By: Staff Writer
February 25, 2025
An international peacekeeping organization warns that Haiti needs to overcome the internal strife and work towards creating a realistic path towards elections and constitutional reform.
The International Crisis Group, said in a recent report on Haiti: “Efforts by Haitian politicians and their foreign partners to quell surging gang violence have yet to bear fruit. A transitional government drawn from the country’s main political forces took office in April 2024, promising to hold the first elections in nearly a decade. Soon thereafter, the first contingent of Kenyan police disembarked, part of an international security mission tasked with loosening the gangs’ stranglehold on the capital Port-au-Prince and its vicinity. But the hopes invested by Haitians in the transitional government and the foreign mission remain unfulfilled.
“Partisan infighting and corruption allegations have prolonged political dysfunction. Violence rages, with gangs perpetrating some of the worst massacres ever as the understaffed, underfunded foreign mission struggles to rein them in. With safe elections looking improbable in the near term, transitional authorities should get past their internal disputes to plot a realistic course to polls and constitutional reform. The UN Security Council, for its part, must decide how best to respond to Haiti’s request for support in fighting the gangs.”
Haiti has been in free-fall since the assassination of its last president, Jovenel Moise, in July 2021 and has not been able to gather itself out of the abysmal state of governmental collapse and social chaos.
Gangs have taken over much of the nation’s capital, Port-Au Prince, despite international peacekeeping efforts led by Kenya to bring stability to the country.
The report also said: “February 2024 saw a grim milestone in the gangs’ growth but also the beginning of what seemed to be a concerted effort to stabilise Haiti. Instead of fighting one another, gangs banded together to mount a multi-pronged assault. Besieging Port-au-Prince, they cemented control of more than 80 per cent of the city, emptied jails, ransacked police stations and forced the airport to close.
“With Prime Minister Ariel Henry stranded in Kenya, where he had been negotiating deployment of the security support mission, the time was ripe for a bold response.”
The report also said:”To make matters worse, plans to push through constitutional reform, to be voted on at referendum in the first half of 2025, as well as hold elections before year’s end, have made scant progress. Members of provisional electoral bodies were appointed only in December, and Haiti lacks an up-to-date voter register.
The report added: “Instead of rushing toward elections, the transitional government should focus on the nuts and bolts of responsible governance. Drawing on the agreement that created the administration, it should establish an assembly where political groups represented in the Transitional Presidential Council can resolve their grievances without threatening to upend the state.
“The authorities should also act quickly to appoint a National Security Council and to provide the secretary of state for public security with the support required to map a strategy for reducing violence anchored in concrete, achievable steps. The government should also show it is serious about fighting corruption by ensuring that its members are held accountable.
“Transitional authorities should work alongside foreign partners to explore how security assistance from abroad can be made more sustainable and effective.
“It is all the more crucial that they do so at a time when funding from the U.S., Haiti’s main donor, has been partially frozen by the Trump administration, putting Washington’s commitment to underwrite future security operations in serious doubt.
Donations for the multinational mission have fallen far short of what was expected, and not all the promised 2,500 officers and materiel have arrived.”