Haiti's prime minister resigned. Who will replace him?

Haiti's embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation late on Monday, effective once a transition council and temporary replacement have been appointed.

HOW DID HENRY RESIGN?

A U.S. official said the decision for Henry's resignation was made on Friday, though he did not officially tender it to his cabinet until Monday evening and later issued an official video address.

Henry had traveled to Kenya in late February to secure support for an international security mission to fight Haiti's powerful armed gangs, but violence in the capital escalated during his absence and left him stranded in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

: Haiti's Prime Minister Ariel Henry speaks while addressing the nation, at an unidentified location on a date given as March 11, 2024,

Widespread protests have called for Henry's resignation. He took power after the 2021 assassination of Haiti's last president, Jovenel Moise, and had postponed elections, citing a lack of security. He had said he would step down by Feb. 7.

Late Friday, heavy gunfire sounded near the capital's National Palace, after days of violence in which armed gangs had broken thousands out of prison, forcing the capital's main cargo port to close and the government to order a state of emergency.

Over the weekend, representatives from Haiti's government as well as opposition groups, the private sector, civil society and religious groups met with leaders from the U.S. and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to establish a consensus on how to return stability to the island.   

WHAT IS THE TRANSITION COUNCIL?

The presidential transitional council will be made up of two observers and seven voting members representing a range of Haitian society, CARICOM chair Irfaan Ali said on Monday.

During the transition, the council will exercise specified presidential powers through majority vote. 

It will also appoint an interim prime minister and a cabinet, co-sign orders and establish a provisional electoral council that will be tasked with paving the way to Haiti's first elections since 2016.

Anyone who has been convicted, charged or hit by U.N. sanctions will be barred from membership, as will anyone who opposes the U.N. resolution to deploy a security force to Haiti or intends to run in the next elections.

WHO WILL BE ON THE COUNCIL?

Although no individuals have been named to the council, CARICOM said the two non-voting observer roles would go to a religious leader and representative of Haiti's civil society.

The seven voting members will be drawn from Haiti's business sector and political parties or coalitions, including a group known as the January 30 Collective, and the December 21 Accord, an organization that had backed Henry's mandate to rule until February 2024.

A member will also be appointed by Fanmi Lavalas, a center-left party led by 70-year-old former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected president, and who was ousted in a 2004 coup d'etat.

Members will also represent Pitit Dessalines, a party led by former Senator Jean-Charles Moise after he split from Fanmi Lavalas and the Montana Accord, a 2021 grassroots movement that emerged toward the end of Haiti's last presidency.

The last member will represent Committed to Development (EDE), the party of former Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who has been accused of involvement in the assassination of Jovenel Moise, charges he blasted as political persecution.

[ABC is Private US Media]

Attacks on the international airport in Port-au-Prince generated headlines worldwide. Coordinated assaults on multiple prisons freed thousands of prisoners over the weekend. But all that could be just the beginning of what an increasing number of Haiti experts are openly referring to as a full-blown rebellion against the country's sitting government.

I was speaking to a senior diplomatic official in Haiti on Monday, a very sober and calculated person not prone to hyperbole. In discussing the situation, I used the word "gangs" and he cut me off.

"I would stop using that term if I were you," he said, arguing that gangs are what you find in American cities. In Haiti, there are multiple large criminal groups with enormous firepower, now unified with the stated goal of toppling the sitting government.

"They are armed rebel groups and this is civil war," the source said.[...]

Some 80% of the capital is under gang control, if not more, according to the UN. Those groups have fought each other and the government for years[...]

But things have fundamentally changed in the last month. We will get to the "why" in a moment, but consider the following:

-Haiti's dozens of gangs, largely grouped into two competing alliances, have seemingly set aside their differences and rather than attack each other, are working together to attack the government.

-The gangs are not hiding their goal. It is a change in government. Gang leadership, most notably a man called Jimmy Chérizier, aka Barbecue, has said the fighting won't stop until the unelected acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry is no longer in power. He's called for Henry's arrest.

-The gangs have launched a series of well-planned, massive attacks against key targets around the city. Nearly 30 police precincts have also come under fire, many completely taken over or destroyed. Government buildings have also been attacked, including one just 500 meters from the U.S. embassy. There is random, sporadic violence constantly around the city, but these attacks are strategic and targeted.

As to the why—gangs have long sought to fill a power vacuum left behind when President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July 2021. But an inflection point came last month.

Henry, in charge since just a few weeks after Moïse's death, had said he would step down by early February. But then, he changed course. The U.S.-backed Henry said the security situation needed to improve before he could leave and new elections could take place. Last week, he committed only to holding elections in August of 2025, a full 18 months away.

That appeared to be the final straw.

In a way, this gang-fueled violence is the armed manifestation of widespread popular anger against Henry and his government. Ordinary Haitians are furious over the ever-worsening poverty, hunger, and violence we've seen under Henry. He is a near-universally loathed public figure.

It is not hard to find people in Port-au-Prince who fully support the actions taken by the gangs, even if they are terrified that they themselves or their families could be collateral damage.

