How did Haiti fall into such chaos?
Widespread gang-led violence has become a crisis
The acting prime minister says he’ll resign. A deal to bring in a new temporary regime is falling apart. Gangs control much of the capital and surrounding areas. There are reports the health system has collapsed and of widespread sexual violence against women.
Haiti has endured a difficult history, with great tumult in the last 20 years, but the moment looks unusually dire. How did Haiti get here? And how is Canada involved? Here’s what you need to know.
The disaster and its aftermath
Born in a slave revolt, with Toussaint L’Ouverture leading the fight against Napoleon Bonaparte’s colonial forces, Haiti as a country has since seen oppression, coups, and foreign intervention.
A modern turning point was the 2010 earthquake, the country’s strongest in more than two centuries, which saw tens of thousands killed.
Subsequent governments in Haiti have since attempted to reconstruct the nation. Billions in aid from foreign countries has poured in, including more than $1.87 billion from Canada. But things have not gone as hoped. The political turmoil of the past five years is “the failure of that reconstruction,” says Greg Beckett, an associate professor of anthropology at Western University who worked in Haiti for more than a decade.
“Numerous audits and reports have shown widespread corruption from political parties, government officials, (and the) economic elite that have misappropriated or stolen somewhere between $2 and $4 billion of reconstruction funds.”
According to the UN, of the nearly $8 billion sent to Haiti since 2010, just 2.3 per cent was awarded directly to Haitian organizations and companies, instead going through aid agencies, NGOs and private companies, stalling the reconstruction effort.
The political upheaval
Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his home on July 7, 2021. He had been ruling by decree, in lieu of a functioning legislature, for more than a year after failing to hold legislative elections in 2019.
Moïse had delayed elections in a push for a new constitution that would have given the presidential office more power. He took power in 2017 under scrutiny over allegations of money laundering during his time as a businessman. Haitians called for his resignation in 2019 amidst anger over corruption and rising inflation.
A judge tasked with investigating the assassination indicted nearly 50 suspects, including a former prime minister, the former head of the nation’s police force and even Moïse’s wife.
Ariel Henry — selected by Moïse as his successor shortly before the assassination — took the mantle of acting prime minister, as Moïse’s killing triggered a spiral into gang violence on Haiti’s streets.
Haiti lost its last democratically elected officials when the remaining 10 senators of Haiti’s legislature, who were elected in 2017, had their mandate expire on Jan. 10, 2023 after Moïse’s failure to hold elections.
That left an estimated 11.5 million Haitians without any democratic representation and without the opportunity to vote in over seven years.
Henry versus the gangs
More than 8,400 people in Haiti were the direct victims of gang violence last year, mainly in the capital of Port-au-Prince, according to the UN.
“These gangs are not small gangs in Haiti, they’re much more like mafias,” Beckett said.
“They’re not seeking to take power, but I think they’re trying to show they’re forced to say that nobody can govern Haiti without their consent,” he added, “And they want to be allowed to continue operating their businesses.”
Haiti’s modern political history has been marked by the use of gangs by political elites that make up the very top of Haitian society, said Melanie J. Newton, an associate professor at University of Toronto’s Centre for Caribbean Studies.
The gangs now have more financial independence thanks to ransoms from kidnapping, and they are seeking more control of the political process. They have also exerted their force and power in new ways, Beckett said, such as by taking control of the infrastructure in Haiti’s capital.
Henry, despite protesters calling for his resignation, campaigned for international intervention and support to help quell the gang violence that has overtaken Port-auPrince and much of the country.
After failing to secure troops from Canada and the United Nations, Henry signed an agreement with Kenya on March 1 to deploy 1,000 Kenyan police officers to combat gang violence. A day after that announcement, gangs stormed two of Haiti’s largest prisons, freeing thousands of inmates.
The government declared a state of emergency the next day.
A leader’s flight from Haiti
Haiti’s main international airports were shut down on March 5 as gangs tried to seize control, blocking Henry from returning from Kenya.
Henry instead landed in Puerto Rico, as Haitian politicians searched for new political alliances to replace him, before the acting prime minister announced his intention to resign.
“The government that I’m running cannot remain insensitive in front of this situation,” Henry said. “There is no sacrifice that is too big for our country.”
Powerful gang leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérizier had previously called for Henry’s ousting but also said he refused co-operation with any international attempts to install a new Haitian leader.
“It’s the Haitian people who know what they’re going through. It’s the Haitian people who are going to take destiny into their own hands. Haitian people will choose who will govern them,” Chérizier said on Monday.
A group of Caribbean nations have placed their hope in a transitional council made up of members from Haiti’s three main political parties, the country’s civil society and the private sector. That plan is now in jeopardy as the proposal to install new leadership was rejected by some of the parties.
What has Canada done in Haiti in the past?
Haiti has a tumultuous history with foreign military interventions led by the United States and United Nations, and Canada is involved.
The United States’ first occupation of Haiti lasted from 1915 to 1934.
A UN peacekeeping mission sent in 1993 was reinforced with troops from the U.S. the following year, to restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power after a military coup.
A 2004 UN intervention, under disputed circumstances, saw Aristide removed from power. Both the 1993 and 2004 interventions included Canadian troops.
The last round of foreign military intervention “is referred to by many as the third U.S. occupation of the country and it’s seen as an invasion,” Beckett said.
UN peacekeepers stayed in Haiti until 2017 as part of a “stabilization mission,” Newton said, but in that process suppressed political parties, like Aristide’s Fanmi Lavalas party, “preventing the emergence of other democratic forces.”
“The 2004 mission has become a textbook case of what not to do for UN mission,” said Beckett.
Reports afterwards found UN peacekeepers had been involved in a child sex ring and helped to expand the influence of gangs in Portau-Prince, Beckett said. UN soldiers also brought cholera to the country with them, killing thousands of Haitians.
“There’s this profound distrust in Haitians that is at the heart of this, that if they elect a democratic government, somehow that’s a bad thing. Like they can’t be trusted to make a good choice,” said Newton.
Newton traced this back to the international response to the 2010 earthquake. Haitians, Newton said, weren’t trusted with the reconstruction effort and the billions that flowed in.
“A democratic government in Haiti is not going to be accountable to these foreign interests,” she added. “It will be accountable to the overwhelming majority of Haitians who don’t want the kinds of people who continue these policies of intervention, and support them, and support this extremely powerful, tiny elite.”
Are troops being sent to Haiti?
Despite requests from both Haitian and U.S. officials for Canada to lead an international security force to reinforce Haiti’s national police, Canadian troops are not being sent.
Instead, the Canadian government is pledging $80.5 million toward the Kenya-led security mission that was requested by the Haitian government (but not authorized by the United Nations).
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said in a February statement that Canada “remains committed to working with Kenya and other international partners to support a successful deployment of the (mission) and ensure that our efforts are mutually reinforcing.” On Thursday, Joly announced that Canada would be removing most of its diplomats remaining in Haiti, leaving the embassy staffed with essential employees.
Military officials, as Canadian troops expanded their presence into Latvia as part of a NATO mission, said this country’s forces would be stretched thin if it were to lead an international security force in Haiti.
“My concern is just our capacity,” Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada’s chief of defence staff, told Reuters in March 2023. “There’s only so much to go around. … It would be challenging.”