Former Governor General Michaëlle Jean believes that rich countries must admit the mistakes they made in Haiti and put pressure on the elite of the pearl of the Antilles to find a way out of the current humanitarian crisis.
“What is endangered, the great risk, is the very national sovereignty of this country,” said Ms. Jean in French, during a long interview with The Canadian Press.
Countries like Canada must take responsibility for introducing debilitating economic policies in Haiti and for expelling the criminals who wreaked havoc in Port-au-Prince, she said.
“We cannot look at all this with fatalism and say that this country is cursed. He is not cursed. It carries within it men and women of very great will, who have even worked hard to find a Haitian solution, but who also realize that they cannot do it alone,” said Ms. Jean.
Ms. Jean was born in Haiti and was a UNESCO special envoy to that country after serving as the Queen’s representative in Canada.
Violent and belligerent gangs have taken over the Haitian capital in recent months, sexually assaulting women and children and limiting access to health care, electricity and clean water.
Hundreds of people have been killed and kidnapped by gangs who have filled a political vacuum in Haiti, which has not held elections for several years.
In July 2021, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated after a crackdown on Haiti’s democratic institutions, an issue where the West should have intervened, instead of allowing Mr. Moïse to offer gangs impunity, Michaëlle Jean believes .
“By destroying the institutions of the country, even wanting to manipulate the Constitution to stay in power, finally, the monster began to take on much more strength and dimensions, and Jovenel Moïse himself ended up being swallowed up by this monster,” she said.
After his assassination, Canada joined the United States, France and the UN in recognizing President Moïse’s unelected ally, Ariel Henry, as prime minister, who Ms. Jean said did not never had legitimacy in the eyes of the Haitian people.
A year later, as gangs took control of the capital, Henry called for international military intervention to allow humanitarian aid and create conditions safe enough to hold elections.
The United States supports the idea, arguing it could stem a growing migration crisis and prevent gangs from destabilizing the entire Caribbean.
Washington has declared that Canada would be an ideal country to lead such a force. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, replied that Ottawa will only act on the basis of a political consensus of Haitians.
According to Ms Jean, this means having an agreement between Mr Henry and civil society groups who have demanded his resignation.
Ms. Jean said she supported the Liberals’ decision to sanction 13 members of Haiti’s political and economic elite, saying it was one of the few times that those responsible for human trafficking and the arms trade have been targeted.
“Now, for the first time that sanctions have been imposed on these individuals, it is panic for them,” said the former secretary general of the International Organization of La Francophonie.
The United States has also sanctioned some of these same people. France should also follow suit to exert pressure, believes Ms. Jean.
She also said that rich countries must take responsibility for the policies that have sown instability in Haiti, namely economic reforms that have led to the collapse of agricultural sectors and their willful blindness when leaders supporting the United States undermine civil society. .
“Haitians also recognize their own responsibility in this situation, that is to say that of bad governance,” said Ms. Jean.
She was among dozens of high-level signatories to an open letter published this week in French, titled “Taken hostage, Haiti is dying.”
The letter argues that the country needs international help to avoid becoming a failed state.
Signatories include Senegalese President Macky Sall, who currently chairs the African Union, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General Adama Dieng and former heads of government from Chad, Mali, Nigeria and the Central African Republic.
The letter notes that almost the entire population of Haiti is descended from slaves brought from Africa and that the country was the first to successfully overthrow a colonial government in 1804.
“The first black republic, perhaps the most fragile in the family of Nations, lacks food, clean water, fuel, peace, justice,” the letter reads.
When the country ousted the French, Paris imposed crippling debt to compensate slave owners. The country has faced a series of invasions, corrupt governments and deforestation.
“All of these factors could only result in a failed state fueled for many decades by the adrenaline of violence and the jolts of anarchy and chaos,” the signatories write.
“It is difficult to envisage the resolution of this Gordian knot without outside intervention. The Haitian people will only be able to vote and freely choose their leaders if there is security,” they continue.
Ms. Jean explained that this could mean creating Haitian-led institutions and providing technical support.
She said she saw Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers and provincial officers give training to local police that helped them be more successful in eliminating crime than their peers who had been trained by peacekeepers from the UN.
“History will not be kind to those who remain inactive or who choose to look elsewhere,” warn the authors of the letter.