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Former National Security Ministry International Affairs director Richard Lynch said the international community is treating Haiti the same way it treats sub-Saharan African failed states. He said it could take 15 years for the nation to recover from its current situation.
Speaking during the Bocas Lit Fest as part of the panel Big Ideas: The Politics of Home, Lynch said the problem that is Haiti was not created in the region, so there was not likely to be a regional autonomous solution.
“The problem that is Haiti will require an international solution. There are gangs in Haiti which we think number 3,000 people. They are now trafficking arms and ammunition out of Haiti to other countries.
“Why is a country like Haiti in the Caribbean being approached in the same way we have approached sub-Saharan African failed states? We have a situation where the country is being run by gangs and whatever levels of goods and services are being made available, the gangs control it. They control the ports, whatever version of health care, there’s absolutely no educational or judicial system, all that has fallen down.”
Lynch said as with many failed-state arrangements, an international force was needed for intervention.
“That force goes in there and provides the level of stability to rebuild the institutions of governance that will give the opportunity for sustainable security and safety to work. Caricom or most developing countries don’t have the military capacity to sustain that kind of security in a failed state on our own, we cannot, and that’s the reality.
“My estimate is that it is not going to take anything less than 15 years to build the institution in a security arrangement, education, healthcare, a judiciary, the prosecution of those who created this circumstance, in order to give Haiti the opportunity to set the foundation to be sustainable.”
He said lessons learned in Iraq and Afghanistan showed that if this formula is not gotten right, when the security forces leaves the country the situation reverts to what it was.
“There’s a level of international commitment to Haiti that must be commensurate with centuries of structural violence and a poor system of supporting a sustainable Haiti that has to be treated with. The reality is you can’t undo hundreds of years of this kind of arrangement just so and it’s much more complex than that.”
He said the current geopolitical environment is not multi-lateral enough to support what we’re seeing in Haiti.
“In fact, what we’re seeing on the global stage is that big countries are looking inward, not to their neighbours, unless the activities of the neighbour render other countries vulnerable.”
One audience member reminded Lynch that Haiti did not manufacture weapons.
The other panelists were Inter-American Commission for Human Rights commissioner Roberta Clarke and Caribbean Culture Fund executive director Kelly Magnus. The panel was moderated by festival director Nicholas Laughlin
Magnus said there could be no meaningful long-term solution for Haiti without the active participation of the people still in Haiti.
“Everybody has not left Haiti, there are people who are still there fighting. The principals of the fund are based in Haiti. There needs to be a balance between marshalling international support and actively supporting the people who are still on the ground, still working for good in Haiti.”
Laughlin said arts and culture are needed to tell the story “that convinces everybody we have to intervene, we have to help. Not just in Haiti but for everyone else.”
He asked Magnus where the fund drew the line between funding art for art’s sake or using resources to set an agenda to go in a specific direction. She said the calls were sent out on a rotational basis but multiple calls included Haiti.
“It’s a balance between trying to run the fund with an equity lens and trying to do what is morally appropriate. We recognised the artists in Haiti are under unimaginable circumstances and we feel like prioritising their voices is the morally right thing to do. We have to try to do what is right.
“I think the principals of the fund have a profound belief in the power of art to catalyse change in the way people think primarily, even if we can’t change the way our societies are structured, laws are shaped or the way gangs behave, but we can change people’s minds, and that is why we’re going to support as much as possible Haitian creatives.”
Clarke asked whether the audience was aware of the many massacres taking place in Haiti currently.
“If we can get the texture of Haitian lives, talking about sexual violence, raping of women and girls, trafficking in people, that’s also happening. But the story has to be told in a way we can understand it and we can say we have a responsibility to something. That’s something we have to do to bring it to the attention of the national community.
“Haitians are telling us, ‘don’t just send in multinational forces like you did the last time. We want to be the authors of our fates and we don’t want you to impose on us political leaders who are part of the problems.’ So I think it’s up to us as co-neighbours in this region to understand what is going on in Haiti so we can make demands on our governments as to the pressure to be put on the international community for a response that builds the government’s foundation that Haitians need now.”
Laughlin noted that if Haiti had not had to pay the French government for its freedom, those funds could have gone into developing the nation.
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