by William O’Neill, Specialist in Human Rights and Refugee Law
I just want to say solidarity now is so important. The Haitian people some days, sometimes many of them feel abandoned, overlooked, overwhelmed by the crisis. And I think it’s now more than ever needed to show them that they’re not alone: that there is hope although the situation is really bad. I’m not going to try to pretend otherwise or sugarcoat anything. It’s bad.
I’ve been working in and on Haiti for over 30 years now I have never seen it worse. But people are doing really good things.
I thought I would spend just a few minutes giving you an update on where things stand at the United Nations with regard to Haiti. In October 2023, this United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that authorized three tools to try to deal with the crisis in Haiti.
This year’s Dominican Month of Peace is focused on Haiti. It begins on the First Sunday of Advent, December 1, through end of December 2024. During this time, we will feature snapshots in ministry and articles that shed light on the unrest and horrific human rights abuses in Haiti at this time.
The first tool was to create a multinational force that was to be led by Kenya that would be comprised of police officers whose job would be to help support the Haitian National Police in their efforts to handle the gangs, and all the violence created by the gangs.
The Haitian National Police. I’ve met the director when I was in Haiti in September for 12 days. My most recent visit was as the designated expert for the UN on Human rights in Haiti. The Haitian National Police are willing. but they’re not able. The problem is, there are not enough Haitian National police, and they do not have the right equipment to take on the gangs so they need help, and the Haitian National Police will be the 1st ones to tell you they need help.
So, the multinational force was authorized to have, at a minimum, 2,500 officers. That’s not a maximum. That’s a minimum of 2,500. But the problem has been finding countries that would contribute police officers to send to Haiti. So as of today, there are approximately 420. That’s not nearly enough. It’s “they’re doing again”. The multinational force does not have enough of anything, either. They don’t have enough people. They don’t have the right equipment. They face all kinds of shortage. However, the combined Haitian National Police and the multinational force have had some successes, not big, not changing materially the situation on the ground, but victories nonetheless. And that tells you that if they were able to get up to their authorized strength with the right equipment, I’m convinced the violence of the gangs could be brought under control pretty quickly.
But that’s one big problem that still remains with us. One other element to this point is that there is a problem in raising money to support this mission. This is not technically a UN Peacekeeping operation. We don’t have time to go into all the details and the technicalities. But the point for us today is that the money to support this mission is purely coming from voluntary contributions.
There is no budget for this within the UN. So it means countries have to write checks and send it to a trust fund that administers the money. The problem is there, too. There’s only a fraction of the money necessary to support this mission, and many countries say they would send police if the money was there. But the money’s not there. So that’s a big problem. And that’s why there’s been talk of transforming this into a UN peacekeeping operation.
Not going into too many details of the politics, the problem there is that it would have to go through the UN Security Council and that would require Russia and China agreeing, or at least not vetoing. They may abstain, but they are not. They are not for this idea, and, my fear and others too, is that they would veto any such proposition. So I think we’re left for the moment with the multinational force we just have to try to make as effective as we can.
The second tool is sanctions. The other step authorized by the Security Council was to sanction some of the wealthy politicians and business people who are, let’s say, negative factors. In all this. They either support or help the gangs; they use the gangs for their own benefit, or they are not working certainly for the Haitian people by avoiding taxes, being corrupt, etc.
There have been some people named to be sanctioned by the UN which is a big deal. Those people then lose access to the U.S. Financial system. Europe, visas, travel all those things. It hits them hard, not the poor people. The poor people do not have bank accounts in Geneva, nor travel to Miami to shop, but the rich people do. Sanctioning the rich is very effective. They don’t want it, they’re afraid of it. But again, once again, the problem is back to the Security Council to get names released publicly. You have to get that through the Security Council, and once again China and Russia have not been very helpful in this regard, and this gets into geopolitics. It has very little to do with Haiti. It’s more to do with Ukraine, or Gaza, or Tiktok, or whatever, but the sanctions are there. Some people have been sanctioned. It’s a powerful weapon, and we have to keep pushing wherever we can to get people named to that list.
The third tool is an arms embargo, and this is something that we all can do much about. Not a single gun or bullet is manufactured in Haiti. They all come from outside, and the overwhelming percentage of weapons and ammunition going into Haiti come from the United States. Most of those weapons come from Miami – the river port of Miami. The US has done not nearly enough to inspect boats, to inspect the containers that are going to Haiti, to determine and seize if there are weapons or ammunition on board. You can buy almost any weapon you want in this country. But you’re not allowed to send them overseas, that’s illegal, and that’s violating Federal law. You could get a long prison term if you do that. So, I know the Dominican sisters were along with many other orders involved in a day going to Washington to lobby their congresspeople and Senators to put more pressure on the Biden Administration to try to crack down on the weapons.
The weapons also come through the Dominican Republic, which is another big problem. The relations between Haiti and the Dominican Republic is terrible. They’re at a low point for all kinds of reasons. Again, we could spend two to three hours just on that. But just to suffice it to say, a lot of contraband is now coming in from the Dominican Republic, including guns and ammunition and drugs and everything else.
Those three tools, if they were to be fully implemented seriously, I think could turn the situation around and turn it around fairly quickly.
So, just one more, maybe plea or appeal. I know you see the statistics of how many people are starving in Haiti, how many people are food insecure, how many hospitals are closed, how many schools aren’t working, and that is all very true and very desperate. So, I’m literally preaching to the converted. But when I’m in Haiti, for me I can’t get the faces out of my head even now. When I’m back home now for 2 months I see the face of a little girl in a camp for displaced persons, and I should say they’re over 700,000 displaced now in Haiti, which is the highest percentage per capita of any country in the world. More people, as a percentage of the entire population, are now displaced in Haiti than any other country in the world and those people have almost no support, get nothing from the government and I just talked to this little girl who had not eaten in 2 days in one of these camps. In the same camp I talked to another girl about a 14-year-old. She had not been to school for 2 years because she’s had to flee her home because of the gang violence and the kids in these camps. There’s no school. There’s not a school in the camp. They’re not allowed. They can’t get out to the local school.
I think of the prisoners. Haitian prisons are among the worst I’ve ever seen in the world, including Rwanda, including South Sudan, incredibly overcrowded. There are prisoners who are dying of starvation. They’re not fed appropriately enough, and I see their faces in these cells jammed with 40 to 50 people in a cell that’s meant to hold 10. And it’s hot. It’s filthy. There’s no water. They get out of the cell, maybe one or two hours a day so the suffering is enormous.
But I think to me that’s a motivation. I just can never forget those faces and no matter how hard it seems at times, and it’s very hard now. We just have to keep fighting, and I know you all will, and the Haitians have a great proverb. There are so many great proverbs in Creol, but the one I always use, especially when I’m winding up a talk or a presentation is RETE FÒ which means, stay strong. Thank You.
UN ___ Dusty Farnan, OP, writes about the author of this article. William O’Neill is a friend and colleague of those of us religious here at the UN, is an expert on human rights in Haiti. He was first appointed by the UN High Commission for Human Rights in April of 2023, and it was renewed again in 2024 for another year. Bill is a US. National lawyer, specializing in human humanitarian human rights and refugee law, with a special focus on the establishment and maintenance of the rule of law in post-conflict situations.
He has been the senior adviser on human rights to the United Nations Mission in Kosovo, chief of the UN. Human Rights field operation in Rwanda and led the legal department of the UN OAS Mission in Haiti.
Bill helped to establish the Haitian National Police in 1995, advising on recruitment, testing and training the then new police force. He participated in creating the school of judges and worked closely with Haitian Human rights organizations to help train their human rights monitors.