It is not that most in Haiti support the gangs or the chaos they cause. Far from it. Most despise the death and destruction they’ve wrought in the country. But for now, some feel the gangs are the only group capable of forcing Henry out.[...]

Remember this staggering fact: in this democratic country, there is not one elected leader serving at any level of government anywhere in the country. No elections have been held since 2016.[...]

So the rebellion, the attempted revolution, has begun--alongside the seemingly never-ending suffering of millions of innocents.

6 Mar 24

Nearly 85% of the Haitian people live on $5.30 a day or less. Severe malnutrition among young children is rampant, and the streets are overflowing with uncollected garbage. Potable water is scarce along with medical care — cholera, which is often spread through contaminated water, has broken out, with hundreds of cases reported in the last few weeks. 

Access to education is spotty. The state has not fed or given water to prisoners since the beginning of the year, leading radio stations to run feed-the-prisoner campaigns; Haitian prisoners are dying from malnutrition.

It has been clear for months that acting Prime Minister/President Ariel Henry — appointed 16 months ago by the U.S. with the blessing of the Core Group — has not been able to control the rising, militant, hungry anger of the Haitian masses. The Core Group consists of the ambassadors of Canada, France, Brazil, Germany and Spain, along with representatives of the U.N. and the Organization of American States (OAS).

Since the beginning of August, hundreds of thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets in increasingly militant demonstrations to express their total rejection of Henry’s government and U.S. imperialism.

On Oct. 10, huge demonstrations rose up in Port-au-Prince, Petit-Goâve, Jacmel, l’Île de la Gonâve, Mirebalais, Lascahobas, Cap-Haïtien and Gonaïves. In Cap-Haïtien, a massive demonstration was attacked by cops firing live rounds. One demonstrator was shot dead; in reaction the crowd attacked and ransacked businesses, including a branch of Unibank, one of two major Haitian banks, which was set ablaze.

Since their puppet Ariel has proven to be hugely unpopular, the U.S. has apparently decided to try someone else. A Disaster Assistance Response Team is currently in Port-au-Prince. DART teams generally consist of “experts” from the political arms of U.S. imperialism, who assess “needs” and organize the delivery of “aid.”

What's Going On in Haiti Rn

tldr: barbeque (leader of revolutionary gang, isnt a cannibal btw) says hes trying to liberate Haiti to free the oppressed groups in Haiti from not only the rich ppl who live in Haiti but also from imperialism so Haiti can get better, but moving along from that, theres canals being built in Haiti so Haitians can actually make their own food and won’t rely in others

alright, I’m making this post, not only because I dont see many people talking about it, but also because they just aren't really telling the exact full story and theyre only using what the western media is saying and not really using any haitian sources or anything like that, for this post Im NOT picking sides or anything of the sort, I just want people to be more aware of what's actually going on in haiti

so where all of this gang stuff is going down is in the CAPITAL of Haiti, this isn't going on all across the country, everything really violent is happening in PORT AU PRINCE. As you know, there's this man called Barbecue who is essentially running Port Au Prince with his gang or group or whatever you want to call it, no Barbecue didn't get his name because he's a cannibal or anything like that, he got it because his mom would sell bbq chicken for people in his neighborhood. The cannibal claims that were going all around on social media was spread by alt right twitter users like elon musk and some other famous alt right twitter users.

NOW when it comes to the gangs in Haiti, what Barbecue is trying to do is "liberate this country, once and for all"(in his own words not mines), and he's done that by trying to bring together all the past gangs of Haiti and they've formed this one big group called "Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies" or I'll just call them G9, and now they control 80% of Port Au Prince and many civilians themselves who live in poverty and terrible conditions are with them because they just want a life with rights to healthcare, education, and housing, things that are hard to get because of politicians and rich people oppressing them and taking away their resources and forcing them to live with the scraps. Another group of people who's followed him is this group of men he's broke out of jail. In this jail as far as I know, these people were never actually given trials or anything and they as well were forced into terrible living conditions with, lack of food, space, that kinda thing. When it comes to G9 getting the prime minister, Ariel Henry, to step down, the reason why they wanted him to step down (as far as i remember) was because he just pushing the election for a new president back and back each time, and people were/are under the impression that he just wanted to get more power. On top of that Ariel Henry was NEVER SWORN INTO HIS POSITION. Plus, after the Haitian president's assassination in 2021, INSTEAD of working with Haitian civil society groups that were open to give solutions to fix the situation, the US, Canada, France, and other places, put their trust into Ariel Henry, and saw him as the connection to the Haitian public. Henry is not well liked by the public of Haiti and he is now not in Haiti and is in Puerto Rico, essentially exiled from Haiti. Now dont take this as me putting Barbecue in this shining light, he did use to be a police officer, and he has closed off Port Au Prince from the rest of the country and people are finding it hard to get food, water, go to school, and much much more, Im just laying out what's happening and his goal as he says it. If you want more info, watch some interviews Barbeque has done.

When it come to the US intervening or ANY country for that matter intervening is because in the past, forcing interventions in haiti has only led to worse. There was terrible treatment to the citizens and they stole money, their only way of intervening was literally through weapons against innocent civilians. Many haitians do NOT want any country, especially the US coming near them AT ALL because theyre are scared for what theyre going to do to them and their livelihoods, and you can't blame them one bit, the US is quite literally a genocidal empire who only looks out for itself.

