Race, discrimination and Haiti dominate discussions in Brazil as top Biden official visits

The United States is continuing to explore ways to help Haiti’s critical security challenges, the State Department’s top envoy for the Western Hemisphere told the Miami Herald.

“The international community’s obligation to the Haitian people is such that we have to continue acting on security and part of that security cooperation is going to require an international presence,” Brian Nichols, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said. “The exact form that it will take, will need to be discussed; whether it’s a multinational force or some other element, like a traditional peacekeeping operation.”

Nichols is in Brazil, where on Wednesday he broke ground on a new $315 million U.S. embassy in Brasilia. In between leading a conversation on human rights and a joint effort to target racial and ethnic discrimination in the South American country, he raised the subject of helping violence-ravaged Haiti. .

He is the third high-ranking Biden official to raise the issue of Haiti in conversations with the Brazilians in weeks.

“The reality is we’re gonna have to help Haiti provide the security to its people that it needs while we do things like make investments in the economy, in humanitarian issues, in building government institutions and ensuring that the Haitian people have a real option for the future,” Nichols said. “Those are the kinds of conversations that we have with Brazil and many other partners who we work with closely on Haiti like Canada, France, the European Union.”

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In October, Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the United Nations secretary general appealed for the deployment of an international force to help the Haitian national police force combat gangs. But seven months after the request, which was backed by the United States, no country has stepped forward.

Th U.S., which doesn’t want to lead such an intervention and had hoped to avoid sending another U.N. peacekeeping mission to Haiti, had hoped Canada would do so. But after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made it clear in March that his country was unlikely to lead a multinational force into Haiti, President Biden said the U.S. was going to look at whether the international community can play a larger role through the United Nations.

Some observers are now wondering if Brazil might be the one to lead the effort. During President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s previous term, the country led the last United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH, and its military has experience working in the country’s slums to root out gangs. The country already provides humanitarian assistance and some police training.

“Brazil has the experience of 13 years of leading the military component of MINUSTAH and being a leading a humanitarian donor to Haiti,” Nichols said, “and we’ve had these conversations with them about what is it that we can do together to support Haitian political reconciliation, movement toward elections and work on the Security Council to get a multinational force to Haiti.”

So far Lula da Silva has not indicated if he’s willing to deploy Brazilian military forces to Haiti. During this week’s G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, he raised the issue of Haiti, telling the international community it needs to take immediate action to address the suffering of the Haitian people.

Nichols said the security situation in Haiti, where more than 1,400 people have been killed in gang-related conflicts since the beginning of this year and vigilante killings by the population against suspected gang members have spiked, remains “critical.”

“We’ve talked to them about how they see other security elements, what more can be done,” said Nichols, whose visit overlapped with that of Gen. Laura J. Richardson, who heads the U.S. Southern Command, based in Doral. “Brazil is also a major destination for Haitians who wish to emigrate from Haiti, as well, so we have a lot of topics that we covered.”

Earlier this month, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with the Secretary General of Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations, Maria Laura da Rocha, in Washington and the two discussed the situation in Haiti, as well as Venezuela, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

The talk followed a visit by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to Brasilia. Though her trip was focused on promoting democracy and multilateral cooperation, Thomas-Greenfield also raised the issue of cooperation on Haiti.

“Both of our countries are frustrated by the situation on the ground in Haiti,” Thomas-Greenfield said in a press briefing. “We talked about some options for how we might move forward on addressing those issues, particularly in the Security Council. And we committed to working together to look to solutions to address the issue more directly.”

Nichols also followed up on those conversations during his visit.

“I would say the key part of the conversations that I’ve had is making sure that we’re pushing forward on getting resources to Haitian institutions, and making sure that the Security Council is working, continues to push forward in terms of seeking broader security support for Haiti,” he said.

Nichols added that one area that his Brazilian counterparts have expressed interest in cooperating with the United States on is the electoral process in Haiti once a calendar has been approved and a Provisional Electoral Council is seated.