Haiti: fifteen thousand displaced from February 7th to today, the Prime Minister promises to resign

ROMA – Prime Minister and interim President Ariel Henry has agreed to resign after the violent clashes in Haiti in recent days. The small Caribbean state is on the verge of total collapse. The criminal groups that until recently fought each other for control of the territory now seem to have even found a sort of tacit agreement: to unite to overthrow the government. The casus belli were Henry’s declarations that last week, while he was in Kenya negotiating the sending of an international contingent, he announced the elections for 2025. Since his mandate expired on February 7, the armed gangs they saw a precise provocative intent in this statement, so they started a guerrilla war, attacked the police, attacked two important prisons and freed over 4,700 prisoners, many of whom were recruited by the gangs themselves, Flavia Maurello explains to Repubblica, which in Haiti is responsible for AVSI, the only Italian Non-Governmental Organization remaining in the country. The actions of the armed gangs, fighting each other, involving the entire civilian population, have effectively paralyzed economic activity, blocked humanitarian assistance and stopped almost all transport. Also the port of the capital of Port-au-Prince and the international airport. “We live in a surreal, almost paradoxical situation, with a city, Port au Prince, completely divided in two. And we know that things can change at any moment,” explains Maurello.

AVSI’s work. The Organization in Port au Prince works in the slums and intervenes mainly in the field of emergencies. Today the armed gangs – says Maurello – prevent access to a series of areas considered vulnerable such as Cité Soleil, La Saline, Bel Air. AVSI, which employs three hundred people in Haiti, has recruited around sixty collaborators who act as intermediaries between the Organization and the people in need who find themselves stranded within these neighborhoods. In this way we can continue with the distribution of aid.

And give. In October 2023, the United Nations Security Council authorized a multinational security mission to train the currently understaffed Haitian National Police. According to the UN, criminal groups, which control much of the country including almost all of the capital Port-au-Prince, have killed over 1,100 people and injured at least 700 since the beginning of 2024. Going back in time, almost 13,000 civilians were killed, injured and kidnapped between January 2022 and March 2024. Thousands of women and children suffered sexual violence and over 362 thousand people were displaced. Food insecurity rates are among the worst in the world. Many children do not go to school and child exploitation and recruitment by criminal groups are on the increase. “15 percent of children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, health and hygiene conditions are precarious and we are already seeing some cases of cholera,” says Maurello.

School dropout. By the time children make it past the age of five, they find themselves experiencing many other problems. First of all, school dropout. At the moment many structures welcome displaced people – says Flavia Maurello – others however do not open because the minimum safety conditions are lacking and because the State is unable to pay the teachers’ salaries. Public schools, among other things, require uniforms, which not all families can afford to buy, so even with a higher level of security, children would most likely still not be able to attend lessons. Indeed, many of them work for the armed gangs: they carry out small services which are then paid to them with a handful of money which becomes essential for the survival of the family. In this scenario AVSI intervenes in two ways: either by directly helping public schools with everything they need: stationery and uniforms, or by helping people to open small businesses to become economically independent.

International reactions. Henry announced his resignation Tuesday morning with a video on social media during a meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an international organization that met specifically to discuss the problem of Haiti. This was what the rights groups and Haitian activists were asking for, who had repeatedly asked the world, and the USA in particular, to no longer support Henry, in the name of corruption and links to criminal groups. A presidential transition council will be established which will have the task of organizing the new elections. Meanwhile, Henry still hasn’t returned to Haiti since the chaos erupted. Human Rights Watch he writes that the United States put pressure on the Prime Minister precisely to resign and favor a transitional government. Meanwhile, a series of legal, financial and operational problems continue to block the deployment of the international support mission, although Kenya and Haiti signed a bilateral agreement on March 1. Promises of support for the mission also came from the United States, Canada and France.