Failure of UN Presence In Haiti

The blue helmets spell trouble wherever they’re deployed. Poorly trained and with the legal license to rape, they’re hated everywhere. It’s no wonder the gang problem has metastasized in Haiti. 

An excerpt from, “Haiti for the Haitians”: A Genealogy” By Brandon Byrd, AAIHS, April 19, 2017:

The U.S. government did not listen. But, after the beginning of its two-decade long occupation of Haiti in 1915, “Haiti for the Haitians” took on a modern Anglophone spelling and a multilingual meaning that persists to this day. From 1915-1934, liberal white editors, black Marxists, and Haitian freedom fighters all united around the common cause of Haitian liberation. In the same era that Garveyites called for an “Africa for the Africans” they rallied around the slogan of “Haiti for the Haitians.” Following the reclamation of Haitian independence due to that transnational resistance, Western journalists attributed the phrase to dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier in an attempt to blame Haitians for their alleged support of the brutal dictator. However, Haitians and their allies did not allow them to succeed in appropriating the slogan.

Today, protests against the ongoing occupation of Haiti by foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the United Nations, and international corporations possess a similar spirit and a shared slogan. In the streets of Montreal and Miami, within the pages of leftist periodicals, on the Facebook pages of human rights advocates, and in the revelry of Carnival, a similar cry arises. Haïti aux Haïtiens! Ayiti pou Ayisyen! Haiti for the Haitians!1 Haiti in which the promise of the Haitian Revolution and the dreams of the black international can finally, truly be realized.

An excerpt from, “Bursting your bubble: Haiti just can’t catch a break“ by Jonathan Park, Daily Trojan, March 24, 2023:

Around the turn of the 21st century, amid a coup d’etat that overthrew democratically-elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the U.S. and United Nations decided to rebrand its interventions in the nation as humanitarian aid. From 2004 to 2017, the U.N. operated a peacekeeping mission in Haiti, codenamed MINUSTAH, which Haitians have accused of introducing cholera and abetting widespread sexual abuse.

As of Tuesday, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is again calling for deployment of specialized forces in Haiti to take down the ongoing gang violence brutalizing the country. The UN announced Tuesday that 187 people have been killed in the past 11 days amid the political turmoil following the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

On Wednesday, I phoned Niels Frenzen, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigration Clinic at the Gould School of Law, to discuss the history of U.S.-Haiti relations and the potential impacts of another foreign intervention should it occur. Frenzen, who has been teaching at USC since 2000, previously served as the supervising attorney at the Haitian Refugee Center, a “Haitian refugee-founded and Haitian refugee-run” organization based in Miami. 

“Very few Haitians’ asylum claims were successful,” Frenzen recalled from his work at the HRC. “Back in the day — I can’t remember what the approval rate was for Haitian asylum applications, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of less than 2%.” As of 2021, Haitian migrants still have the lowest asylum approval rate since 2018, at just under 5%.

The particular racism historically directed at Haiti was precisely due to the U.S.’ fear of similar uprisings in their own country inspired by the Haitian Revolution, uprooting a system that massively benefited white plantation owners.