase in local rice production, 2009 to 2019: 13.8
The cost, in 2010, of purchasing the entire local rice crop to use as food aid: about $70 million
Metric tons of food aid sent by USAID to Haiti in 2010: 152,960
Total cost: $161,792,300
Date on which former US president Bill Clinton apologized for undermining Haiti farmers for the benefit of rice producers in Arkansas: March 10, 2010
Local agricultural production, in metric tons, bought by the World Food Program for food assistance programs in Haiti, in 2018: over 700
Children who receive school meals from World Food Program in Haiti today: 275,000
Percent of those meals that contain local products: 15
Date on which Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s Southern Peninsula: October 4, 2016
Number of years since a hurricane of similar magnitude struck Haiti: 62
Estimated percent of crops destroyed in the Grand’Anse region: 100 percent
Estimated percent of livestock killed in the same department: 85–90 percent
Estimated amount Haiti needed for reconstruction after the hurricane: $2.2 billion
Amount requested in a UN flash appeal for humanitarian funding: $139 million
Percent of flash appeal that was funded: 62.1 percent
Average UN humanitarian funding appeal for Haiti, 2011–2019: $200,961,058
Average percent funded: 44
Total foreign assistance disbursed in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, as of 2018: $11,581,637,407.32
Total amount of budget support provided by international donors: $282,503,604
Number of Haitian presidents since 2010 earthquake: 4
Percent of the 11,181 tally sheets of electoral results that were never counted or never received after the November 28, 2010 election: 12.2 percent
Date on which members of the international “Core Group” threatened then President Rene Preval with forced exile: November 28, 2010
Participation rate in that election: 22.8 percent
Date on which a draft OAS audit of the elections, which recommended changing the results, was leaked: January 10, 2011
Date on which then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti to pressure the Preval government to change the results of the election: January 30, 2011
Date on which Michel Martelly, who had initially placed third and missed the runoff, was sworn in as president: May 14, 2011
Value of in-kind support that a USAID contractor provided to an organization linked to Martelly’s campaign to clean the streets of the capital before the inauguration: $98,928
Number of elections held in Martelly’s first four years in office: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the Senate expired: January 12, 2015
Number of political parties that registered to participate in Haiti’s August 2015 legislative elections: 128
Number of candidates: 1,852
Number of seats up for grabs: 139
Percent of votes that were never counted due to irregularities, including fraud and violence: 25 percent
Date on which Haiti’s first-round presidential election was held: October 25, 2015
Number of candidates participating in the 2015 presidential election: 54
Date on which the planned second-round presidential election was indefinitely called off due to widespread irregularities: January 22, 2016
Number of untraceable votes in the October 25, 2015 election, according to an independent verification commission: 628,000
Date on which a new parliament was sworn in despite the election being canceled at the presidential level: January 11, 2016
Participation in the 2016 rerun presidential and partial legislative election: 18 percent
Number of elected senators arrested and extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges before taking office: 1
Date on which Jovenel Moïse was inaugurated president: February 7, 2017
Number of votes received by Moïse: 590,927
Current Haitian population, estimate: 11 million
Average annual disbursement, through the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe program, 2011–2015: $270.8 million
Date on which former president Michel Martelly appointed the brother of his political party’s president to lead the agency that controls the Petrocaribe fund: February 3, 2015
Date on which Jovenel Moïse, Martelly’s chosen successor, registered as a presidential candidate: May 21, 2015
Date on which the government authorized $1 million in disbursements from its Petrocaribe account to Agritrans, a company owned by Jovenel Moïse: May 26, 2015
Minimum amount allocated to a project to build sports centers, run by former president Michel Martelly’s son: $27.7 million
Date on which Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a Haitian filmmaker, Tweeted a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a sign asking where the Petrocaribe money is: August 14, 2018
Percent of Haiti’s 10 departments that experienced massive demonstrations on October 17, 2018 asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 90 percent
Minimum number of Haitians killed by armed gangs and corrupt police on November 13, 2018 in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: 70
Date of the second mass mobilization demanding accountability for Petrocaribe corruption: November 18, 2018
Date on which Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors released its first report on Petrocaribe: January 31, 2019
Date on which the second report was released: May 31, 2019
Number of pages in the second report: 612
Number of government officials or private sector actors imprisoned due to Petrocaribe corruption: 0
Number of foreign mercenaries arrested outside the Haitian central bank in February 2019: 7
Days those mercenaries remained in jail before US officials intervened and facilitated their flight back to the U.S.: 3
Total prison population: 10,905
Fraction of prison population that is still awaiting a trial: 3/4
Number of inmates in Port-au-Prince’s “national penitentiary”: 3,626
Number the prison was built to hold: 778
Number of Haitians killed during demonstrations since July 2018: 187
Percent who died from a bullet wound to the head: 22.5
Minimum number of civilian massacres: 5
Estimated number of individuals killed in those massacres: 127
Number of police officers killed in 2019: 44
Months that Haiti has not had a prime minister ratified by parliament: 10
Date on which Haiti broke longstanding diplomatic precedent and voted against Venezuela at the Organization of American States (OAS): January 10, 2019
Date on which President Donald Trump invited Jovenel Moïse to Mar-a-Lago to thank him for his vote: March 22, 2019
Number of US members of Congress who wrote to the State Department in March 2019 pushing for human rights and corruption accountability in Haiti: 106
Number of civil society and other organizations that signed a document in late 2019 calling for Moïses’s resignation and the formation of a transitional government: 107
Number of elections held under Jovenel Moïse: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the senate expire: January 13, 2020
Magnitude of earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010: 7.0
Years since an earthquake of that magnitude struck Haiti: 168
Number of aftershocks, over 4.5 magnitude, in the week after the initial tremor: 51
Total number of government ministry buildings, before the earthquake: 29
Number of government ministry buildings that stood after the earthquake: 1
Number of United Nations troops and police stationed in Haiti, at the time of the earthquake: 9,057
Date on which the United Nations voted to increase the number of troops by 4,000: January 19, 2010
Number of US military personnel sent to Haiti, or stationed on ships off Haiti’s shores, by the end of January 2010: 22,200
Number of US citizens evacuated from Haiti in 2010: over 16,000
Cost of the US military’s response to the earthquake: at least $461,000,000
Official death toll: 316,000
Estimated death toll, based on survey data: 46,190 to 84,961
Estimated value of damages and losses, in percent of Haiti’s 2009 GDP: 113
Amount pledged by donors for short- and long-term reconstruction at a March 2010 donor conference: $10.7 billion
Percent of $2.4 billion in donor provided humanitarian assistance that went to the Haitian government from 2010 to 2012: 0.9
Billions in humanitarian and reconstruction aid disbursed by donors from 2010 to 2012: $6.4
Percent of that which was disbursed directly to Haitian organizations, institutions or companies: less than 0.6 percent
Percent of US families that donated to earthquake relief efforts: 45 percent
Estimated amount of private money raised, predominantly by NGOs: $3.06 billion
Number of homes destroyed by the earthquake: 105,000
Number of homes damaged: 208,000
Estimated number of individuals displaced by the earthquake: 1.5 million
Number of individuals evicted from camps for the internally displaced, between June 2010 and March 2011: 230,000
Estimated number of individuals living in damaged or destroyed houses in 2011: 1,036,174
IDP camp population in December 2019: 33,000
Population of Canaan, an area about 15 kilometers outside of the capital, at time of earthquake: 0
Population of Canaan now: at least 300,000
Amount of money raised by the American Red Cross for Haiti: $486,000,000
Number of new houses built by American Red Cross (as of June 2015): 6
Number of new houses USAID planned to build after the earthquake: 15,000
Original estimated cost of those 15,000 houses: $59 million
Number of houses USAID actually built: 900
Miles from Port-au-Prince where the original housing construction site was planned: 8
Miles from Port-au-Prince where 750 of the 900 houses were actually built: 130
Projected average cost of the new houses: $8,000
Final average cost of the 750 houses built in Northern Haiti: $77,125
Number of those 750 houses originally built to earthquake standards: 0
Amount spent by US taxpayers to fix structural problems with the 750 houses: $21,237,888
Date by which the two main US contractors involved in housing construction were suspended from receiving US government contracts: March 25, 2015
Amount the two suspended contractors were fined: $0
Total USAID spending for Haiti since January 2010: $2,479,512,152
Percent of that amount that went to contractors inside the Beltway (Washington, DC; Maryland; and Virginia): 54.1 percent
Percent of USAID spending that went directly to local Haitian companies or organizations: 2.6 percent
Amount disbursed to Chemonics International and Development Alternatives Incorporated: $473,992,419
Amount spent in 2012, on lobbying against USAID reforms, by the Coalition of International Development Companies (which includes Chemonics and DAI): $250,000
Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the international community’s flagship postquake project: $350 million
Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: October 22, 2012
Number of jobs the State Department promised the new industrial park would create: 65,000
Total number of jobs at the industrial park, as of 2017: 10,214
Amount allocated by USAID to build a new port in support of the industrial park: $72 million
Date on which USAID abandoned its plans to support a new port in northern Haiti: May 2018
Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400
Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: December 8, 2018
Daily minimum wage, in Haitian gourdes, in 1990: 15
Daily minimum wage, in Haitian gourdes, in 2019 (adjusted for inflation, in 1990 gourdes): 9.6
Millions of dollars in textiles exported to the United States in 2009: $491
In 2019: $740
Year in which per capita GDP reached its pre-earthquake level: 2013
Average annual per capita GDP growth in the years since 2013: 0.1 percent
Exchange rate at time of earthquake (Haitian gourdes per US dollar): 40.5
Exchange rate today: 92
Inflation rate in 2009: 3.43
Inflation rate in 2019: 17.58
Number of United Nations missions in Haiti since the earthquake: 3
Total number of years that the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) remained in country: 13
Number of Sri Lankan peacekeepers who abused children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007: at least 134
Number of those peacekeepers removed from Haiti: 114
Number of those peacekeepers imprisoned: 0
Number of Haitians reporting children fathered by UN troops or other personnel: 265
Minimum number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation at the hands of UN troops or other personnel in Haiti, from 2004 to 2016: 150
Date the first Haitian contracted cholera: October 19, 2010
Number of days it took the United Nations to admit responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti: 2,129
Official number of cases registered since: 819,000
Official number of deaths: 9,789
Factor by which epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux believes this underestimates the death toll: 8
Cost of the 13-year MINUSTAH mission: $7,207,843,300
Fraction of that which donors spent in responding to the cholera outbreak: 1/10
Amount raised by the UN’s multidonor cholera trust fund: $10,615,595
Haiti’s ranking in the UN Human Development Index in 2009: 149
In most recent update: 169
Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2008 to 2010): 5 million
Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2016 to 2018): 5.4 million
Number of people in Haiti in need of “urgent food assistance” now: 3.7 million
Dollar amount of food imported by Haiti in 2009: $483.9 million
In 2018: $909.9 million
In 2019: $729.1 million
Dollar amount of food exported by Haiti in 2009: $28 million
In 2019: $20.7 million
Percent increase in rice consumption, 2009 to 2019: 40.7
Percent increase in local rice production, 2009 to 2019: 13.8
The cost, in 2010, of purchasing the entire local rice crop to use as food aid: about $70 million
Metric tons of food aid sent by USAID to Haiti in 2010: 152,960
Total cost: $161,792,300
Date on which former US president Bill Clinton apologized for undermining Haiti farmers for the benefit of rice producers in Arkansas: March 10, 2010
Local agricultural production, in metric tons, bought by the World Food Program for food assistance programs in Haiti, in 2018: over 700
Children who receive school meals from World Food Program in Haiti today: 275,000
Percent of those meals that contain local products: 15
Date on which Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s Southern Peninsula: October 4, 2016
Number of years since a hurricane of similar magnitude struck Haiti: 62
Estimated percent of crops destroyed in the Grand’Anse region: 100 percent
Estimated percent of livestock killed in the same department: 85–90 percent
Estimated amount Haiti needed for reconstruction after the hurricane: $2.2 billion
Amount requested in a UN flash appeal for humanitarian funding: $139 million
Percent of flash appeal that was funded: 62.1 percent
Average UN humanitarian funding appeal for Haiti, 2011–2019: $200,961,058
Average percent funded: 44
Total foreign assistance disbursed in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, as of 2018: $11,581,637,407.32
Total amount of budget support provided by international donors: $282,503,604
Number of Haitian presidents since 2010 earthquake: 4
Percent of the 11,181 tally sheets of electoral results that were never counted or never received after the November 28, 2010 election: 12.2 percent
Date on which members of the international “Core Group” threatened then President Rene Preval with forced exile: November 28, 2010
Participation rate in that election: 22.8 percent
Date on which a draft OAS audit of the elections, which recommended changing the results, was leaked: January 10, 2011
Date on which then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti to pressure the Preval government to change the results of the election: January 30, 2011
Date on which Michel Martelly, who had initially placed third and missed the runoff, was sworn in as president: May 14, 2011
Value of in-kind support that a USAID contractor provided to an organization linked to Martelly’s campaign to clean the streets of the capital before the inauguration: $98,928
Number of elections held in Martelly’s first four years in office: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the Senate expired: January 12, 2015
Number of political parties that registered to participate in Haiti’s August 2015 legislative elections: 128
Number of candidates: 1,852
Number of seats up for grabs: 139
Percent of votes that were never counted due to irregularities, including fraud and violence: 25 percent
Date on which Haiti’s first-round presidential election was held: October 25, 2015
Number of candidates participating in the 2015 presidential election: 54
Date on which the planned second-round presidential election was indefinitely called off due to widespread irregularities: January 22, 2016
Number of untraceable votes in the October 25, 2015 election, according to an independent verification commission: 628,000
Date on which a new parliament was sworn in despite the election being canceled at the presidential level: January 11, 2016
Participation in the 2016 rerun presidential and partial legislative election: 18 percent
Number of elected senators arrested and extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges before taking office: 1
Date on which Jovenel Moïse was inaugurated president: February 7, 2017
Number of votes received by Moïse: 590,927
Current Haitian population, estimate: 11 million
Average annual disbursement, through the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe program, 2011–2015: $270.8 million
Date on which former president Michel Martelly appointed the brother of his political party’s president to lead the agency that controls the Petrocaribe fund: February 3, 2015
Date on which Jovenel Moïse, Martelly’s chosen successor, registered as a presidential candidate: May 21, 2015
Date on which the government authorized $1 million in disbursements from its Petrocaribe account to Agritrans, a company owned by Jovenel Moïse: May 26, 2015
Minimum amount allocated to a project to build sports centers, run by former president Michel Martelly’s son: $27.7 million
Date on which Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a Haitian filmmaker, Tweeted a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a sign asking where the Petrocaribe money is: August 14, 2018
Percent of Haiti’s 10 departments that experienced massive demonstrations on October 17, 2018 asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 90 percent
Minimum number of Haitians killed by armed gangs and corrupt police on November 13, 2018 in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: 70
Date of the second mass mobilization demanding accountability for Petrocaribe corruption: November 18, 2018
Date on which Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors released its first report on Petrocaribe: January 31, 2019
Date on which the second report was released: May 31, 2019
Number of pages in the second report: 612
Number of government officials or private sector actors imprisoned due to Petrocaribe corruption: 0
Number of foreign mercenaries arrested outside the Haitian central bank in February 2019: 7
Days those mercenaries remained in jail before US officials intervened and facilitated their flight back to the U.S.: 3
Total prison population: 10,905
Fraction of prison population that is still awaiting a trial: 3/4
Number of inmates in Port-au-Prince’s “national penitentiary”: 3,626
Number the prison was built to hold: 778
Number of Haitians killed during demonstrations since July 2018: 187
Percent who died from a bullet wound to the head: 22.5
Minimum number of civilian massacres: 5
Estimated number of individuals killed in those massacres: 127
Number of police officers killed in 2019: 44
Months that Haiti has not had a prime minister ratified by parliament: 10
Date on which Haiti broke longstanding diplomatic precedent and voted against Venezuela at the Organization of American States (OAS): January 10, 2019
Date on which President Donald Trump invited Jovenel Moïse to Mar-a-Lago to thank him for his vote: March 22, 2019
Number of US members of Congress who wrote to the State Department in March 2019 pushing for human rights and corruption accountability in Haiti: 106
Number of civil society and other organizations that signed a document in late 2019 calling for Moïses’s resignation and the formation of a transitional government: 107
Number of elections held under Jovenel Moïse: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the senate expire: January 13, 2020
In August 2015, President Michel Martelly inaugurated the Delmas viaduct, a four-lane overpass designed to ease the capital’s grid-locked streets. “This viaduct proves once again that together we can achieve great and beautiful things,” Martelly told the large crowd that had assembled. “More than a dream, more than a project, this viaduct is now one of the symbols of Port-au-Prince.”
