If we trust the author Dany Laferrière, Haitians will never run out of hope. “They are so accustomed to seeking life in difficult conditions that they will carry hope to hell,” wrote the member of the French Academy in Everything is moving around meafter the 2010 earthquake which caused more than 200,000 victims.
We need a lot of hope today, when the country is collapsing politically and economically.
This week, a ballet of helicopters was busy evacuating Canadian nationals, while the 11.5 million Haitians continue to live in fear of the gangs which control around 80% of the capital Port-au-Prince.
After freeing more than 4,000 bandits from prison, these gangs united by Jimmy Chérizier, alias Barbecue, attacked the stations of the Haitian National Police, too weak to restore order.
The population wakes up at night to the sound of gunshots and finds dead bodies in the street in the early morning. The airport has been closed for a month. Hospitals and schools are in disarray. Even the National Library was looted this week.
What can we do to help Haiti?
The most useful thing for the international community would be to admit that it played a role in this drama, replies Michaëlle Jean, former governor general of Canada and former secretary general of La Francophonie.
From the hundreds of millions in “reparations” that France forced its former colony to pay, after independence in 1804, until the country’s occupation by the Americans, there was “an obstinacy in making the country don’t get away with it,” she explains.
It is clear that the recipe for foreign aid in recent decades has been a bitter failure. Putting a lid on the pot by sending in foreign troops, and then holding elections in the belief that this will be enough to restore lasting democracy, was like putting a bandage on a cancer.
In addition to bringing cholera to Haiti, foreign troops have offered a golden clientele to large Haitian families who provide housing, vehicles, gasoline, food… However, this elite which controls the economy is also linked to “armed criminal gangs “, to “money laundering” and other “acts of corruption”, according to the Canadian government which distributed the sanctions.
Infantilizing Haiti leads nowhere. But advocating “Haitian solutions” should not be a hypocritical way of abandoning the country to its fate.
With the right mix, Canada could play a key role, relying on its strong diaspora which already creates natural bridges to support its country of origin.
Ottawa can exercise international leadership, as Brian Mulroney did to fight apartheid in South Africa. It can distinguish itself from the United States, as Jean Chrétien did by refusing to participate in the invasion of Iraq.
Where to start ?
First, we must continue to support the reform of the Haitian National Police, the country’s only law enforcement force, which does not have an army. Canada announced millions. But beyond the press releases, we will have to see if the agents on the ground are better equipped and trained.
That said, the Haitian police will not succeed alone, even the most nationalist Haitians recognize this. This is why we must hope that the international mission authorized by the UN in October will provide tactical support as quickly as possible – which is very different from previous missions. The longer we delay, the more the gangs strengthen their grip.
But, in the current political vacuum, we can still recognize recent progress, however fragile they may be. In mid-March, a presidential transition committee was set up to take over from exiled Prime Minister Ariel Henry and chart a path out of the crisis.
Made up of seven members and two observers from varied backgrounds, the committee certainly has more legitimacy than Mr. Henry, whose arrival in power, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, was not very democratic. .
It remains to be seen whether the members of the new committee will be able to rise above their personal interests and live up to the immense expectations of the population. The challenge is titanic: the foundations of the country must be rebuilt.
Should we review the Constitution? Eliminate the Senate, a hotbed of corruption?
How to reform the weakened justice system? Should we conduct a truth and reconciliation commission to make peace with the past? The fact that Jean-Claude Duvalier was able to return from exile to end his days in Haiti sent a bad signal of impunity. If the former dictator is not tried for his crimes, who will be?
Justice, health, education… In many areas, Canada has expertise that could be made available to Haiti. This is already happening naturally, thanks to the diaspora.
A very good example: after the 2010 earthquake, Polytechnique Montréal professor Samuel Pierre founded, near Cap-Haïtien, a university which allows young people to access higher education, to obtain a master’s degree or a doctorate, thanks to teachers from the diaspora who teach voluntarily, remotely1.
Help Haiti train and keep brains. Act in the region, where bandits do not yet rule the roost.
Let us multiply these types of initiatives and, as Samuel Pierre says, “let us keep hope that the country will have the destiny it deserves”.
Read “Reconstruction of Haiti: The diaspora takes matters into their own hands”