ON SOME MORE BRIGHTER NEWS, idk if you heard, but theres this canal thats close to being finished, that will allow Haitian farmers to grow and make their own foods so Haiti wont have to rely on other places of getting stuff like rice!! The canal gets water from the massacre river however, Dominican politicians dont like that and are claiming that the canal will weaken the water supply of the river, despite the DR having like 11 canals using the river and Haiti has 1 (the one being built rn). To slow down the water flow going into the canal, Dominican officals have these pumps that are constantly flowing to take away water from the canal, however the canal is still able to flow a good amount of water into Haiti, to Haitian farmers :)

on top of that, Haitian farmers in another part of Haiti has gotten inspired to take action to make their OWN canal (that has NOTHING to do with the massacre river before yall start) and are currently making their own canal so they can have water so WOOOO🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹🇭🇹

anyways pls share and make sure to listen to Haitian voices and media to understand whats going on, dont use media from the same niggas that assisted a Dominican dictator that committed a Haitian genocide :P

to learn more about whats going on theres this Haitian news source called Haiti Liberte that discusses whats going on in Haiti and they have a documentary on youtube that goes more in depth with Barbeque and his ideas/wants and some Haitian citizens

as for the canals, on tik tok theres this woman whos been at the forefront of it all, discussing whats going on with the canals, giving updates, and shes actually in Haiti, and you can see the canals for yourself, her @ is @bertrhude

On March 5, Haiti’s acting prime minister took off on a chartered Gulfstream jet from a New Jersey airport with nowhere to go.

Ariel Henry—Haiti’s unelected leader since July 2021—had spent weeks traveling in Africa and the Americas trying to rally international support for his country, which has been mired in chronic poverty, political instability, and an insurgency of criminal groups led by a former Haitian police officer turned gang leader, Jimmy Chérizier, known as “Barbecue.”

While Henry was out of the country, Barbecue and his allies coordinated an armed assault calling for Henry’s ouster. They stormed police stations and prisons, released around 3,700 inmates, and attacked the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, making it too dangerous for Henry to land there.

Instead, Henry tried to negotiate a plan to land in neighboring Dominican Republic, but he was rebuffed at the last minute by the government there, according to U.S. officials, Caribbean officials, and regional experts familiar with the matter. Other Caribbean countries reacted coolly to the prospect of hosting Henry as his support domestically and abroad began collapsing. Finally, he landed in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where he remained in limbo until March 12, when he announced his intention to resign.

The chaos and uncertainty of Henry’s final flight as prime minister underlined the political tumult that has gripped Haiti—and the tepid response to Haiti’s downward spiral by an overstretched international community reluctant to tackle yet another crisis.

If Haiti isn’t yet formally deemed a failed state, it’s well on its way. Government institutions and basic services have broken down and gang violence has sparked one of the worst humanitarian and refugee crises in the Western Hemisphere.

“It’s an extremely dangerous situation,” said Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s former foreign minister who now runs the Haitian Observatory of International Relations think tank. “Without a change, we are facing a possibility of an entire nation becoming a big open-air jail run by gangs.”

Yet what that change should look like—and who might be willing and able to step in to make it happen—remains as unclear now as it has for more than two years.

Haiti’s near collapse has led to frantic meetings among regional leaders in recent weeks and heated debates between the Biden administration and Congress over what role, if any, the United States should play in the unfolding emergency in its own backyard. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Jamaica on Monday to meet with Caribbean leaders on the issue, and he pledged an additional $100 million in U.S. funds to finance the deployment of a multinational force to help stabilize the country.

The Biden administration is urging Congress to unlock even more funds. Two powerful Republican lawmakers—Sen. Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—argue that the administration doesn’t have adequate plans for how it would use those funds. They also charge that the administration let its Haiti policy fester in indecision for too long, exacerbating the country’s current predicament.

Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has faced chronic instability for decades, fueled in part by devastating natural disasters and international aid mishaps, including a U.N. mission that brought a deadly cholera outbreak to the country as well as sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children by U.N. peacekeepers, and a 2010 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, followed by bungled international relief efforts that sparked a cycle of mismanagement and stunted development projects.

In 2021, then-President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated by a group of gunmen in his home, sparking the current political crisis in the country. (A Haitian judge last month indicted three prominent individuals—Moïse’s widow, an ex-prime minister, and a former Haitian chief of police—for involvement in the assassination, charges they have denied as baseless political reprisals.) Henry took over as acting president shortly after and soon began pleading with foreign powers for a military intervention to address the country’s spiraling instability.

Gangs have taken control of much of Port-au-Prince, and rights groups say the gangs have used rape and torture as weapons against the civilian population. Thousands of Haitians have been killed and kidnapped.

“It is difficult to overstate the gravity of the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Haiti today,” the U.N. mission in Haiti wrote in a report to the U.N. Security Council in January, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy. The violence has led to a surge in Haitians fleeing the country; the report noted that the number of Haitians fleeing to Central America with the aim of making it across the U.S. southern border increased 23-fold in 2023—from 1,550 people in July to 35,500 people in October.

