U.N. Security Council delays vote on Haiti sanctions, troops while rebuking political class

The United Nations Security Council adjourned a hearing on Haiti without a vote Monday on whether it will support an appeal by the Caribbean nation and its supporters to provide urgent international support to help confront armed gangs that continue to block the flow of fuel after five weeks and have plunged the country into a dire humanitarian crisis.

“The people of Haiti are not living, they are surviving,” Haiti Foreign Minister Jean Victor Geneus said, telling the council that 4 million Haitian children are unable to attend school because of the blockade and ongoing violence, and that women and girls are being raped by armed gangs. “It is a very stark and unfathomable reality for the people of Haiti that I’m describing here now.”

While Security Council members were unanimous in their condemnation of the gang violence, which has left Haiti paralyzed and without the ability to tackle a new cholera outbreak, some expressed reservations about the way forward.

Two resolutions, both supported by the United States and Mexico, are under consideration. One would establish a framework to impose financial sanctions on Haitian gangs and those who provide them with money and weapons. The second supports the immediate deployment of a rapid-action armed force to help the Haiti National Police take back control of Varreux, the country’s main fuel terminal, along with seaports and roads.

Though some member nations publicly voiced support for both proposals, others were hesitant, expressing concerns about the potential adverse effects of U.N. sanctions and of interfering in a country’s internal affairs.

The draft of the sanctions resolution was shared with members ahead of Monday’s meeting. Under U.N. procedures, if no one objects within a certain time, it will be approved. The resolution on deploying troops, however, could face a tougher battle even though both the Haitian government and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres have called on the international community to intervene with a force.

“A humanitarian emergency is now at our doorstep,” Guterres’ representative in Haiti, Helen La Lime, told the Security Council, which also received a report detailing how gangs have commandeered the main courthouse, outgunned police and frequently resort to sexual violence. La Lime also said dozens of cholera cases have been confirmed, including 25 deaths in the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince.

The gang blockade is being led by a powerful gang alliance headed by a former cop, Jimmy Cherizier, who goes by the name Barbeque. Now in its sixth week, the fuel blockade continues to disrupt the country’s hospitals and water suppliers, and is affecting the response to cholera.

“Without fuel, waste is not removed from neighborhoods, while torrential rains promote flooding, which mixes with refuse to create insalubrious conditions ripe for the spread of disease,” La Lime said.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US. ambassador to the U.N., asked members to support both proposals and said the draft resolution specifically lists Cherizier as the subject of sanctions.

“He is directly responsible for the devastating fuel shortage that is crippling the country,” she said. “By passing this resolution, we would take concrete actions to hold him — and so many other violent criminals — to account.”

Thomas-Greenfield said that an arms embargo provision in the sanctions resolution also would prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of weapons to criminal gangs and their leaders designated by the council.

The United States, she said, is keenly aware of the history of international intervention in Haiti. She spoke of a recent visit by a high-level U.S. delegation to Port-au-Prince, saying that “we have also consulted broadly with other stakeholders in Haiti, including civil society and the private sector.”

“Colleagues, if there was ever a moment to come to the aid of Haitians in dire need, it is now. Faced with extreme violence and instability, Haiti’s leaders and people are crying out for help,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “A problem of this magnitude cannot be solved by one country or even by a handful of partners in the region. It requires a concerted international response. It requires robust international cooperation. And it requires urgent action by this Council.”

Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. plans to circulate a resolution authorizing “a non-U.N. international security assistance mission” to help restore security in Haiti and alleviate the humanitarian crisis. Though the mission would not be a U.N. peacekeeping operation similar to the successive missions Haiti has had since the 1990s, it would be authorized under the U.N.’s Chapter VII, which gives the Security Council the power to maintain peace.

The U.S. has said it doesn’t want to lead the mission, and Canada has also expressed similar concerns. Some members on the Security Council have privately expressed to the U.S. that they expect to see details of the proposed mission before voting on it.

Biden administration officials say they are still skeptical of sending U.S. troops to join the effort, and that Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks were meant to underscore that the U.S. would lend substantial support to a mission led by a foreign partner. The goal, one official said, is to avoid the mission appearing to the Haitian people — or the international community — like a foreign invasion.

Russia and China expressed concerns that the issue remains sensitive in Haiti, where opposition leaders are against a foreign intervention force and fear that it may be used to keep the current government in power.

“Many opposition groups call for not allowing a foreign intervention and they are rightly referring also, to put it mildly, to a not very successful experience with external interference in the affairs of the country,” said Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative. “We issue a call to take these opinions into account and to carefully weigh all of the consequences of bringing foreign contingents within international or regional foreign formats into Haiti.”

Polyanskiy also urged against rushing to implement U.N. sanctions, saying that the Russian Federation cannot support “attempts to quickly push through a resolution” without discussions to consider their effectiveness, targeted natures and humanitarian consequences.

Acknowledging that the Haitian National Police needs help, Polyanskiy said the deepening humanitarian crisis “needs to become an incentive for all players to understand that the interest of society needs to become the highest priority.”

Brazil’s U.N. representative agreed. “A Haitian-led solution is central to curb violence,” Ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho said.

The representative of Brazil, which has experience in helping Haiti confront gang violence, made no commitment. The country is currently in a presidential election runoff, and its ambassador said they have taken note of the secretary-general’s support for the deployment of a rapid-action armed force.

“We must all examine how best to help Haiti,” he said.

The need for key players in Haiti’s political and civil society to break a deepening stalemate is the one area the Security Council agreed on, with several members calling for elections as soon as the security conditions allow. All council members called for the country’s leaders to set aside their personal and political interests, with Albania’s representative not mincing words.

“The political class of Haiti should get its act together,” Ambassador Ferit Hoxha said. “Political actors cannot be bystanders of a house on fire.”