Underneath the overpass, bands provided live entertainment throughout the hours-long inauguration ceremony which eventually turned into a political rally. Martelly’s term as president was coming to an end, and presidential elections were set to take place in a few months.
“This is the man I have picked to succeed me for my party,” Martelly said from the stage, calling up the man next to him for all to see. “His name is Jovenel Moïse.”
Nearly four years later, on May 31, 2019, Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors (CSCCA) released a 600-page investigation into more than $2.3 billion in Petrocaribe-related expenditures between 2008 and 2016, when Moïse eventually secured the presidency. The report identified nearly $2 million in questionable payments made to Moïse in late 2014 and early 2015. The largest came just days after he registered as the governing party’s presidential candidate.
As for the viaduct, Martelly was right. It has become a symbol of Port-au-Prince. A concrete symbol of government waste. And a rallying point for Haiti’s growing anticorruption movement.
On October 17, 2018 and again on November 18, 2018 massive anticorruption protests took place in Port-au-Prince and in provincial towns across the country. “Where is the Petrocaribe money?” They demanded. In the capital, before marching up Route Delmas — which runs from the poorer neighborhoods downtown straight up the hill to the comparatively wealthy Petionville — the various organizations and neighborhoods participating amassed at the overpass.
Now, approaching a year since the launch of their movement, organizers are planning another march for June 9. Armed with the CSCCA report, the question is no longer where did the money go, but what is the government going to do about it. There won’t be any confusion about where the demonstration will begin.
But the story of the viaduct itself reveals just how difficult it will be to ensure justice and accountability in Haiti – and abroad. It’s not just the Haitian government that may be reticent about following the money. The implications of the Petrocaribe scandal in Haiti are vast and extend far beyond the country’s own borders and its own political class.
***
Plans for the Delmas viaduct have been around for decades, the brainchild of the politically connected local representative of the Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin, Bernard Chancy. In 2005, SNC-Haiti completed a study on the viability of the project, but couldn’t find the funding to make it a reality.
In the meantime, SNC-Lavalin and its local subsidiary were becoming increasing involved in Haiti. The firm handled the design and construction of the new Canadian Embassy, inaugurated in 2004. It undertook the engineering studies and then supervised the construction of a number of other structures, including the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. The firm found itself on the UN’s approved vendor list, and on the receiving end of millions in Canadian foreign assistance funds.
In Canada, the firm became one of the Liberal Party’s most steadfast donors. But it had political connections in Haiti as well. A family relation of its Haiti representative, Michael Chancy, was a deputy agricultural minister in Rene Préval’s 2006-2011 government and then was one of the only senior administration officials to be retained in the new administration of Michel Martelly.
But according to a senior Haitian government advisor during the Préval years, SNC-Haiti, despite its political connections, was unable to convince Préval during either of his two terms in office to approve the viaduct project, which the president dismissed as “a rip-off.”
That didn’t stop SNC-Haiti from once again attempting to sell its pet project to the incoming Martelly administration though. And the earthquake presented an opportunity for Bernard Chancy and the Delmas viaduct.
Donors pledged billions of dollars toward Haiti’s reconstruction, and the “gold rush” was on. The vast majority of donor funds went to international organizations or private firms in the donor’s home country. The government of Haiti, meanwhile, became increasingly reliant on the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe initiative. From 2011 to 2015, the oil-for-loans program provided the government with more than $250 million per year. The new administration was eager to show it was doing something, however expensive or nonsensical the project.
But as the viaduct project reveals, much of the government’s Petrocaribe funding also went to international companies – though often via a local subsidiary.
In the fall of 2012, SNC-Haiti, operating under the name LGL S.A., updated its earlier viaduct analysis. On December 27, 2012, the Haitian government signed a $16.6 million contract with a different company, Estrella, to build the Delmas viaduct. Estrella, one of the largest construction companies in the Dominican Republic, also received a $13.6 million contract to build another viaduct on Route Carrefour, the main road leading from the capital to the south of the country.
The Haitian government provided Estrella with an advance on both projects and awarded a $2.7 million contract to supervise the work to LGL S.A., the SNC-Lavalin local affiliate led by Bernard Chancy.
According to the contracts, which the CSCCA analyzed as part of its report, Estrella was to finish both projects by February 2015. Oddly, LGL S.A.’s supervisory contract ended in November 2014.
At the end of the 18-month deadline, the projects were nowhere near finished. The Delmas viaduct appeared closer, but the Carrefour viaduct had barely been started. And the costs had increased. The CSCCA found that, for the Delmas viaduct, the cost of earthwork had increased by 213 percent and “drainage and sanitation” by 141 percent.
LGL’s supervision contract came to an end in late 2014, but in February 2015, the government gave an additional $5 million to Estrella to continue work on the Delmas viaduct. Though Martelly inaugurated the overpass in August 2015, Estrella received more than $600,000 in 2016 for costs related to the project.
Today, the Delmas viaduct is at least operational, but the Carrefour overpass has yet to be completed. LGL received $2.1 million of its supervision contract. Estrella received nearly $30 million – and that could still increase. Millions more were allocated to the project and have yet to be disbursed.
The CSCCA auditors wrote that the government agency responsible for both projects, the Ministry of Public Works, “did not implement the project in accordance with the principles of efficiency, effectiveness, or economy” and that its actions did not comply with “sound management practices.”
It came as little surprise to the thousands of Haitians who have gathered underneath the overpass before each recent anticorruption demonstration.
***
In the aftermath of the CSCCA report, most of the focus has been on President Jovenel Moïse. It was the president who, responding to the increasing pressure from the anticorruption protests, tasked the CSCCA with investigating the fund in late 2018. No government officials or private sector actors have yet to appear in court over Petrocaribe-related corruption. “We will await the CSCCA report,” the president said repeatedly in one form or another.
Popularized during his election as “The Banana Man” due to his ownership of a banana plantation, Agritrans, it turns out the firm may have had more success as a government road-building contractor. And now that the court has implicated Agritrans in the Petrocaribe affair, calls for the president’s resignation have come from disparate corners of the political landscape.
But it’s not just the Haitian government who is afraid of where a judicial investigation may lead.
“For sure, the [governing party] received money from Petrocaribe,” a foreign diplomat stationed in Haiti told me late last year. “The government doesn’t want an investigation.” But, the source added, “the international ramifications of Petrocaribe are far greater than we know.” It’s not just Haiti that may not be interested in following the money.
Estrella received more than $100 million in Petrocaribe funds, and wasn’t even the largest Dominican recipient. And then there are the businesses in the United States and Canada, often operating through local branches and linked to members of the diaspora.
Many are quick to point out the pervasive level of corruption in Haiti, but few want to look at the international reach of that corruption. Or, viewed differently, the corrupting influence of international actors within Haiti.
SNC-Lavalin is currently embroiled in a corruption scandal that reaches all the way to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. It was revealed in 2018 that the company had been illegally funding politicians for years. Then, as a SNC-Lavalin came under legal scrutiny again over bribes paid to the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the firm attempted to cash in on those long-standing political connections. The Attorney General of Canada resisted the political pressure, but was promptly pushed out of her position. A taped phone call revealed she had previously been threatened with losing her job if she pursued the case against SNC-Lavalin.
Then there is Estrella. Like SNC-Lavalin, Estrella has received contracts not just from the government of Haiti, but multilateral and bilateral donors in Haiti as well. And in the Dominican Republic, Estrella also finds itself embroiled in corruption allegations. The firm was part of a consortium with Odebrecht, the Brazilian multinational, to construct the Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant. Prosecutors have alleged Odebrecht paid some $92 million in bribes to secure the contract and have issued a number of indictments in the Dominican Republic.
Odebrecht, the center of the hemisphere’s largest corruption scandal, has acknowledged paying bribes to government officials throughout the region. The fallout from the Odebrecht scandal has already ensnared high-level government officials in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Mexico. Investigations are ongoing across the hemisphere.
***
On June 9, many Haitians will once again meet underneath the Delmas overpass before proceeding up the hill to Petionville. And Haitian president Jovenel Moïse will be serenaded with calls for his resignation. It is his involvement that has received media attention and popular scorn.
But this is a scandal that extends far beyond the current president, and far beyond Haiti altogether, as the case of the Delmas viaduct makes clear. Still, the president faces a problem. As I told Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, “President Moïse has pledged action, and action will be necessary to calm political tensions— but it will be very difficult to judicially pursue members of the private sector or former government officials when it is the president himself who now stands accused.”
Whatever the fallout from the CSCCA report and the Petrocaribe scandal, it’s worth remembering that Haitians do not have a monopoly on corruption – not even in their own country. Perhaps that can be added to the list of what the Delmas viaduct has come to symbolize.
In August 2015, President Michel Martelly inaugurated the Delmas viaduct, a four-lane overpass designed to ease the capital’s grid-locked streets. “This viaduct proves once again that together we can achieve great and beautiful things,” Martelly told the large crowd that had assembled. “More than a dream, more than a project, this viaduct is now one of the symbols of Port-au-Prince.”
Underneath the overpass, bands provided live entertainment throughout the hours-long inauguration ceremony which eventually turned into a political rally. Martelly’s term as president was coming to an end, and presidential elections were set to take place in a few months.
“This is the man I have picked to succeed me for my party,” Martelly said from the stage, calling up the man next to him for all to see. “His name is Jovenel Moïse.”
Nearly four years later, on May 31, 2019, Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors (CSCCA) released a 600-page investigation into more than $2.3 billion in Petrocaribe-related expenditures between 2008 and 2016, when Moïse eventually secured the presidency. The report identified nearly $2 million in questionable payments made to Moïse in late 2014 and early 2015. The largest came just days after he registered as the governing party’s presidential candidate.
As for the viaduct, Martelly was right. It has become a symbol of Port-au-Prince. A concrete symbol of government waste. And a rallying point for Haiti’s growing anticorruption movement.
On October 17, 2018 and again on November 18, 2018 massive anticorruption protests took place in Port-au-Prince and in provincial towns across the country. “Where is the Petrocaribe money?” They demanded. In the capital, before marching up Route Delmas — which runs from the poorer neighborhoods downtown straight up the hill to the comparatively wealthy Petionville — the various organizations and neighborhoods participating amassed at the overpass.
Now, approaching a year since the launch of their movement, organizers are planning another march for June 9. Armed with the CSCCA report, the question is no longer where did the money go, but what is the government going to do about it. There won’t be any confusion about where the demonstration will begin.