The U.S. Embassy in Haiti this week evacuated some diplomats and nonessential personnel as well as deployed a specialized detachment of U.S. Marines to bolster the embassy’s security. Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of U.S. Southern Command, told lawmakers in a hearing on Thursday that the U.S. military had plans ready to evacuate U.S. citizens if the crisis worsened.

“It’s absolute chaos. People are crying out for even some basic level of security,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “We need to see the international community doing something very rapid to bring security and stability and protection from the violence.”

The international community, meanwhile, procrastinated on the matter for over two years, officials and experts said.

After Moïse’s assassination, the United States balked at the prospect of leading a multinational force. In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden privately asked Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if Canada would take the lead, current and former officials said. Canada declined, but it offered to contribute $100 million to help fund such a force. No other country in South or Central America stepped up. Haiti, coordinating with the Biden administration, then turned to Africa. Kenya agreed to lead a mission and deploy 1,000 police officers to Haiti as part of an effort that would be coordinated and bankrolled mostly by the United States.

That plan stalled when Kenyan opposition politicians challenged the program’s legality. The U.S. government, meanwhile, already overstretched by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, let Haiti fall by the wayside, current and former U.S. officials told Foreign Policy. Biden didn’t nominate a U.S. ambassador to Haiti until May 2023, nearly two years after Moïse’s assassination. Biden’s nominee, career diplomat Dennis Hankins, was confirmed to the post by the U.S. Senate on Thursday.

“A lot of countries at the beginning were reluctant to take the lead, though Haiti needs urgent help,” Edmond said. But, he added, “At the end of the day, we also need to take our own responsibilities for our own country. I don’t think I will throw the blame only on the international community.”

Henry’s resignation announcement was quietly seen as a relief by some U.S. and regional officials, but it also created new challenges as the region tries to cobble together a temporary governance structure from afar to lead Haiti out of its crisis.

His announcement came after quiet pressure from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), officials said, as well as repeated threats from gang leaders should he return to the country. (The White House has denied reports that it also pressured Henry to resign.)

Now, CARICOM is helping craft a new presidential transitional council composed of seven voting members and two observers, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by Foreign Policy. Candidates for the council would be put forward by at least five active Haitian political parties with input from CARICOM-screened civil society organizations. Once appointed, the new council, in theory, would help restore legitimacy to Haiti’s absent government and lead the country on a path toward stability and, eventually, elections. Henry has said he’ll officially step down once the new council is in place.

Almost immediately, though, current and former officials said, those efforts hit a wall as Haitian elites began wrangling with CARICOM officials over who should make the final cut, and some potential member candidates voiced fear for their families’ lives if they joined the council. On Friday, Blinken said that most of the parties have named their representatives for the council but that several still have not.

Edmond said many Haitians are skeptical of the plan and “don’t believe it’s the right solution.” Edmond said he believes a better alternative would be for the Haitian Supreme Court to take temporary control and appoint a technocrat as prime minister to strengthen Haiti’s national police forces and lead the country into elections.

Meanwhile, Henry’s resignation has put on hold the U.S.- and U.N.-backed plan for Kenya to deploy a police force to Haiti to help restore order to the country. Kenyan President William Ruto said he remained committed to the plan but that it would only occur after the transitional council was established. It’s unclear whether Henry’s resignation will create new legal hurdles for Ruto to carry out the deployment.

Biden administration officials also considered offers from Senegal and Rwanda to lead the security assistance force, but those proposals were ultimately rejected in favor of Kenya, current and former U.S. and Haitian officials said. Rwanda faces widespread criticisms over its checkered record on human rights and authoritarian bent, and Senegal is currently mired in its own political crisis over delayed elections. However, Kenya’s police have also been accused of committing abuses at home by human rights groups, including the use of excessive force and the killing of more than 100 people in 2023.

The planned Kenyan operation, even if it is able to commence, faces significant practical and logistical challenges, U.S. officials and congressional aides said. For starters, neither Kenya, the United States, nor other regional powers have stated what the rules of engagement would be for Kenyan forces once they are deployed to the country, where they face the daunting task of quelling powerful and heavily armed gangs and a weakened and embattled local police force.

There is also the broader question of whether adding more police will solve the deeper systemic issues that led to the current situation. “The police cannot make significant inroads against gangs absent a broader political breakthrough,” Pierre Espérance, the executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, argued in Foreign Policy last July. “In Haiti, gang members are not independent warlords operating apart from the state. They are part of the way the state functions—and how political leaders assert power.”

An unclassified U.S. intelligence assessment released this week predicted that Haitian gangs “will be more likely to violently resist a foreign national force deployment to Haiti because they perceive it to be a shared threat to their control and operations” and that Haiti’s national police have been “unable to counter gang violence and [have] been plagued by resource issues, corruption challenges, and limited training.”

Any deployment of Kenyan forces would also require substantial logistical support from the U.S. military, U.S. officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter said. Administration officials have told Congress that once given the green light, Kenyan police could be deployed to Haiti in a matter of 45 to 60 days in ideal conditions—and without U.S. boots on the ground. But Haiti has no clear base or logistics hub for the Kenyan police to be deployed to, particularly after gangs seized control of major power centers in Port-au-Prince.

