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Saturday, March 15, 2025

UN peacekeeping force to be deployed in Haiti

by

Gail Alexander
618 days ago
20230706
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, left, speak with Haiti Interim Prime Minsiter Ariel Henry and Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness during the 45th Caricom Heads of Government Meeting at the Hyatt Regency, yesterday.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame, left, speak with Haiti Interim Prime Minsiter Ariel Henry and Jamaica Prime Minister Andrew Holness during the 45th Caricom Heads of Government Meeting at the Hyatt Regency, yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

US Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and Hait­ian Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry have agreed on the ur­gency of de­ploy­ing a UN-au­tho­rised multi­na­tion­al force or peace­keep­ing op­er­a­tion to en­able the Hait­ian Na­tion­al Po­lice to re­store peace and se­cu­ri­ty and al­le­vi­ate the hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in that coun­try.

Both men met yes­ter­day at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, on the fi­nal day of Cari­com’s 45th reg­u­lar meet­ing.

Sec­re­tary Blinken and Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry dis­cussed the ur­gency of en­larg­ing po­lit­i­cal con­sen­sus and reach­ing a broad­ly sup­port­ed agree­ment to en­able a re­turn to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic or­der as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, said spokesman Matthew Miller.

Blinken reaf­firmed the Unit­ed States’ un­wa­ver­ing sup­port to the Hait­ian peo­ple, in­clud­ing through the con­tin­ued pro­vi­sion of hu­man­i­tar­i­an, eco­nom­ic, and se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tance.

Haiti’s PM must be ‘hon­est bro­ker’, tell cit­i­zens he won’t con­test elec­tion—PM Browne

Prime Min­is­ter of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Gas­ton Browne says Haiti’s Prime Min­is­ter Ariel Hen­ry should be­come an “hon­est bro­ker” and com­mu­ni­cate to Haitians that he does not in­tend to con­test that coun­try’s elec­tion.

Browne said Hen­ry should in­stead use the of­fice of Prime Min­is­ter to re­store con­fi­dence in the process and en­sure the nec­es­sary sys­tems are im­ple­ment­ed for elec­tion.

He ex­pressed his views to re­porters yes­ter­day morn­ing at the Hy­att Re­gency. Haiti’s cur­rent po­lit­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion was among the agen­da items.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that Haiti was a very del­i­cate and com­plex sit­u­a­tion, Browne said “It will re­quire a Hait­ian home-grown so­lu­tion, ob­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed with the help of Cari­com and the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.”

Browne said Cari­com has ap­point­ed an Em­i­nent Per­sons Group on the is­sue and they are do­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of work bring­ing the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to­geth­er. He said in­cre­men­tal progress has been made.

“But I’m of the view that the cur­rent of­fice hold­er in Haiti’s of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, he too has a sig­nif­i­cant role to play in bring­ing the var­i­ous par­ties to­geth­er to help to come up with a Hait­ian so­lu­tion,” Browne said.

“My un­der­stand­ing is that the Prime Min­is­ter of Haiti (Ariel Hen­ry) has in­di­cat­ed that he and his oth­er col­leagues will not par­tic­i­pate in the elec­tion when they’re held.”

Haiti’s cur­rent in­sta­bil­i­ty would not al­low for an elec­tion at this time and may take up to 12 to 18 months, but Browne said Hen­ry has to in­di­cate to the peo­ple that he does not in­tend to run for of­fice.

At the same time, Browne said there should be a gath­er­ing of re­sources for nec­es­sary equip­ment and train­ing for Haiti’s po­lice to re­store sta­bil­i­ty. He said the as­sis­tance of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty will be need­ed for cer­tain ar­tillery re­quired and oth­er fi­nan­cial sup­port. “We need the sup­port of coun­tries like the US, Cana­da, and France to con­tribute to fund­ing the re­quire­ments to strength­en Haiti’s law en­force­ment.”

Hen­ry be­came prime min­is­ter fol­low­ing the Ju­ly 7, 2021 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moïse at his pri­vate res­i­dence. Since then Hen­ry has had to deal with calls for his res­ig­na­tion from op­po­si­tion leg­is­la­tors as well as crim­i­nal gangs that have se­vere­ly dis­rupt­ed life in the coun­try with a spate of kid­nap­pings, mur­ders, and ri­val war­fare.

Mean­while, ac­cord­ing to a Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC) re­port, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves shared Browne’s po­si­tion, re­mind­ing CMC that dur­ing the Cari­com sum­mit in the Ba­hamas ear­li­er this year, Prime Min­is­ter Hen­ry had giv­en an un­der­tak­ing to not be in­volved in the elec­tion.

“He has said that and he said he has said it pub­licly, I don’t know. But he cer­tain­ly said it to me, said it re­peat­ed­ly to me in the pres­ence of (Cana­di­an) Prime Min­is­ter (Justin) Trudeau and al­so the Prime Min­is­ter of the Ba­hamas when we were in the Ba­hamas. So that is a mat­ter of record. And I mean, I can say that be­cause he told me that in front of wit­ness­es,” Gon­salves told CMC.

But Gon­salves, the longest serv­ing Cari­com leader, told CMC he want­ed to make it clear that “what­ev­er we do here in Cari­com, or we at the UN ... it has to be with­in the frame­work, that the process must be Hait­ian de­vised and Hait­ian led”.

Gon­salves said Cari­com was play­ing a role in the po­lit­i­cal process, to get all the stake­hold­ers to­geth­er, in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment so that “we can have an in­clu­sive process for a po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tion, lead­ing even­tu­al­ly, maybe to an­oth­er year and a half, two years, for elec­tions in cir­cum­stances where they can be held cred­i­bly in a se­cure en­vi­ron­ment”.

Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Philip Davis said his coun­try’s po­si­tion was clear and that “there needs to be as­sis­tance to the Haiti Na­tion­al Po­lice by pro­vid­ing them train­ing re­sources, as­sist­ing in re­cruit­ing and train­ing, to be able to se­cure Haiti; to pro­vide a space for peace, tran­quil­li­ty, to al­low per­sons to move about freely with­out fear of in­tim­i­da­tion or vi­o­lence.”

He said, “We have been talk­ing too much about it, and we just need to act.”

CARICOM


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