But the story of the viaduct itself reveals just how difficult it will be to ensure justice and accountability in Haiti – and abroad. It’s not just the Haitian government that may be reticent about following the money. The implications of the Petrocaribe scandal in Haiti are vast and extend far beyond the country’s own borders and its own political class.
***
Plans for the Delmas viaduct have been around for decades, the brainchild of the politically connected local representative of the Canadian conglomerate SNC-Lavalin, Bernard Chancy. In 2005, SNC-Haiti completed a study on the viability of the project, but couldn’t find the funding to make it a reality.
In the meantime, SNC-Lavalin and its local subsidiary were becoming increasing involved in Haiti. The firm handled the design and construction of the new Canadian Embassy, inaugurated in 2004. It undertook the engineering studies and then supervised the construction of a number of other structures, including the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. The firm found itself on the UN’s approved vendor list, and on the receiving end of millions in Canadian foreign assistance funds.
In Canada, the firm became one of the Liberal Party’s most steadfast donors. But it had political connections in Haiti as well. A family relation of its Haiti representative, Michael Chancy, was a deputy agricultural minister in Rene Préval’s 2006-2011 government and then was one of the only senior administration officials to be retained in the new administration of Michel Martelly.
But according to a senior Haitian government advisor during the Préval years, SNC-Haiti, despite its political connections, was unable to convince Préval during either of his two terms in office to approve the viaduct project, which the president dismissed as “a rip-off.”
That didn’t stop SNC-Haiti from once again attempting to sell its pet project to the incoming Martelly administration though. And the earthquake presented an opportunity for Bernard Chancy and the Delmas viaduct.
Donors pledged billions of dollars toward Haiti’s reconstruction, and the “gold rush” was on. The vast majority of donor funds went to international organizations or private firms in the donor’s home country. The government of Haiti, meanwhile, became increasingly reliant on the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe initiative. From 2011 to 2015, the oil-for-loans program provided the government with more than $250 million per year. The new administration was eager to show it was doing something, however expensive or nonsensical the project.
But as the viaduct project reveals, much of the government’s Petrocaribe funding also went to international companies – though often via a local subsidiary.
In the fall of 2012, SNC-Haiti, operating under the name LGL S.A., updated its earlier viaduct analysis. On December 27, 2012, the Haitian government signed a $16.6 million contract with a different company, Estrella, to build the Delmas viaduct. Estrella, one of the largest construction companies in the Dominican Republic, also received a $13.6 million contract to build another viaduct on Route Carrefour, the main road leading from the capital to the south of the country.
The Haitian government provided Estrella with an advance on both projects and awarded a $2.7 million contract to supervise the work to LGL S.A., the SNC-Lavalin local affiliate led by Bernard Chancy.
According to the contracts, which the CSCCA analyzed as part of its report, Estrella was to finish both projects by February 2015. Oddly, LGL S.A.’s supervisory contract ended in November 2014.
At the end of the 18-month deadline, the projects were nowhere near finished. The Delmas viaduct appeared closer, but the Carrefour viaduct had barely been started. And the costs had increased. The CSCCA found that, for the Delmas viaduct, the cost of earthwork had increased by 213 percent and “drainage and sanitation” by 141 percent.
LGL’s supervision contract came to an end in late 2014, but in February 2015, the government gave an additional $5 million to Estrella to continue work on the Delmas viaduct. Though Martelly inaugurated the overpass in August 2015, Estrella received more than $600,000 in 2016 for costs related to the project.
Today, the Delmas viaduct is at least operational, but the Carrefour overpass has yet to be completed. LGL received $2.1 million of its supervision contract. Estrella received nearly $30 million – and that could still increase. Millions more were allocated to the project and have yet to be disbursed.
The CSCCA auditors wrote that the government agency responsible for both projects, the Ministry of Public Works, “did not implement the project in accordance with the principles of efficiency, effectiveness, or economy” and that its actions did not comply with “sound management practices.”
It came as little surprise to the thousands of Haitians who have gathered underneath the overpass before each recent anticorruption demonstration.
***
In the aftermath of the CSCCA report, most of the focus has been on President Jovenel Moïse. It was the president who, responding to the increasing pressure from the anticorruption protests, tasked the CSCCA with investigating the fund in late 2018. No government officials or private sector actors have yet to appear in court over Petrocaribe-related corruption. “We will await the CSCCA report,” the president said repeatedly in one form or another.
Popularized during his election as “The Banana Man” due to his ownership of a banana plantation, Agritrans, it turns out the firm may have had more success as a government road-building contractor. And now that the court has implicated Agritrans in the Petrocaribe affair, calls for the president’s resignation have come from disparate corners of the political landscape.
But it’s not just the Haitian government who is afraid of where a judicial investigation may lead.
“For sure, the [governing party] received money from Petrocaribe,” a foreign diplomat stationed in Haiti told me late last year. “The government doesn’t want an investigation.” But, the source added, “the international ramifications of Petrocaribe are far greater than we know.” It’s not just Haiti that may not be interested in following the money.
Estrella received more than $100 million in Petrocaribe funds, and wasn’t even the largest Dominican recipient. And then there are the businesses in the United States and Canada, often operating through local branches and linked to members of the diaspora.
Many are quick to point out the pervasive level of corruption in Haiti, but few want to look at the international reach of that corruption. Or, viewed differently, the corrupting influence of international actors within Haiti.
SNC-Lavalin is currently embroiled in a corruption scandal that reaches all the way to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. It was revealed in 2018 that the company had been illegally funding politicians for years. Then, as a SNC-Lavalin came under legal scrutiny again over bribes paid to the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the firm attempted to cash in on those long-standing political connections. The Attorney General of Canada resisted the political pressure, but was promptly pushed out of her position. A taped phone call revealed she had previously been threatened with losing her job if she pursued the case against SNC-Lavalin.
Then there is Estrella. Like SNC-Lavalin, Estrella has received contracts not just from the government of Haiti, but multilateral and bilateral donors in Haiti as well. And in the Dominican Republic, Estrella also finds itself embroiled in corruption allegations. The firm was part of a consortium with Odebrecht, the Brazilian multinational, to construct the Punta Catalina coal-fired power plant. Prosecutors have alleged Odebrecht paid some $92 million in bribes to secure the contract and have issued a number of indictments in the Dominican Republic.
Odebrecht, the center of the hemisphere’s largest corruption scandal, has acknowledged paying bribes to government officials throughout the region. The fallout from the Odebrecht scandal has already ensnared high-level government officials in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Mexico. Investigations are ongoing across the hemisphere.
***
On June 9, many Haitians will once again meet underneath the Delmas overpass before proceeding up the hill to Petionville. And Haitian president Jovenel Moïse will be serenaded with calls for his resignation. It is his involvement that has received media attention and popular scorn.
But this is a scandal that extends far beyond the current president, and far beyond Haiti altogether, as the case of the Delmas viaduct makes clear. Still, the president faces a problem. As I told Jacqueline Charles of the Miami Herald, “President Moïse has pledged action, and action will be necessary to calm political tensions— but it will be very difficult to judicially pursue members of the private sector or former government officials when it is the president himself who now stands accused.”
Whatever the fallout from the CSCCA report and the Petrocaribe scandal, it’s worth remembering that Haitians do not have a monopoly on corruption – not even in their own country. Perhaps that can be added to the list of what the Delmas viaduct has come to symbolize.
On February 17, Haitian police arrested seven Blackwater-like security contractors a few blocks from the country’s Central Bank. Driving in unmarked vehicles and transporting semi-automatic rifles, drones, and other tactical equipment, the contractors claimed to be on a government mission. Four days later the US “rescued” them. None are expected to face charges.
Over the course of just a few days, the case took on political significance much greater than the detention and release of the contractors. The chain of events initiated by the detention revealed the weakness of the nation’s justice system and the precariousness of the current Haitian administration; it exposed the close ties between criminal networks and the ruling party; and casts doubt on the idea that this was a simple security operation gone wrong.
Launch the investigation below.
On February 17, Haitian police arrested seven Blackwater-like security contractors a few blocks from the country’s Central Bank. Driving in unmarked vehicles and transporting semi-automatic rifles, drones, and other tactical equipment, the contractors claimed to be on a government mission. Four days later the US “rescued” them. None are expected to face charges.
Over the course of just a few days, the case took on political significance much greater than the detention and release of the contractors. The chain of events initiated by the detention revealed the weakness of the nation’s justice system and the precariousness of the current Haitian administration; it exposed the close ties between criminal networks and the ruling party; and casts doubt on the idea that this was a simple security operation gone wrong.
Launch the investigation below.
Years since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti: 9
Estimated number of aftershocks that measured 4.5 or greater: 59
Number of people who died in the earthquake, according to Haitian government: 316,000
Number of people displaced: 1,300,000
Number of people who remained in internally displaced persons camps, as of September 2017: 37,867
Estimated population of Canaan, a barren hillside north of the capital, pre-earthquake: 0
Estimated population of Canaan now: 300,000
Minimum number of new homes necessary to meet demand: 500,000
Estimated damage and economic losses from earthquake, in percent of Haiti’s GDP: 120 percent
Total amount of aid disbursed by donors, since 2010: $7,538,885,632
Amount of aid given to the government in the form of budget support: $280,844,071
Total amount of approved World Bank projects in Haiti since the earthquake: $1.167 billion
Total aid awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID): $2.3 billion
Of that amount, percent of which was given to organizations or companies located inside the Beltway (Maryland, DC, Virginia): 55.5 percent
Percent of which was awarded directly to Haitian organizations or companies: 2.3 percent
Total amount of contracts awarded to the DC-based company Chemonics International: $298.55 million
Total amount of contracts awarded directly to all Haitian firms: $52.95 million
Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the flagship post-quake project: $350 million
Number of miles from the earthquake epicenter to Caracol: 190
Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: October 22, 2012
Number of jobs the State Department promised the new industrial park would create: 65,000
Total number of jobs at the industrial park, as of 2017: 10,214
Percent by which garment sector employment has increased countrywide since 2010: 93 percent
Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400
Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: December 19, 2018
Daily minimum wage in the garment sector: 420 gourdes (less than $6)
Daily minimum wage requested by unions: 1000 gourdes
Percent of garment factories noncompliant with social security and other benefit payments in 2018: 75 percent
Total remittances sent to Haiti in 2018, according to the World Bank: $2.5 billion
Haiti’s rank among countries with the highest remittances as a share of GDP: 5
Minimum number of Haitians who emigrated to Chile in 2017: 105,000
Number of Haitians living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS): 59,000
Date on which then-candidate Trump proclaimed that he would be Haiti’s “greatest champion”: September 16, 2016
Date on which the US announced it was ending TPS for Haitians: November 20, 2017
Date on which it was reported that President Trump referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country: January 11, 2018
Date on which a trial in New York commenced contesting the US decision to end TPS: January 7, 2019
Ratio of per capita public health funding in Haiti compared to Cuba: 1:60
Percent by which child mortality decreased, between 1990 and 2015: 50 percent
Factor by which Haiti’s child mortality rate remains greater than the Latin America and Caribbean average: 5
Percent of health facilities that charge user fees: 93 percent
Percent of the national budget that went to health in 2004: 16.6
In 2016: 4.4
Percent of national budget that went to the Senate and Chamber of Deputies last year: 5.8 percent
Number of political parties that registered to participate in Haiti’s August 2015 legislative elections: 128
Number of candidates: 1,852
Number of seats up for grabs: 139
Percent of votes that were never counted due to irregularities, including fraud and violence: 25 percent
Date on which Haiti’s first-round presidential election was held: October 25, 2015
Date on which the planned second-round presidential election was indefinitely called off due to widespread irregularities: January 22, 2016
Number of untraceable votes in the October 25, 2015 election, according to an independent verification commission: 628,000
Date on which the Haitian government announced it would rerun the presidential election on October 25, 2016: June 6, 2016
Date on which the United States, which was opposed to the decision, announced it would not fund the rerun election: July 7, 2016
Total cost of the rerun election, paid entirely by the Haitian government: $55 million
Date on which Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s Southern Peninsula: October 4, 2016
Number of years since a hurricane of similar magnitude struck Haiti: 62
Amount requested in a flash appeal for humanitarian funding by the United Nations: $139 million
Percent of flash appeal that has been funded since: 62.1 percent
Estimated percent of crops destroyed in the Grand’Anse region: 100 percent
Estimated percent of livestock killed in the same department: 85–90 percent
Estimated amount needed for reconstruction after the hurricane: $2.2 billion
Number of days the passage of Hurricane Matthew delayed the presidential election: 26
Estimated voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election: 18 percent
Number of elections in Latin America and the Caribbean which have experienced that low a turnout before: 0
Date on which Haiti officially relaunched the military, disbanded since 1995: November 18, 2017
Percent of the six members of the high command who also held positions in the disbanded military: 100 percent
Budget for the Armed Forces of Haiti in 2018-2019, in dollars: $6 million
Minimum amount the Government of Haiti invested in Agritrans, a banana exporting plantation run by current president Jovenel Moïse: $6 million
Date on which Moïse appeared at Agritrans to mark the first shipment of bananas to Europe: September 8, 2015
Date on which the 2015 presidential campaign officially began: September 9, 2015
Date on which the second, and last, shipment of bananas to Europe was made: April 2016
Number of jobs the plantation was expected to create: 3,000
Estimated number of individuals displaced by the creation of Agritrans: 1,000
Estimated average annual economic loss of those displaced: $1,433
Dollar amount of import tax exemptions that Agritrans benefited from between 2014 and 2017: $573,543
Dollar amount of food imported by Haiti in 2009: $483 million
