Office for Haiti in the Dominican Republic | A false good idea ?

(Ottawa) As Kenya prepares to deploy troops in Haiti, Canada continues to rely on an office opened a few months ago in the Dominican Republic to help restore order on Haitian soil – a project which started in confusion, and which is still far from unanimous today.

“If the Canadian government had consulted Haitian and Dominican representatives, they would have been told very clearly that this would never work. We learned this news through the press,” said The Press a highly placed Haitian source who requested anonymity, not being authorized to speak to the media.

The discordant signal from the Dominican Republic – a country which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and whose government re-elected last Sunday has the habit of bashing its neighbor – was issued in public . “The Dominican government has not discussed, accepted or granted any authorization [à cet effet] », wrote on X the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Álvarez, on June 16, 2023.

He published this message the day after an announcement made by his Canadian counterpart Mélanie Joly as part of a ministerial meeting on Haiti.

Canada, which the United States was urging to take the lead in a multinational intervention mission, had found a halfway solution: opening an office on Dominican territory in order to coordinate aid and strengthen the Haitian National Police. .

“It was presented as an alternative to military deployment. At National Defense, neither Anita Anand [qui était alors ministre] nor Wayne Eyre [le chef d’état-major] did not want to hear about sending troops,” explains a Canadian source familiar with the matter who requested anonymity in order to speak more freely.

The reflection gave rise to the idea of ​​reproducing the model of Operation Unifier: when Russia invaded Ukraine, in February 2022, the training mission for Ukrainian soldiers moved to Poland. It was therefore suggested to transpose this model to the Caribbean island, according to our information. Big problem: Santo Domingo and Port-au-Prince are at loggerheads.

“Haitians were outraged”

“Just because a model works in one place doesn’t mean it will work the same way elsewhere. We must take into account the historical reality of relations between the two countries. That’s not a one size fits all », notes Gilles Rivard, who was Canadian ambassador to Haiti from 2008 to 2010.

Even if we omit this aspect, the idea was “not good”, except perhaps in terms of security, he believes. “I spoke to Haitians who were outraged to see that Canada was preparing a support program from the Dominican Republic,” he relates.

The first of the 14 members currently comprising the team of this office with a budget of 20 million over two years (2023-2024 and 2024-2025) were deployed approximately five months after the announcement, i.e. in November 2023, said Geneviève Tremblay, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada.

A civil servant posted abroad costs much more than a civil servant in Ottawa, and therefore, these sums could be spent better, that is to say to contribute to the multinational mission led by Kenya, believes the Canadian source cited above.

Hundreds of Kenyan police officers must soon set foot on Haitian soil. The president of this East African country, William Ruto, was received at the White House on Wednesday by the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to mark the occasion.

The arrival of Kenyan troops had been postponed pending the establishment of a Presidential Transitional Council. This was formed on April 12.

There have been no elections in Haiti since 2016 nor since President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated at his private residence in July 2021.

Criminal gangs, already numerous in the country, have taken advantage of this governance vacuum to terrorize the population and block ports. They also forced the closure of the Port-au-Prince international airport in early March. International flights have timidly resumed in recent days.