Another complicating factor is the funding mechanism. After balking for nearly two years on proposals to deploy their own forces to Haiti, the U.S. and Canadian governments have both pledged to fund the Kenyan-led force, but no funding mechanism has been set up yet to do that. A multinational police mission in Haiti could cost an estimated $500 million to $800 million per year, State Department officials have told congressional oversight committees.

Risch has held up an estimated $40 million of the first tranche of U.S. funding for the Kenya-led mission. “[A]fter years of discussions, repeated requests for information, and providing partial funding to help them plan, the administration only this afternoon sent us a rough plan to address this crisis,” Risch said in a joint statement with McCaul. The administration “owes Congress a lot more details in a more timely manner before it gets more funding,” they said.

John Kirby, White House National Security Council spokesperson, said the situation is getting worse in the meantime. “The violence has been increasing, not decreasing, as well as the instability. And, of course, the Haitian people are the ones that are suffering as a result,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Edmond said that even if the Kenya-led mission gets underway, the United States has a “moral obligation to consider, before the arrival of the Kenyan forces, a way to help the national police forces that are now being overwhelmed by the gangs.”

“The United States is the leader of the free world. Haiti is a member of that world, one of the closest neighbors to the U.S. There is a moral obligation here to step in.”

Widdersheim said the United States can’t dodge responsibilities. “Half measures won’t be good enough this time,” she said. “The U.S. government hasn’t in the past seemed to care enough to truly invest in Haiti’s long-term development, and it’s to our detriment because nothing ever sticks; we just get stuck doing half measures that always fail.”

Canada airlifted 18 vulnerable Canadians out of Haiti by helicopter to the Dominican Republic on Monday, and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly says more will be offered the chance to evacuate in the coming days. Haiti has been in a profound security crisis since mid-2021, when gangs took control of key infrastructure and started violent turf wars that have led to the collapse of most of its medical and food systems. "Gangs are terrorizing the streets; women and children are scared of getting out of their homes," Joly told a news conference. The chaos escalated earlier this month when Ariel Henry, Haiti's unelected prime minister, visited Kenya to confirm plans for an international military intervention led by police from the east African country.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

Why The US Won't Leave Haiti Alone

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2024-03-12/explainer-haitis-prime-minister-resigned-who-will-replace-him

Haiti's Prime Minister Resigned. Who Will Replace Him?

-Haiti's embattled Prime Minister Ariel Henry announced his resignation late on Monday, effective once a transition council and temporary replacement have been appointed.

HOW DID HENRY RESIGN?

A U.S. official said the decision for Henry's resignation was made on Friday, though he did not officially tender it to his cabinet until Monday evening and later issued an official video address.

Henry had traveled to Kenya in late February to secure support for an international security mission to fight Haiti's powerful armed gangs, but violence in the capital escalated during his absence and left him stranded in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.

Widespread protests have called for Henry's resignation. He took power after the 2021 assassination of Haiti's last president, Jovenel Moise, and had postponed elections, citing a lack of security. He had said he would step down by Feb. 7.

Late Friday, heavy gunfire sounded near the capital's National Palace, after days of violence in which armed gangs had broken thousands out of prison, forcing the capital's main cargo port to close and the government to order a state of emergency.

Over the weekend, representatives from Haiti's government as well as opposition groups, the private sector, civil society and religious groups met with leaders from the U.S. and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to establish a consensus on how to return stability to the island.   

WHAT IS THE TRANSITION COUNCIL?

The presidential transitional council will be made up of two observers and seven voting members representing a range of Haitian society, CARICOM chair Irfaan Ali said on Monday.

During the transition, the council will exercise specified presidential powers through majority vote. 

It will also appoint an interim prime minister and a cabinet, co-sign orders and establish a provisional electoral council that will be tasked with paving the way to Haiti's first elections since 2016.

Anyone who has been convicted, charged or hit by U.N. sanctions will be barred from membership, as will anyone who opposes the U.N. resolution to deploy a security force to Haiti or intends to run in the next elections.

CARICOM did not give a date for the council appointments nor the elections, though regional leaders have said security must be established before a vote.

WHO WILL BE ON THE COUNCIL?

Although no individuals have been named to the council, CARICOM said the two non-voting observer roles would go to a religious leader and representative of Haiti's civil society.

The seven voting members will be drawn from Haiti's business sector and political parties or coalitions, including a group known as the January 30 Collective, and the December 21 Accord, an organization that had backed Henry's mandate to rule until February 2024.

A member will also be appointed by Fanmi Lavalas, a center-left party led by 70-year-old former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected president, and who was ousted in a 2004 coup d'etat.

Members will also represent Pitit Dessalines, a party led by former Senator Jean-Charles Moise after he split from Fanmi Lavalas and the Montana Accord, a 2021 grassroots movement that emerged toward the end of Haiti's last presidency.

The last member will represent Committed to Development (EDE), the party of former Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who has been accused of involvement in the assassination of Jovenel Moise, charges he blasted as political persecution.

