Kenyan police officers will soon travel to Haiti with a daunting mission: to help restore order in a country where killings and kidnappings are so rampant that hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and where, for years, it has been too dangerous to hold elections.
It is certainly the first time that an international force has gone to Haiti in the name of law and order. Or the second. Or even the third.
Over the last century, soldiers from around the world – including the United States – have deployed to Haiti and even invaded.
Over the past 30 years, the United Nations has launched at least six peacekeeping missions in Haiti. International soldiers restored overthrown presidents, freed them, and helped train the Haitian National Police. But they also left a sad legacy of sexual exploitation, civilian casualties and deadly diseases.
Here is a look at some of the international interventions in Haiti.
Has the United States ever invaded Haiti?
YES. More than once.
The United States invaded Haiti in 1915, following the assassination of President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam of Haiti that year, and remained for nearly 20 years, one of the longest occupations in American history.
President Woodrow Wilson ordered the invasion in the name of preventing anarchy, but US government historians also recognize this that the deployment was more aimed at protecting U.S. assets in the area and keeping the Germans at bay.
German merchants dominated trade with Haiti and, at the time, were considered the United States' main rivals in the Caribbean.
The Americans took control of Haiti's central bank and created a slave-like workforce. The Americans oversaw the construction of roads and hospitals, using the forced labor of poor Haitians. The United States installed puppet presidents and rewrote Haiti's Constitution to give foreigners the right to own land.
Like the Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat said it: “Call it gunboat diplomacy or banana warfare, but this occupation was never intended – as Americans professed – to spread democracy, especially given that certain democratic freedoms were not even available to black citizens of the United States at the time ”.
The Americans also established a security force known as the Gendarmerie, which later evolved into the Haitian Army.
When strikes and riots broke out in Haiti, U.S. Marines opened fire on protesters, killing 12 Haitians. Following that massacre, Wilson appointed a commission to study withdrawal from Haiti, and the occupation ended in 1934.
The Americans returned 60 years later with a mission they called Operation Uphold Democracy.
In 1994, three years after Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a military coup, President Bill Clinton ordered Haiti to send more than 20,000 troops. The American troops were greeted by cheers from the masses of Haitians who supported Mr. Aristide, who was popular in low-income communities. He returned to power and completed his term.
In 2004, the United States, Canada and France created the Interim Multinational Force, which was deployed to Haiti when Aristide, who had been elected a second time, was again forced to leave the country.
And the United Nations?
The United Nations has sent several missions to Haiti, each with its own unpronounceable acronym.
The UN said its 1993 mission, known as UNMIH, helped create a favorable atmosphere for the elections and contributed to the training and support of the new police force.
Many more missions followed, but none as long-lasting and infamous as the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH, which lasted from 2004 to 2017.
After rebel forces had succeeded in overthrowing Aristide's second presidency, and a few months after he left for exile, the UN Security Council authorized MINUSTAH to address the armed conflicts that had spread to several cities Haitian.
The mission was supposed to support the transitional government by creating a stable environment that would allow elections to be held and international aid to be provided. The UN-maintained peacekeeping force in Haiti at times numbered as many as 13,000 members.
The UN has credited the force with helping the nation overcome a series of natural disasters, including a devastating 2010 earthquake, which the Haitian government says killed 316,000 people, including 102 MINUSTAH members.
The UN also noted that its mission has led to a reduction in killings and political violence. According to United Nations data, 15,000 police officers have been trained and kidnappings have decreased by 95%.
“Thirteen years after the arrival of MINUSTAH, political violence has significantly decreased and immediate threats from armed gangs, whose origins are rooted in social and political divisions, have been significantly reduced,” wrote António Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations, in a 2017 message. final report.
But he admitted that “aside from many obvious findings,” cholera and sexual abuse by members of the UN forces have cast a shadow over the agency's relationship with the Haitian people.
At least 10,000 people have died from cholera, which was introduced into the country due to poor sanitation conditions at a UN camp for Nepalese soldiers. Although the United Nations apologized, the families of the sick and dead were never compensated.
The UN has raised only 5% of the $400 million promised to help victims and build cholera treatment centers.
“It was truly shameful,” said Beatrice Lindstrom, a human rights lawyer who represented victims in an unsuccessful lawsuit against the United Nations.
Soldiers sent into poor neighborhoods to root out gangs were also accused of several incidents of excessive use of force that resulted in the deaths of civilians. In some operations, the UN fired grenades and tens of thousands of projectiles.
“There is real reason to be very concerned about what this mission in Kenya will look like from the perspective of civilian casualties,” Ms. Lindstrom said.
The United Nations is still grappling with the consequences of hundreds of children fathered and abandoned by soldiers in Haiti. Furthermore, in 2007, the UN announced had sent home 108 Sri Lankan soldiers who had sexually exploited minors.
When asked if the mission was considered a success, The UN said in a statement that the deployment had “stabilised the country when it was on the brink of collapse, with deep political polarization and instability, a dysfunctional police force and almost non-existent state authority”.
UN support in vetting, recruiting and training Haitian police has helped the force grow from 2,500 officers to more than 15,000, the UN said.
“MINUSTAH opened space for political and democratic processes to take place, including the organization of electoral processes,” the statement read.
However, experts fear that the troubled legacies of past interventions are simply being repeated.
“None of these interventions were beneficial to Haiti,” said François Pierre-Louis, chair of the political science department at Queens College and a member of Aristide’s cabinet.
“I am against intervention on principle,” he added. “We need to let people be held accountable for their actions. Let them fail so they own the process.”
