Haiti – Rapid International Intervention Needed Says Rights Group

Human Rights Watch is urging the international community to take “urgent action is needed to address the extreme levels of violence, lack of security and near-total impunity, and the palpable feelings of terror, fear, hunger, and abandonment that so many Haitians experience today.”

In a report posted on their website, the organization “calls on the US, Canada, France, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) members and other governments to support the facilitation of the establishment of a transitional government that would work to re-establish rights-respecting rule of law and provide access to basic necessities for all Haitians, until democratic elections can provide the basis for the formation of a regular government”.

The group is also calling on the “UN Security Council to heed these calls and, if it authorizes the consensual deployment of an international force in Haiti, ensure that it is based on clear human rights protocols and has adequate funding and robust oversight mechanisms”.

HRW has documented the experience of Haitians while visiting the violence-torn country earlier this year, specifically the experience the members of one family – of two sisters and a brother – who were kidnapped by G9 gang members in Brooklyn, Port au Prince. The sisters were raped repeatedly and their brother killed along with other kidnapped men.

Ida Sawyer, the HRW’s crisis and conflict director, who visited Haiti to compile a report on the violence said, “The longer that we wait and don’t have this response, we’re going to see more Haitians being killed, raped and kidnapped, and more people suffering without enough to eat.”

“The main message we want to get across is that Haitian people need support now,” Sawyer said. “We heard again and again that the situation is worse now in Haiti than it’s been at any time people can remember.” However, the group is adamant that whatever help comes to Haiti, “steps must be taken to avoid repetition of past harms and to support implementation of a Haitian-led reparations process”.