In 2018: $909 million
Dollar amount of food exported by Haiti in 2009: $25.8 million
In 2018: $21.5 million
Number of rural Haitians facing acute food insecurity: 2,054,161
Number facing a “food emergency situation”: 571,129
Exchange rate at time of earthquake (Haitian gourdes per dollar): 40.5
Exchange rate today: 76.3
Percent by which gas prices would increase following a July 2018 government announcement: 38 percent
Days of protests and rioting that followed the announcement: 3
Approximate number of hours it took the government to rescind the increase: 24
Percent of the gasoline subsidy that benefits the wealthiest segments of society: 90 percent
Average annual per capita GDP growth, since 2009: 0.3 percent
Amount of debt relief granted by Venezuela after the earthquake: $295 million
Estimated amount that Haiti currently owes Venezuela: $1.44 billion
Average annual disbursement, through the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe program, 2011–2015: $270.8 million
Number of pages in a 2017 Haitian Senate investigation into Petrocaribe spending that found significant irregularities and alleged widespread fraud and abuse: 617
In the annex to the report: 619
Minimum amount allocated to a project to build sports centers, run by former president Michel Martelly’s son: $27.7 million
Date on which Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a Haitian filmmaker, tweeted a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a sign asking where the Petrocaribe money is: August 14, 2018
Percent of Haiti’s ten departments that experienced massive demonstrations on October 18, 2018 asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 90 percent
Minimum number of individuals wounded by police gunfire at a funeral for protesters killed during the October 18 demonstrations: 3
Minimum number of Haitians killed by armed gangs and corrupt police on November 13, 2018 in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: 70
Number of officials held accountable for wrongdoing related to Petrocaribe: 0
Number of individuals held accountable for the massacre at La Saline: 0
Years remaining in President Jovenel Moïse’s mandate: 3
Years since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti: 9
Estimated number of aftershocks that measured 4.5 or greater: 59
Number of people who died in the earthquake, according to Haitian government: 316,000
Number of people displaced: 1,300,000
Number of people who remained in internally displaced persons camps, as of September 2017: 37,867
Estimated population of Canaan, a barren hillside north of the capital, pre-earthquake: 0
Estimated population of Canaan now: 300,000
Minimum number of new homes necessary to meet demand: 500,000
Estimated damage and economic losses from earthquake, in percent of Haiti’s GDP: 120 percent
Total amount of aid disbursed by donors, since 2010: $7,538,885,632
Amount of aid given to the government in the form of budget support: $280,844,071
Total amount of approved World Bank projects in Haiti since the earthquake: $1.167 billion
Total aid awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID): $2.3 billion
Of that amount, percent of which was given to organizations or companies located inside the Beltway (Maryland, DC, Virginia): 55.5 percent
Percent of which was awarded directly to Haitian organizations or companies: 2.3 percent
Total amount of contracts awarded to the DC-based company Chemonics International: $298.55 million
Total amount of contracts awarded directly to all Haitian firms: $52.95 million
Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the flagship post-quake project: $350 million
Number of miles from the earthquake epicenter to Caracol: 190
Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: October 22, 2012
Number of jobs the State Department promised the new industrial park would create: 65,000
Total number of jobs at the industrial park, as of 2017: 10,214
Percent by which garment sector employment has increased countrywide since 2010: 93 percent
Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400
Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: December 19, 2018
Daily minimum wage in the garment sector: 420 gourdes (less than $6)
Daily minimum wage requested by unions: 1000 gourdes
Percent of garment factories noncompliant with social security and other benefit payments in 2018: 75 percent
Total remittances sent to Haiti in 2018, according to the World Bank: $2.5 billion
Haiti’s rank among countries with the highest remittances as a share of GDP: 5
Minimum number of Haitians who emigrated to Chile in 2017: 105,000
Number of Haitians living in the United States with Temporary Protected Status (TPS): 59,000
Date on which then-candidate Trump proclaimed that he would be Haiti’s “greatest champion”: September 16, 2016
Date on which the US announced it was ending TPS for Haitians: November 20, 2017
Date on which it was reported that President Trump referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country: January 11, 2018
Date on which a trial in New York commenced contesting the US decision to end TPS: January 7, 2019
Ratio of per capita public health funding in Haiti compared to Cuba: 1:60
Percent by which child mortality decreased, between 1990 and 2015: 50 percent
Factor by which Haiti’s child mortality rate remains greater than the Latin America and Caribbean average: 5
Percent of health facilities that charge user fees: 93 percent
Percent of the national budget that went to health in 2004: 16.6
In 2016: 4.4
Percent of national budget that went to the Senate and Chamber of Deputies last year: 5.8 percent
Number of political parties that registered to participate in Haiti’s August 2015 legislative elections: 128
Number of candidates: 1,852
Number of seats up for grabs: 139
Percent of votes that were never counted due to irregularities, including fraud and violence: 25 percent
Date on which Haiti’s first-round presidential election was held: October 25, 2015
Date on which the planned second-round presidential election was indefinitely called off due to widespread irregularities: January 22, 2016
Number of untraceable votes in the October 25, 2015 election, according to an independent verification commission: 628,000
Date on which the Haitian government announced it would rerun the presidential election on October 25, 2016: June 6, 2016
Date on which the United States, which was opposed to the decision, announced it would not fund the rerun election: July 7, 2016
Total cost of the rerun election, paid entirely by the Haitian government: $55 million
Date on which Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s Southern Peninsula: October 4, 2016
Number of years since a hurricane of similar magnitude struck Haiti: 62
Amount requested in a flash appeal for humanitarian funding by the United Nations: $139 million
Percent of flash appeal that has been funded since: 62.1 percent
Estimated percent of crops destroyed in the Grand’Anse region: 100 percent
Estimated percent of livestock killed in the same department: 85–90 percent
Estimated amount needed for reconstruction after the hurricane: $2.2 billion
Number of days the passage of Hurricane Matthew delayed the presidential election: 26
Estimated voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election: 18 percent
Number of elections in Latin America and the Caribbean which have experienced that low a turnout before: 0
Date on which Haiti officially relaunched the military, disbanded since 1995: November 18, 2017
Percent of the six members of the high command who also held positions in the disbanded military: 100 percent
Budget for the Armed Forces of Haiti in 2018-2019, in dollars: $6 million
Minimum amount the Government of Haiti invested in Agritrans, a banana exporting plantation run by current president Jovenel Moïse: $6 million
Date on which Moïse appeared at Agritrans to mark the first shipment of bananas to Europe: September 8, 2015
Date on which the 2015 presidential campaign officially began: September 9, 2015
Date on which the second, and last, shipment of bananas to Europe was made: April 2016
Number of jobs the plantation was expected to create: 3,000
Estimated number of individuals displaced by the creation of Agritrans: 1,000
Estimated average annual economic loss of those displaced: $1,433
Dollar amount of import tax exemptions that Agritrans benefited from between 2014 and 2017: $573,543
Dollar amount of food imported by Haiti in 2009: $483 million
In 2018: $909 million
Dollar amount of food exported by Haiti in 2009: $25.8 million
In 2018: $21.5 million
Number of rural Haitians facing acute food insecurity: 2,054,161
Number facing a “food emergency situation”: 571,129
Exchange rate at time of earthquake (Haitian gourdes per dollar): 40.5
Exchange rate today: 76.3
Percent by which gas prices would increase following a July 2018 government announcement: 38 percent
Days of protests and rioting that followed the announcement: 3
Approximate number of hours it took the government to rescind the increase: 24
Percent of the gasoline subsidy that benefits the wealthiest segments of society: 90 percent
Average annual per capita GDP growth, since 2009: 0.3 percent
Amount of debt relief granted by Venezuela after the earthquake: $295 million
Estimated amount that Haiti currently owes Venezuela: $1.44 billion
Average annual disbursement, through the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe program, 2011–2015: $270.8 million
Number of pages in a 2017 Haitian Senate investigation into Petrocaribe spending that found significant irregularities and alleged widespread fraud and abuse: 617
In the annex to the report: 619
Minimum amount allocated to a project to build sports centers, run by former president Michel Martelly’s son: $27.7 million
Date on which Gilbert Mirambeau Jr., a Haitian filmmaker, tweeted a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a sign asking where the Petrocaribe money is: August 14, 2018
Percent of Haiti’s ten departments that experienced massive demonstrations on October 18, 2018 asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 90 percent
Minimum number of individuals wounded by police gunfire at a funeral for protesters killed during the October 18 demonstrations: 3
Minimum number of Haitians killed by armed gangs and corrupt police on November 13, 2018 in the La Saline neighborhood of Port-au-Prince: 70
Number of officials held accountable for wrongdoing related to Petrocaribe: 0
Number of individuals held accountable for the massacre at La Saline: 0
Years remaining in President Jovenel Moïse’s mandate: 3
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More than two months have passed since an innocuous tweet went viral and a social media campaign targeting government corruption in Haiti began. Using the hashtags #PetrocaribeChallenge and #KotKobPetwoKaribea (“where is the Petrocaribe money?”), the campaign has shifted the paradigm in Haiti and forced a reckoning over alleged fraud and mismanagement in the $2 billion Venezuela-financed Petrocaribe program. This anticorruption movement, which has brought together disparate groups ? both formal and informal ? from across the political and economic landscape of the country, now faces a critical moment.
A Country on Edge
Tomorrow, October 17, is expected to be the largest demonstration yet; a prospect that has the entire country on edge. The US Embassy has issued a security warning requiring employees to “shelter in place.” President Jovenel Moïse, who, despite being implicated in the wrongdoing, has pledged to support an investigation, visited police stations across the capital region over the weekend in anticipation of the protest. “In the camp of power, the panic is palpable,” warned Mario Andresol, the former chief of police. Some 1,500 officers will be deployed throughout the capital. Businesses have already begun boarding up windows. Reports of money being distributed to keep people away from the protests have circulated widely, as have mysterious audio and video clips warning of a bloodbath. “As October 17 approaches, the authorities are doing all the ‘bagay’ [things] to defeat the announced insurrection,” Andresol said.
By focusing on the possibility of violence, the government is attempting to intimidate the population into not participating, while laying the groundwork for blaming opposition political actors if things do go south. Last week, Schiller Louidor, an outspoken government critic, was hauled before a court to answer questions after using the term “Petro-dechoukay,” a reference to dechoukaj (literally “the uprooting,” but more easily translated as rioting). However, what likely scares the government more than the possibility of violence is a massive and largely peaceful demonstration; a demonstration that the government is not able to demonize or use to deflect attention from itself and its lack of response to calls for greater accountability.
The reality is that this movement appears to have tapped into a deep reservoir of political frustration, and not just among those who have taken the streets for years in opposition to the ruling party. With inflation in double digits, the local currency continuing to depreciate, and the cost of living rising each week, the country’s economic malaise has reached the middle and even upper classes of society. If those calling for an investigation into the Petrocaribe accounts are to be successful, they will need the support of a broad-based coalition. Nevertheless, there is also a palpable fear among those tepidly supportive of this movement and tomorrow’s protests who are also deeply distrustful of the popular organizations that have been leading the opposition in the streets. There will be a lot riding on tomorrow’s protest for the future of this burgeoning anticorruption campaign, as well as for a government attempting to stave it off.
Why Petrocaribe?
Haiti formally joined the Petrocaribe initiative in 2007. Under the program, Haiti ? as well as more than a dozen other Caribbean and Central American nations ? received discounted oil, paying a portion of the bill up-front and converting the remainder into a long-term concessional loan to be used for government investments and social spending.
In contrast to traditional donor support that generally bypasses the government entirely, Petrocaribe serves as direct support to the government. As the price of oil rose throughout the early 2010s, the Petrocaribe program filled government coffers. From 2012 to 2015, Haiti spent an average of $270 million a year through the initiative, a critical source of financing for a government sorely in need of additional revenue. Haiti has spent some $1.8 billion of Petrocaribe-related funds since joining.
However, Petrocaribe has been plagued by a lack of transparency. While some have warned for years of the dangers posed by such expenditures without proper oversight, it was elevated to the forefront of Haiti’s political consciousness by an unlikely source: Senator Youri Latortue, whom a former US Ambassador once described as the “poster-boy for political corruption in Haiti.” Though few trusted Latortue’s motives to be anything other than craven politics, his efforts in many ways laid the groundwork for today’s anticorruption movement.
In the fall of 2017, Latortue and a small senate commission released a 600-plus page report (with a similar length appendix) on nearly 10 years of Petrocaribe. The investigation found that over the course of multiple administrations, the program was characterized by mismanagement, waste, fraud and abuse; ghost companies that received no-bid contracts; payments for work that was never completed; and a host of other financial improprieties. The investigation directly implicated high-level government officials, including current president Moïse. Though the report was never formally approved by Parliament, it has hung over the heads of Haiti’s political class ever since.
What Comes Next?
While the current anticorruption movement is largely leaderless and brings together many organizations and individuals with different interests, one demand is clear: an independent investigation into the decade of Petrocaribe largesse.
Though initially critical of the senate report, President Moïse has since changed his rhetoric and pledged to support an investigation. The government has tasked the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Litigation (CSCCA) with this and the body has pledged to release its work in early 2019. However, there are reasons to be skeptical that this can lead to accountability. To begin with, the CSCCA is responsible for approving government contracts, meaning that the body now set to investigate is the one that already signed off on most of the contracts in question. Further, many question the ability of the CSCCA, or of any governmental body, to adequately and independently investigate.
Perhaps most importantly, the CSCCA has already produced a report on a limited amount of Petrocaribe spending and despite finding significant problems, nothing was ever done to follow up. In fact, it was the work of the CSCCA that originally provided the basis for the Senate to investigate Petrocaribe. By kicking the investigation back to the court, the cycle of investigation continues, while the prospect of real accountability dithers.
