After the earthquake in 2010, Haiti, an already politically unstable country since 1991 with fragile governments, became a failed state with most of its infrastructure failing or being in ruins as a result of the natural disaster and its already poor economy being left in ruins.
These conditions have created an incredibly poor and unstable society where most people aspire to leave, with the main city being partly controlled by gangs and armed militia groups connected with organized crime as a result of the fragile quasi-failed government.
Previously the migration routes from Haitians migrants were mostly to wealthy states in South America such as Colombia and mainly Chile, but with the Chilean government having passed a new migration law that restricts entrance of Haitian migrants as a result of security concerns and human trafficking issues, the Haitian migrant route has moved to the north since 2015/2016 in the direction of the US.
Covid-19 and the 2021 earthquake have made conditions in the country more dire and Haitian society has become increasingly more unstable. In addition, the country also suffers from a rapid drought caused by climate change and lack of sustainable agricultural land practices.
Its government lacks the necessary means to build infrastructure to deal with the amount of waste and plastic usage that the population in the cities produces, with alarming levels of pollution and bad sanitarian conditions existing throughout the country and contributing to a society with high mortality rates.
Under such conditions, Haitian population inside Haiti is one of the populations with the highest death rate in the Caribbean and there has been a alarming rise of killings and kidnappings that are a result of the high levels of extreme poverty that Haitian society suffers.
It’s precisely these same conditions that make an increasing amount o Haitians want to leave and be willing to risk their lives in order to reach a more stable society.
Throughout the Caribbean the Haitian refugee issue has also been a strong challenge to deal since most countries are too poor to have a social state that may afford to house and feed hundreds of thousands of migrants.
The country that has suffered more with this has been the Dominican Republic and it´s government has recently publicly considered Haitian refugees a “security threat” given the instability of Haiti, having recently passed a law that makes anyone that does not descend from someone born in the country after 1930 unable to have citizenship.
This new law as in effect given space for the Dominican government to openly deny citizenship to Haitian refugees and has consequently left thousands of Haitian migrants without citizenship and neglected.
Both the UN and the US government have given pressure to the Dominican government to give more support, however clashes between the Haitian population and the Dominican along the border have made the tensions increase and Dominican society has been historically at odds with Haitian over territorial disputes along the border and inter-ethnic tensions.
There are now plans by the Dominican government to reinforce the border-line with fences and barbed wire and the checkpoints in at the border are actively being guarded by military police with military weapons.
Although many Haitians have been sent back to Haiti after attempting to migrate and settle in the US, under the previous administration and in this current presidency as well, there was a strong condemnation by Human Rights organizations to the governments of the states surrounding Haiti that deport them such as Cuba and the US since it puts at risk the lives of these same migrants.
However, there is also a security and economic dilemma here that most states in the Caribbean battle with which is the fact that theses same migrants end up bringing an increasing level of insecurity to the country and live off the state welfare in societies that are already weak economically speaking, making the development of their economies get harder and slower.
Human Rights Watch has interviewed multiple Haitian migrants and has come to the conclusion that returns to Haiti are life-threatening now and will continue to be so until security conditions in Haiti improve.
The dire security situation in Haiti has gotten since 2021 even worse and currently what rests of the state authority is actively engaging in deals with organize crime, giving full control of the port of the capital city of Port-Au Prince to the gangs which in turn have turned it into a regional drug checkpoint and a human trafficking market.
It is also believed that politicians are also financially backed by these same crime groups which are suspected to have connections with drug and human trafficking cartels of South and Central America.
The failure of the Haitian state is also connected with its deep political crisis and the crisis of its unstable democracy with the current Prime Minister having not been elected but rather appointed by former President Jovenel Moise two days before Moises assassination which happened during the corona crisis.
The state institutions have ceased to have accountability and Parliament has ceased to function with the justice system also being barely capable of remaining capable, with most criminals with connections to the main gangs remaining free.
In addition, given the current security situation in Haiti, civil society groups and organizations assisting returnees are concerned that people expelled or deported to Haiti are at risk of kidnapping extortion by the local crime lords which further demotivates migrants from retuning, with no system in place to actively track or support returnees.
It should be added that although the Biden administration has made one of its public policy agendas to create a country that is more welcoming of migrants, it has in this last year intensified its deportation of Haitian migrants with the number of deportations from January 1st 2021 through February 26th 2022 counting to 25,765 deportees according to the International Organization for Migration.
More than any other country in the Caribbean. Out of all the people deported it is reported that the most vulnerable are children, with the IOM reporting that just through February 2022 the US returned to Haiti 2,300 children born abroad to Haitian parents, with the majority having been originally in Chile.
The deportations are happening under the federal legislation of Title 42 which deliberately cuts the opportunity of the migrants to express their fears or register as refugees and effectively enter the country under an asylum permit, something that multiple Human rights organizations have openly criticized the US government claiming that it is in open violation of international law.
However, it is also important to understand that inevitably a sovereign state will always choose to protect its society and stability over accepting uncontrolled waves of migrants.
The question is how to find a strategically sustainable solution that lessens the burden and security situation of the migrants on the states receiving them while also protecting their rights and taking into account their legitimate grievances.
The best strategic option would be to create an international system of support that creates more stability and humanitarian aid in Haiti and tackles its immediate security situation with the gang and organized crime. By stabilizing the country, it would be possible to reallocate the migrants and make Haiti stable.
However, this is only one of the multiple possible scenarios and it is only possible to be effectively put into action under an international coalition that spans governments and humanitarian aid organizations.
Under the current paradigm of economic stress and with the US continuously moving its resources to Ukraine and the Pacific, its hard to see such a development happening at least in the next few years.
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