"

Haiti’s government declared a state of emergency and nighttime curfew late Sunday in an effort to regain control of the streets after a huge popular uprising over the weekend saw armed fighters storm the country’s two biggest prisons.

The 72-hour state of emergency took effect immediately. The government said it would set out to find the escapees from prison. “The police were ordered to use all legal means at their disposal to enforce the curfew and apprehend all offenders,” said a statement from Finance Minister Patrick Boivert, acting prime minister.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry traveled abroad last week to try to salvage international bourgeois support for bringing in a US-backed security force to pacify the country in its conflict with increasingly militant organizations countrywide." ... "But the siege Saturday night of the National Penitentiary came as a shock even to Haitians accustomed to living under the constant pressure due to colonial misrule. Almost all of the estimated 4,000 inmates fled in the jailbreak, leaving the usually criminally overcrowded facility empty Sunday with no prison guards in sight and plastic sandals, clothing and furniture strewn across the concrete patio. Three bodies with gunshot wounds lay at the prison entrance." ... "Among the few dozen who chose to stay in the prison are 18 former Colombian soldiers accused of working as mercenaries in the July 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. Amid the clashes Saturday night, several of the Colombians shared a video pleading for their lives.

'Please, please help us,” one of the men, Francisco Uribe, said in the message widely shared on social media. “They are massacring people indiscriminately inside the cells.' " .... "A second Port-au-Prince prison containing about 1,400 inmates was also overrun. Gunmen also occupied the nation’s top soccer stadium in a highly symbolic display of defiance Internet service for many residents was down as Haiti’s top mobile network said a fiber-optic cable connection was slashed during the rebellion." .. "The rebellion is significant since the president, who is US-backed and unelected, has been organizing an international occupation force to impose its will on the country. There has been no notable progress on social issues, economic issues, or reparations for US and French destruction of the country.

The violence must be understood in this context."

Haiti’s deepening crisis — armed groups launching an assault on the government, and the de facto prime minister on indefinite layover in the San Juan, Puerto Rico airport — is a predictable consequence of 14 years of U.S. support for undemocratic regimes connected to Haiti’s PHTK party as it has dismantled Haiti’s democracy.

Haiti has a chance at reversing this descent and returning to a more stable, democratic path, but only if the Biden administration will let it.

Prime Minister Ariel Henry was stranded in San Juan Tuesday on his way back from Kenya, where he had signed an agreement for Kenyan police to come bolster his repressive, corrupt and unpopular regime. The armed groups, including many that had collaborated with Henry’s regime, took advantage of his absence to attack government infrastructure, and free 5,000 prisoners, many of them members of armed groups. Henry had planned to fly to the neighboring Dominican Republic and take a helicopter ride back to Haiti’s National Palace under the cover of darkness. But Dominican authorities refused entry to the prime minister’s chartered plane, which re-routed to San Juan.

Prime Minister Henry has not yet resigned, and the State Department denied reports that it demanded his resignation. But Henry has clearly lost the support of the United States, which for two years had allowed him to resist Haitians demands for fair elections. Absent Washington’s support, Henry has little chance of regaining power.

This dire situation is not only predictable, it was predicted. Haitian-American officials, Haitian civil society, members of the U.S. Congress, and other experts had been warning for years that the U.S. propping up Henry would lead to increasing tragedy for Haitians. The United States, which installed Henry in power in the first place, ignored these pleas and stood resolutely by its friend. With U.S. support, Henry’s unconstitutional term as prime minister exceeded any other prime minister’s term under Haiti’s 1987 Constitution. Levels of gang violence, kidnapping, hunger, and misery also reached unprecedented levels.

The United States is still insisting on getting Kenyan troops to Haiti. The State Department has persistently — if so far unsuccessfully — tried to deploy non-American boots onto Haitian ground since Henry requested them in October 2022. The mission’s deployment initially stalled because it was widely rejected as a bad idea that will primarily serve to prop up the repressive regime that generated the crisis. Haitian civil society [groups] repeatedly insisted that the first step towards security must be a transitional government with the legitimacy to organize elections and determine how the international community can best help Haiti.

Concerns that the intervention would serve only to reinforce an unpopular regime led the countries that the Biden administration first tapped to lead the mission, including Canada, Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors, and Brazil, to pass. The U.N. itself concluded that the mission would require too much “robust use of force” to be appropriate for a peacekeeping mission. So, the Security Council took the unusual step of authorizing the mission, but on the condition that it not actually be a U.N. mission that the organization would have to take responsibility for. The Biden administration, likely concerned about election-year cell phone videos of troops shooting indiscriminately in crowded neighborhoods — as the last foreign intervention did — declined to send U.S. troops for the mission (but is considering deploying a small Marine contingent to Haiti in early March).

Last August Kenya — which did not even have diplomatic relations with Haiti but did need the hundreds of millions of dollars that the United States offered — agreed to lead the mission. The exploratory delegation Kenya sent to evaluate conditions in Haiti quickly realized how deadly the planned mission would be for Haitians and Kenyans alike, and proposed to limit its scope to protecting public infrastructure.