The CSCCA audited government spending for the fiscal year 2014-2015 and produced a public report on its findings, though this has received scant attention. The findings, however, remain relevant. The court found the selection of projects to be financed by Petrocaribe to be procedurally lacking, as many either did not have specificity or did not appear to be sustainable. By making multiple budget amendments and reallocations of Petrocaribe resources throughout the year, the court found that it allowed the government to conceal its actions under the investment program. The government “gave itself many liberties … and poured into illegality,” the court wrote.
The system, the court concluded, was set up for failure and did not support accountability efforts. “A significant portion of public spending is indecipherable,” the audit found, adding, “There is a culture of accountability to be established … and appropriate information systems must be put in place.”
It therefore seems unlikely that a further investigation undertaken by the court will be able to adequately follow the money wherever it may lead or otherwise satisfy the demands of those taking to the streets in tomorrow’s protests. This brings us back to the importance of tomorrow’s events. Without sustained public pressure, it is clear the governing party will not provide the necessary level of transparency to ensure real accountability.
More than two months have passed since an innocuous tweet went viral and a social media campaign targeting government corruption in Haiti began. Using the hashtags #PetrocaribeChallenge and #KotKobPetwoKaribea (“where is the Petrocaribe money?”), the campaign has shifted the paradigm in Haiti and forced a reckoning over alleged fraud and mismanagement in the $2 billion Venezuela-financed Petrocaribe program. This anticorruption movement, which has brought together disparate groups ? both formal and informal ? from across the political and economic landscape of the country, now faces a critical moment.
A Country on Edge
Tomorrow, October 17, is expected to be the largest demonstration yet; a prospect that has the entire country on edge. The US Embassy has issued a security warning requiring employees to “shelter in place.” President Jovenel Moïse, who, despite being implicated in the wrongdoing, has pledged to support an investigation, visited police stations across the capital region over the weekend in anticipation of the protest. “In the camp of power, the panic is palpable,” warned Mario Andresol, the former chief of police. Some 1,500 officers will be deployed throughout the capital. Businesses have already begun boarding up windows. Reports of money being distributed to keep people away from the protests have circulated widely, as have mysterious audio and video clips warning of a bloodbath. “As October 17 approaches, the authorities are doing all the ‘bagay’ [things] to defeat the announced insurrection,” Andresol said.
By focusing on the possibility of violence, the government is attempting to intimidate the population into not participating, while laying the groundwork for blaming opposition political actors if things do go south. Last week, Schiller Louidor, an outspoken government critic, was hauled before a court to answer questions after using the term “Petro-dechoukay,” a reference to dechoukaj (literally “the uprooting,” but more easily translated as rioting). However, what likely scares the government more than the possibility of violence is a massive and largely peaceful demonstration; a demonstration that the government is not able to demonize or use to deflect attention from itself and its lack of response to calls for greater accountability.
The reality is that this movement appears to have tapped into a deep reservoir of political frustration, and not just among those who have taken the streets for years in opposition to the ruling party. With inflation in double digits, the local currency continuing to depreciate, and the cost of living rising each week, the country’s economic malaise has reached the middle and even upper classes of society. If those calling for an investigation into the Petrocaribe accounts are to be successful, they will need the support of a broad-based coalition. Nevertheless, there is also a palpable fear among those tepidly supportive of this movement and tomorrow’s protests who are also deeply distrustful of the popular organizations that have been leading the opposition in the streets. There will be a lot riding on tomorrow’s protest for the future of this burgeoning anticorruption campaign, as well as for a government attempting to stave it off.
Why Petrocaribe?
Haiti formally joined the Petrocaribe initiative in 2007. Under the program, Haiti ? as well as more than a dozen other Caribbean and Central American nations ? received discounted oil, paying a portion of the bill up-front and converting the remainder into a long-term concessional loan to be used for government investments and social spending.
In contrast to traditional donor support that generally bypasses the government entirely, Petrocaribe serves as direct support to the government. As the price of oil rose throughout the early 2010s, the Petrocaribe program filled government coffers. From 2012 to 2015, Haiti spent an average of $270 million a year through the initiative, a critical source of financing for a government sorely in need of additional revenue. Haiti has spent some $1.8 billion of Petrocaribe-related funds since joining.
However, Petrocaribe has been plagued by a lack of transparency. While some have warned for years of the dangers posed by such expenditures without proper oversight, it was elevated to the forefront of Haiti’s political consciousness by an unlikely source: Senator Youri Latortue, whom a former US Ambassador once described as the “poster-boy for political corruption in Haiti.” Though few trusted Latortue’s motives to be anything other than craven politics, his efforts in many ways laid the groundwork for today’s anticorruption movement.
In the fall of 2017, Latortue and a small senate commission released a 600-plus page report (with a similar length appendix) on nearly 10 years of Petrocaribe. The investigation found that over the course of multiple administrations, the program was characterized by mismanagement, waste, fraud and abuse; ghost companies that received no-bid contracts; payments for work that was never completed; and a host of other financial improprieties. The investigation directly implicated high-level government officials, including current president Moïse. Though the report was never formally approved by Parliament, it has hung over the heads of Haiti’s political class ever since.
What Comes Next?
While the current anticorruption movement is largely leaderless and brings together many organizations and individuals with different interests, one demand is clear: an independent investigation into the decade of Petrocaribe largesse.
Though initially critical of the senate report, President Moïse has since changed his rhetoric and pledged to support an investigation. The government has tasked the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Litigation (CSCCA) with this and the body has pledged to release its work in early 2019. However, there are reasons to be skeptical that this can lead to accountability. To begin with, the CSCCA is responsible for approving government contracts, meaning that the body now set to investigate is the one that already signed off on most of the contracts in question. Further, many question the ability of the CSCCA, or of any governmental body, to adequately and independently investigate.
Perhaps most importantly, the CSCCA has already produced a report on a limited amount of Petrocaribe spending and despite finding significant problems, nothing was ever done to follow up. In fact, it was the work of the CSCCA that originally provided the basis for the Senate to investigate Petrocaribe. By kicking the investigation back to the court, the cycle of investigation continues, while the prospect of real accountability dithers.
The CSCCA audited government spending for the fiscal year 2014-2015 and produced a public report on its findings, though this has received scant attention. The findings, however, remain relevant. The court found the selection of projects to be financed by Petrocaribe to be procedurally lacking, as many either did not have specificity or did not appear to be sustainable. By making multiple budget amendments and reallocations of Petrocaribe resources throughout the year, the court found that it allowed the government to conceal its actions under the investment program. The government “gave itself many liberties … and poured into illegality,” the court wrote.
The system, the court concluded, was set up for failure and did not support accountability efforts. “A significant portion of public spending is indecipherable,” the audit found, adding, “There is a culture of accountability to be established … and appropriate information systems must be put in place.”
It therefore seems unlikely that a further investigation undertaken by the court will be able to adequately follow the money wherever it may lead or otherwise satisfy the demands of those taking to the streets in tomorrow’s protests. This brings us back to the importance of tomorrow’s events. Without sustained public pressure, it is clear the governing party will not provide the necessary level of transparency to ensure real accountability.
It was 2:15 on Friday afternoon, July 6th, when I got the first WhatsApp message. The Haitian government was going to announce that fuel prices would increase the following day by up to 50 percent. It was also somewhere around the 13th minute of the World Cup quarterfinal match between Belgium and Brazil, the national team adopted by most Haitian soccer fans. Eyes across the country were glued to the TV when the official announcement came late in the game’s second half. Minutes later, Brazil had lost the match. And soon after, thousands of Haitians were in the streets, though not because of the game’s disappointing result.
Roadblocks and burning tires went up in smoke throughout the capital, and soon demonstrations had broken out across the country. By Saturday morning the situation had worsened. International airlines canceled flights in and out of Haiti. Parking lots at many private businesses were turned into car cemeteries. Digicel, the leading cell provider in Haiti, said its fiber optic cables were destroyed, blocking international phone calls, internet usage and other services. Helicopters could be seen evacuating individuals from their rooftops. At least three people were killed.
Less than 24 hours after the initial announcement, the government was forced to cancel the price increases. But the aftershocks of that initial decision have continued to reverberate.
The heads of both chambers of parliament (erstwhile allies of the president) as well as the most powerful private business organization have since called for Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, a doctor and political novice, to resign. The Jovenel Moise administration is now facing its most significant test yet. But how the government found itself backed into this corner is about far more than fuel prices, and reveals as much about the failures of the international community as it does those of Haiti.
The price increase was not a surprise. In late 2017, faced with an increasing budget deficit, and a lack of donor funds, the government sought the assistance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Before the government could sign a financing deal with the IMF however, it first had to complete a 6-month reform program. If that program was successful, the government could then sign a long-term deal with the IMF, and budget support from other donors would begin to flow again.
On June 20, the IMF issued a statement welcoming “the government’s intention to eliminate fuel price subsidies,” a key step in completing the program. The IMF also noted that it “agreed on the importance of implementing key social measures to mitigate the impact of the subsidy reform on the most vulnerable segments of the population.”
According to World Bank research, 90 percent of the benefits from the subsidy go toward the wealthiest segments of the population. But, in a country with 60 percent youth unemployment, a majority of citizens living on less than $2.40 a day, and stubborn double-digit inflation, any increase in the cost of living can be catastrophic. And to make matters worse, kerosene, the fuel that the poor most rely on, was to see the greatest increase.
Donor budget support was the “carrot” to convince the government to take the unpopular decision, an IMF official explained to me before the increase was announced. The savings from eliminating the subsidy could then be used to provide direct subsidies to those most in need, they explained. But, when the IMF team was in Haiti last month, mitigation plans were delayed due to discussions over which ministries would receive the additional funds to be used to subsidize vulnerable sectors. No mitigation efforts were announced alongside the price hike.
A previous fuel price increase in October 2014 involved, according to the World Bank, a three-month media campaign that involved outreach to journalists and labor unions. “The outreach was key to widespread public acceptance,” the Bank noted. But this time, there was no such outreach. Authorities seemed to believe they could make the announcement while everyone was watching the World Cup, and that that would tamper the reaction. It proved to be a deadly mistake.
While the Haitian government has increased its revenue in recent years, it still remains low overall, which is why efforts to increase revenue and allow greater productive investments are justifiable. The government has claimed that the fuel subsidies amount to $160 million in lost revenue. But there are other measures to be taken that could have a similar impact. For example, last year, Haiti lost almost the exact same amount of money from tax exemptions granted to free trade zones, businesses, NGOs and diplomatic missions.
The government, however, has been under pressure to implement the fuel price increases. Though the European Union and Inter-American Development Bank announced in late June that they would begin budget support disbursements, the vast majority of those funds remain tied to the Haitian government proving that it is willing to make unpopular economic reforms. Up to $100 million is on the line. But unpopular economic reforms generate popular reactions. This one has been a long time coming, and now that it has, everyone appears to be trying to take advantage of it.
Moise took office in the midst of a cloud of controversy. His first election victory, back in 2015, was thrown out after an independent commission found evidence of “massive” irregularities, but only after massive protests forced the government — and the international community that supported the initial results and paid for the election – to accept said investigation. In the re-run election, less than 20% of Haitians voted, Moise won again, but was left without a broad popular mandate.
Since, the ruling party, which appeared to have majority alliances in both chambers of parliament, has been besieged by internal power struggles. Former president Michel Martelly, who hand-picked Moise, remains influential behind the scenes — and is, at least according to some diplomatic sources, the most likely next president. But Martelly is also reviled by the political opposition, and even by some of Moise’s newfound allies who have sought to keep the former president at bay.
Lafontant, the Prime Minister now facing calls for his resignation, is widely seen as Moise’s man and has been the target of these various political factions for months already. The calls for a new prime minister that have emerged from the violence of this past weekend are nothing new, and appear to have more to do with which political faction can seize the upper hand than with efforts to formulate a genuine response to the crisis. Nevertheless, Lafontant is set to answer questions before parliament this coming weekend and his job is likely to be on the line.
But regardless of the internal political machinations, or if there is a new prime minister, the protests of this past weekend were a reflection of far more than a poorly handled increase in fuel prices.
Since 2014, per capita GDP has been flat, meaning the average Haitian is no better off than they were four years ago. The local currency, the gourde, has lost more than half its value against the dollar — especially important in a country in which almost everything is imported. After hurricane Matthew destroyed much of Haiti’s southern peninsula — and the crops grown there — in the fall of 2016, food insecurity has increased. And Haiti remains one of the most unequal countries in the world.
As progress stalls, allegations of corruption have picked up — and implicated individuals from every faction of the political and economic elite. The allegations have triggered protests, but little judicial action. Impunity for the political and economic elite appears nearly absolute. Nevertheless, it has fueled the perception that the country’s politicians are more interested in their own bottom line than that of their constituents. So far this year, more money has gone to the two chambers of parliament than has gone to any government ministry except education and justice. The elimination of subsidies was the lit match but the tinder had already been soaked in gasoline.
It was in the 13th minute of Brazil’s world cup game that a ball glanced off all-world midfielder Fernadinho and into his own goal. It was a blunder that Brazil’s team would be unable to recover from. Now, the question is, can the Haitian government recover from its own recent blunders?
[This post has been edited for accuracy.]
It was 2:15 on Friday afternoon, July 6th, when I got the first WhatsApp message. The Haitian government was going to announce that fuel prices would increase the following day by up to 50 percent. It was also somewhere around the 13th minute of the World Cup quarterfinal match between Belgium and Brazil, the national team adopted by most Haitian soccer fans. Eyes across the country were glued to the TV when the official announcement came late in the game’s second half. Minutes later, Brazil had lost the match. And soon after, thousands of Haitians were in the streets, though not because of the game’s disappointing result.
