On my re­cent vis­it to the Unit­ed Na­tions as a mem­ber of T&T’s del­e­ga­tion to the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and as our coun­try’s Am­bas­sador Plenipo­ten­tiary to Cari­com, I had an over­pow­er­ing sense of déjà vu dur­ing meet­ings on the cur­rent cri­sis in Haiti.

In 1991, my first year as this na­tion’s for­eign min­is­ter, Haiti was plunged in­to a ma­jor cri­sis when the coun­try’s first de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, Jean Bertrand Aris­tide, was over­thrown in a coup led by army com­man­der Raoul Ce­dras.

As the cri­sis wore on with no end in sight, de­spite con­tin­u­ing ef­forts by the UN, OAS, and the Unit­ed States un­der Bill Clin­ton, on be­half of T&T, I start­ed a call for con­sid­er­a­tion of UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (UN­SC) in­ter­ven­tion in Haiti.

I per­sist­ed at home and abroad, earn­ing the nick­name “Aris­tide” among cab­i­net col­leagues. The Cari­com coun­cil of for­eign min­is­ters dis­cussed it and agreed and Heads of Gov­ern­ment “stat­ed their com­mit­ment to par­tic­i­pate in UN-man­dat­ed ef­forts aimed at the re­moval of the il­le­gal regime and the restora­tion of democ­ra­cy in Haiti. There was then no stop­ping our call for UN ac­tion. We made it at every op­por­tu­ni­ty-re­gion­al, hemi­spher­ic and glob­al. We were joined by oth­er coun­tries.

And on Ju­ly 3, 1994, pushed by a Unit­ed States strong­ly sup­port­ive of the cause, the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, by Res­o­lu­tion 940, vot­ed 12-0 au­tho­ris­ing a US-led in­va­sion, “Op­er­a­tion Up­hold Democ­ra­cy,” to re­store Aris­tide to pow­er. This was the first time the UN was act­ing ex­plic­it­ly to change a gov­ern­ment.

The US Air Force gath­ered in Puer­to Ri­co and Flori­da. And on in­va­sion day, Sep­tem­ber 19, the sit­u­a­tion was tense. Whilst de­ter­mined to strike, Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton had al­lowed a del­e­ga­tion led by Jim­my Carter to vis­it Port-au-Prince for a last chance at diplo­ma­cy.

At first, Ce­dras re­fused to step down but when shown footage of the 82nd Air­borne Di­vi­sion be­ing loaded with 15,000 para­troop­ers and told they were over the At­lantic in 100 air­craft on their way to Haiti, he was per­suad­ed.

The US-led multi­na­tion­al force land­ed un­op­posed. Ce­dras was giv­en safe pas­sage to Pana­ma, and the way was cleared for Aris­tide’s re­turn in Oc­to­ber 1994.

T&T then con­tributed to the Cari­com con­tin­gent of a multi­na­tion­al peace­keep­ing force sub­se­quent­ly es­tab­lished in Haiti. I had the ho­n­our of vis­it­ing our sol­diers in Port-au-Prince, along with then Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ed­win Car­ring­ton.

But af­ter all that, here we were again last month, 31 years lat­er, among our­selves in Cari­com and with many oth­ers in var­i­ous UN fo­ra, in­clud­ing the Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Coun­cil (ECOSOC), dis­cussing the Hait­ian sit­u­a­tion for hours, hop­ing for a so­lu­tion that hinged on ap­proval by the UN Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Again.

It came last Tues­day. The coun­cil passed a res­o­lu­tion au­tho­ris­ing the tran­si­tion from the Kenyan-led Multi­na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sup­port Mis­sion (MSSM), which has been on the ground since 2023 but has been un­able to curb the gang vi­o­lence due to short­ages in equip­ment, re­sources and the man­pow­er orig­i­nal­ly en­vis­aged.

By Res­o­lu­tion 2793, co-spon­sored by the Unit­ed States and Pana­ma, the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil au­tho­rised the tran­si­tion from the MSSM in­to a Gang Sup­pres­sion Force (GSF) con­sist­ing of 5,500 uni­formed per­son­nel—mil­i­tary and po­lice- and 50 civil­ians with a more ro­bust UN-au­tho­rised man­date to stop the es­ca­lat­ing gang vi­o­lence in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hait­ian au­thor­i­ties.

The GSF will be an in­ter­na­tion­al force op­er­at­ing un­der a UN Sup­port Of­fice, which will pro­vide lo­gis­ti­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port. It’s 5,500 mem­bers will come from coun­tries will­ing­ly con­tribut­ing to its com­po­si­tion and cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion. It will be a con­sid­er­ably larg­er and bet­ter-equipped con­tin­gent.

Haiti’s UN rep­re­sen­ta­tive Er­icq Pierre said the de­ci­sion “marks a de­ci­sive turn­ing point” against one of the most se­ri­ous chal­lenges in his coun­try’s “tur­bu­lent his­to­ry”.

Crim­i­nal gangs have been seek­ing to over­throw the pro­vi­sion­al gov­ern­ment since the as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se in Ju­ly 2021. They now con­trol 90 per cent of Port-au-Prince. To­day, near­ly 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple are in­ter­nal­ly dis­placed due to gang vi­o­lence and could die from dis­ease, hunger, mur­der, and mal­nu­tri­tion.

Cari­com has com­mend­ed the US and Pana­ma for the res­o­lu­tion and its pas­sage at the UN­SC. Amer­i­can Am­bas­sador Michael Waltz sees it as “a key first step” since “it al­lows the nec­es­sary re­con­fig­u­ra­tion on the ground to face the gangs and ad­dress the in­se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try”. And af­ter the res­o­lu­tion, Pana­ma’s Am­bas­sador told Haiti, “To­day, once and for all, you are not alone.”

This is crit­i­cal. The suc­cess of the new ef­fort will re­quire all in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to en­sure sus­tain­able, pre­dictable re­sourc­ing to meet the cost of GSF per­son­nel through con­tri­bu­tions to the UN Trust Fund.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly that, notwith­stand­ing our small size and lim­it­ed re­sources, T&T is com­mit­ted to “shar­ing the bur­den” to­wards peace in Haiti.

There is tough work ahead. We need a vast­ly im­proved po­lit­i­cal and se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment nec­es­sary for the con­duct of safe, cred­i­ble elec­tions and the restora­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty in Haiti. The world has again tak­en a sig­nif­i­cant de­ci­sion which could set this be­lea­guered coun­try on the road to or­der, good gov­er­nance, se­cu­ri­ty, and even­tu­al pros­per­i­ty for its long-suf­fer­ing peo­ple.

To­day, there is hope for Haiti. Again.