The United States was not open to renegotiating the deal, and Kenya withdrew its proposed limits. But Kenya’s High Court temporarily blocked the deployment as unconstitutional. Ariel Henry’s visit to Kenya was for the signature of an accord that Kenya’s President William Ruto hoped would overcome the court’s objections. Kenyan lawyers insist that the agreement itself is illegal, and are continuing their challenge. In the meantime, Kenyan officers who had volunteered for the mission are changing their minds. Another obstacle appeared on March 7, when the White House conceded that the mission cannot be deployed without congressional approval of funding.

The State Department’s insistence that the Kenyan deployment must nevertheless happen raises fears that the United States will also continue its policy of installing and propping up undemocratic regimes in Haiti. Finance Minister Patrick Boisvert, who Henry tapped as interim prime minister when he left for Kenya, increased concerns of authoritarian governance on March 6 when he declared a three-day curfew and state of emergency throughout the Port-au-Prince region in an edict that did not even mention the legal basis for his authority. The next day Boisvert raised more fears by extending the emergency measures for a month and adding in a ban on all protests.

The State Department’s rescinding its support for Henry might have been promising had the gangs not already made his ouster inevitable. State’s claim that it now supports “an empowered and inclusive governance structure” that will “pave the way for free and fair elections” might have been promising if it had not added the condition that the new government must “move with urgency to help the country prepare for a multinational security support mission.”

A legitimate, broadly supported, sovereign transitional Haitian government might request foreign police assistance. But a government allowed to form only if it accepts a U.S.-imposed occupation force originally designed to prop up a hated, repressive government is not sovereign. It may not be legitimate or broadly-supported either.

The United States tasked CARICOM, the federation of Haiti’s Caribbean neighbors, to forge a civil society consensus. CARICOM has enjoyed credibility in Haiti in the past, but over the past few months it has faced criticism for trying to strong-arm civil society into an agreement that maintained Henry’s power. Not surprisingly, CARICOM-led talks on March 6 and 7 failed.

When allowed, Haitians have a history of coming together to make their way out of a crisis. Haiti became a country in 1804 by defeating Napoleon, with almost no outside help. In 1986, when the U.S. finally withdrew its support from Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Haitians eventually wrested power from the military and held fair elections. In 2006, they voted their way out of the crisis created by the U.S. kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years before. In August 2021, shortly after the killing of Haiti’s last president, Jovenel Moïse, a broad-based group presented the Montana Accord that would have created a transitional government leading to elections in two years. The U.S. vetoed the accord, citing, among other reasons, that the two-year time frame was too long. That was 30 months ago, and there are no elections in sight.No amount of submission to U.S. demands by Prime Minister Henry and his predecessors can justify the absolute horror that our support has allowed them to inflict on the Haitian people. It is time for the United States to let Haitians come together and make their way out of the current crisis. Civil society [groups] [see] an opportunity for democracy in the crisis, and people all over Haiti have been meeting, discussing and negotiating to develop platforms for a broad-based, legitimate transitional government that can hold fair elections. It is expected that soon — maybe within weeks — one of these platforms will rise to the top, and civil society will coalesce around it. The United States needs to let that process happen without interference or conditions.

8 Mar 24

If the U.S. moves forward with a U.N.-proposed plan to send armed forces into Haiti, the Biden administration’s former envoy to Haiti warned, the result will be a predictable catastrophe.

Ambassador Dan Foote resigned last fall in protest of U.S. deportation policy, which continues to return planeloads of Haitian migrants to dangerous conditions without giving them a serious opportunity to apply for asylum. In his resignation letter, he also condemned the U.S. for its support of the extralegal, de facto Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has been credibly linked to the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, and has fired multiple prosecutors probing the crime.

In recent weeks, Haiti has erupted in protests against deteriorating economic conditions. In September, Henry cut fuel subsidies, sending costs flying and people into the streets. Gangs responded by blockading a key fuel terminal, and in early October, Henry called for international intervention. An outbreak of cholera, originally brought to the island by a U.N. “peacekeeping” operation in the 2000s, is worsening as the fuel shortage limits clean water supplies.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres responded to Henry’s call for intervention by encouraging an international armed force to deploy to Haiti. On Monday, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. representative to the United Nations, told the Security Council that the U.S. and Mexico would be proposing a resolution for a “carefully scoped non-U.N. mission led by a partner country with the deep and necessary experience required for such an effort to be effective.”

Foote said Biden’s increasingly interventionist posture toward Haiti, which was evident even last year, was behind his decision to resign. “The deportations were the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Foote said. “But the major reason I resigned is because I saw U.S policy moving in exactly this direction, toward intervention, which is, as Einstein said — and I’ll paraphrase — trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity. And in Haiti, each time the international community has intervened without Haitian and popular support, the situation is stabilized temporarily, and then it becomes much worse over time.”

An armed intervention would likely produce a short period of calm, he said, but would fall apart sooner or later. “It’s almost unfathomable that all Haitians are calling for a different solution, yet the U.S and the U.N and international [institutions] are blindly stumbling through with Ariel Henry,” he said.

