OPINION:
Haiti is on the brink of collapse.
For decades, the Caribbean nation and its 11 million people have withstood repeated natural disasters, presidential coups, violent uprisings, devastating disease and unconscionable poverty. Yet somehow, Haiti survives — perhaps until now.
The nation has devolved into complete lawlessness. There have been no elections since 2016 and no elected legislature or president since the assassination of Jovenel Moise two years ago. Violent, heavily armed gangs now run the country.
International action is long overdue.
My wife, Fran, and I first traveled to Haiti in the mid-1990s as part of a congressional delegation fact-finding trip when I was serving in the U.S. Senate. We have since traveled there over 20 times, gaining a better understanding of the nation’s challenges with every visit.
We have met people such as Dr. William Pape, a Haitian-born physician who founded GHESKIO in the early 1980s to fight the raging AIDS epidemic in Haiti and has turned it into one of the nation’s only integrated health care systems. He knows Haiti as well as anyone and recently said this: “Haitians cannot overcome this crisis — the worst I have seen in my life — without foreign intervention.”
His sentiments echo those of the Rev. Tom Hagan, our friend who runs a free school, clinic, and feeding program in what is likely the poorest, most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere — a slum of Port-au-Prince called Cite Soleil, where over 500,000 Haitians live atop 3 square miles of garbage and raw sewage.
Father Hagan, whose own life is constantly under threat, says the violence is worse than he has ever seen in almost 40 years of working there, and the over 200 gangs have never been as volatile or deadly. Over the past year, their stray bullets have killed at least 20 students on their way to his school.
News reports suggest that the gangs now control between 60% to 80% of Port-au-Prince. They have blocked food, water and gas from entering Cite Soleil, often leaving Father Hagan, along with the World Food Program, the only ones able to get food into the slums.
The gangs threaten, intimidate, and in some cases, control what little legitimate police presence exists in Haiti. And cholera outbreaks have become rampant because sanitation efforts have ground to a halt.
Aside from the current volatility, Haiti remains unlike any other nation in the Western Hemisphere. No other nation in our hemisphere is as impoverished. Today, at least 90% of all Haitians live in poverty, with over half the population suffering severe food insecurity and one-third of Haitians living on little more than $2 a day.
No other nation in our hemisphere has a higher infant mortality rate.
And no other nation in our hemisphere is as environmentally strapped. Haiti is an ecological disaster, with 99% of the nation deforested and nearly the entire population vulnerable to hurricanes, floods and earthquakes.
Though seemingly a world away, Haiti is less than a 90-minute flight from Miami, so we have more of a stake in what goes on there than the rest of the world. Our nations are intrinsically linked by history, geography, humanitarian concerns, the illicit drug trade, and the ever-present possibility of waves of incoming refugees and illegal immigrants floating to our shores.
Over the nearly 30 years that Fran and I have been traveling to Haiti, the only time we truly saw order was when U.S. troops were stationed there. In 2004, we observed and talked with U.S. Marines in Port-au-Prince, serving as part of Operation Secure Tomorrow, following the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the collapse of the government. It was astounding the difference that just a thousand Marines could make.
Their presence created order and enabled the Haitian people to go about their lives, no longer fearful for their safety and security and to begin building the most basic infrastructure, such as roads and sanitation systems.
The current situation in Haiti is a humanitarian crisis of growing proportion, and the Biden administration must take a leadership role in rallying the international community to help Haiti restore the rule of law and a democratically elected government — one free of corruption and the influence and involvement of thugs and killers.
When it comes to Haiti, one thing I have learned is that nothing is easy. We must work with the international community over the long haul because any improvements will require a serious, sustained and steadfast commitment.
Things will not change overnight, and we must remain involved for as long as necessary for reforms to take root and for a democratic system of government to emerge.
Ultimately, the United States cannot fix Haiti, nor can the international community, but we can bring some stability to the country, and we can help Haiti begin to help itself.
• Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine served in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007. He sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was one of the Senate’s leading authorities on Haiti.
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