Roadblocks and burning tires went up in smoke throughout the capital, and soon demonstrations had broken out across the country. By Saturday morning the situation had worsened. International airlines canceled flights in and out of Haiti. Parking lots at many private businesses were turned into car cemeteries. Digicel, the leading cell provider in Haiti, said its fiber optic cables were destroyed, blocking international phone calls, internet usage and other services. Helicopters could be seen evacuating individuals from their rooftops. At least three people were killed.
Less than 24 hours after the initial announcement, the government was forced to cancel the price increases. But the aftershocks of that initial decision have continued to reverberate.
The heads of both chambers of parliament (erstwhile allies of the president) as well as the most powerful private business organization have since called for Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, a doctor and political novice, to resign. The Jovenel Moise administration is now facing its most significant test yet. But how the government found itself backed into this corner is about far more than fuel prices, and reveals as much about the failures of the international community as it does those of Haiti.
The price increase was not a surprise. In late 2017, faced with an increasing budget deficit, and a lack of donor funds, the government sought the assistance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Before the government could sign a financing deal with the IMF however, it first had to complete a 6-month reform program. If that program was successful, the government could then sign a long-term deal with the IMF, and budget support from other donors would begin to flow again.
On June 20, the IMF issued a statement welcoming “the government’s intention to eliminate fuel price subsidies,” a key step in completing the program. The IMF also noted that it “agreed on the importance of implementing key social measures to mitigate the impact of the subsidy reform on the most vulnerable segments of the population.”
According to World Bank research, 90 percent of the benefits from the subsidy go toward the wealthiest segments of the population. But, in a country with 60 percent youth unemployment, a majority of citizens living on less than $2.40 a day, and stubborn double-digit inflation, any increase in the cost of living can be catastrophic. And to make matters worse, kerosene, the fuel that the poor most rely on, was to see the greatest increase.
Donor budget support was the “carrot” to convince the government to take the unpopular decision, an IMF official explained to me before the increase was announced. The savings from eliminating the subsidy could then be used to provide direct subsidies to those most in need, they explained. But, when the IMF team was in Haiti last month, mitigation plans were delayed due to discussions over which ministries would receive the additional funds to be used to subsidize vulnerable sectors. No mitigation efforts were announced alongside the price hike.
A previous fuel price increase in October 2014 involved, according to the World Bank, a three-month media campaign that involved outreach to journalists and labor unions. “The outreach was key to widespread public acceptance,” the Bank noted. But this time, there was no such outreach. Authorities seemed to believe they could make the announcement while everyone was watching the World Cup, and that that would tamper the reaction. It proved to be a deadly mistake.
While the Haitian government has increased its revenue in recent years, it still remains low overall, which is why efforts to increase revenue and allow greater productive investments are justifiable. The government has claimed that the fuel subsidies amount to $160 million in lost revenue. But there are other measures to be taken that could have a similar impact. For example, last year, Haiti lost almost the exact same amount of money from tax exemptions granted to free trade zones, businesses, NGOs and diplomatic missions.
The government, however, has been under pressure to implement the fuel price increases. Though the European Union and Inter-American Development Bank announced in late June that they would begin budget support disbursements, the vast majority of those funds remain tied to the Haitian government proving that it is willing to make unpopular economic reforms. Up to $100 million is on the line. But unpopular economic reforms generate popular reactions. This one has been a long time coming, and now that it has, everyone appears to be trying to take advantage of it.
Moise took office in the midst of a cloud of controversy. His first election victory, back in 2015, was thrown out after an independent commission found evidence of “massive” irregularities, but only after massive protests forced the government — and the international community that supported the initial results and paid for the election – to accept said investigation. In the re-run election, less than 20% of Haitians voted, Moise won again, but was left without a broad popular mandate.
Since, the ruling party, which appeared to have majority alliances in both chambers of parliament, has been besieged by internal power struggles. Former president Michel Martelly, who hand-picked Moise, remains influential behind the scenes — and is, at least according to some diplomatic sources, the most likely next president. But Martelly is also reviled by the political opposition, and even by some of Moise’s newfound allies who have sought to keep the former president at bay.
Lafontant, the Prime Minister now facing calls for his resignation, is widely seen as Moise’s man and has been the target of these various political factions for months already. The calls for a new prime minister that have emerged from the violence of this past weekend are nothing new, and appear to have more to do with which political faction can seize the upper hand than with efforts to formulate a genuine response to the crisis. Nevertheless, Lafontant is set to answer questions before parliament this coming weekend and his job is likely to be on the line.
But regardless of the internal political machinations, or if there is a new prime minister, the protests of this past weekend were a reflection of far more than a poorly handled increase in fuel prices.
Since 2014, per capita GDP has been flat, meaning the average Haitian is no better off than they were four years ago. The local currency, the gourde, has lost more than half its value against the dollar — especially important in a country in which almost everything is imported. After hurricane Matthew destroyed much of Haiti’s southern peninsula — and the crops grown there — in the fall of 2016, food insecurity has increased. And Haiti remains one of the most unequal countries in the world.
As progress stalls, allegations of corruption have picked up — and implicated individuals from every faction of the political and economic elite. The allegations have triggered protests, but little judicial action. Impunity for the political and economic elite appears nearly absolute. Nevertheless, it has fueled the perception that the country’s politicians are more interested in their own bottom line than that of their constituents. So far this year, more money has gone to the two chambers of parliament than has gone to any government ministry except education and justice. The elimination of subsidies was the lit match but the tinder had already been soaked in gasoline.
It was in the 13th minute of Brazil’s world cup game that a ball glanced off all-world midfielder Fernadinho and into his own goal. It was a blunder that Brazil’s team would be unable to recover from. Now, the question is, can the Haitian government recover from its own recent blunders?
[This post has been edited for accuracy.]
On March 13, President Jovenel Moise appointed six individuals to the high command of the recently reinstated Haitian armed forces (FAdH). All of the appointees, now in their sixties, were majors or colonels in the former FAdH, disbanded in 1995 after a long history of involvement in coups, violent repression, and drug trafficking. At least three of the officers appear to have held senior positions within the early-‘90s military coup regime. One of them is a convicted intellectual author of a civilian massacre, and another was a member of a committee that sought to cover it up.
Ministry of Defense press release from March 13, 2018 announcing the FAdH’s new senior leadership.
The makeup of the new leadership has raised concerns among human rights organizations over the trajectory of the new force and its commitment to the rule of law.
“The appointment confirms once again that the Haitian Armed Forces, remobilized by the [ruling Tét Kale party] is a militia whose hidden mission is to have the Haitian people relive the darkest hours of bloodthirsty Duvalierism,” wrote the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in a press release, referencing the illegal arrests, forced disappearances, assassinations, and other abuses that characterized the Duvalier dictatorship.
Haitian Defense Minister Herve Denis responded that the new high-command is “clean,” and that all were vetted for involvement in human rights abuses or drug trafficking.
In 1990, an outspoken liberation theologian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected in the first democratic election in the country’s history. But within months, a group of Haitian military officers – backed by many of the country’s wealthiest families – overthrew the new government, imposing a military dictatorship that would last three years. It was later revealed that the CIA had supported certain military elements involved in the coup, and that leaders of a paramilitary group that waged a campaign of terror against Aristide supporters and other activists were on the CIA payroll.
The group, FRAPH, helped to prop up the coup regime of Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras, while also at times appearing to undermine and sabotage the official actions of Clinton administration to restore democratic government to Haiti. Thousands of Haitians were murdered under the coup regime and hundreds of thousands fled the country.
Colonel Jean-Robert Gabriel, the new FAdH’s assistant chief of staff, was the secretary of the general staff, and later a public spokesperson, for the Cédras regime.
Following the 1991 military coup, the US and the international community implemented sanctions against the regime, eventually instituting an embargo. After Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, and increasingly in 1994, the Congressional Black Caucus played a leading role in pushing for a more aggressive role against the dictatorship, and solidarity groups in the US and elsewhere also influenced policy.
In June of 1993, the Clinton administration announced individual targeted sanctions against those determined to be a part of the “de facto regime in Haiti.” The initial sanction list, published in July of 1993, named 83 individuals, including 29 military officers. Included in this initial list was Jean-Robert Gabriel.
Screenshot of the Federal Register from July 1993, listing Jean-Robert Gabriel as one of 29 military officers sanctioned for their participation in the coup regime.
In 1993, the UN mediated indirect negotiations between Cédras and Aristide (who had taken up residence in Washington, DC to lobby for his restoration to office). Known as the Governors Island negotiations for the location where they took place, the eventual accord did little to immediately overturn the bloody coup. According to official documents, Gabriel, as well as the newly appointed chief of the general staff, Sadrac Saintil, were members of the delegation, indicating their senior positions within the Cédras regime.
List of members of Armed Forces delegation to Governors Island.
The US temporarily suspended some of the sanctions during the negotiations, but when it became clear that Cédras and his regime would not back down, the sanctions were expanded. In October 1993, the administration revoked US visas and froze the US assets of 41 officials who were determined to be thwarting a return to democratic rule and contributing to the violence in Haiti. Among the 41 individuals was Derby Guerrier, recently named as an assistant chief of staff in the reinstated armed forces ? and then a lieutenant colonel.
Guerrier held a US passport, and a New Jersey address was listed next to his name. According to press reports at the time, Guerrier was the head of the military’s anti-drug unit. Though there is little public information about Guerrier, drug trafficking took off under the military regime.
A 1997 federal indictment in Miami alleged that Joseph-Michel François, a former military officer who helped topple Aristide in 1991 and later become the police chief under Cédras, “placed the political and military structure of the Republic of Haiti under his control” in order to facilitate drug shipments from Colombia. François, by that time, was living in exile in Honduras and managed to avoid accountability.
Back in 1994, with the situation in Haiti continuing to deteriorate, and more and more Haitians fleeing the country, the US expanded its sanctions policy. Some 550 military officers were added to the sanctions list, including all of those recently appointed to the FAdH’s new high command.
In April that year, around the same time the new sanctions were levied, Haitian military and paramilitary forces descended on the neighborhood of Raboteau, where many opposition supporters were apparently seeking refuge. At least eight, and likely far more, were assassinated.
The next month a military-led commission of inquiry was tasked with investigating the allegations that a massacre had taken place in Raboteau. Cédras named Lieutenant Colonel Sadrac Saintil as one of four members, according to official documents made public as part of the Raboteau trial. Unsurprisingly, the commission found no evidence of a massacre and the FADH high command accepted the commission’s recommendation that nobody be punished.
Communique signed by Raoul Cédras, appointing Sadrac Saintil to a commission of inquiry looking into the Raboteau massacre.
But in 2000, in a landmark human rights trial supported by the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (the same organization now denouncing the new armed forces’ leadership), a Haitian court convicted 53 former officers and paramilitaries of involvement in the Raboteau massacre. Among the military officers convicted was Jean-Robert Gabriel. Though he was not implicated in direct involvement, he was charged under the theory of “command responsibility” due to his position within the top echelons of the Cédras regime.
“It’s the same type of case made against the Nazis and (Slobodan) Milosevic,” Brian Concannon, an American attorney who helped form the BAI in the early ‘90s and who worked the Raboteau case, told the St. Petersburg Times in 2002. Concannon is now the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a partner organization to the BAI.
The Haitian government has pushed back on Gabriel’s involvement in Raboteau. “What I can tell you in all honesty,” the defense minister told the press, “the candidates were subjected to vetting, including Colonel Gabriel. There is nothing negative against him in the vetting with regard to human rights.”
In 2005, under a new de facto regime following Aristide’s second Washington-backed ouster (this one in 2004, and also backed by former military and paramilitary officers), the Haitian supreme court controversially vacated the sentences that had been handed down five years earlier. Most of those who had been convicted were on the run, including Jean-Robert Gabriel, who had taken up residence in Florida. Those that had been in jail escaped from prison years earlier.
After the convictions were overturned, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch (who had previously worked with the BAI), commented: “In a country in which the poor have been killed and brutalized with impunity for centuries, Raboteau was perhaps the only time that justice was achieved after a massacre, and in a scrupulously fair trial … To overturn that verdict is to say that the only justice possible in Haiti is the justice of those with guns. It’s a sad day.”
By 2005 however, the Haitian Armed Forces had already been disbanded for 10 years.
On November 18, 2017, 214th anniversary of the Battle of Vértieres, the decisive battle in Haiti’s victorious fight for independence, current president Jovenel Moise oversaw a military parade to celebrate the FAdH’s reestablishment. It was the culmination of a two-decade fight by former military officers and their civilian supporters that had received new life in 2010 with the election of Moise’s predecessor, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly.
That’s the same nickname that François, the drug-trafficking former police chief, went by. He apparently got it from Martelly, a popular musician, who has previously acknowledged his ties to François. During the Cédras regime, Martelly operated a nightclub that was frequented by his friends in the military.
While president, Martelly put the restoration of the military front and center in his party’s agenda. Martelly brought on the past dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s son as a counselor, and other officials with links to the Duvalier years populated the administration. “The army has always been a part of our policy…There is no way to have Haiti without an army,” a party representative told me in 2015.
On his way out of office Martelly issued an executive decree reinstating the FAdH, but was unable to get it off the ground. That has changed under Moise. Despite public opposition from the UN and the US ? both of which have spent billions training the Haitian police ? Moise has now fulfilled a major promise to a segment of the party’s supporters.
