Washington, D.C. – The Organisation of American States (OAS) is pleading for urgency to continue working to increase security in Haiti and to begin the democratisation process.
The OAS said in a statement that the institutional crisis that Haiti is currently experiencing is “a direct result of the actions taken by the country’s endogenous forces and by the international community”.
“The last 20 years of the international community’s presence in Haiti has amounted to one of the worst and clearest failures implemented and executed within the framework of any international cooperation,” the OAS stated in a news release.
“This is not to blame the individuals who, with a vocation for service and altruism, worked as co-operators and made their best efforts, in some cases giving their lives, for Haiti. These persons deserve our greatest respect and remembrance.”
The news release stated that the international community’s “20 years of erratic political strategy” failed to establish “a single institution with the capacity to address the problems facing Haitians”.
“After 20 years, not a single institution is stronger than it was before,” the OAS said, adding: “It was under this umbrella provided by the international community that the criminal gangs that today lay siege to the country fermented and germinated, even as the process of deinstitutionalisation and political crisis that we see today grew and took shape.”
The OAS news release stated that the international community left Haiti, leaving chaos, destruction, and violence behind after recognising failure to establish sustainable institutions.
“Right now, it is absurd to think that in this context of destruction, the Haitians, left completely alone, polarised, and with very few resources, would be able to rebuild or build the kind of security, deinstitutionalisation, and development project that could enable its 12 million inhabitants to once again live in peaceful coexistence,” the OAS news release stated.
“Without resources, in a climate of violence, without technological capabilities, without financial accumulation, without any of that today, they want us to believe a completely endogenous Haitian solution could prosper. This is not so.”
The OAS said that without the basic conditions of democracy and security, the French-speaking Caricom country was suffering from the international community’s “lack of ideas and real capacity, as well as from its own structural problems”.
“This is the international community that never knew if it should leave the MINUSTAH (United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti) in place or remove it, an international community that thought that contributing money was the same as having ideas, an international community that thought that paying its own consultants would solve Haitians’ problems,” the OAS news release stated. “Obviously, none of that was possible and none of this is possible.”
The OAS concluded that the international community must work urgently to increase security and begin the democratisation process in Haiti.
“The international community, international financial institutions, the multilateral system, and the international financial community of donor countries must make a decision,” the OAS news elease stated.
“…whether they want to industrialise Haiti sufficiently to ensure work for nine million Haitians, or whether it is economically more profitable to continue absorbing Haitian migrants and let host countries accommodate them as and how they can and in such economic conditions as they can offer.
“This is a critical decision because on it depends whether the Haitian situation continues in a state of permanent crisis with increasingly tragic dimensions, or whether we can move toward a process of transformation in which we ensure sufficient investments on sustainable terms and, therefore, the social stability of the country.”
(CMC/AR)