By Amélie Gauthier

Amélie Gauthier is a researcher at the Foundation for International Relations and Dialogue (FRIDE) in Madrid. She is specialized in UN peace operations and has conducted several investigations in Haiti.


No fewer than seven United Nations’ missions have passed through Port-au-Prince since 1991. Given the collapse of the country’s institutions and rampant gang violence, the UN has set up an “integrated mission”, this time with a much more ambitious brief. The wager is far from won.

President Aristide’s controversial departure on 29 February 2004 left a power vacuum in Haiti. The crumbling State was overwhelmed by worker unrest, the fragmentation of civil society, and the proliferation of armed bands that were terrorizing the population. Unable to guard its borders and completely absent from some of country’s 10 departments, it could not guarantee its population’s basic needs.
Confronted with serious human rights violations (attacks on innocent victims, abductions, sexual violence, etc.), the international community decided to intervene in the name of “the responsibility for protection of civilian populations”, that is, the doctrine that the United Nations’ General Assembly adopted in September 2005 to guarantee the protection of populations in danger. Given the extent of the crisis, several experts and governments even considered imposing a transitional administration, like the one in Kosovo, to reconstruct the Haitian State.

Integrated operations
To cope with this type of humanitarian, security, and political crisis, the international community can resort to “integrated peace operations”. These operations, which are composed of civilians, military personnel, and police officers, have very broad, but often ambiguous, mandates. The Haitian case is an innovation, for the mandate given to the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has given rise to a hybrid mission, that of both peace keeping and imposing peace. It is a government assistance mandate, but at the same time it is an executive mandate in several respects, one that provides notably for the need “to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence”(1).
Concretely, the mandate consists of three parts: restoring a secure and stable environment, promoting the political process, and promoting and protecting human rights. In reality, the mandate makes the integrated mission responsible for reconstructing the State by organizing elections, reforming the national police, restoring the rule of law and law and order, and helping the government with a programme that covers DDR (disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration), protection of the civilian population, promotion of a process of national dialogue, and the observance of human rights.
To achieve these numerous objectives, the integrated mission must work closely with the UN agencies that are already on site. This new approach tries to give “one” consistent response from the UN system as a whole in order to re-establish lasting peace in the country. Unfortunately, integration on the ground is complicated and many obstacles, both administrative and structural ones, make this “single” strategic response difficult to achieve.

A regional concern
Unlike the previous missions, in which the United States and France had predominant roles, Latin America has taken command of the operations this time. Three Latin American countries – Chile, Argentina, and Brazil – are supplying more than half of the troops, without counting the other Latin American countries that are also contributing military personnel or police offers(2). Chile’s ambassdor to the UN and former Foreign Minister, Juan Gabriel Valdés, was appointed Special Representative for the Secretary-General in Haiti and Head of MINUSTAH(3) in 2004. He was followed by Edmond Mulet, from Guatemala, in 2006. The forces’ commanders, for their part, have come from Brazil from the very start of the mission.
Beyond the principle of Latin American solidarity, some domestic and foreign interests have motivated this strong regional participation in the effort. The armed forces of the three lead countries, whose regimes were still recently associated with military putsches, want to improve their image. Moreover, the rapprochement of their troops on Haitian soil fosters the development of closer regional security ties. The integrated mission also enables them to increase their influence in international forums. MINUSTAH’s deployment coincided with the campaign that Brazil waged to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council during the UN Reform Summit in 2005.
During the discussions of the mandate and resolutions, two blocs formed around two different visions. They are Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (the ABC group) versus the United States, France, and Canada. The ABC group asserts that stabilization and security cannot be achieved without development and it is essential to treat security and development problems together. It thus has defended the importance of Quick Impact Projects (QIPS)(4) from the very outset. The US-Canada-France group, in contrast, wants bolder enforcement of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, i.e., imposing peace, stabilizing the environment, and creating conditions conducive to investment before proceeding with the reconstruction, rehabilitation, and consolidation of the country’s institutions.

Combating lawlessness
Over the first two years MINUSTAH concentrated on organizing presidential elections in order to restore a legitimate political power. René Préval was elected on 7 February 2006 in an election marked by massive voter turnout. MINUSTAH’s security work and logistic support, coupled with the UNDP’s collaboration, were decisive factors in this first step towards a viable State. A certain degree of political stability followed, allowing MINUSTAH to redirect its efforts towards combating lawlessness. The elected government first tried to negotiate with the country’s powerful gang leaders to get them to hand in their weapons voluntarily. This effort was in vain, for the violence and kidnappings continued.
In August 2006, the Haitian government and UN Security Council co-signed the reform of Haiti’s national police force (NPF) in order to create a professional14 000 man force that would be able to meet the country’s basic security needs by 2011. Not until December 2006 did the government authorize MINUSTAH to enter Cité Soleil, a very densely populated shantytown of 300 000 inhabitants where a great many criminal gangs that were manipulated by political factions or linked to the underworld hid out. Blind alleys, urban trenches, and hilly terrain constitute the new context for the UN’s military operations.
These operations exceeded the limits reached during the previous peace missions. The soldiers had to go house to house in search of arms, ammunition, and those responsible for the violence. They arrested more than 200 criminals, including Evans, one of the most feared gang leaders in the country.

Scepticism
Despite these efforts, the Haitians themselves remain sceptical. In their view, all the indicators are in the red: In November Haiti, which was already labelled the poorest country in the Americas and the eighth most fragile state in the world, was put at the top of Transparency International’s perceived corruption index for 2006(5). Lawlessness has worsened, violence has become a way of life, and former President Aristide’s Famni Lavalas Party has grown stronger. Some inhabitants even feel that the situation has deteriorated since MINUSTAH arrived. The number of guns in circulation in Haiti is put at more than 200 000(6). So far, MINUSTAH has recovered a mere few hundred of them and several thousand rounds of ammunition. The illegal drugs and arms trades, which are facilitated by the country’s porous border with the Dominican Republic and extensive coastline, give criminal groups ample opportunity to consolidate their power. The corruption that is fuelled by this criminal economy has contaminated every echelon of government and is considered one of the main destabilizing elements in the country.
Restoring the rule of law remains without a doubt MINUSTAH’s greatest challenge. Although the integrated mission is devoting much of its resources to reforming the police, the population remains wary of the corruption, politicisation, and lack of training (four and a half months) of the police.
The justice system and penitentiaries are not getting comparable resources and their reform is still proceeding much more slowly. The penitentiary system is in ruins, prisoners are detained without trial, and prison breaks are a dime a dozen. The bumpy relations between the national police and judicial system play into the criminals’ hands: Some criminals have been arrested and released up to five times!

The spectre of failure
It is time to take stock. The Haitian peace mission expresses the international community’s will to prevent the country’s total collapse and the spread of its devastating effects to the entire region. Beyond its action to combat the symptoms of an ailing state, i.e., violence and crime, the integrated mission knows that it must reinforce the State’s institutions, if the State is to be viable in the long term and support economic development. It also knows that its success or failure will depend on securing the international community’s long-term commitment, for premature withdrawal will definitely have catastrophic effects. The fate of Haiti and the future of relying on “integrated peace operations” hang in the balance.