Moise “vowed that the new military would be different” and would focus on protecting the country’s borders, responding to natural disasters, and civil engineering projects. But the appointment of six former FAdH officers to the new command ? all of whom are around the same age and were in same promotional class ? sends the wrong message, according to Concannon, the human rights lawyer.
“Filling the new High Command with people who played key leadership roles in Haiti’s de facto dictatorship demonstrates a determination to revive the brutal practices that caused so much suffering and undermined Haiti’s democracy and economy,” he said.
Rather than a modern force, the new military is starting to look a lot like the old one.
On March 13, President Jovenel Moise appointed six individuals to the high command of the recently reinstated Haitian armed forces (FAdH). All of the appointees, now in their sixties, were majors or colonels in the former FAdH, disbanded in 1995 after a long history of involvement in coups, violent repression, and drug trafficking. At least three of the officers appear to have held senior positions within the early-‘90s military coup regime. One of them is a convicted intellectual author of a civilian massacre, and another was a member of a committee that sought to cover it up.
Ministry of Defense press release from March 13, 2018 announcing the FAdH’s new senior leadership.
The makeup of the new leadership has raised concerns among human rights organizations over the trajectory of the new force and its commitment to the rule of law.
“The appointment confirms once again that the Haitian Armed Forces, remobilized by the [ruling Tét Kale party] is a militia whose hidden mission is to have the Haitian people relive the darkest hours of bloodthirsty Duvalierism,” wrote the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in a press release, referencing the illegal arrests, forced disappearances, assassinations, and other abuses that characterized the Duvalier dictatorship.
Haitian Defense Minister Herve Denis responded that the new high-command is “clean,” and that all were vetted for involvement in human rights abuses or drug trafficking.
In 1990, an outspoken liberation theologian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was elected in the first democratic election in the country’s history. But within months, a group of Haitian military officers – backed by many of the country’s wealthiest families – overthrew the new government, imposing a military dictatorship that would last three years. It was later revealed that the CIA had supported certain military elements involved in the coup, and that leaders of a paramilitary group that waged a campaign of terror against Aristide supporters and other activists were on the CIA payroll.
The group, FRAPH, helped to prop up the coup regime of Lieutenant General Raoul Cédras, while also at times appearing to undermine and sabotage the official actions of Clinton administration to restore democratic government to Haiti. Thousands of Haitians were murdered under the coup regime and hundreds of thousands fled the country.
Colonel Jean-Robert Gabriel, the new FAdH’s assistant chief of staff, was the secretary of the general staff, and later a public spokesperson, for the Cédras regime.
Following the 1991 military coup, the US and the international community implemented sanctions against the regime, eventually instituting an embargo. After Bill Clinton became president in January 1993, and increasingly in 1994, the Congressional Black Caucus played a leading role in pushing for a more aggressive role against the dictatorship, and solidarity groups in the US and elsewhere also influenced policy.
In June of 1993, the Clinton administration announced individual targeted sanctions against those determined to be a part of the “de facto regime in Haiti.” The initial sanction list, published in July of 1993, named 83 individuals, including 29 military officers. Included in this initial list was Jean-Robert Gabriel.
Screenshot of the Federal Register from July 1993, listing Jean-Robert Gabriel as one of 29 military officers sanctioned for their participation in the coup regime.
In 1993, the UN mediated indirect negotiations between Cédras and Aristide (who had taken up residence in Washington, DC to lobby for his restoration to office). Known as the Governors Island negotiations for the location where they took place, the eventual accord did little to immediately overturn the bloody coup. According to official documents, Gabriel, as well as the newly appointed chief of the general staff, Sadrac Saintil, were members of the delegation, indicating their senior positions within the Cédras regime.
List of members of Armed Forces delegation to Governors Island.
The US temporarily suspended some of the sanctions during the negotiations, but when it became clear that Cédras and his regime would not back down, the sanctions were expanded. In October 1993, the administration revoked US visas and froze the US assets of 41 officials who were determined to be thwarting a return to democratic rule and contributing to the violence in Haiti. Among the 41 individuals was Derby Guerrier, recently named as an assistant chief of staff in the reinstated armed forces ? and then a lieutenant colonel.
Guerrier held a US passport, and a New Jersey address was listed next to his name. According to press reports at the time, Guerrier was the head of the military’s anti-drug unit. Though there is little public information about Guerrier, drug trafficking took off under the military regime.
A 1997 federal indictment in Miami alleged that Joseph-Michel François, a former military officer who helped topple Aristide in 1991 and later become the police chief under Cédras, “placed the political and military structure of the Republic of Haiti under his control” in order to facilitate drug shipments from Colombia. François, by that time, was living in exile in Honduras and managed to avoid accountability.
Back in 1994, with the situation in Haiti continuing to deteriorate, and more and more Haitians fleeing the country, the US expanded its sanctions policy. Some 550 military officers were added to the sanctions list, including all of those recently appointed to the FAdH’s new high command.
In April that year, around the same time the new sanctions were levied, Haitian military and paramilitary forces descended on the neighborhood of Raboteau, where many opposition supporters were apparently seeking refuge. At least eight, and likely far more, were assassinated.
The next month a military-led commission of inquiry was tasked with investigating the allegations that a massacre had taken place in Raboteau. Cédras named Lieutenant Colonel Sadrac Saintil as one of four members, according to official documents made public as part of the Raboteau trial. Unsurprisingly, the commission found no evidence of a massacre and the FADH high command accepted the commission’s recommendation that nobody be punished.
Communique signed by Raoul Cédras, appointing Sadrac Saintil to a commission of inquiry looking into the Raboteau massacre.
But in 2000, in a landmark human rights trial supported by the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (the same organization now denouncing the new armed forces’ leadership), a Haitian court convicted 53 former officers and paramilitaries of involvement in the Raboteau massacre. Among the military officers convicted was Jean-Robert Gabriel. Though he was not implicated in direct involvement, he was charged under the theory of “command responsibility” due to his position within the top echelons of the Cédras regime.
“It’s the same type of case made against the Nazis and (Slobodan) Milosevic,” Brian Concannon, an American attorney who helped form the BAI in the early ‘90s and who worked the Raboteau case, told the St. Petersburg Times in 2002. Concannon is now the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a partner organization to the BAI.
The Haitian government has pushed back on Gabriel’s involvement in Raboteau. “What I can tell you in all honesty,” the defense minister told the press, “the candidates were subjected to vetting, including Colonel Gabriel. There is nothing negative against him in the vetting with regard to human rights.”
In 2005, under a new de facto regime following Aristide’s second Washington-backed ouster (this one in 2004, and also backed by former military and paramilitary officers), the Haitian supreme court controversially vacated the sentences that had been handed down five years earlier. Most of those who had been convicted were on the run, including Jean-Robert Gabriel, who had taken up residence in Florida. Those that had been in jail escaped from prison years earlier.
After the convictions were overturned, Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch (who had previously worked with the BAI), commented: “In a country in which the poor have been killed and brutalized with impunity for centuries, Raboteau was perhaps the only time that justice was achieved after a massacre, and in a scrupulously fair trial … To overturn that verdict is to say that the only justice possible in Haiti is the justice of those with guns. It’s a sad day.”
By 2005 however, the Haitian Armed Forces had already been disbanded for 10 years.
On November 18, 2017, 214th anniversary of the Battle of Vértieres, the decisive battle in Haiti’s victorious fight for independence, current president Jovenel Moise oversaw a military parade to celebrate the FAdH’s reestablishment. It was the culmination of a two-decade fight by former military officers and their civilian supporters that had received new life in 2010 with the election of Moise’s predecessor, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly.
That’s the same nickname that François, the drug-trafficking former police chief, went by. He apparently got it from Martelly, a popular musician, who has previously acknowledged his ties to François. During the Cédras regime, Martelly operated a nightclub that was frequented by his friends in the military.
While president, Martelly put the restoration of the military front and center in his party’s agenda. Martelly brought on the past dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier’s son as a counselor, and other officials with links to the Duvalier years populated the administration. “The army has always been a part of our policy…There is no way to have Haiti without an army,” a party representative told me in 2015.
On his way out of office Martelly issued an executive decree reinstating the FAdH, but was unable to get it off the ground. That has changed under Moise. Despite public opposition from the UN and the US ? both of which have spent billions training the Haitian police ? Moise has now fulfilled a major promise to a segment of the party’s supporters.
Moise “vowed that the new military would be different” and would focus on protecting the country’s borders, responding to natural disasters, and civil engineering projects. But the appointment of six former FAdH officers to the new command ? all of whom are around the same age and were in same promotional class ? sends the wrong message, according to Concannon, the human rights lawyer.
“Filling the new High Command with people who played key leadership roles in Haiti’s de facto dictatorship demonstrates a determination to revive the brutal practices that caused so much suffering and undermined Haiti’s democracy and economy,” he said.
Rather than a modern force, the new military is starting to look a lot like the old one.
When Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country earlier this year, the US Ambassador was called in to explain the comments, but the Haitian government stopped short of any type of retaliation. But since last week, the government has been up in arms after a UN mission with a mandate to support the Haitian justice system went so far as to welcome a judicial inquiry into corruption allegations. The government has recalled its ambassador to the UN in response.
The Background
In November, a Senate commission released a 650-page report on Petrocaribe-related corruption. The report implicated top officials from previous administrations in inflating government contracts, funneling money to ghost companies, no-bid contracts for projects that were never finished, and a host of other financial crimes. Even current president Jovenel Moïse was named, allegedly overbilling the government on a $100,000 contract to install solar lamps back in 2013 when he was a relatively unknown businessman.
Moïse has rejected the allegations as politically motivated, as have others implicated. And rather than follow up on their colleague’s report, the Senate has worked to bury it.
On February 8, four civil society organizations released a statement condemning the efforts to obstruct further investigation into the allegations contained in the Petrocaribe dossier. The organizations noted that the Senate had blocked a vote on the report for four months and then, in a “clandestine” session conducted once the opposition had left the building, passed a resolution condemning the report as politically motivated and sending the dossier to the Superior Court of Accounts ? a governmental body that had already signed off on the contracts in question at the time they were awarded. The civil society organizations wrote that these actions “expose the cowardice” of the Senate, and their desire to bury the report.
Anticipating the Senate’s lack of action, a private citizen, Johnson Colin ? backed by lawyer and government critic André Michel ? filed multiple cases at the Port-au-Prince Court of First Instance on January 29 and February 20. (The original filing is available here.)
The UN Statement
On February 25, the UN Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) issued a press release welcoming “the assignment of investigating judges to pursue the Petrocaribe court cases filed by private citizens.” The mission noted that Haiti is ranked near the bottom of Transparency International’s corruption report.
“I welcome the initiative and the active role of Haitian citizens and civil society who are engaged in the fight against corruption and impunity. Their actions demonstrate that the population is standing up for accountability and justice,” said the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) and Head of MINUJUSTH, Susan D. Page.
The UN also expressed its regret that no investigating judge had been assigned to two cases of alleged human rights violations on the part of the Haitian police; one in Lilavois on October 12, 2017 and one, the alleged summary execution of civilians, in Grand Ravine on November 13, 2017. (The Grand Ravine operation was planned in coordination with the UN mission).
The mandate of MINUJUSTH, which took over for the previous UN mission, MINUSTAH, this past October is to “help the Government of Haiti strengthen rule-of-law institutions, further develop and support the Haitian National Police and engage in human rights monitoring, reporting and analysis.”
Of course, as many observers have pointed out (including here on this blog), the UN has its own terrible track record in terms of avoiding accountability for its actions. The UN’s introduction of cholera has killed more than 10,000 and sickened a million while the UN continues to dodge legal accountability or properly fund eradication efforts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of sexual exploitation and abuse involving UN personnel have been identified ? however in the overwhelming majority of those cases, the perpetrators were simply moved out of Haiti and avoided prosecution. How can the UN have the moral authority to call for justice in Haiti when the UN itself has yet to face justice for its crimes there?
Yet the UN statement was not so much surprising for its content, but for going against the Haitian government. Throughout its controversial history, the UN has rarely even hinted at criticism of the Haitian government. Then again, in this case the UN simply welcomed a judicial investigation.
Given its mandate to support anticorruption efforts and strengthen the judicial system, and its creation under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, the mission was within its rights to make those comments, argued university professor James Boyard.
The UN did not express an opinion on the content of the Petrocaribe dossier, and given the current state of Haiti’s judicial system, the likelihood of the current case leading to any meaningful accountability is slim. The statement posed little threat to those implicated in the dossier (who, if they believe they are innocent, should be welcoming an investigation into the allegations rather than letting the dossier be used by politicians for political reasons).
The Government’s Reaction
The first response to the UN statement came from Haitian foreign minister Antonio Rodrigue. Reuters reported that Rodrigue “said in a statement on Tuesday that Page had exceeded her authority and that her comments reflect an ‘attitude harmful to the political and institutional stability acquired during the past few years.’”
The Haitian government, rather than address the allegations in the Petrocaribe dossier, has doubled down on this response. “The country is fighting to defend its image,” President Moïse said. “People have to speak well of the country,” he added. (The Haitian government recently hired an international PR firm to help with “media relations services.”)
Moïse responded by recalling the Haitian ambassador to the UN and summoning Page to explain her comments. Page has since left the country to travel to New York ? a move the government characterized as punishment for her comments.
Last Friday, government spokesperson Lucien Jura told the press that Moïse had spoken with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who Jura claimed distanced the UN from Page’s statement. But journalist Jacqueline Charles noted that she had been told Page’s travel had been scheduled for weeks. The UN has not provided any clarity on the situation.
