On October 15, the United Nations Will Fail Haiti Once Again

On October 15, the United Nations Will Fail Haiti Once Again

By Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya and Kevin Edmonds
Global Research, October 14, 2014
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/on-october-15-the-united-nations-will-fail-haiti-on
ce-again/5407785

On October 15, the United Nations Security Council will meet to “debate” the extension of
the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) which has acted as an
occupying force in the country since the summer of 2004. MINUSTAH was created to put an
end to the Multinational Interim Force (primarily made up of U.S., French, Canadian and
Chilean troops) which occupied Haiti after an internationally backed coup d’état ousted
the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party
from power on February 29, 2004.

During these ten years, MINUSTAH has compiled a horrific record of human rights abuses,
including but not limited to extrajudicial murder, an epidemic of sexual assault against
Haitian men, women and children, the repression of peaceful political protests, in
addition to unleashing cholera through criminal negligence which has caused the death of
over 9,000 people and infecting nearly a million more. Despite these well documented
abuses, the historical record has shown that the Security Council will mostly likely renew
MINUSTAH for another year without any thought to damage being done to Haiti. As evidence
of how little resistance there is to the renewal of MINUSTAH’s mandate in the United
Nations, on August 21, MINUSTAH’s budget was extended to June 2015 – clearly signalling
that the occupation is certain to continue.

When one examines the level of instability in Haiti which is used as the justification for
MINUSTAH’s continued presence in the country, the United Nations’ argument of protecting
the Haitian people from themselves falls flat. Despite the mainstream media portrayal of
Haiti as a lawless and dangerous country, in 2012, it had a homicide rate of 10.2 per
100,000 people, ranking it as one of the least violent countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean – in contrast to Washington DC which sat at 13.71 per 100,000. Furthermore, to
argue that it is the presence MINUSTAH which has acted as a stabilizing force which has
kept violence down, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that between
2007 and 2012, Haiti’s homicide rate doubled from 5.1 to 10.2 per 100,000.

For the fiscal year running from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, $609.18 million was
allocated to MINUSTAH. In the ten years in which MINUSTAH has been operational, their
total budget is over $5.5 billion. If this same amount had been applied towards human
development in the form of investments in clean water, sanitation, healthcare and
education – Haiti would have the potential reclaim its sovereignty and self-determination.

We must be clear, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti is not based on any
principles of humanitarianism, but rather those of an imperialist occupation which seeks
to make sure that the island’s government can implement and maintain repressive policies
favourable to international investors. Thus the reasons for MINUSTAH’s continued presence
in Haiti were confirmed thanks to revelations by WikiLeaks. In one of the most up-front
classified cables, from US Ambassador Janet Sanderson on October 1, 2008, stated that, “A
premature departure of MINUSTAH would leave the [Haitian] government...vulnerable
to...resurgent populist and anti-market economy political forces—reversing gains of the
last two years.”

The corrupt and repressive regime of President Michel Martelly has proudly boasted that
“Haiti is open for business”. Indeed, this is true – however it is the people and the land
that are being sold. Canadian mining companies like St. Genevive and Eurasian Minerals
have taken advantage of weak laws to prospect new sites covering enormous swaths of
territory (an estimated 1/3 of Northern Haiti has been granted to companies via permit),
setting up the potential for substantial displacement through forced evictions and
environmental destruction. Montreal based Gildan Activewear (the world’s largest
manufacturer of blank T-shirts) has routinely pressured the Haitian government to block an
increase in Haiti’s abysmally low daily minimum wage and have undermined unionization
efforts in their plants.

MINUSTAH has carried out a series of human rights violations resulting in a loss of
Haitian sovereignty, stability, dignity and life. Its record of engaging in acts of
extrajudicial murder, sexual assault, suppressing peaceful political protests, undermining
democracy and introducing cholera into Haiti are more than enough grounds to revoke its
mandate. Yet for geopolitical and economic reasons, this does not happen.

As people of good conscience and principled internationalists, we collectively have the
capacity and the resources to force an end to the military occupation of Haiti. However,
we will not be able to fulfill this potential and stand in solidarity with the laboring
classes in Haiti, if we don’t organize campaigns in Canada and across the world that
pressure contributing states to end their provision of military and police personnel to
MINUSTAH’s occupation force.

Our opposition to the military occupation of Haiti ought to take the form of
grassroots-oriented campaigns that educate, mobilize, and organize membership-based
organizations to add the end to the occupation to their organizational programme. It is
critically necessary to reach out to the people in the spaces in which they are present,
and offer specific actions that they may carry out to force the withdrawal of the
occupation troops.

We have a moral and political obligation to support the struggle for self-determination by
the popular classes in Haiti. The successful Haitian Revolution eliminated the enslavement
of Afrikans in Haiti, and lit the fire of freedom in slaveholding states in the Americas.

The people of Haiti demonstrated their solidarity with the colonized peoples in South
America by providing a place of refuge, guns, ammunition, personnel, and a printing press
to Simon Bolivar’s campaign to liberate the region from Spanish colonialism. The French
Revolution and the American Revolution cannot lay claim to being beacons and agents of
emancipation in the Americas.

As we work to rid Haiti of MINUSTAH’s occupation forces, we ought to be motivated by the
fact that we are continuing a long and proud tradition of people-to-people solidarity in
support of emancipation in the Americas. Haiti is the architect and pioneer of this
principled political tradition. We should remember this legacy as we call for the Security
Council to pull out the occupation troops from Haiti.

Kevin Edmonds is a PhD student and member of the Toronto Haiti Action Committee and the
Campaign to End the Occupation of Haiti.

Ajamu Nangwaya, Ph.D., is an educator. He is an organizer with the Campaign to End the
Occupation of Haiti, and the Organization of Afrikan Struggles and International
Solidarity.

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