Haitian community organizations are calling for help from Canada and Quebec to emerge from the crisis plaguing Haiti and are also asking that Ottawa and Westerners avoid the mistakes of the past.
Armed violence, massacres, shortages of water, medicine and food and the risk of epidemics threaten the lives of 11 million people in Haiti according to the Haitian Concertation for Migrants (CHPM), which calls on Canada to take a leadership role in order to find “with credible Haitian actors” solutions to emerge from the crisis.
“We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe where the most basic rights to security, health and life are violated,” lamented Marjorie Villefranche, general director of the Maison de Haïti and spokesperson for the CHPM, Tuesday in Montreal, adding that “it is imperative that Canada and Quebec respond to this call for solidarity.”
Include Haitians in ending the crisis
The capital Port-au-Prince is overwhelmed by violent gangs and Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced Monday that he will resign, on the sidelines of a meeting called in Jamaica to end the crisis.
The meeting, initiated by CARICOM, a regional trade bloc, notably brought together Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae and American Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Frantz Voltaire, of the International Center for Haitian, Caribbean and Afro-Canadian Documentation and Information, based in Montreal, deplored Tuesday the absence of Haitians around the table.
“At this meeting in Kingston (Jamaica), I did not see any representatives from Haiti and I did not see any representatives from the Haitian diasporas. There are still Haitian personalities and expertise (who could be consulted), but I am afraid that we will decide for Haiti without consulting Haitians from the interior and the diaspora. »
Westerners must avoid past mistakes
The involvement of the Haitian community in overcoming the crisis is imperative to avoid the mistakes of the past according to Frantz Voltaire.
During the press conference, he listed several situations in the past where foreign powers, or the United Nations, created more problems than they solved in Haiti.
He notably cited the example of the last cholera epidemic which killed nearly 10,000 people. It began more than a decade ago after UN peacekeepers introduced the bacteria into the country’s largest river through sewage runoff from their base.
“We are experiencing a situation where this country is occupied, the country is under a protectorate, but without the responsibility of the protectorate,” he denounced, affirming that foreign powers were involved in the appointment of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry and that it was under the leadership of this leader that gang violence increased.
The Core Group, made up of Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the United States, France, the European Union and emissaries from the Organization of American States and the United Nations, had supported in 2021 the appointment of Ariel Henry.
Frantz Voltaire also criticized “the police training programs put in place by Canada, France and the United States”, which he described as a “disaster”.
“Part of the police has developed links with organized gangs” and “the sectors of the police which could have or which confront the gangs” do not have the necessary equipment. He gave the example of delays in the delivery of armored police vehicles ordered from Canada by Haiti.
“We need to review all these programs and see everyone’s responsibility,” he said.