By Mary Durran, Latin America Programs Officer, and Luke Stocking, Interim Executive Director
This International Development Week, let’s not forget Haiti
As we mark International Development Week, we would like to draw attention to a country that, despite facing many challenges, continues demonstrating incomparable resilience: Haiti.
In 2025, Haiti is celebrating two key anniversaries in its history: the 15th anniversary of the earthquake of January 12, 2010, which destroyed Port-au-Prince and killed over 250,000 people; and the 200th anniversary of King Charles X’s imposition to pay 9 million francs to the French state for its independence. This staggering debt swapped plantation slavery for economic slavery and undermined the country’s development and economy. This anniversary is particularly poignant when a global campaign against unjust debt is underway.
Today, mired in a security, political and economic crisis, Haiti is still suffering. The stranglehold of armed gangs on the country led to over 5,600 deaths and almost 1,500 kidnappings in 2024. It has also resulted in over a million people being displaced. Meanwhile, the Dominican Republic have deported over 276,000 Haitians back to Haiti.
Despite the UN embargo, arms continue to enter the country illegally, mainly from Florida and the Dominican Republic, and gangs continue using them to terrorize the population. Massacres, rapes, attacks on hospitals and the murder of journalists are commonplace. The Haitian National Police is under-equipped and understaffed. The Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission has received barely 600 of the 2,500 troops that the international community had promised. Having received only $97.4 million of the $600 million allocated by the international community for its first year, the MSS has produced poor results. The U.S. decision to suspend funding for the MSS cannot help.
There are pressing humanitarian needs today. Half the population is affected by food insecurity, and over a million displaced people are living in precarious conditions, exposed to gang violence and exactions, disease and hunger. Regions outside Port-au-Prince, where there is relative calm, are receiving an influx of displaced people, as host families struggle to feed themselves. Many of these displaced people are heading for the southern peninsula, which is still recovering from damage caused by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and the earthquake of 2021.
Appeal to the international community
In this important year, we recall that Haiti’s complex challenges are the consequences of structural exploitation, particularly by foreign economies, and that the current situation seriously threatens the survival of the Haitian people.
Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada calls on the international community to ensure that eliminating social exclusion and disparity are at the heart of all initiatives to build a better future for Haitians. Canada and the international community must:
- Increase contributions to the UN humanitarian appeal for $674 million launched in February 2024. Only 43.5 per cent of the appeal is currently funded, with Canada’s contribution accounting for only 1.6 per cent (see report). Canada can and must do more!
- Strengthen government services through Canada’s aid program in Haiti, especially where displaced people have headed outside Port-au-Prince. Also strengthen health and education services and decentralized governmental agriculture, civil protection and environmental protection services to meet the medium- and long-term needs of the new arrivals and prevent a fresh exodus to Port-au-Prince once peace is restored.
- Apply Resolution 2653 against the illegal flow of weapons into Haiti, particularly from the United States and the Dominican Republic.
- Encourage the Presidential Council and the Haitian justice system to prosecute and punish those responsible for recruiting, financing and arming criminal gangs.
- Launch a well-funded, broad-spectrum program to strengthen the administrative and judicial capacities of the Haitian state, with a proportion devoted to improving the effectiveness of the MSS mission and strengthening and equipping the national police force. Lessons learned from the failures of past internal and external armed operations must be integrated into the design and implementation of any security-related intervention. This must include close civilian oversight by human rights organizations, strict mandate limitations and a viable demobilization program for gang members.
- Provide more than a short-term response to the security situation by addressing key issues like constitutional, electoral and justice reform; committing to investing in genuine sustainable development in Haiti; and empowering the Haitian people to determine their own future.
- Suspend the deportation of Haitians while the country lacks the resources to take in deportees.
Finally, on the 200th anniversary of imposing a debt on Haiti for its independence, we call on France to engage in dialogue with Haiti to consider reparations. That fundamental injustice means that France owes a moral and financial debt to Haiti, which it has a unique opportunity to resolve 200 years on.