Foote said that the Biden administration continues to support Henry in power because he has been amenable to accepting the deportations of migrants. “It’s gotta be because he has promised to be compliant,” he said, “but we’re going to have a civil uprising in Haiti similar to 1915, when we sent the Marines in for the first time and administered Haiti for almost 20 years. In 1915, Haiti was in a similar position, and they went up to the French Embassy at the time, or the legation, and they dragged the president — President [Jean Vilbrun Guillaume] Sam — out, and they tore him limb from limb on the streets. And I fear that you’re gonna see something similar with Ariel Henry or with a foreign force that’s sent in there to propagate his government and keep him in power.”

Haiti's government declared a 72-hour state of emergency on Sunday after armed gangs stormed a major prison. At least 12 people were killed and about 3,700 inmates escaped in the jailbreak.

Gang leaders are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, whose whereabouts are unknown since he travelled to Kenya.

Gangs control around 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Gang violence has plagued Haiti for years.

A government statement said two prisons - one in Port-au-Prince and the other in nearby Croix des Bouquets - were stormed over the weekend.

It said the acts of "disobedience" were a threat to national security and said it was instituting an immediate night-time curfew in response, which started at 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Monday).

How gangs came to dominate Haiti

Haitian media reported that police stations were attacked, distracting authorities before the coordinated assault on the jails.

Among those detained in Port-au-Prince were suspects charged in connection with the 2021 killing of President Jovenel Moïse.

In the capital, gangs have erected barricades to prevent security forces from encroaching on their territory, while their strongholds in Port-au-Prince's vast shantytowns are still largely on lockdown.

Schools and many businesses are closed, and there are reports of looting in some neighbourhoods.

Police have set up roadblocks and there is much uncertainty on the streets.

The latest upsurge in violence began on Thursday, when the prime minister travelled to Nairobi to discuss sending a Kenya-led multinational security force to Haiti.

Gang leader Jimmy Chérizier (nicknamed Barbecue) declared a co-ordinated attack to remove him.

"All of us, the armed groups in the provincial towns and the armed groups in the capital, are united," said the former police officer, who is accused of being behind several massacres in Port-au-Prince.

Haiti's police union had asked the military to help reinforce the capital's main prison, but the compound was stormed late on Saturday.

On Sunday the doors of the prison were still open and there were no signs of officers, Reuters news agency reported. Three inmates who tried to flee lay dead in the courtyard, the report said.

A journalist for the AFP news agency who visited the prison saw around 10 bodies, some with signs of injuries caused by bullets.

One volunteer prison worker told the Reuters news agency that 99 prisoners - including former Colombian soldiers jailed over President Moïse's murder - had chosen to remain in their cells for fear of being killed in crossfire.

They have now been transferred to a different prison.

The US embassy in Port-au-Prince on Sunday urged its citizens to leave Haiti "as soon as possible". The French embassy said it was closing visa services as a "precaution".

While Haiti has been plagued by gangs for years, the violence has further escalated since President Moïse's assassination at his home in 2021. He has not been replaced and presidential elections have not been held since 2016.

Under a political deal, Mr Henry was due to stand down by 7 February. But planned elections were not held and he remains in post.

A spokesperson for the White House's National Security Council said it was "monitoring the rapidly deteriorating security situation" with "grave concern".

They said the path forward "lies with free and fair elections" and violence serves "only to delay a democratic transition while... upending the lives of thousands".

Speaking to the BBC's Newsday, Claude Joseph - who was serving as acting prime minister when President Moïse was assassinated and who is now head of the opposition party called Those Committed to Development - said Haiti was living through a "nightmare".

Mr Joseph said Prime Minister Henry wanted "to stay as long as possible in charge".

"He agreed to step down on 7 February. Now he decides to stay, despite the fact that there are huge protests throughout the country asking him to step down - but it's unfortunate that now those criminals are using violent means to force him to step down."

In January, the UN said more than 8,400 people were victims of Haiti's gang violence last year, including killings, injuries and kidnappings - more than double the numbers seen in 2022.

Many health facilities have stopped operating because of the bloodshed.

Anger at the shocking levels of violence, on top of the political vacuum, have led to several demonstrations against the government, with protesters demanding the resignation of the prime minister.

WHY HAITI IS A THREAT TO THE U.S. Why does the US keep meddling in Haiti? Given the disastrous results of its interventions up to now, it’s almost as if it wants the island nation to fail. So-called UN peacekeeping missions have led to cholera, child abuse and civilian deaths, while Washington seems incapable of letting Haitians chose their own leaders. In this clip, Brian Concannon, the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, argues that a strong Haiti poses a direct threat to US interests. The fear is that the spirit of freedom that led the island’s slaves to break their chains in 1804 is still strong and could spread. Little wonder, then, Washington has had a hand in removing Haitian leaders it doesn’t like: they might start demanding reparations at the UN and giving other oppressed nations ideas! The US, lacking all credibility in Haiti, has now roped Kenya into fronting its next intervention to ‘restore order’ on the island, where gun violence (involving US-made guns!) has spiralled out of control. The envisioned deployment of Kenyan police - now in doubt after the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry (widely seen as a Western puppet installed after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021) - would be illegal under both Kenyan and Haitian law, but Washington stumped up $300 million for the mission all the same.