Reuters put Page’s press release into the context of international bodies leading corruption fights throughout Latin America, and the pushback those efforts have faced:
The case is the latest example of governments across the Americas – including Guatemala and Honduras – chafing at criticisms by U.N. bodies, which have highlighted lackluster efforts to tackle corruption, human rights abuses or impunity.
Jocelyne Colas, the director general of the Episcopal Justice and Peace Commission (JILAP), told the press that the government’s response showed that they had no desire to “curb the phenomenon of corruption in the country.” Colas said: “There must be light in this case. We do not have the right to close our eyes.”
There is also a certain amount of hypocrisy in the reaction of the Moïse administration and their apparent nationalist response to the comments from the UN. As Haitian author Edwidge Danticat has noted, Moïse’s “two heavily contested election cycles are often touted as a [UN] success.” In other words, Moïse (and the ruling party to which he belongs), in many ways owe their own political success to the international actors they are now criticizing.
The Fallout
Since he assumed office last February, Moïse has seemingly been at odds with at least some members of the ever-influential international community in Haiti. The Miami Herald reported that in January, Moïse “irked the country’s foreign diplomatic corps when, according to several sources, he demanded that foreign donors support his campaign promises or take their aid elsewhere.”
The Inter-American Development Bank, one of Haiti’s largest donors, is providing financing for Moïse’s flagship government program ? his “Caravan for Change.” But Moïse has failed to secure public support for his controversial decision to reinstate the Haitian military. The UN ? which has spent more than a decade training and funding the Haitian police ? was publicly opposed to the decision.
In early February, Moïse took his criticism public, telling Bloomberg:
Right now in Haiti, the money of foreign taxpayers, your money, is being wasted … Every year we receive $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in aid, or more. However, it’s all consumed in a state of disorder that constitutes public international development aid.
It may be difficult to view the latest disagreement between Page and the Haitian government as anything other than a continuation of this conflict ? but it remains very much unclear to what extent there really is any conflict, or if both sides are simply posturing in order to save face in public.
Though the Moïse administration did not respond as forcefully as many had hoped to Trump’s comments about Haiti, the administration has been very outspoken about the revelation of the Oxfam sexual abuse scandal and what lessons should be learned about foreign aid more broadly. In a Washington Post opinion piece, Moïse wrote:
The general paradigm of aid and power in Haiti, as elsewhere in the developing world, is not a balanced one. Our government is often sidestepped by aid agencies that refuse oversight as they pursue their own development and humanitarian agendas in our country. The level and direction of aid, and its implementation, is controlled by donor forces with little or no input from Haiti’s government or other local stakeholders.
Moïse is not incorrect in criticizing the way foreign aid is administered in Haiti ? and elsewhere (as has been pointed out innumerable times on this blog). This blog has long been an advocate of greater donor coordination with the Haitian government and of directing funds directly to the Haitian government as opposed to high-priced foreign “experts” that often lack any local understanding. But it is next to impossible to imagine a world in which donors simply give funding directly to the Haitian government, given its history of corruption.
This is why the battle over the Petrocaribe dossier is so important. If the Moïse administration wants to be in the lead with donors, then the first step must be to clean house. It’s not just donors who are wary of the government ? recent surveys have shown corruption to be high atop Haitian citizens’ list of priorities.
Unfortunately, the fallout from the UN statement appears to be having the opposite effect. The government has deftly deflected attention from the underlying corruption allegations, instead shifting focus to the intervention ? and nefarious practices ? of the international community. There is plenty there worthy of criticism, but the sins of one’s enemies do not absolve one’s own.
And it appears the reaction will have real implications on the ground. Last week, the Haitian government reportedly canceled its participation in a high-level retreat, coordinated by the UN, to address the ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti. Moïse was scheduled to give the keynote address ? until the press release from Page. (The Haitian government has since said that the retreat was postponed.)
In all likelihood, the relationship between the UN and the Haitian government will be just fine. Both, in fact, depend upon the other for their successes. But both can use the situation to their advantage.
The public conflict allows the UN to garner some sympathy from the political opposition, which has long criticized the UN mission as an infringement upon Haiti’s sovereignty and for supporting the elite of the country (including the current administration). Moïse and his administration can point to their response as evidence of their standing up against the international forces that have taken advantage of Haiti for centuries ? all while ignoring the corruption allegations.
The UN may have no moral standing to question the Haitian justice system, but that doesn’t absolve the Haitian government. Unless, and until, corruption is seriously addressed in Haiti, the faulty aid paradigm that the Moïse administration has criticized will assuredly continue.
When Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti as a “shithole” country earlier this year, the US Ambassador was called in to explain the comments, but the Haitian government stopped short of any type of retaliation. But since last week, the government has been up in arms after a UN mission with a mandate to support the Haitian justice system went so far as to welcome a judicial inquiry into corruption allegations. The government has recalled its ambassador to the UN in response.
The Background
In November, a Senate commission released a 650-page report on Petrocaribe-related corruption. The report implicated top officials from previous administrations in inflating government contracts, funneling money to ghost companies, no-bid contracts for projects that were never finished, and a host of other financial crimes. Even current president Jovenel Moïse was named, allegedly overbilling the government on a $100,000 contract to install solar lamps back in 2013 when he was a relatively unknown businessman.
Moïse has rejected the allegations as politically motivated, as have others implicated. And rather than follow up on their colleague’s report, the Senate has worked to bury it.
On February 8, four civil society organizations released a statement condemning the efforts to obstruct further investigation into the allegations contained in the Petrocaribe dossier. The organizations noted that the Senate had blocked a vote on the report for four months and then, in a “clandestine” session conducted once the opposition had left the building, passed a resolution condemning the report as politically motivated and sending the dossier to the Superior Court of Accounts ? a governmental body that had already signed off on the contracts in question at the time they were awarded. The civil society organizations wrote that these actions “expose the cowardice” of the Senate, and their desire to bury the report.
Anticipating the Senate’s lack of action, a private citizen, Johnson Colin ? backed by lawyer and government critic André Michel ? filed multiple cases at the Port-au-Prince Court of First Instance on January 29 and February 20. (The original filing is available here.)
The UN Statement
On February 25, the UN Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH) issued a press release welcoming “the assignment of investigating judges to pursue the Petrocaribe court cases filed by private citizens.” The mission noted that Haiti is ranked near the bottom of Transparency International’s corruption report.
“I welcome the initiative and the active role of Haitian citizens and civil society who are engaged in the fight against corruption and impunity. Their actions demonstrate that the population is standing up for accountability and justice,” said the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) and Head of MINUJUSTH, Susan D. Page.
The UN also expressed its regret that no investigating judge had been assigned to two cases of alleged human rights violations on the part of the Haitian police; one in Lilavois on October 12, 2017 and one, the alleged summary execution of civilians, in Grand Ravine on November 13, 2017. (The Grand Ravine operation was planned in coordination with the UN mission).
The mandate of MINUJUSTH, which took over for the previous UN mission, MINUSTAH, this past October is to “help the Government of Haiti strengthen rule-of-law institutions, further develop and support the Haitian National Police and engage in human rights monitoring, reporting and analysis.”
Of course, as many observers have pointed out (including here on this blog), the UN has its own terrible track record in terms of avoiding accountability for its actions. The UN’s introduction of cholera has killed more than 10,000 and sickened a million while the UN continues to dodge legal accountability or properly fund eradication efforts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of sexual exploitation and abuse involving UN personnel have been identified ? however in the overwhelming majority of those cases, the perpetrators were simply moved out of Haiti and avoided prosecution. How can the UN have the moral authority to call for justice in Haiti when the UN itself has yet to face justice for its crimes there?
Yet the UN statement was not so much surprising for its content, but for going against the Haitian government. Throughout its controversial history, the UN has rarely even hinted at criticism of the Haitian government. Then again, in this case the UN simply welcomed a judicial investigation.
Given its mandate to support anticorruption efforts and strengthen the judicial system, and its creation under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, the mission was within its rights to make those comments, argued university professor James Boyard.
The UN did not express an opinion on the content of the Petrocaribe dossier, and given the current state of Haiti’s judicial system, the likelihood of the current case leading to any meaningful accountability is slim. The statement posed little threat to those implicated in the dossier (who, if they believe they are innocent, should be welcoming an investigation into the allegations rather than letting the dossier be used by politicians for political reasons).
The Government’s Reaction
The first response to the UN statement came from Haitian foreign minister Antonio Rodrigue. Reuters reported that Rodrigue “said in a statement on Tuesday that Page had exceeded her authority and that her comments reflect an ‘attitude harmful to the political and institutional stability acquired during the past few years.’”
The Haitian government, rather than address the allegations in the Petrocaribe dossier, has doubled down on this response. “The country is fighting to defend its image,” President Moïse said. “People have to speak well of the country,” he added. (The Haitian government recently hired an international PR firm to help with “media relations services.”)
Moïse responded by recalling the Haitian ambassador to the UN and summoning Page to explain her comments. Page has since left the country to travel to New York ? a move the government characterized as punishment for her comments.
Last Friday, government spokesperson Lucien Jura told the press that Moïse had spoken with UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who Jura claimed distanced the UN from Page’s statement. But journalist Jacqueline Charles noted that she had been told Page’s travel had been scheduled for weeks. The UN has not provided any clarity on the situation.
Reuters put Page’s press release into the context of international bodies leading corruption fights throughout Latin America, and the pushback those efforts have faced:
The case is the latest example of governments across the Americas – including Guatemala and Honduras – chafing at criticisms by U.N. bodies, which have highlighted lackluster efforts to tackle corruption, human rights abuses or impunity.
Jocelyne Colas, the director general of the Episcopal Justice and Peace Commission (JILAP), told the press that the government’s response showed that they had no desire to “curb the phenomenon of corruption in the country.” Colas said: “There must be light in this case. We do not have the right to close our eyes.”
There is also a certain amount of hypocrisy in the reaction of the Moïse administration and their apparent nationalist response to the comments from the UN. As Haitian author Edwidge Danticat has noted, Moïse’s “two heavily contested election cycles are often touted as a [UN] success.” In other words, Moïse (and the ruling party to which he belongs), in many ways owe their own political success to the international actors they are now criticizing.
The Fallout
Since he assumed office last February, Moïse has seemingly been at odds with at least some members of the ever-influential international community in Haiti. The Miami Herald reported that in January, Moïse “irked the country’s foreign diplomatic corps when, according to several sources, he demanded that foreign donors support his campaign promises or take their aid elsewhere.”
The Inter-American Development Bank, one of Haiti’s largest donors, is providing financing for Moïse’s flagship government program ? his “Caravan for Change.” But Moïse has failed to secure public support for his controversial decision to reinstate the Haitian military. The UN ? which has spent more than a decade training and funding the Haitian police ? was publicly opposed to the decision.
In early February, Moïse took his criticism public, telling Bloomberg:
Right now in Haiti, the money of foreign taxpayers, your money, is being wasted … Every year we receive $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion in aid, or more. However, it’s all consumed in a state of disorder that constitutes public international development aid.
It may be difficult to view the latest disagreement between Page and the Haitian government as anything other than a continuation of this conflict ? but it remains very much unclear to what extent there really is any conflict, or if both sides are simply posturing in order to save face in public.
Though the Moïse administration did not respond as forcefully as many had hoped to Trump’s comments about Haiti, the administration has been very outspoken about the revelation of the Oxfam sexual abuse scandal and what lessons should be learned about foreign aid more broadly. In a Washington Post opinion piece, Moïse wrote:
The general paradigm of aid and power in Haiti, as elsewhere in the developing world, is not a balanced one. Our government is often sidestepped by aid agencies that refuse oversight as they pursue their own development and humanitarian agendas in our country. The level and direction of aid, and its implementation, is controlled by donor forces with little or no input from Haiti’s government or other local stakeholders.
Moïse is not incorrect in criticizing the way foreign aid is administered in Haiti ? and elsewhere (as has been pointed out innumerable times on this blog). This blog has long been an advocate of greater donor coordination with the Haitian government and of directing funds directly to the Haitian government as opposed to high-priced foreign “experts” that often lack any local understanding. But it is next to impossible to imagine a world in which donors simply give funding directly to the Haitian government, given its history of corruption.
This is why the battle over the Petrocaribe dossier is so important. If the Moïse administration wants to be in the lead with donors, then the first step must be to clean house. It’s not just donors who are wary of the government ? recent surveys have shown corruption to be high atop Haitian citizens’ list of priorities.
Unfortunately, the fallout from the UN statement appears to be having the opposite effect. The government has deftly deflected attention from the underlying corruption allegations, instead shifting focus to the intervention ? and nefarious practices ? of the international community. There is plenty there worthy of criticism, but the sins of one’s enemies do not absolve one’s own.
And it appears the reaction will have real implications on the ground. Last week, the Haitian government reportedly canceled its participation in a high-level retreat, coordinated by the UN, to address the ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti. Moïse was scheduled to give the keynote address ? until the press release from Page. (The Haitian government has since said that the retreat was postponed.)
In all likelihood, the relationship between the UN and the Haitian government will be just fine. Both, in fact, depend upon the other for their successes. But both can use the situation to their advantage.
The public conflict allows the UN to garner some sympathy from the political opposition, which has long criticized the UN mission as an infringement upon Haiti’s sovereignty and for supporting the elite of the country (including the current administration). Moïse and his administration can point to their response as evidence of their standing up against the international forces that have taken advantage of Haiti for centuries ? all while ignoring the corruption allegations.
The UN may have no moral standing to question the Haitian justice system, but that doesn’t absolve the Haitian government. Unless, and until, corruption is seriously addressed in Haiti, the faulty aid paradigm that the Moïse administration has criticized will assuredly continue.
